4 Funny marks

Here is a listing of marks that a user can use for insertion or deletion in Summary mode. This mark is displayed in the beginning of a line as follows: (Note that the marks that Mew inserts are displayed left side of date.)

D 03/12 Hidenori Ohta  This weekend              |Let's go to StoneMagic
oM03/14 Momo-chan      The pictures of Noto      |Attached are the pictu
* 03/15 Neat Sumikawa  Re: wine                  |OK. I vote for Wednesd

There are six marks at present.

‘U’

The unread mark.

‘D’

The delete mark.

‘X’

The delete mark.

‘o’

The refile mark, that is, to move a message to another folder.

‘*’

The target mark.

‘$’

The mark to save another mark temporarily.

Just putting a mark on to a message does NOT process anything at all. It is typing ‘x’ that processes the marks including ‘o’, ‘D’, ‘X’. So, take it easy to put marks but take care to type ‘x’.

The marks above are explained in sequence. The marks which Mew inserts are summarized here as well.

4.1 Unread ‘U’

With the following configuration, messages are marked with the unread mark ‘U’ when scanning the messages.

(setq mew-use-unread-mark t)

When you read a message with ‘SPC’, ‘n’, or ‘p’ and etc, the ‘U’ mark disappears.

These three commands read through messages marked with the ‘*’ mark, the ‘U’ mark, and non-marked messages. If you type ‘zSPC’, they read through messages marked with the ‘*’ mark and the ‘U’ mark only. This is convenient to read through unread messages. Typing ‘zSPC’ again gets the target messages back.

When you move onto the current message by putting a mark on the previous message, the ‘U’ mark is deleted. It’s sure that you want to read the current message if you move onto it by ‘SPC’, ‘n’, and ‘p’. However, you might not intend to read the current message when you move onto it by putting a mark. If this is the case, this spec is inconvenient for you. If you want to retain the unread mark on the current message when you move onto it by putting a mark on the previous message, configure as follows:

(setq mew-delete-unread-mark-by-mark nil)

The followings are summary of commands related to the ‘U’ mark.

‘zSPC’

Toggle the target of ‘SPC’, ‘n’, and ‘p’. Toggling means change one to the other out of “the ‘U’ mark, the ‘*’ mark, and non-mark” and “the ‘U’ mark and the ‘*’ mark”.

‘M-u’

Put the ‘U’ mark to the current message.

4.2 Delete ‘D’ and ‘X’

If you want to delete a message, type ‘d’ in Summary mode to put the ‘D’ mark on it. Don’t be worried about losing the message by mistake. Since putting the ‘D’ mark has no immediate effect, it does not result in a serious mistake. By default, typing ‘x’ moves messages marked with ‘D’ to a trash.

For local folders, a trash is +trash. For IMAP, it is %trash.

To really delete messages in the trashes, there are two methods:

1. Type ‘D’ in Summary mode.
2. Put the ‘D’ mark in the trashes then type ‘x’.

Exactly speaking, the following rule is applied for local folders. (‘mew-trash-folder’ is default to +trash. ‘mew-trash-folder-list’ is default to ‘nil’.)

• - If ‘mew-trash-folder’ is ‘nil’, messages marked with ‘D’ are deleted.
• - If ‘mew-trash-folder-list’ is defined, messages marked with ‘D’ in one of the folders defined in it are deleted. Otherwise, they are moved to the trash.
• - If ‘mew-trash-folder-list’ is ‘nl’, messages marked with ‘D’ in ‘mew-trash-folder’ are deleted. Otherwise, they are moved to the trash. (This is default.)

For IMAP, the same rule is applied according to both ‘mew-imap-trash-folder’ and ‘mew-imap-trash-folder-list’.

It is convenient if you can change the ‘*’ mark to the ‘D’ mark since you can put many the ‘D’ marks at once. To achieve this, use ‘md’.

Also, typing ‘Md’ put the ‘D’ mark to all duplicated messages excluding one for each.

There is also another mark, ‘X’, which is like the mark ‘D’. Messages marked with ‘X’ are deleted when ‘x’ is typed. The ‘X’ mark can be put by ‘M-d’.

‘mxM-d’ processes messages marked with ‘X’ only. Typing ‘mM-d’ converts all ‘*’ marks to ‘X’.

The following is a summary regarding with the ‘D’ mark and the ‘X’ mark.

‘d’

Put the ‘D’ mark.

‘M-d’

Put the ‘X’ mark.

‘md’

Convert all ‘*’ marks to ‘D’.

‘mM-d’

Convert all ‘*’ marks to ‘X’.

‘x’

Process marked messages.

‘mxd’

Process messages marked with ‘D’ only.

