TkMail is an X windows interface to the unix Mail command built using Tk/Tcl. Reading, sending, and managing mail messages can almost all be done using only the mouse (except for the body of the message, of course). TkMail depends on the unix 'Mail' and 'sendmail' commands to do the real network mail work. It puts the X window interface on top and adds some additional features. Major Features: - listbox interface to messages for easy click and read - viewed messages are editable inside viewing widget so one can add or delete text for printing or piping X selections - dynamic (at startup) menus for quick access to mail folders for reading, copying, and moving messages - button bar for quick composing, replying to, and forwarding of mail messages - built in 'biff' icon for notification of new mail - easy inclusion of files into message compositions with automatic uuencoding and compression, if desired - access alternate editor for compositions to send - spell check compositions using a X windows interface (must have the ispell program version 3.0.09, not 4.0!) - reads aliases from either standard .mailrc or elm aliases.txt - easy piping of message text through unix filters - emacs-like key-bindings for text editing Unfortunately, the Mail program is not standard across all platforms or even versions of operatings systems, so don't trust TkMail without testing! Make a backup copy of your ~/mbox file and some of your folders and then test out the features on those files. Please see the help.txt file for more details on usage and customization. Personally, I find the default colors of the Tk text widget rather hard on the eyes, so I suggest you at least read about customizing the color. IMPORTANT TO TK3.6 USERS! You will find in the contrib directory two files: tk.patch and tk.patch2. If you have not applied tk3.6p1.patch.Z available at harbor.ecn.purdue.edu:/pub/tcl/sprite-mirror or the first of patch files on contrib to your wish, TkMail will coredump. The file tk.patch2 fixes a minor problem that some users had with "illegal unit" messages and should not be stricty necessary if you have already patched the raw tk3.6 distribution. INSTALLATION: I have run TkMail on a SUN, IBM RS/6000, SGI, and Linux systems. (1) Edit the Makefile to set the defines to match your site (2) Make sure you have no new mail in your system inbox and at least one mail message in your ~/mbox. For safety sake make a backup copy of your ~/mbox. (3) Type 'make tests'. This runs a wish script in the test directory which will run tests to see if TkMail can work with the settings you defined in the Makefile. Follow the instruction you are given. You will be prompted with appropriate info before anything destructive is done, so if you happen to receive new mail during the test, it will not be lost. If the test succeed, then TkMail will probably work with your system. If they failed, please mail me the output of the tests along with your Makefile settings and machine type and operating system. (4) Type 'make' to build the tkmail script executable. (5) Type 'make install'. (6) Look at the SETTINGS section in the help.txt file for descriptions of setting you might want to put into your ~/.tkmail file (~/.tk/tkmail is also supported). An example ~/.tkmail is included in example.tkmail. (7) Some editing of your .mailrc file might be required. See the HEADER FIELD STRIPPING section at the top of the tkmail file for more info. TkMail always sets the 'append' mode. If you prefer a reverse time listing, use the mf(headlist-reverse) setting. The following TkMail variables sometimes have similar Mailrc counterparts which should not conflict. Since different mailers have different Mailrc variable names for these, I can't as yet just grab them from the .mailrc file. mf(mail-directory) mf(mail-record) mf(mail-mbox) mf(insert-prefix) mf(compose-alternates) (8) If you are updating from a version of TkMail previous to version 1.6, you will need to modify your ~/.tkmail file to use the new variable name scheme. I have included a sed script called newvar.sed to quickly do this. Type sed -f newvar.sed ~/.tkmail > tkmail.new then copy tkmail.new into ~/.tkmail. Also look at the first four items of Whats New in the NEWS file. Now you are ready to run! A WORD OF CAUTION: The way alot of people use TkMail (including me) is have TkMail always running, most of the time as an icon to signal new mail. When I log off, I don't bother to quit TkMail (or any of the other X applications running) explicitly. Unfortunately, as far as I know, Tk does not give me anyway of catching a quit to the window manager. Therefore, pending deletes and marking of messages as read may not be done. On some badly designed systems, it might be possible to lose new incorporated mail. You should test this by sending yourself a test mail message, running TkMail from a shell (not in the background), incorporating the mail, and then killing TkMail abruptly (type ^C in the shell). Rerun TkMail and see if the test message is still there. Please email me if you find this behavior on your system. INFORMATIONAL MAILINGS: If you would like me to send you email about new TkMail releases, patches, and future directions, please send an email message to raines@bohr.physics.upenn.edu saying so. Suggestions, bug reports, and critiques are always welcome. The latest version of TkMail is always available by anonymous ftp at bohr.physics.upenn.edu:pub/tk/tkmail.tk.Z FUTURE RELEASE INFORMATION: Release 1.6 of TkMail will be the last major release of TkMail for at least a month. The next release will be 2.0 and will contain several new features. My plans are to give up fighting all the different versions of the Mail command and write my own C program or figure out how to use something more standard, like awk, to do the Mail-like work. This will also let me do several things that I can't do with the normal BSD Mail program. Other major additions planned include MIME and PGP. I will still be releasing bug fix patches for 1.6 when they are needed. Paul Raines Feb 3, 1994