Last update: 19/02/2001.
This FAQ is maintained by Zoltan Varady <drifta@freemail.hu>, all questions, comments and additons are welcome.
1.1. What is ishmail?
1.2. Features
1.3. Where can I obtain the latest version?
2.1. Problems installing on Linux
3.1. URL's are highlighted, but nothing happens when I click on them
3.2. What is the difference between exiting, quitting and sleep-ing ishmail?
3.3. Help for those new to UNIX
3.4. Not-so-obvious features
3.5. Does Ishmail support multiple accounts?
4.1. What are the configuration files for Ishmail? How can I change the colors? How can I change the shortcut keys?
4.2. Netscape starts up slowly when clicking on URL's or viewing HTML mail
4.3. The date column looks untidy
5.1 My mailbox contents get doubled!
Ishmail was originally developed as a commercial product by H & L Software. In May, 1999, H & L dropped the product and released the source code under the GNU General Public License. As of this writing, the original H & L website, www.ishmail.com , is still in operation.
Kevin Remhof began maintaining a separate website for Ishmail, but no significant progress was made with the program. In early 2000, Kenneth Herron and Evgeny Stambulchik independently began to work with Ishmail. The two made contact after Evgeny started a Sourceforge project for the program, and two decided to proceed with Evgeny's source code base.
In addition to features you would expect in any decent GUI mail client, ishmail:
- is based on the UNIX philosophy
- supports UNIX (mbox), mh and MMDF folder formats
- e-mail aliases (also aliases for groups of people).
- shares folders and aliases with programs such as pine, elm, Z-mail, and sendmail
- internal IMAP and POP support
- PGP support
- easy integration with procmail, fetchmail, sendmail...
- the internal editor can be configured to use emacs key bindings, or you can use an external editor
- spell checking using any external spellchecker (like ispell or Aspell)
- can pass messages to external commands
- message sorting by multiple criteria
- message threading by subject
- advanced message searching with regular expressions
- can specify patterns (using UNIX regular expressions) to look for in message headers, then take action when a match is found. Each pattern can have a different action. These actions include:
- Automatically file the message in a specific folder (mail filtering)
- Run an alert command (for example, play a specific sound).
- Display a specific icon pixmap. extremely customizable: select your own
- shortcut keys, buttons, colors, just about anything
Ishmail's official website is now http://ishmail.sourceforge.net, there you can download the latest version of the program and this FAQ, read the discussion list, etc.
Make sure you are using Lesstif 0.91 or newer. Alternatively, try building ishmail with OpenMotif. There is a problem with RedHat 7.0 (and possibly other distributions), William W. Austin writes:
This appears to be a problem only on RH7.0 -- ishmail 2.0 built just fine on my 6.2 box (and I'm using 2.0 to write this now).
There is one file, hgl/MimeRichTextEdit.C, which fails to build due to the use of the return hex char '^M' instead of the '\r' seq.
Here are the affected lines:
1190 else if ( buf[0] == '\n' || buf[0] == '^M' )
1211 else if ( buf[0] == '\n' || buf[0] == '^M' && This->priv->singleLine ) {
1263 if ( buf[0] == '\n' || buf[0] == '^M' ) {The default compiler on 7.0 appears to be gcc-2.96-54, not egcs, so it appears to be a compiler difference.
If the above three lines are changed to read
1190 else if ( buf[0] == '\n' || buf[0] == '\r' )
1211 else if ( buf[0] == '\n' || buf[0] == '\r' && This->priv->singleLine ) {
1263 if ( buf[0] == '\n' || buf[0] == '\r' ) {Then the build appears to complete normally.
Use CTRL + click.
Exit exits the program and offers to save your folders.
Quit exits the program without saving the folders.
Sleep saves the folders, then minimizes Ishmail. Also, when in the sleeping mode, ishmail doesn't check for new emails (so it's safe to leave it in this mode and use another program to read new mails if so desired).
Most modern GUI mail clients try to copy the look and feel of popular Windows mail clients. Ishmail, however, follows the UNIX tradition in naming the features (similar to pine or mutt). This may be a little confusing for newcomers, so I'll try to explain the differences:
- "Transferring mail" to a different folder is called "saving to a folder".
- "Mail filtering" is called "automatic filing".
- "Filtering" in ishmail means passing the contents of an email to an external user-defined command (the command is the filter here).
- The "Address Book" is found in "Aliases".
- There is no Trash mailbox: deleted messages are marked as deleted, and remain in the same folder - they can be undeleted. Messages are erased permanently when you save the folder.
- The middle mouse button is used to drag messages.
- Not all folders are visible when you first start ishmail: you need to open them individually. You can also set the folders to be opened at startup.