‘mxM-d’

Delete messages marked with ‘X’ only.

‘D’

Delete all messages in a trash.

‘C-uD’

Delete all messages in a specified folder.

4.3 Refile ‘o’

To refile a message, type ‘o’ and input a folder name, then ‘o’ is put. A folder is guessed neatly, so most time what you should do is just type ‘RET’. For more information, refer to Happy refiling.

If you type ‘o’ on a message marked with ‘o’, the refile folder is shown. When typing ‘x’, messages marked with ‘o’ are actually refiled.

Consider that you specify multiple folders and refiles actually. If your file system has hard link, the message is moved to the first folder, and hard links are created from the other folders. Otherwise, the message is moved to the first folder, and it is copied to the other folders.

If the number of specified folders are 1, and it is the current folder, refiling means do nothing. If the number is more than two and the current folder is included, refiling means that the message number in the current folder remains and hard links are created from the other folders (or it is copied to the other folders).

Mew provides ‘c’ which is very similar to ‘o’. ‘c’ shows the current folder as a candidate in addition to guessed folders.

A summary about the ‘o’ mark is here.

‘o’

Put the ‘o’ mark.

‘c’

Put the ‘o’ mark. Showing the current folder as a candidate in addition to guessed folders.

‘x’

Refile messages marked with ‘o’.

‘mxo’

Refile messages marked with ‘o’ only. This command does not process other marks.

‘C-umxo’

Refile messages marked with ‘o’, whose destination is the same as that of the current message.

4.4 Target ‘*’

Please put the ‘*’ mark onto messages that you want to review later. ‘?’ also put the ‘*’ mark onto matched messages (for more information, refer to Searching). Use ‘N’ and ‘P’ to walk around messages marked with ‘*’.

Here is a summary for ‘*’ commands.

‘*’

Put the ‘*’ mark.

‘N’

Jump to the message marked with ‘*’ below and display it.

‘P’

Jump to the message marked with ‘*’ above and display it.

‘ma’

Put the ‘*’ mark to all unmarked messages.

‘mr’

Put the ‘*’ mark to all matching messages with specified regular expression.

The ‘*’ mark is used to handle multiple messages. The following is a list of commands which handle multiple messages.

‘F’

Prepare a draft to forward multiple messages marked with ‘*’ in MIME format.

‘J’

A large message is occasionally fragmented into multiple messages whose Content-Type: is Message/Partial. Mew puts the ‘P’ mark to these messages. Now a user marks these messages with ‘*’ and executing this commands results in producing the original message.

‘mI’

Retrieve the rest of truncated(‘T’) messages marked with ‘*’.

‘C-umI’

Perform ‘mI’.

‘M-b’

De-capsulate messages embedded in the messages marked with ‘*’.

‘M-\’

Executing an external command specifying messages marked with ‘*’ as arguments.

‘M-t’

Apply "uudecode" on messages marked with ‘*’.

For ‘M-t’, messages marked with ‘*’ are supposed to be in the right order. If out of order, sorting with ‘S’ would help.

4.5 Escape ‘$’

Suppose that you want to put the ‘*’ marks to messages matched to a pattern specified to the ‘/’ command. If there are messages marked with ‘*’ already, these messages are merged to the results of ‘/’. Thus, you would want to escape the current messages marked with ‘*’.

For this sake, the escape mark ‘$’ is provided. A typical usage is as follows:

1. Change the ‘*’ marks to the ‘$’ marks with ‘m$’.
2. Put the ‘*’ marks to messages, for instance, with ‘/’ and process the messages marked with ‘*’.
3. Cancel the ‘*’ marks with ‘U*’.
4. Get the old ‘*’ marks back with ‘m*’.

Here is summary of the commands related to the ‘$’ mark.

‘m$’

Change the ‘*’ marks to the ‘$’ marks.

‘m*’

Change the ‘$’ marks to the ‘*’ marks.

4.6 Deleting marks

Refiling and deleting is not processed unless you type ‘x’. So, if you press ‘u’ to unmark before you type ‘x’, messages do not disappear accidentally.

Here is a summary for unmark commands.

‘u’

Cancel the mark on this message.

‘U’

Cancel all marks according to what you input.

The method with the ‘$’ mark, that is, preserve the ‘*’ marks and operate something then get them back, is friendly to users since it is visible. But since messages are marked, they would not be the targets of the operation.

To solve this problem, a method to recover ‘*’ marks is provided. The command is bound to ‘M*’. This method would not be friendly to users since the ‘*’ marks to recover are invisible. But because the marks are canceled, these message are surely the target of any operations.

‘M*’

Recover the ‘*’ marks which are canceled by the last ‘U*’.

