= coma - a console mail user agent

THIS IS ALPHA SOFTWARE WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY. PLEASE KEEP BACKUPS OF YOUR MAIL, ESPECIALLY IF YOU USE DESTRUCTIVE OPERATIONS.

== About

This is coma, a simple but powerful console mail user agent. You can think of it as a modern (that is, post-2000) alternative to the venerable MH, RAND Mail Handler.

coma aims to provide a surrogate for MH that works well in modern environments. The main differences are:

• coma uses Maildir as backing store; this is more reliable and widely supported.
• coma has built-in MIME and UTF-8 support.
• coma has built-in threading support (using jwz's algorithm).
• coma is a single, extensible script written in Ruby, so you can implement complex features in it easily without having to write C.

Yet, coma also is a lot like MH:

• it is command-driven, featuring a non-captive interface, unlike tools like mailx or mutt. It is well suited for parallel use for multiple terminals and thus a good fit for screen/tmux/xterms.
• it is a MUA only. Mail delivery and transfer is the task of other tools.

== Command-line parsing

coma is a multi-call script that is executed like this:

% coma SUBCOMMAND ARGS... [-FLAG FLAGARGS...]...

Note that some flags have possibly several arguments. Consider:

% coma repl -cc [email protected] [email protected] -att *.c -noquote

== Workflow

How do you use coma? The default workflow for coma works like this:

• You are bored and want to read mail, or your xlbiff pops up and shows an interesting message.

• Thus, you check your folders for new Maildir messages:

  % coma inc +INBOX 134 messages 129 unread 5 new

• You setup a reading sequence you want to progress in; usually this is saved in your config, here is an explicit variant:

  % coma read +INBOX +ruby-talk thread unseen [...scan lines of new mail...]

  By default, "inc" sets up a reading sequence containing all fresh mail.

• You read the mails: % coma show % coma next % coma next % coma next . . . % coma next no more mail

• You are done.

• It is highly advised that you alias ,=coma.

== Searching mail

coma has a powerful search language that can operate on the header fields being cached:

% coma scan '+INBOX ( subj:foo | subj:bar ) date>2009-01-01 unreplied'

For content searches, I recommend using mairix:

% mairix -r SEARCH TERMS | coma read -

Put the included "coma-search" wrapper into your path to simply use:

% coma search SEARCH TERMS

== Sending mail

% coma mail ... [-cc ...] [-bcc ...] [-att ...]

% coma repl

% coma fwd

== Other commands

% coma Subcommands: att copy cur expunge folders fwd inc mail mark mkdir move next prev read repl scan seqs show usage

Folder list:

% coma folders +camping-list 1299 messages 0 unread 0 new +lispmachines 121 messages 0 unread 0 new ...

Marking mails:

% coma mark unseen -seen % coma mark 666 667 -flagged

Deleting mail:

% coma mark 666 667 -trashed % coma expunge

Moving and copying mail:

% coma move "date<2000-01-01" +archive % coma copy +announcements # defaults to .

Reading attachments:

% coma show From: Dyers Downin Subject: " "You shall judge for yourself. It is just as Harvey To: Etchells Freid Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2010 09:12:01 +0200

2 --image 19968B PNG 366x275 mousiness.png-- % coma att 1 multipart/mixed 27522B 2 image/png 19968B "mousiness.png" % coma att 2 mousiness.png % display mousiness.png % coma att 2 - |lpr

Scanning mail (like read, but don't change the current sequence):

% coma scan date # sort by date ...

scan (and read) support various scan line formats, others can be implemented easily:

% coma scan 363 367 1133 363 2008-01-10 Jeremy McAnally Keeping Camping going
367 2008-04-07 _why camping moved to github
1133 2010-06-30 Magnus Holm Access to github.com/camping
% coma scan "363 367 1133" -fmt nmh 363 01/10 Jeremy McAnally Keeping Camping going<<all, I'm not sure who Cam 367 04/07 _why camping moved to github<<the better interest of 1133 06/30 Magnus Holm Access to github.com/camping<<I've converted the % coma scan 363 367 1133 -fmt twoline 363 Keeping Camping going
S 2008-01-10 05:29 "Jeremy McAnally" [email protected] 367 camping moved to github
S 2008-04-07 21:17 _why [email protected] 1133 Access to github.com/camping
S 2010-06-30 13:18 Magnus Holm [email protected] % coma scan "363 367 1133" -fmt 9fans

Keeping Camping going
363 Jeremy McAnally Thu, 10 Jan 2008 05:29:17 +0100 367 _why Mon, 07 Apr 2008 21:17:01 +0200

Access to github.com/camping
1133 Magnus Holm Wed, 30 Jun 2010 13:18:49 +0200 % coma scan 363 367 1133 -fmt mailx 363 Jeremy McAnally Thu Jan 10 05:29 Keeping Camping going
367 _why Mon Apr 07 21:17 camping moved to github
1133 Magnus Holm Wed Jun 30 13:18 Access to github.com/camping

== Working with sequences

Sequences are refered to in the query language as "%sequencename". By default, you operate on the sequence "%default" (or $COMASEQ if set). You can list sequences with "coma seqs":

% coma seqs %default 1250 messages %ten 10 messages %y 14 messages

Sequences are created with "coma scan ... -save sequencename", and can be deleted with "coma seqs -clear sequencename...". You can add mails to a sequence with "coma scan ... -add sequencename" or remove mails with "coma scan ... -delete sequencename".

There are two special sequences, "%" and "%-" which are the sequence expressions of the current and the last "coma read", respectively.

== Config file

You can create a ~/.config/coma/config like this:

path: /path/to/your/maildirs scan: -default -arguments -for -scan %alias: %for +often +needed %sequence +expressions

== Dependencies

Ruby 1.8 and sqlite3.

External tools: file(1), w3m(1) for HTML mail display, identify(1) for images.

== ZSH integration

. coma.zshrc

== tkma

tkma provides a very early exmh-like interface for coma. Needs Tk.

http://imgur.com/n6dFT.png

== Copying

Written by Christian Neukirchen http://purl.org/net/chneukirchen.

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/