MBLAZE(7)              Miscellaneous Information Manual              MBLAZE(7)

NAME
     mblaze – introduction to the mblaze message system

DESCRIPTION
     The mblaze message system is a set of Unix utilities for processing and
     interacting with mail messages which are stored in maildir folders.

     Its design is roughly inspired by MH, the RAND Message Handling System,
     but it is a complete implementation from scratch.

     mblaze consists of these Unix utilities that each do one job:

     maddr(1)     extract mail addresses from messages
     magrep(1)    search messages matching a pattern
     mbnc(1)      bounce messages
     mcom(1)      compose and send messages
     mdeliver(1)  deliver messages or import mbox file
     mdirs(1)     list maildir folders, recursively
     mexport(1)   export messages as mbox file
     mflag(1)     manipulate maildir message flags
     mflow(1)     reflow format=flowed plain text messages
     mfwd(1)      forward messages
     mgenmid(1)   generate a Message-ID
     mhdr(1)      print message headers
     minc(1)      incorporate new messages
     mless(1)     conveniently read messages in less(1)
     mlist(1)     list and filter messages
     mmime(1)     create MIME messages
     mmkdir(1)    create new maildir folders
     mpick(1)     advanced message filter
     mrefile(1)   move or copy messages between maildir folders
     mrep(1)      reply to messages
     mscan(1)     generate one-line message summaries
     msed(1)      manipulate message headers
     mseq(1)      manipulate message sequences
     mshow(1)     render messages and extract MIME parts
     msort(1)     sort messages
     mthread(1)   arrange messages into discussions

     mblaze is a classic command line MUA and has no features for receiving or
     transferring messages; you can operate on messages in a local maildir
     spool, or fetch your messages using fdm(1), getmail(1), offlineimap(1),
     or similar utilities, and send it using dma(8), msmtp(1), sendmail(8), as
     provided by OpenSMTPD, Postfix, or similar.

     mblaze operates directly on maildir folders and doesn't use its own
     caches or databases.  There is no setup needed for many uses.  All
     utilities have been written with performance in mind.  Enumeration of all
     messages in a maildir is avoided unless necessary, and then optimized to
     limit syscalls.  Parsing message metadata is optimized to limit I/O
     requests.  Initial operations on a large maildir may feel slow, but as
     soon as they are in the file system cache, everything is blazingly fast.
     The utilities are written to be memory efficient (i.e. not wasteful), but
     whole messages are assumed to fit into RAM easily (one at a time).

     mblaze has been written from scratch and is now well tested, but it is
     not 100% RFC-conforming (which is neither worth it, nor desirable).
     There may be issues with very old, nonconforming, messages.

     mblaze is written in portable C, using only POSIX functions (apart from a
     tiny Linux-only optimization), and has no external dependencies.  It
     supports MIME and more than 7-bit messages (everything the host iconv(3)
     can decode).  It assumes you work in a UTF-8 environment.  mblaze works
     well with other Unix utilities such as mairix(1), mu(1), or
     offlineimap(1).

EXAMPLES
     mblaze utilities are designed to be composed together in a pipe.  They
     are suitable for interactive use and for scripting, and integrate well
     into a Unix workflow.

     For example, you could decide you want to look at all unseen messages in
     your INBOX, oldest first.
           mlist -s ~/Maildir/INBOX | msort -d | mscan

     To operate on a set of messages in multiple steps, you can save it as a
     sequence, e.g. add a call to ‘mseq -S’ to the above command:
           mlist -s ~/Maildir/INBOX | msort -d | mseq -S | mscan

     Now mscan will show message numbers and you could look at the first five
     messages at once, for example:
           mshow 1:5

     Likewise, you could decide to incorporate (by moving from new to cur) all
     new messages in all folders, thread it and look at it interactively:
           mdirs ~/Maildir | xargs minc | mthread | mless

     Or you could list the attachments of the 20 largest messages in your
     INBOX:
           mlist ~/Maildir/INBOX | msort -S | tail -20 | mshow -t

     Or delete messages beyond a certain age:
           mlist ~/Maildir/INBOX | mpick -t 'mtime < "-365d"' | xargs rm

     Or apply the patches from the current message:
           mshow -O. '*.diff' | patch

     As usual with pipes, the sky is the limit.

CONCEPTS
     mblaze deals with messages (which are files), folders (which are maildir
     folders), sequences (which are newline-separated lists of messages,
     possibly saved on disk in ${MBLAZE:-$HOME/.mblaze}/seq), and the current
     message (kept as a symlink in ${MBLAZE:-$HOME/.mblaze}/cur).

     Messages in the saved sequence can be referred to using special syntax as
     explained in mmsg(7).

     Many utilities have a default behavior when used interactively from a
     terminal (e.g. operate on the current message or the current sequence).
     For scripting, you must make these arguments explicit.

     For configuration, see mblaze-profile(5).

COLORS
     mblaze color output of mshow(1) and mscan(1) can be configured via
     environment variables starting with MCOLOR_. For example:
           export MCOLOR_FROM=226

     will turn the color of From= header line to bright yellow.

     All programmable colors:
     MCOLOR_CUR       current message in mless
     MCOLOR_DIFF_D    diff deleted lines
     MCOLOR_DIFF_I    diff inserted lines
     MCOLOR_DIFF_R    diff line range
     MCOLOR_FOOTER    footer
     MCOLOR_FROM      from header line
     MCOLOR_HEADER    rest of header
     MCOLOR_QUOTE     quote
     MCOLOR_QQUOTE    double-nested quote
     MCOLOR_QQQUOTE   triple-nested quote
     MCOLOR_SEP       message separator
     MCOLOR_SIG       message signature

SEE ALSO
     mailx(1), mblaze-profile(5), nmh(7)

AUTHORS
     Leah Neukirchen <[email protected]>

     There is a mailing list available at [email protected] (to
     subscribe, send a message to [email protected]); archives
     are available at https://inbox.vuxu.org/mblaze/. There also is an IRC
     channel #vuxu on irc.libera.chat.  Please report security-related bugs
     directly to the author.

LICENSE
     mblaze is in the public domain.

     To the extent possible under law, the creator of this work has waived all
     copyright and related or neighboring rights to this work.

     http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/

Void Linux                     January 18, 2020                     Void Linux