Postcard - An X-11 interface for mail and news groups
Postcard [ -display name ] [ -geometry WxH+X+Y] ] [ -longFolders ]
Postcard is a user interface for reading and composing personal electronic mail, and for reading newsgroups and bulletin boards. It combines in an X-windows interface most of the functions of mail handling programs such as mh or xmh, and news-reading programs such as rn or xrn.In addition, Postcard provides an integrated user interface for browsing the accumulated spool of newsgroups and bulletin boards, with a query language that includes full text indexing. This browsing is done through the ni(1) news indexing program.
Just like mh, Postcard keeps messages in folders. (There is no nesting of folders.) One folder, inbox, is special: it is where your newly arrived personal electronic mail is placed. You can create other private folders and copy or move messages into them. You can also create folders that correspond to newsgroups (or bulletin boards). In many ways these behave like your other folders, except that they are read-only. When new articles appear in a newsgroup, they automatically appear in your corresponding folder. You can also create aliases for newsgroups and for folders shared with other users.
Postcard uses the same file and directory structures for storing messages as mh(1). Indeed, it uses the various mh programs for most access to messages. Postcard does not interfere with use of rn, although it does not use rn's list of active newsgroups, nor rn's kill file. Postcard is compatible with some mail polling programs, such as faces -a; it is incompatible with xbiff.
Postcard uses an X-Server for all its user interactions. Postcard is programmed in Modula-3, using the Trestle and VBTKit toolkit and the FormsVBT interface-description system.
Postcard has a built-in editor for message composition, but it also lets you use an external editor of your choice, such as emacs, epoch, or vi.
Postcard has been debugged using version 6.7.1 of mh. Your mileage might differ if you have a different version installed in your local environment. Note that, unlike previous versions, mh version 6 allows more than 999 messages in a folder.
All of Postcard's documentation is built-in to the application. Click "help" on the general menu (at the top-left of the main window, looking like a U.S. Mail box). That produces a "help" window, with buttons to provide detailed explanations of Postcard's operations. Please use the help window's Next button to skim the documentation at least once.
Postcard itself is a single unprivileged program, and needs no installation - just run it, as described below in Starting Postcard. However, Postcard uses several other programs. Postcard finds most of these subsidiary programs by their simple name, looked up according to your PATH environment variable. You (the user) or your system administrator should make sure these programs are accessible.Postcard requires the mh(1) system, version 6.7 or later. From mh(1), Postcard uses inc, scan, refile, rmm, folder, sortm and send.
Postcard requires /bin/rm, bin/ls, and /usr/ucb/from, each of which is referenced by absolute pathname. Postcard invokes /bin/rm with the -r option to delete recursively, and invokes /bin/ls with no options. It uses /usr/ucb/from to count the number of messages in your inbox - all that Postcard does is count the number of newline in the output.
Postcard requires the program llscan, which is available from SRC.
Postcard uses the program ni to implement the "Browse Discussion" command and the commands in Postcard's "NI Query" dialog; if ni is not available, Postcard will give you an error message when you use those commands.
Postcard can also use various other programs that you explicitly choose in the "Set Configuration" dialog, for printing, external editing, and PostScript previewing. See the "help" popups in the configuration dialog for more information on these commands.
If you want to use Postcard to read newsgroups and bulletin boards, they must be available for direct file access, generally in the directory /usr/spool/news. If you are using them, your system administrator should create a ".purge" file in a newsgroup directory whenever messages there are purged or renumbered, so that Postcard will rescan the directory.
Postcard takes about half a minute to start upon a modern workstation; you'll probably want start Postcard and leave it running until the machine crashes or a new version of Postcard comes along.You start Postcard with the Postcard command; this creates a window on your display. All your interaction with Postcard is centered around this window.
On the command line with the Postcard command you can give a -geometry parameter to specify the width, height and position of the main window. The value of this parameter is in the standard WxH+X+Y format, e.g. "640x480+0+0". The numbers in this parameter are pixels. Positions are measured from the top left of the display if positive, and the bottom right if negative. You can also provide a -display parameter to name the X-server and particular display for the main window. Postcard creates its other windows when needed, near the main window.
The -longFolders parameter requests a slightly different layout for Postcard's main window, with the folder list all the way down the right hand side.
It's generally safe to run multiple copies of Postcard (e.g. in order to display on your X-server at work as well as your X-server at home). But this is safe only if the multiple copies are executing on the same computer (or you're not using NFS). And the multiple copies will not track additions and removals of folders, nor changes made with the Postcard configuration dialog. You might also get confused when there are file system errors, but the applications will try their best to avoid losing data in those cases. Don't try to interact with multiple copies of Postcard simultaneously - the algorithms assume there's a delay of at least one minute between your using one copy of Postcard and using the other one.
Postcard relies on a lot of files, programs, and settings from your environment. The most important of these are as follows; section 5 describes many additional configuration options, and more environment variables are mentioned below under ENVIRONMENT.
Most systems provide suitable defaults for all of the settings automatically.
- $PATH
- This environment variable must be set to a search path that provides access to the mh and ni commands.
- $DISPLAY
- This environment variable describes the display for your X-Server, e.g. "tokay.pa.dec.com:0.0".
- $HOME
- This environment variable should be the name of your user directory, e.g. "/udir/birrell".
- $USER
- This environment variable should be your user name as used for mail, e.g. "birrell". Case sensitive.
- $HOME/Mail
- The directory containing your mail folders, as for mh. Must be writable, and should contain at least "inbox" (though you can create this in Postcard).
