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 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).

SEE ALSO

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

AUTHORS

     Leah Neukirchen <leah@vuxu.org>

     There is a mailing list available at mblaze@googlegroups.com (to subscribe, send a message
     to mblaze+subscribe@googlegroups.com) and an IRC channel #vuxu on irc.freenode.net.  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/