All message composition from Gnus (both mail and news) takes place in Message mode buffers.
Message is distributed with Gnus. The Gnus distribution corresponding to this manual is Gnus v5.11.
When a program (or a person) wants to respond to a message – reply,
follow up, forward, cancel – the program (or person) should just put
point in the buffer where the message is and call the required command.
Message will then pop up a new message mode buffer with
appropriate headers filled out, and the user can edit the message before
sending it.
You can customize the Message Mode tool bar, see M-x customize-apropos RET message-tool-bar. This feature is only available in Emacs.
The message-mail command pops up a new message buffer.
Two optional parameters are accepted: The first will be used as the
To header and the second as the Subject header. If these
are nil, those two headers will be empty.
The message-news command pops up a new message buffer.
This function accepts two optional parameters. The first will be used
as the Newsgroups header and the second as the Subject
header. If these are nil, those two headers will be empty.
The message-reply function pops up a message buffer that's a
reply to the message in the current buffer.
Message uses the normal methods to determine where replies are to go
(see Responses), but you can change the behavior to suit your needs
by fiddling with the message-reply-to-function variable.
If you want the replies to go to the Sender instead of the
From, you could do something like this:
(setq message-reply-to-function
(lambda ()
(cond ((equal (mail-fetch-field "from") "somebody")
(list (cons 'To (mail-fetch-field "sender"))))
(t
nil))))
This function will be called narrowed to the head of the article that is being replied to.
As you can see, this function should return a list. In this case, it
returns ((To . "Whom")) if it has an opinion as to what the To
header should be. If it does not, it should just return nil, and
the normal methods for determining the To header will be used.
Each list element should be a cons, where the car should be the
name of a header (e.g. Cc) and the cdr should be the header
value (e.g. `larsi@ifi.uio.no'). All these headers will be
inserted into the head of the outgoing mail.
The message-wide-reply pops up a message buffer that's a wide
reply to the message in the current buffer. A wide reply is a
reply that goes out to all people listed in the To, From
(or Reply-to) and Cc headers.
Message uses the normal methods to determine where wide replies are to go,
but you can change the behavior to suit your needs by fiddling with the
message-wide-reply-to-function. It is used in the same way as
message-reply-to-function (see Reply).
Addresses that match the message-dont-reply-to-names regular
expression will be removed from the Cc header.
If message-wide-reply-confirm-recipients is non-nil you
will be asked to confirm that you want to reply to multiple
recipients. The default is nil.
The message-followup command pops up a message buffer that's a
followup to the message in the current buffer.
Message uses the normal methods to determine where followups are to go,
but you can change the behavior to suit your needs by fiddling with the
message-followup-to-function. It is used in the same way as
message-reply-to-function (see Reply).
The message-use-followup-to variable says what to do about
Followup-To headers. If it is use, always use the value.
If it is ask (which is the default), ask whether to use the
value. If it is t, use the value unless it is `poster'. If
it is nil, don't use the value.
The message-cancel-news command cancels the article in the
current buffer.
The value of message-cancel-message is inserted in the body of
the cancel message. The default is `I am canceling my own
article.'.
When Message posts news messages, it inserts Cancel-Lock
headers by default. This is a cryptographic header that ensures that
only you can cancel your own messages, which is nice. The downside
is that if you lose your .emacs file (which is where Gnus
stores the secret cancel lock password (which is generated
automatically the first time you use this feature)), you won't be
able to cancel your message. If you want to manage a password yourself,
you can put something like the following in your ~/.gnus.el file:
(setq canlock-password "geheimnis"
canlock-password-for-verify canlock-password)
Whether to insert the header or not is controlled by the
message-insert-canlock variable.
Not many news servers respect the Cancel-Lock header yet, but
this is expected to change in the future.
The message-supersede command pops up a message buffer that will
supersede the message in the current buffer.
Headers matching the message-ignored-supersedes-headers are
removed before popping up the new message buffer. The default is
`^Path:\\|^Date\\|^NNTP-Posting-Host:\\|^Xref:\\|^Lines:\\|
^Received:\\|^X-From-Line:\\|^X-Trace:\\|^X-Complaints-To:\\|
Return-Path:\\|^Supersedes:\\|^NNTP-Posting-Date:\\|^X-Trace:\\|
^X-Complaints-To:\\|^Cancel-Lock:\\|^Cancel-Key:\\|^X-Hashcash:\\|
^X-Payment:'.
