36.13 Display of Messages

Rmail reformats the header of each message before displaying it for the first time. Reformatting hides uninteresting header fields to reduce clutter. You can use the t command to show the entire header or to repeat the header reformatting operation.

t

Toggle display of complete header (rmail-toggle-header).

Reformatting the header involves deleting most header fields, on the grounds that they are not interesting. The variable rmail-ignored-headers holds a regular expression that specifies which header fields to hide in this way—if it matches the beginning of a header field, that whole field is hidden. However, the variable rmail-nonignored-headers provides a further override: a header matching that regular expression is shown even if it matches rmail-ignored-headers too.

As an alternative to the previous two variables, you can set rmail-displayed-headers instead. If non-nil, this should be a regular expression specifying which headers to display.

To see the complete, original header, use the t command (rmail-toggle-header). This discards the reformatted headers of the current message and displays it with the original header. Repeating t reformats the message again, which shows only the interesting headers according to the current values of the above variables. Selecting the message again also reformats it if necessary.

When the t command has a prefix argument, a positive argument means to show the reformatted header, and a zero or negative argument means to show the full header.

Rmail highlights certain header fields that are especially interesting—by default, the ‘From’ and ‘Subject’ fields. The variable rmail-highlighted-headers holds a regular expression that specifies the header fields to highlight; if it matches the beginning of a header field, that whole field is highlighted. To turn off this feature, set rmail-highlighted-headers to nil. Customize the face rmail-highlight to adjust the style of the highlighting.

You can highlight and activate URLs in incoming messages using Goto Address mode:

     (add-hook 'rmail-show-message-hook (lambda () (goto-address-mode 1)))

Then you can browse these URLs by clicking on them with Mouse-2 (or Mouse-1 quickly) or by moving to one and typing C-c <RET>. See Activating URLs.

The v (rmail-mime) command creates a temporary buffer displaying the current MIME message. By default, it displays plain text and multipart messages, and offers buttons to save attachments.