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); archives are available at https://inbox.vuxu.org/mblaze/.  There also
       is 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/

Debian                                          January 18, 2020                                       MBLAZE(7)