The message-forward command pops up a message buffer to forward
the message in the current buffer. If given a prefix, forward using
news.
message-forward-ignored-headersmessage-make-forward-subject-functionThe provided functions are:
message-forward-subject-author-subjectmessage-forward-subject-fwdmessage-wash-forwarded-subjectst, the subjects of forwarded messages have
the evidence of previous forwards (such as `Fwd:', `Re:',
`(fwd)') removed before the new subject is
constructed. The default value is nil.
message-forward-as-mimet (the default), forwarded messages are
included as inline MIME RFC822 parts. If it's nil, forwarded
messages will just be copied inline to the new message, like previous,
non MIME-savvy versions of Gnus would do.
message-forward-before-signaturenil, put forwarded message before signature, else after.
The message-resend command will prompt the user for an address
and resend the message in the current buffer to that address.
Headers that match the message-ignored-resent-headers regexp will
be removed before sending the message.
The message-bounce command will, if the current buffer contains a
bounced mail message, pop up a message buffer stripped of the bounce
information. A bounced message is typically a mail you've sent
out that has been returned by some mailer-daemon as
undeliverable.
Headers that match the message-ignored-bounced-headers regexp
will be removed before popping up the buffer. The default is
`^\\(Received\\|Return-Path\\|Delivered-To\\):'.
Sometimes while posting to mailing lists, the poster needs to direct followups to the post to specific places. The Mail-Followup-To (MFT) was created to enable just this. Three example scenarios where this is useful:
Gnus honors the MFT header in other's messages (i.e. while following up to someone else's post) and also provides support for generating sensible MFT headers for outgoing messages as well.
The first step in getting Gnus to automagically generate a MFT header in posts you make is to give Gnus a list of the mailing lists addresses you are subscribed to. You can do this in more than one way. The following variables would come in handy.
message-subscribed-addressesnil. Example:
(setq message-subscribed-addresses
'("ding@gnus.org" "bing@noose.org"))
message-subscribed-regexpsnil. Example: If you
want to achieve the same result as above:
(setq message-subscribed-regexps
'("\\(ding@gnus\\)\\|\\(bing@noose\\)\\.org")
message-subscribed-address-functionsnil.
There is a pre-defined function in Gnus that is a good candidate for
this variable. gnus-find-subscribed-addresses is a function
that returns a list of addresses corresponding to the groups that have
the subscribed (see Group Parameters) group parameter set to a non-nil value.
This is how you would do it.
(setq message-subscribed-address-functions
'(gnus-find-subscribed-addresses))
message-subscribed-address-fileYou can use one or more of the above variables. All their values are “added” in some way that works :-)
Now you are all set. Just start composing a message as you normally do. And just send it; as always. Just before the message is sent out, Gnus' MFT generation thingy kicks in and checks if the message already has a MFT field. If there is one, it is left alone. (Except if it's empty - in that case, the field is removed and is not replaced with an automatically generated one. This lets you disable MFT generation on a per-message basis.) If there is none, then the list of recipient addresses (in the To: and Cc: headers) is checked to see if one of them is a list address you are subscribed to. If none of them is a list address, then no MFT is generated; otherwise, a MFT is added to the other headers and set to the value of all addresses in To: and Cc:
Hm. “So”, you ask, “what if I send an email to a list I am not
subscribed to? I want my MFT to say that I want an extra copy.” (This
is supposed to be interpreted by others the same way as if there were no
MFT, but you can use an explicit MFT to override someone else's
to-address group parameter.) The function
message-generate-unsubscribed-mail-followup-to might come in
handy. It is bound to C-c C-f C-a by default. In any case, you
can insert a MFT of your own choice; C-c C-f C-m
(message-goto-mail-followup-to) will help you get started.
When you followup to a post on a mailing list, and the post has a MFT
header, Gnus' action will depend on the value of the variable
message-use-mail-followup-to. This variable can be one of:
usenilaskIt is considered good netiquette to honor MFT, as it is assumed the fellow who posted a message knows where the followups need to go better than you do.
You most often end up in a Message buffer when responding to some other message of some sort. Message does lots of handling of quoted text, and may remove signatures, reformat the text, or the like—depending on which used settings you're using. Message usually gets things right, but sometimes it stumbles. To help the user unwind these stumblings, Message sets the undo boundary before each major automatic action it takes. If you press the undo key (usually located at C-_) a few times, you will get back the un-edited message you're responding to.
These following commands move to the header in question. If it doesn't exist, it will be inserted.
To header (message-goto-to).
From header (message-goto-from). (The “o”
in the key binding is for Originator.)
Bcc header (message-goto-bcc).
Fcc header (message-goto-fcc).
Cc header (message-goto-cc).
Subject header (message-goto-subject).
Reply-To header (message-goto-reply-to).