4.7 Overwriting marks

Marks have levels of strength. You can override a mark by another same-level mark weak mark. Also stronger marks can override weaker marks.

The followings shows the marks in the strong order:

‘o’, ‘D’, and ‘X’

After marking a message newly, the next message is shown. After overriding another mark, the cursor stays on the message.

‘*’ and ‘$’

After marking a message, the cursor stays on the message.

‘U’

After marking a message, the cursor stays on the message.

refer to Summary mode to know which direction the cursor moves after putting a strong mark.

You can exchange marks as follows:

‘m$’

‘*’ -> ‘$’ :: Preserve the ‘*’ marks temporarily.

‘m*’

‘$’ -> ‘*’ :: Get the ‘*’ marks back.

‘ms’

‘$’ <-> ‘*’

‘mM-u’

‘*’ -> ‘U’ :: It is useful when you put ‘U’ marks to messages picked by ‘?’.

‘md’

‘*’ -> ‘D’ :: It is useful when you put ‘D’ marks to messages picked by ‘?’.

‘mM-d’

‘*’ -> ‘X’ :: It is useful when you put ‘X’ marks to messages picked by ‘?’.

‘mo’

‘*’ -> ‘o’ :: It is useful when you put ‘o’ marks to messages to be moved picked by ‘?’. ‘*’ -> ‘o’ :: It is useful when you put ‘o’ marks to messages to be copied picked by ‘?’.

‘e’

Exchange the first input mark to the second one. The ‘o’ mark is not exchangeable.

4.8 Mark consistency against an IMAP server

Mew can maintain consistency of the following marks against an IMAP server:

‘U’

Whether a message is read or not. This IMAP flag is \Seen. This is usually valid in %inbox only.

‘*’

Review mark. This IMAP flag is \Flagged.

To allow off-line operations, Mew synchronizes marks with an IMAP server everytime when a user makes an action. Mew does not automatically synchronize marks repeatedly. The followings are how Mew synchronizes marks.

1. ‘s’ + ’update
   • - Reflecting modified marks of the existing messages to the server
   • - For newly arrived messages, reflecting flags of the server to the messages.
2. ‘x’
   • - Reflecting modified marks of the existing messages to the server
3. ‘s’ + ’sync
   • - Reflecting modified marks of the existing messages to the server
   • - Clearing ‘*’,‘U’, ‘$’, ‘ ’ mark on the existing messages.
   • - Reflecting flags of the server to the existing messages
   • - Removing messages which were deleted in the server

4.9 Processing marks off-line for IMAP

An IMAP user may want to cache messages in folder A and go out. Then he may want to put the ‘o’ and/or ‘D’ marks, and process the marks off-line. In this story, these jobs should be done in his IMAP server after connecting the Internet.

If a message in folder A is moved to folder B with IMAP, the cached message in folder A usually must be deleted and a corresponding message in folder B must be retrieved from his IMAP server again. This is because information embedded in a cached message in folder A is valid only in folder A.

Suppose you refile a message in folder A to folder B off-line. It is very inconvenient for you to retrieve a corresponding message in folder B from your IMAP server , in order to read it, after refile jobs are done online. You may want to read the messages refiled to folder B by just going to the folder B, without retrieval from the IMAP server.

Mew implements delayed jobs processing and viewing refiled messages without retrieval. If you want to process marks off-line, type ‘lx’. ‘lx’ carries out the following jobs.

1. Deleting messages marked with ‘o’ and/or ‘D’ from folder A.
2. Queuing these jobs in %queue.
3. Moving messages marked with ‘o’ to folder B and marking them invalid.

’invalid’ means that you can read it but you cannot put the ‘o’/‘D’ mark on it. Invalid messages are marked with ‘#’. When you go to folder B by typing ‘g’, a list of invalid messages is displayed automatically.

If you want to let your IMAP server process jobs in %queue after you get back online, type ‘C-cC-c’ in %queue.

Typing ‘s’ in folder B after jobs in %queue are done in your IMAP server results in deletion of invalid messages and caching valid messages.

4.10 Marks displayed by Mew

Here is a summary of marks displayed by Mew.

‘M’

This message is a multipart. Please refer to Displaying MIME.

‘-’

This message contains a Multipart/Alternative content. Please refer to Controlling MIME analysis.

‘T’

This message was truncated by Mew. Please refer to Getting messages.

‘S’

This message is signed. Please refer to Visualizing cipher or signature.

‘E’

This is a cipher message. Please refer to Visualizing cipher or signature.

‘P’

This message is fragmented. Please refer to Target ‘*’.

‘#’

This message is invalid. Please refer to Processing marks off-line for IMAP.

This document was generated on February 16, 2023 using texi2html 5.0.