Red Hat ENTERPRISE LINUX 4 - STEP BY STEP GUIDE Manual

Also see for ENTERPRISE LINUX 4 - DEVELOPER TOOLS GUIDE: Installation guide Installation guide Tuning guide Installation guide Manual

Contents

Chapter 7. Email Applications 877.3. Plain Text Email ClientsMost modern email clients allow the user to select whether they want to send their emails in plaintext or in HTML. HTML formatted email can contain formated text, graphics, and interactive links toWeb sites. The particular font can be specified, the layout is very controllable, textures, and picturesor backgrounds can be added; all this makes for a visually appealing message when it gets to therecipient.On the other hand, plain text email is just that — plain text. There is nothing fancy, there are nopictures embedded in the email, and there are no special fonts.The term plain text refers to textual data in ASCII format. Plain text (also called clear text) is themost portable format because it is supported by nearly every email application on various types ofmachines.This chapter discusses the mutt plain text email client.7.3.1. Using MuttMutt is a small but very powerful text-based mail client for UNIX operating systems.The configuration file for Mutt, ~/.muttrc, is highly configurable. Because a user can control nearlyall of the functions within Mutt, new users sometimes run into problems with initial configuration.Most of the options for Mutt are invoked using the set or unset commands, with either boolean orstring values, e.g. set folder = ~/Mail.All configuration options can be changed at any time by typing a [:] followed by the relevant com-mand. For example :unset help turns off the keyboard command hints at the top of the screen. Toturn those hints back on, type :set help.If you cannot remember the command, there is always tab-completion to help.You do not have to type all your preferred configuration commands each time you run mutt, you cansave them in a file which is loaded every time the program starts up. This configuration file must existin your home directory, and it must be named either ~/.muttrc or ~/.mutt/muttrc.When you launch mutt (by typing mutt at a shell prompt), a screen appears with a list of emailmessages. This initial menu is called the index.Figure 7-8. mutt Main Screen