Newsgroups header (message-goto-newsgroups).
Distribution header (message-goto-distribution).
Followup-To header (message-goto-followup-to).
Keywords header (message-goto-keywords).
Summary header (message-goto-summary).
user-mail-address.
If the optional argument include-cc is non-nil, the
addresses in the `Cc:' header are also put into the
`Mail-Followup-To:' header.
message-header-format-alist
(message-sort-headers).
To header that contains the Reply-To or
From header of the message you're following up
(message-insert-to).
Newsgroups header that reflects the Followup-To
or Newsgroups header of the article you're replying to
(message-insert-newsgroups).
To: and Cc: headers.
message-insert-disposition-notification-to).
This means that if the recipient support RFC 2298 she might send you a
notification that she received the message.
message-subject-trailing-was-query
(see Message Headers).
message-cross-post-default is nil or if this command is
called with a prefix-argument, only the `FollowUp-To' header will
be set but the target newsgroup will not be added to the
`Newsgroups' header. The function to insert a note is controlled
by the message-cross-post-note-function variable.
message-archive-header and message-archive-note. When
called with a prefix argument, ask for a text to insert. If you don't
want the note in the body, set message-archive-note to
nil.
message-goto-body).
message-goto-signature).
message-beginning-of-line.
message-yank-original).
message-yank-buffer).
message-fill-yanked-message). Warning:
Can severely mess up the yanked text if its quoting conventions are
strange. You'll quickly get a feel for when it's safe, though. Anyway,
just remember that C-x u (undo) is available and you'll be
all right.
message-insert-signature).
message-insert-headers).
message-mark-insert-begin and message-mark-insert-end.
message-mark-insert-begin and message-mark-insert-end.
Message is a MIME-compliant posting agent. The user generally
doesn't have to do anything to make the MIME happen—Message will
automatically add the Content-Type and
Content-Transfer-Encoding headers.
The most typical thing users want to use the multipart things in MIME for is to add “attachments” to mail they send out. This can be done with the C-c C-a command (M-x mml-attach), which will prompt for a file name and a MIME type.
If your Emacs supports drag and drop, you can also drop the file in the
Message buffer. The variable mml-dnd-protocol-alist specifies
what kind of action is done when you drop a file into the Message
buffer. The variable mml-dnd-attach-options controls which
MIME options you want to specify when dropping a file. If it
is a list, valid members are type, description and
disposition. disposition implies type. If it is
nil, don't ask for options. If it is t, ask the user
whether or not to specify options.
You can also create arbitrarily complex multiparts using the MML language (see Composing).
Message is a IDNA-compliant posting agent. The user
generally doesn't have to do anything to make the IDNA
happen—Message will encode non-ASCII domain names in From,
To, and Cc headers automatically.
Until IDNA becomes more well known, Message queries you whether IDNA encoding of the domain name really should occur. Some users might not be aware that domain names can contain non-ASCII now, so this gives them a safety net if they accidently typed a non-ASCII domain name.
The message-use-idna variable control whether IDNA is
used. If the variable is nil no IDNA encoding will
ever happen, if it is set to the symbol ask the user will be
queried, and if set to t (which is the default if IDNA
is fully available) IDNA encoding happens automatically.
If you want to experiment with the IDNA encoding, you can invoke M-x message-idna-to-ascii-rhs RET in the message buffer to have the non-ASCII domain names encoded while you edit the message.
Note that you must have GNU Libidn installed in order to use this functionality.
Using the MML language, Message is able to create digitally signed and digitally encrypted messages. Message (or rather MML) currently support PGP (RFC 1991), PGP/MIME (RFC 2015/3156) and S/MIME.
Instructing MML to perform security operations on a MIME part is done using the C-c C-m s key map for signing and the C-c C-m c key map for encryption, as follows.
These commands do not immediately sign or encrypt the message, they merely insert the proper MML secure tag to instruct the MML engine to perform that operation when the message is actually sent. They may perform other operations too, such as locating and retrieving a S/MIME certificate of the person you wish to send encrypted mail to. When the mml parsing engine converts your MML into a properly encoded MIME message, the secure tag will be replaced with either a part or a multipart tag. If your message contains other mml parts, a multipart tag will be used; if no other parts are present in your message a single part tag will be used. This way, message mode will do the Right Thing (TM) with signed/encrypted multipart messages.
Since signing and especially encryption often is used when sensitive
information is sent, you may want to have some way to ensure that your
mail is actually signed or encrypted. After invoking the above
sign/encrypt commands, it is possible to preview the raw article by
using C-u C-c RET P (mml-preview). Then you can
verify that your long rant about what your ex-significant other or
whomever actually did with that funny looking person at that strange
party the other night, actually will be sent encrypted.
