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[cce.zizkov AT volny.cz]

Sorry Sindi, Alejandro and all, 

it is only now that I can have another look at the mutt problems. In
November I spent two weeks in Ukrainia and Christmas has already come
incredibly near.

At this moment I am improving the mutt configuration for BL2 in
order to convince a Russian friend to try it at home. Until now she
does all online work from a MS internet cafe run by Ukrainians in
Prague. The BL solution therefore must be still _a lot_ easier 
to set up and to work with. 

On 18 Nov 04 at 23:35, keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org wrote:

> With mutt bl3 I can send mail (while online - if I am offline it says it is
> sending but I don't know where it went, and I have not figured out where
> postponed messages go either).

I see that I must change the sendmail script in a way that it
confirms sending or gives an error message. And at the beginning of 
mu, it should check for unsent mail in _outbox. 

The confusion is probably due to the fact that for a long time I 
could not decide which format to use for mail folder format. One of 
my objectives was compatibility with Pegasus mail sitting on the 
DOS partition of my computers (one file for each message). But in 
Linux mbox is much more usual, and even Pegasus mail archives 
the mail into large folder files. Finally I found some scripts and
binaries which claim to convert Pegasus folders to mbox format and 
vice versa. I have not tested them, but it seems clear to me, now, 
that the mbox format will be basic to my mutt installation. 

That means: There will be only one file _inbox and one file _outbox.
All folders for whatever use will also be only one file, but the may
be put into a hierarchical directory system. Postponed messages
therefore should be messages waiting in _outbox. 

At the end of mail composing dialogue (type: y) mutt calls sendmail 
script.  When you compose mail online, sendmail will be sent the 
message out immediately by the help of pmail. Otherwise it is 
stored to _outbox. It will be sent it later: 

a) when you compose another message and happen to be online 

b) when you are online and call pmail from Mutt (F8)

c) when you call pmail with the same parameters as in the macro
but independently from Mutt. 

Unfortunately Mutt menu and pmail understand the term postponed in a 
different way: in pmail documentation postponed messages are those 
which have not been sent out, mutt calls postponed messages those 
outgoing e-mails you have not finished yet. If you select the menu 
option p in the mail composer, and the message will not be handed over 
to sendmail script, but can be completed when you call the mail 
composer the next time (m). 
 
> I do the same in Bl2 mutt and am told Error sending message, child exited
> 127.  (Exec. error).
> 
> What might I be doing wrong?

This is a bug I eliminated before I went to Ukrainia. I unfortunately 
forgot what it was about. But it was only part of the sendmail 
script. 
 
> Also my /tmp directory is getting full of 0 length messages in both BLs,
> mutt-Basiclinux- followed by somewhat random numbers. The outgoing mail
> seems to be going to /root/Mail/_outbox so what is in tmp?
> 
> Do I have things set up wrong, or are other people having this 
> problem too?

I do not know, problably these files are created while composing a 
new message. Are you sure that they persist even after terminating 
the program normally? 

> I have a /usr/local/bin/sendmail in both BLs which sends things from 
> /root/Mail/_outbox with pmail -o.  (I added the -o option to send 
> immediately, I think).

The -o option is needed to indicate the mailbox. pmail _always_ sends 
immediately. If you are not connected it fails and leaves the 
messages where they are. 

> I put a # in front of the line 'unset help' in .muttrc so I would get the
> help menu at the screen top.

Yes this is a minimum of documentation that will certainly be 
appreciated by any user. 

> 
> .mailcap is using 8859-2 (E. European charset) as default.  Probably the
> majority of BL users don't use that.

I decided to change the key bindings completely: 

Ctrl D: dial
Ctrl H: hang up

F1: documentation
F2: edit macro configuration
F3: edit mailcap
F4: edit pmailrc

The .private configuration file will be abandoned as well 
as the F7 macro. Direct access to the pop server is explained 
in .macro. All kinds of pop3 servers, user names and passwords
can be defined as a macro in the edit mode. 

F5: manually change settings for edit/view
F6: West European settings for edit/view 
F7: East European settings for edit/view 
F8: Russian settings for edit/view 

The problem here is, that it not only concerns keyboard, 
fonts and encoding, but also the viewer html2text in mailcap 
and even the configuration files for links: People not only 
send messages in foreign languages, but even attach .doc, .rtf 
and .html in different code pages. So there should be some kind 
of filter that is replaced with each change of code page. 

F9: Mail send & receive
F10: Select folder

I am not happy with the size of the packets. Sed for code 
page translation will even make them bigger. But I still think that 
the packet should contain anything needed in order to run mutt on the 
_default_ BL2 (RAM) and BL3. 

Regards
Christof Lange 

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