Also, most Windows mail clients are "monolithic", all the features are included in one program. UNIX programs are often more modular: you can use one program's output as another program's input. Ishmail has a lot of features, and you can use it on it's own. But, it also provides opportunities to use external programs. For example, the mailboxes are in a standard format, so you can use other programs to access them: you can use fetchmail if you need multiple accounts, or procmail if Ishmail's automatic filing system is not enough for you. You can use any external editor or spell checker if you want, and you can pass messages as input to any external program (filter). This gives Ishmail a lot of flexibility, it also means that it doesn't have to reinvent the wheel, and implement features that can be solved just as well by other programs.
These features are documented in the manual. I highly recommend reading the complete manual (it takes about 20 minutes), it will give you a good understanding of Ishmail's features. If you don't have the patience, these are some that can be overlooked:
You can tear off the menus by dragging the dashes (------------) at the top of the menu. Then they become floating palettes. This is especially handy when configuring Ishmail (tear off the Options menu), or when selecting folders (tear off Folders -> Open (List)).
Triple clicking in the message window selects the whole line, quadruple clicking selects all the text. See the Help -> On Keys help card for the keyboard shortcuts.
You can use as many different IMAP folders (on different servers) as you wish, provided the IMAP folder is specified as {hostname}foldername. In the next versions, it will be possible to use URL-like syntax e.g. imap://user@host/some/path
However, Ishmail supports just one POP account internally. But, you can use an external mail fetcher, like fetchmail, to receive mail from multiple accounts. Then you can use the Automatic Filing feature to file the messages into different folders.
For more info on fetchmail, see it's man page, it's pretty straightforward.
You might find it useful to tear down the Options menu (by dragging the dashes at the top of the menu), so you will have easy access to the options. Note that, when entering file names in text fields, you CAN use enviroment variables (like $HOME), or paths like ~user (which expands to the user's home directory), or mailbox names like +mbox (the + prefix means the default mail folder).
The ishmail configuration is stored in the following files:
$HOME/.ishmailrc ($HOME is the user's home directory, usually /home/user_name) This file stores the personal settings, those that can be changed via the Options menu. You can change the location of this file by setting $ISHMAILRC.
There are also files (in standard X resources format, see the X man pages or http://www.mit.edu:8001/afs/sipb/project/doc/ixresources/xres.html ) that can be used to change the colors, shortcut keys, widget labels, fonts, messages, etc. They are found here:
$ISHHOME/ishmail/lib/Ishmail (if $ISHHOME is not specified, the compile-time setting (usually /usr/local/share/ishmail ) will be used). The file #include's several others; for example Ishmail.colors is (you guessed) where the color resources are defined. These files are system-wide settings for all users. They (except Ishmail.site) are overwritten when you upgrade Ishmail, so don't make changes to them directly - but you can look at them to see which settings can be changed.
$ISHHOME/ishmail/lib/Ishmail.site Here you can add your own changes that will affect all users on the system. Also, each user can add his own settings in the $HOME/.Xdefaults file (or in $HOME/app-defaults/Ishmail ).
Ishmail also uses the mailcap , mailrc and mime.types files (these are also used by other programs). For more information, read the "Customizing Ishmail" and "Ishmail Resources" section in the user's guide.
This is because Netscape _does_ start up slowly :) Use a more lightweight browser, for example I use KDE's built-in Konqueror. Change this in the Options -> Reading -> Web browser command preferences, and use %s where you need to tell the browser the file to open. For example:
konqueror %s
On some systems the date column looks untidy because some mailers don't include day-of-the-week information, others include a lot of timezone information... you can set the date format you want to use in Options -> Message List -> Date format. Help on the format can be found on the "Message List - Date Format" help card, or see the strftime man page. For example, I use:
%Y.%m.%d. %H:%M %a (Hungarian format)
This is a bug many have encountered in the 2.0.0. version. There is a temporary fix for it, you will need to add four lines of source code, and then recompile. This will fix the doubling issue, but, it will break another thing: when you send mail, the status message will say Message NOT sent. Nevertheless, the message will be sent OK. Hopefully we'll have a fix out soon that fixes both problems. In the meantime, change these source files:
FolderC.h:
Boolean writable; Boolean scanning; // by drifter Boolean scanned;FolderC.C, HasMessagesWithStatus function:#else if ( !IndexValid() && !scanning ) { // && !scanning added by drifter Lock(True); Scan(); Lock(False); } #endif BooleanUnixFolderC.C:UnixFolderC::Scan() { scanning = True; // by drifter time_t timeIn = 0;[... and at the end of the function: ]if ( debuglev > 0 ) { time_t timeOut = time(0); cout <<"Leaving UnixFolderC(" <<BaseName(name) <<")::Scan after " <<(timeOut-timeIn) <<" seconds" <<endl; } scanning = False; // by drifter return True;Then run make again.