Note! Neither PGP/MIME nor S/MIME encrypt/signs RFC822 headers. They only operate on the MIME object. Keep this in mind before sending mail with a sensitive Subject line.
By default, when encrypting a message, Gnus will use the
“signencrypt” mode, which means the message is both signed and
encrypted. If you would like to disable this for a particular
message, give the mml-secure-message-encrypt-* command a prefix
argument, e.g., C-u C-c C-m c p.
Actually using the security commands above is not very difficult. At least not compared with making sure all involved programs talk with each other properly. Thus, we now describe what external libraries or programs are required to make things work, and some small general hints.
Note! This section assume you have a basic familiarity with modern cryptography, S/MIME, various PKCS standards, OpenSSL and so on.
The S/MIME support in Message (and MML) require OpenSSL. OpenSSL performs the actual S/MIME sign/encrypt operations. OpenSSL can be found at http://www.openssl.org/. OpenSSL 0.9.6 and later should work. Version 0.9.5a cannot extract mail addresses from certificates, and it insert a spurious CR character into MIME separators so you may wish to avoid it if you would like to avoid being regarded as someone who send strange mail. (Although by sending S/MIME messages you've probably already lost that contest.)
To be able to send encrypted mail, a personal certificate is not
required. Message (MML) need a certificate for the person to whom you
wish to communicate with though. You're asked for this when you type
C-c C-m c s. Currently there are two ways to retrieve this
certificate, from a local file or from DNS. If you chose a local
file, it need to contain a X.509 certificate in PEM format.
If you chose DNS, you're asked for the domain name where the
certificate is stored, the default is a good guess. To my belief,
Message (MML) is the first mail agent in the world to support
retrieving S/MIME certificates from DNS, so you're not
likely to find very many certificates out there. At least there
should be one, stored at the domain simon.josefsson.org. LDAP
is a more popular method of distributing certificates, support for it
is planned. (Meanwhile, you can use ldapsearch from the
command line to retrieve a certificate into a file and use it.)
As for signing messages, OpenSSL can't perform signing operations
without some kind of configuration. Especially, you need to tell it
where your private key and your certificate is stored. MML
uses an Emacs interface to OpenSSL, aptly named smime.el, and it
contain a custom group used for this configuration. So, try
M-x customize-group RET smime RET and look around.
Currently there is no support for talking to a CA (or RA) to create your own certificate. None is planned either. You need to do this manually with OpenSSL or using some other program. I used Netscape and got a free S/MIME certificate from one of the big CA's on the net. Netscape is able to export your private key and certificate in PKCS #12 format. Use OpenSSL to convert this into a plain X.509 certificate in PEM format as follows.
$ openssl pkcs12 -in ns.p12 -clcerts -nodes > key+cert.pem
The key+cert.pem file should be pointed to from the
smime-keys variable. You should now be able to send signed mail.
Note! Your private key is now stored unencrypted in the file,
so take care in handling it. Storing encrypted keys on the disk are
supported, and Gnus will ask you for a passphrase before invoking
OpenSSL. Read the OpenSSL documentation for how to achieve this. If
you use unencrypted keys (e.g., if they are on a secure storage, or if
you are on a secure single user machine) simply press RET at
the passphrase prompt.
PGP/MIME requires an external OpenPGP implementation, such
as GNU Privacy Guard. Pre-OpenPGP
implementations such as PGP 2.x and PGP 5.x are also supported. One
Emacs interface to the PGP implementations, PGG (see PGG), is included, but Mailcrypt and Florian Weimer's
gpg.el are also supported. See PGP Compatibility.
Message internally calls GnuPG (the gpg command) to perform data encryption, and in certain cases (decrypting or signing for example), gpg requires user's passphrase. Currently the recommended way to supply your passphrase to gpg is to use the gpg-agent program.
To use gpg-agent in Emacs, you need to run the following command from the shell before starting Emacs.
eval `gpg-agent --daemon`
This will invoke gpg-agent and set the environment variable
GPG_AGENT_INFO to allow gpg to communicate with it.
It might be good idea to put this command in your .xsession or
.bash_profile. See Invoking GPG-AGENT.
Once your gpg-agent is set up, it will ask you for a passphrase as needed for gpg. Under the X Window System, you will see a new passphrase input dialog appear. The dialog is provided by PIN Entry (the pinentry command), and as of version 0.7.2, pinentry cannot cooperate with Emacs on a single tty. So, if you are using a text console, you may need to put a passphrase into gpg-agent's cache beforehand. The following command does the trick.
gpg --use-agent --sign < /dev/null > /dev/null
The Lisp variable pgg-gpg-use-agent controls whether to use
gpg-agent. See also See Caching passphrase.
