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Elm

Elm is a menu based way of sending mail. When elm is invoked, a menu of commands is displayed and if you have mail, it will display the subjects of the mail.

There are 3 main ways to use elm:

1. Explicitly send a single message.
2. Conveniently send files or the output of commands via command line redirection.
3. Use elm as an interactive mail interface program (Just type elm).

To invoke elm just type: elm

Once you are in elm, you will see at the bottom of the screen a menu of commands, and if you have mail waiting you will see at the top of the screen, from who the mail is coming from and the subject of the mail. In front of each piece of mail there is a status message and also a number. The status field is composed of three separate character fields, the first of which indicates temporary status:

D

Indicates a deleted message.

E

Identifies an expired message. This flag is set according to the header field Expires.

N

Identifies a new message.

At the menu you can execute this commands that will enable you to read, send mail, reply to mail, forward mail and other functions.

Return

Read current message.

f

Forward this message to another person.

m

Send mail to a specified user.

n

Go to next message.

q

Quit and save all changes.

r

Reply to the author of the current message.

c

Change mailbox file.

s

Save message(s) to file.

x

Exit and throw away all changes.

When sending a message, elm uses vi as the default editor, unless you have altered the editor specified in your .elm/elmrc file or have an editor listed as $EDITOR in your environment. If builtin is specified as your editor, a large set of commands is available while composing your message.

If the file $HOME/.elm/elmheaders exists, elm reads in the contents of the file and adds it to the headers of all outbound mail (useful for adding an Organization: field, Phone: field, etc).

Elm supports automatic configuration by means of an rc file. The file must be named $HOME/.elm/elmrc and can contain any combination of the string, numeric, and boolean variables described below. If the directory $HOME/.elm does not exist, elm asks whether you want to create it or not. If you respond with "yes", elm will create $HOME/.elm.

The following files have special meaning if they exist in your .elm directory:

signature

This file will be appended to all outbound mail before the editor is invoked.

weedout

This can contain a list of headers that you wish to not see. Default is >From" "In-Reply-To:" "References:" "Newsgroups:" "Received:" "Apparently-To:" "Message-Id:" "Content-Type:" "From" and "Mailer:")

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