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We now give the basics of how to read, save, and delete messages, send mail to people and save your changes back to your mailbox.
5.1 Reading Messages How to read the current message. 5.2 Changing the Location of Point How to move around in a buffer. 5.3 Scrolling How to scroll the messages on the screen. 5.4 Deleting Messages Deleting and killing messages. 5.5 Message and Position information Commands to get information. 5.6 Quitting abort a key or command. 5.7 Help How to ask af what a key does. 5.8 Numeric Arguments Numeric arguments to repeat a command.
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The most basic operation in af is to open the current message; to display it's contents via typeout (see section 6. Typeout), or some other pager.
pager
variable, usually `typeout' (open-message).
PAGER
environment variable (page-message).
pager variable. The body is
not decoded, and multipart or partial messages are not processed in
any way. (open-raw-message).
Normally, only mail headers not listed in the
headers-not-displayed variable will be displayed when you open a
message. A positive numeric argument makes af display all the message's
headers. A negative argument makes af skip all headers, and only
display the body of the message. See section 5.8 Numeric Arguments, for more information
on numeric arguments.
When you open a multipart message, the headers and each textual body part will be displayed to a separate section of typeout. Non-textual body parts will be displayed using an external program if possible, otherwise you will be asked whether to view the text of the body part, save it to a file, pipe it into a command, or skip it. If any body part is an attachment, then af will offer you the choice of viewing, saving or skipping that body part.
Normally, af will ask for confirmation before it displays image, audio,
video or application body parts, even if it knows how to. The
confirm-viewing variable controls this, listing the content types
which af will ask for confirmation before displaying.
When you open a partial message, af will try to rebuild and display the entire original message. If af can't rebuild the message then it will warn you about the problem, and offer you the choice of viewing or skipping that part of the message.
If your external pager doesn't need af to pause after displaying the
message; then you can make reading messages more convenient by setting
the variable pause-after-paging-message to true.
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To do anything useful with af, you have to know how to move point (see section 2.1 Point). There are several keys which move point within a buffer.
next-line).
previous-line).
move-to-window-line). Text does not move on the screen.
A numeric argument says which screen line to place point on. It counts screen lines down from the top of the window (zero for the top line). A negative argument counts lines from the bottom (-1 for the bottom line).
beginning-of-buffer). With
numeric argument n, move to n/10 of the way from the top.
See section 5.8 Numeric Arguments, for more information on numeric arguments.
end-of-buffer).
goto-line). Line 1 is the beginning of the buffer.
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Since only part of a large buffer fits in the window, af tries to show the part that is likely to be interesting. The display control commands allow you to specify which part of the buffer you want to see.
recenter). A numeric argument
n says to move point to screen line n.
scroll-up).
scroll-down).
The names of all scroll commands are based on the direction that the
messages move in the window. Thus, the command to scroll forward is
called scroll-up, since the messages move up.
When scrolling a windowful at a time, af leaves two lines that were
visible before you scrolled still visible afterwards, so that you can
retain the context you were in before you scrolled. The number of lines
of overlap across a C-v or M-v is controlled by the variable
next-screen-context-lines; by default, it is two.
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kill-line). See section 14. Killing and Yanking.
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Here are commands to get information about messages, and your position in the buffer.
what-cursor-position).
message-info).
message-tags).
See section 13. Tags.
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At any time in af except when a command is running, you can type
C-g (keyboard-quit) to quit from what you are doing. If
you have typed part of a command, or a numeric argument, then C-g
will get rid of it. If there isn't a partial command to get rid of,
but you are in the minibuffer or typeout then typing C-g will
exit back to the mail buffer, aborting the command you were running.
This means, that you can always get back to the top level of af by typing C-g C-g. This is useful for aborting commands, or if you are unsure where you are in af.
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If you forget what a key does, you can find out with the Help character,
which is C-h. Type C-h k followed by the key you want to
know about; for example, C-h k C-n tells you all about what
C-n does. C-h is a prefix key; C-h k is just one of
its subcommands (the command describe-key). The other
subcommands of C-h provide different kinds of help. Type
C-h three times to get a description of all the help facilities.
(see section 10. Help).
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Any af command can be given a numeric argument (also called a prefix argument), although it may be ignored. Some commands interpret the argument as a repetition count. For example, C-n with an argument of ten moves down ten lines instead of one. With these commands, no argument is equivalent to an argument of one. Negative arguments tell most such commands to move or act in the opposite direction.
If your terminal keyboard has a META key, the easiest way to specify a numeric argument is to type digits and/or a minus sign while holding down the META key. For example,
M-5 C-n |
would move down five lines. The characters Meta-1, Meta-2,
and so on, as well as Meta--, do this because they are keys bound
to commands (digit-argument and negative-argument) that
are defined to contribute to an argument for the next command.
Another way of specifying an argument is to use the C-u
(universal-argument) command followed by the digits of the
argument. With C-u, you can type the argument digits without
holding down modifier keys; C-u works on all terminals. To type a
negative argument, type a minus sign after C-u. Just a minus sign
without digits normally means -1.
C-u followed by a character which is neither a digit nor a minus sign has the special meaning of "multiply by four". It multiplies the argument for the next command by four. C-u twice multiplies it by sixteen. Thus, C-u C-u C-n moves down sixteen lines. This is a good way to move down "fast", since it moves about 2/3 of a screen in the usual size screen. C-u is also a handy way of providing an argument when you don't care about the value.
Many commands care only about whether there is an argument, and not
about its value. Other commands care only about the sign of the
argument. For example, the command RET (open-message)
with no argument shows only some of the message's headers; with a
positive argument, it shows all the headers, and with a negative
argument it shows no headers at all. This may seem strange, but it is a
convenient way of modifying the behaviour of a command.
We use the term "prefix argument" as well as "numeric argument" to emphasise that you type the argument before the command, and to distinguish these arguments from minibuffer arguments that come after the command.
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