Note, if you are using the gpg.el you must make sure that the
directory specified by gpg-temp-directory have permissions
0700.
Creating your own key is described in detail in the documentation of your PGP implementation, so we refer to it.
If you have imported your old PGP 2.x key into GnuPG, and want to send
signed and encrypted messages to your fellow PGP 2.x users, you'll
discover that the receiver cannot understand what you send. One
solution is to use PGP 2.x instead (i.e., if you use pgg, set
pgg-default-scheme to pgp). If you do want to use
GnuPG, you can use a compatibility script called gpg-2comp
available from
http://muppet.faveve.uni-stuttgart.de/~gero/gpg-2comp/. You
could also convince your fellow PGP 2.x users to convert to GnuPG.
As a final workaround, you can make the sign and encryption work in
two steps; separately sign, then encrypt a message. If you would like
to change this behavior you can customize the
mml-signencrypt-style-alist variable. For example:
(setq mml-signencrypt-style-alist '(("smime" separate)
("pgp" separate)
("pgpauto" separate)
("pgpmime" separate)))
This causes to sign and encrypt in two passes, thus generating a message that can be understood by PGP version 2.
(Refer to http://www.gnupg.org/gph/en/pgp2x.html for more information about the problem.)
message-caesar-buffer-body). If narrowing is in effect, just
rotate the visible portion of the buffer. A numerical prefix says how
many places to rotate the text. The default is 13.
message-elide-region).
The text is killed and replaced with the contents of the variable
message-elide-ellipsis. The default value is to use an ellipsis
(`[...]').
message-kill-to-signature).
message-delete-not-region).
Here's an example:
> This is some quoted text. And here's more quoted text.
If point is before `And' and you press M-RET, you'll get:
> This is some quoted text.
*
> And here's more quoted text.
`*' says where point will be placed.
message-rename-buffer). If given a prefix,
prompt for a new buffer name.
message-tab-body-function is non-nil, execute the
function it specifies. Otherwise use the function bound to TAB in
text-mode-map or global-map.
message-send-and-exit).
message-send).
message-dont-send).
message-kill-buffer).
The message-mail-alias-type variable controls what type of mail
alias expansion to use. Currently only one form is supported—Message
uses mailabbrev to handle mail aliases. If this variable is
nil, no mail alias expansion will be performed.
mailabbrev works by parsing the /etc/mailrc and
~/.mailrc files. These files look like:
alias lmi "Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@ifi.uio.no>"
alias ding "ding@ifi.uio.no (ding mailing list)"
After adding lines like this to your ~/.mailrc file, you should
be able to just write `lmi' in the To or Cc (and so
on) headers and press SPC to expand the alias.
No expansion will be performed upon sending of the message—all expansions have to be done explicitly.
There are two popular ways to have Emacs spell-check your messages:
ispell and flyspell. ispell is the older and
probably more popular package. You typically first write the message,
and then run the entire thing through ispell and fix all the
typos. To have this happen automatically when you send a message, put
something like the following in your .emacs file:
(add-hook 'message-send-hook 'ispell-message)
If you're in the habit of writing in different languages, this can be
controlled by the ispell-message-dictionary-alist variable:
(setq ispell-message-dictionary-alist
'(("^Newsgroups:.*\\bde\\." . "deutsch8")
(".*" . "default")))
ispell depends on having the external `ispell' command
installed.
The other popular method is using flyspell. This package checks
your spelling while you're writing, and marks any mis-spelled words in
various ways.
To use flyspell, put something like the following in your
.emacs file:
(defun my-message-setup-routine ()
(flyspell-mode 1))
(add-hook 'message-setup-hook 'my-message-setup-routine)
flyspell depends on having the external `ispell' command
installed.
Message is quite aggressive on the message generation front. It has to be – it's a combined news and mail agent. To be able to send combined messages, it has to generate all headers itself (instead of letting the mail/news system do it) to ensure that mail and news copies of messages look sufficiently similar.
message-generate-headers-firstt, generate all required headers before starting to
compose the message. This can also be a list of headers to generate:
(setq message-generate-headers-first
'(References))
The variables message-required-headers,
message-required-mail-headers and
message-required-news-headers specify which headers are
required.
Note that some headers will be removed and re-generated before posting,
because of the variable message-deletable-headers (see below).
message-draft-headersmessage-draft-headers says which headers
should be generated when a draft is written to the draft group.
message-from-styleFrom headers should look. There are four valid
values:
nilparensanglesdefaultangles if that doesn't require quoting, and
parens if it does. If even parens requires quoting, use
angles anyway.
message-deletable-headers*post-buf* buffer, edit the Newsgroups line, and
ship it off again. By default, this variable makes sure that the old
generated Message-ID is deleted, and a new one generated. If
this isn't done, the entire empire would probably crumble, anarchy would
prevail, and cats would start walking on two legs and rule the world.
Allegedly.
message-default-headersmessage-subject-re-regexpHere's an example of a value to deal with these headers when responding to a message:
(setq message-subject-re-regexp
(concat
"^[ \t]*"
"\\("
"\\("
"[Aa][Nn][Tt][Ww]\\.?\\|" ; antw
"[Aa][Ww]\\|" ; aw
"[Ff][Ww][Dd]?\\|" ; fwd
"[Oo][Dd][Pp]\\|" ; odp
"[Rr][Ee]\\|" ; re
"[Rr][\311\351][Ff]\\.?\\|" ; ref
"[Ss][Vv]" ; sv
"\\)"
"\\(\\[[0-9]*\\]\\)"
"*:[ \t]*"
"\\)"
"*[ \t]*"
))
message-subject-trailing-was-querynil, leave the subject unchanged. If it is the symbol
ask, query the user what to do. In this case, the subject is
matched against message-subject-trailing-was-ask-regexp. If
message-subject-trailing-was-query is t, always strip the
trailing old subject. In this case,
message-subject-trailing-was-regexp is used.
message-alternative-emailsFor example, if you have two secondary email addresses john@home.net and john.doe@work.com and want to use them in the From field when composing a reply to a message addressed to one of them, you could set this variable like this:
(setq message-alternative-emails
(regexp-opt '("john@home.net" "john.doe@work.com")))
This variable has precedence over posting styles and anything that runs
off message-setup-hook.
message-allow-no-recipientsGcc or Fcc. If it is always, the posting is
allowed. If it is never, the posting is not allowed. If it is
ask (the default), you are prompted.
message-hidden-headersnot and the rest are regexps. It says which headers to keep
hidden when composing a message.
(setq message-hidden-headers
'(not "From" "Subject" "To" "Cc" "Newsgroups"))
message-header-synonymsCc and To, then
message-carefully-insert-headers will not insert a To
header when the message is already Cced to the recipient.
message-required-mail-headers(From Subject Date (optional . In-Reply-To) Message-ID
(optional . User-Agent)) by default.
message-ignored-mail-headersmessage-default-mail-headersmessage-send-mail-functionmessage-send-mail-with-sendmail. Other valid values include
message-send-mail-with-mh, message-send-mail-with-qmail,
message-smtpmail-send-it, smtpmail-send-it and
feedmail-send-it.
message-mh-deletable-headersnil (which is
the default), these headers will be removed before mailing when sending
messages via MH. Set it to nil if your MH can handle these
headers.
message-qmail-inject-programmessage-qmail-inject-argsFor e.g., if you wish to set the envelope sender address so that bounces
go to the right place or to deal with listserv's usage of that address, you
might set this variable to '("-f" "you@some.where").
message-sendmail-f-is-evilnil means don't add `-f username' to the sendmail
command line. Doing so would be even more evil than leaving it out.
message-sendmail-envelope-frommessage-sendmail-f-is-evil is nil, this specifies
the address to use in the SMTP envelope. If it is
nil, use user-mail-address. If it is the symbol
header, use the `From' header of the message.
message-mailer-swallows-blank-linenil if the system's mailer runs the header and
body together. (This problem exists on SunOS 4 when sendmail is run
in remote mode.) The value should be an expression to test whether
the problem will actually occur.
message-send-mail-partially-limitnil, the size is unlimited.
message-required-news-headers a list of header symbols. These
headers will either be automatically generated, or, if that's
impossible, they will be prompted for. The following symbols are valid:
Frommessage-make-from function, which depends on the
message-from-style, user-full-name,
user-mail-address variables.
SubjectNewsgroupsOrganizationmessage-user-organization variable.
message-user-organization-file will be used if this variable is
t. This variable can also be a string (in which case this string
will be used), or it can be a function (which will be called with no
parameters and should return a string to be used).
LinesMessage-IDmessage-user-fqdn, system-name, mail-host-address
and message-user-mail-address (i.e. user-mail-address)
until a probably valid fully qualified domain name (FQDN) was found.
User-Agentmessage-newsreader local variable.
In-Reply-ToDate and From
header of the article being replied to.
Expiresmessage-expires variable. It is highly deprecated and shouldn't
be used unless you know what you're doing.
Distributionmessage-distribution-function variable. It is a deprecated and
much misunderstood header.
Pathmessage-user-path further controls how this
Path header is to look. If it is nil, use the server name
as the leaf node. If it is a string, use the string. If it is neither
a string nor nil, use the user name only. However, it is highly
unlikely that you should need to fiddle with this variable at all.
In addition, you can enter conses into this list. The car of this cons
should be a symbol. This symbol's name is the name of the header, and
the cdr can either be a string to be entered verbatim as the value of
this header, or it can be a function to be called. This function should
return a string to be inserted. For instance, if you want to insert
Mime-Version: 1.0, you should enter (Mime-Version . "1.0")
into the list. If you want to insert a funny quote, you could enter
something like (X-Yow . yow) into the list. The function
yow will then be called without any arguments.
If the list contains a cons where the car of the cons is
optional, the cdr of this cons will only be inserted if it is
non-nil.
If you want to delete an entry from this list, the following Lisp snippet might be useful. Adjust accordingly if you want to remove another element.
(setq message-required-news-headers
(delq 'Message-ID message-required-news-headers))
Other variables for customizing outgoing news articles:
message-syntax-checks (signature . disabled)
to this list.
Valid checks are:
approvedApproved header, which is
something only moderators should include.
continuation-headerscontrol-charsemptyexisting-newsgroupsNewsgroups and
Followup-To headers exist.
fromFrom header seems nice.
illegible-textinvisible-textlong-header-lineslong-linesmessage-idMessage-ID looks syntactically ok.
multiple-headersnew-textnewsgroupsNewsgroups header exists and is not empty.
quoting-stylerepeated-newsgroupsNewsgroups and Followup-to headers
contains repeated group names.
reply-toReply-To header looks ok.
senderSender header if the From header looks odd.
sendsysshootMessage-ID header looks ok.
shorten-followup-toFollowup-to header to shorten the number
of groups to post to.
signaturesizesubjectSubject header exists and is not empty.
subject-cmsgvalid-newsgroupsNewsgroups and Followup-to headers
are valid syntactically.
All these conditions are checked by default, except for sender
for which the check is disabled by default if
message-insert-canlock is non-nil (see Canceling News).
message-ignored-news-headersmessage-default-news-headersmessage-send-news-functionmessage-send-news.
message-post-methodmessage-ignored-cited-headersmessage-cite-prefix-regexpmessage-citation-line-functionmessage-insert-citation-line, which will lead to citation lines
that look like:
Hallvard B Furuseth <h.b.furuseth@usit.uio.no> writes:
Point will be at the beginning of the body of the message when this function is called.
Note that Gnus provides a feature where clicking on `writes:' hides the
cited text. If you change the citation line too much, readers of your
messages will have to adjust their Gnus, too. See the variable
gnus-cite-attribution-suffix. See Article Highlighting, for details.
message-yank-prefixmessage-yank-prefix prepended to it (except for quoted and
empty lines which uses message-yank-cited-prefix). The default
is `> '.
message-yank-cited-prefixmessage-yank-prefix.
message-indentation-spacesmessage-cite-functionmessage-cite-original, which simply inserts the original message
and prepends `> ' to each line.
message-cite-original-without-signature does the same, but elides
the signature. You can also set it to sc-cite-original to use
Supercite.
message-indent-citation-function(point) and (mark t). And each function
should leave point and mark around the citation text as modified.
message-mark-insert-beginmessage-mark-insert-endmessage-signaturet
(which is the default), the message-signature-file file will be
inserted instead. If a function, the result from the function will be
used instead. If a form, the result from the form will be used instead.
If this variable is nil, no signature will be inserted at all.
message-signature-filemessage-signature-insert-empty-linet (the default value) an empty line is inserted before the
signature separator.
Note that RFC1036bis says that a signature should be preceded by the three characters `-- ' on a line by themselves. This is to make it easier for the recipient to automatically recognize and process the signature. So don't remove those characters, even though you might feel that they ruin your beautiful design, like, totally.
Also note that no signature should be more than four lines long. Including ASCII graphics is an efficient way to get everybody to believe that you are silly and have nothing important to say.
message-default-charsetiso-8859-1 on non-mule Emacsen; otherwise nil,
which means ask the user. (This variable is used only on non-mule
Emacsen.) See Charset Translation, for details on the mule-to-MIME
translation process.
message-signature-separatormail-header-separatormessage-directorymessage-directory.
message-auto-save-directorynil, Message won't auto-save. The default is ~/Mail/drafts/.
message-signature-setup-hookmessage-setup-hookmessage-header-setup-hookFor instance, if you're running Gnus and wish to insert a `Mail-Copies-To' header in all your news articles and all messages you send to mailing lists, you could do something like the following:
(defun my-message-header-setup-hook ()
(let ((group (or gnus-newsgroup-name "")))
(when (or (message-fetch-field "newsgroups")
(gnus-group-find-parameter group 'to-address)
(gnus-group-find-parameter group 'to-list))
(insert "Mail-Copies-To: never\n"))))
(add-hook 'message-header-setup-hook
'my-message-header-setup-hook)
message-send-hookIf you want to add certain headers before sending, you can use the
message-add-header function in this hook. For instance:
(add-hook 'message-send-hook 'my-message-add-content)
(defun my-message-add-content ()
(message-add-header "X-In-No-Sense: Nonsense")
(message-add-header "X-Whatever: no"))
This function won't add the header if the header is already present.
message-send-mail-hookmessage-send-news-hookmessage-sent-hookmessage-cancel-hookmessage-mode-syntax-tablemessage-strip-special-text-propertiesmessage-send-method-alist (type predicate function)
nil.
function is called with one parameter – the prefix.
The default is:
((news message-news-p message-send-via-news)
(mail message-mail-p message-send-via-mail))
The message-news-p function returns non-nil if the message
looks like news, and the message-send-via-news function sends the
message according to the message-send-news-function variable
(see News Variables). The message-mail-p function returns
non-nil if the message looks like mail, and the
message-send-via-mail function sends the message according to the
message-send-mail-function variable (see Mail Variables).
All the elements in this alist will be tried in order, so a message containing both a valid `Newsgroups' header and a valid `To' header, for example, will be sent as news, and then as mail.
message-fcc-handler-functionmessage-output which saves in Unix mailbox format.
message-courtesy-messagenil, no such courtesy message will be added.
The default value is `"The following message is a courtesy copy of
an article\\nthat has been posted to %s as well.\\n\\n"'.
message-fcc-externalize-attachmentsnil, attach files as normal parts in Fcc copies; if it is
non-nil, attach local files as external parts.
message-interactivenil wait for and display errors when sending a message;
if nil let the mailer mail back a message to report errors.
Message will generate new buffers with unique buffer names when you request a message buffer. When you send the message, the buffer isn't normally killed off. Its name is changed and a certain number of old message buffers are kept alive.
message-generate-new-buffersniluniquetunsentunique but the buffer name begins with "*unsent ".
standardnil but the buffer name is simpler like *mail
message*.
nil). The function should return the new buffer name.
The default value is unique.
message-max-buffersnil, no old message buffers
will ever be killed.
message-send-rename-function (setq message-send-rename-function 'ignore)
message-kill-buffer-on-exitnil, kill the buffer immediately on exit.
When Message is being used from a news/mail reader, the reader is likely to want to perform some task after the message has been sent. Perhaps return to the previous window configuration or mark an article as replied.
The user may exit from the message buffer in various ways. The most
common is C-c C-c, which sends the message and exits. Other
possibilities are C-c C-s which just sends the message, C-c
C-d which postpones the message editing and buries the message buffer,
and C-c C-k which kills the message buffer. Each of these actions
have lists associated with them that contains actions to be executed:
message-send-actions, message-exit-actions,
message-postpone-actions, and message-kill-actions.
Message provides a function to interface with these lists:
message-add-action. The first parameter is the action to be
added, and the rest of the arguments are which lists to add this action
to. Here's an example from Gnus:
(message-add-action
`(set-window-configuration ,(current-window-configuration))
'exit 'postpone 'kill)
This restores the Gnus window configuration when the message buffer is killed, postponed or exited.
An action can be either: a normal function, or a list where the
car is a function and the cdr is the list of arguments, or
a form to be evaled.
Message uses virtually only its own variables—older mail-
variables aren't consulted. To force Message to take those variables
into account, you can put the following in your .emacs file:
(require 'messcompat)
This will initialize many Message variables from the values in the corresponding mail variables.
To determine where a message is to go, the following algorithm is used by default.
Reply-To
FromTo/Cc headers:
FromReply-To, in which case that is used instead).
Cc
ToIf a Mail-Copies-To header is present, it will also be included
in the list of mailboxes. If this header is `never', that means
that the From (or Reply-To) mailbox will be suppressed.
Followup-To
NewsgroupsIf a Mail-Copies-To header is present, it will be used as the
basis of the new Cc header, except if this header is
`never'.
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