While Postcard is running it creates directories in $HOME/Mail when you create folders. It stores your Postcard configuration in $HOME/.postcardFV_rc and draft messages in $HOME/.pc_draft; it can use an alias file from $HOME/.mail_aliases.sx
The mh commands used by Postcard require an mh profile in $HOME/.mh_profile. You probably already have one, but if not you should acquire one from a friend, or read the mh documentation.
Postcard does not have a generalized undo mechanism, but there are several ad hoc ways to recover from a mistake. If you [move] a message to the wrong folder, just open that folder and [move] it to the correct one.If you are worried about mistakes with [delete], you can use the Postcard option to have [delete] work by copying the message to a "deleted" folder (see the help information in the configuration dialog). If you decide to use this option, you should try to keep your "deleted" folder down to a reasonable size by using the Purge command in the Folders menu when you have your "deleted" folder open.
If you don't use the "deleted" folder option, it is still possible to recover a message you accidentally deleted with the [delete] button. The message is not destroyed immediately. Instead, the message file is renamed to begin with a comma. These "comma files" may disappear, however: if you subsequently delete a second message with the same number (i.e., after an [inc] or a "Sort & Pack"), its comma file will overwrite the earlier one. Also many installations include daemons that delete such files overnight. So you have a short period of grace in which to recover your accidentally deleted message. Just use a shell window to look in the directory corresponding to the folder you had open, e.g.:
tokay 1> cd ~/Mail/inbox tokay 2> lsLook for the comma file corresponding to the message you deleted, and note the highest existing message number. Rename the comma file to a message number not in use (such as the number of the message you deleted, if possible):srcff 3> mv ,27 27Then go back to Postcard and use the Rescan command in the Folder menu. Your message will reappear in the browser.If this fails, but the message you accidentally deleted had been in your folder for at least 24 hours, it may be possible to recover it from backup tapes.
Restoring files from backup tapes is not something that the system manager has time to do routinely, but he or she is willing to do it in an emergency.
The text of a draft message in a composition sub-window is written to a file in the $HOME/.pc_draft directory within 30 seconds of each edit that you make to it. These files are named "1", "2", etc.; the names are re-used as composition sub-windows are re-used. Postcard normally recovers these files automatically on a restart if you had an unsent draft. When you click "discard" or after a successful "send", the message file is stored in a simlarly named file in $HOME/.pc_draft, but with its name prefixed by ",".
Sometimes your $HOME/.mh_profile file can get into a state that will confuse the mh programs. A symptom of this is persistent strange messages including the name of an mh program (e.g. scan or inc). You can often recover from this by deleting $HOME/.mh_profile or by copying that file a friend.
Postcard maintenance is handled at SRC by Andrew Birrell. Report bugs in Postcard by sending a message to Birrell@pa.dec.com. If possible, include the version number, from the "About Postcard" dialog.
To improve interactiveness, Postcard executes time-consuming operations in the background while giving the illusion that they are done immediately. This can confuse you if you look at Postcard's part of the file system using other means. To be sure no background operations are in progress, click on the "inc" button, open a different folder, or exit Postcard; each of these actions waits for the background queue to empty.If you use mh and Postcard concurrently, it is possible that Postcard's internal cache of mail information can be incorrect. Postcard is only smart enough to detect whether a folder directory has been modified at the time it opens it. If you modify the mail information through other means other than Postcard (i.e., using mh from home), simply use the Rescan comand in the Folder menu. This will bring Postcard up to date.
During bulletin board upheavals, it is sometimes useful for the bulletin board wizards to force an automatic rescan the next time a user opens a particular bulletin board. This is done by creating a file .purge in the actual /usr/spool/news directory associated with the bulletin board. If a user's own cache is out of date with respect to this file, a complete rescan will be performed.
Postcard uses several environment variables, and the various mh programs use some more. The ones used explicitly by Postcard are as follows.
- PATH
- Used to find sub-programs.
- DISPLAY
- The identity of your X-Server, e.g. "tokay.pa.dec.com:0.0".
- HOME
- The directory containing your "Mail" directory (which contains your folders), your ".pc_draft" directory (for message drafts), an optional alias file ".mail_aliases.sx", and your Postcard configuration file ".postcardFV_rc" and ".mh_profile".
- USER
- The user name as used for mail, e.g. "birrell". Case-sensitive.
- MAILDROP
- The mail spool, where new personal mail arrives. The default is /usr/spool/mail/$USER
- NEWSDROP
- The news spool, where newsgroups and bulletin boards reside. The default is /usr/spool/news
- TextPortModel
- The initial editing model for the built-in editing windows. Should be ivy, emacs, mac, or xterm. The default is emacs.
- PostcardPATH
- The resource-path (directory name) where the startup code looks for the form-descriptions, pixmaps, help files, etc. By default, these resources are bundled with the executable.
FILES
$HOME/Mail/*/* # folders and messages $HOME/.pc_draft # message drafts $HOME/.mail_aliases.sx # mail aliases $HOME/.postcardFV_rc # Postcard configuration options $HOME/.mh_profile # .mh_profile file llscan # sub-program to scan folders /usr/ucb/from # to count new messages {inc,scan,refile,rmm,folder,sortm,send} # mh sub-programs /bin/rm # to delete folder (rm -r) /bin/ls # to enumerate (no options) the mail spool, defaulting to /usr/spool/mail/$USER the news spool, defaulting to /usr/spool/news
mh(1).
previously: Anthony Discolo, Paul McJones, Dorothy Denning
currently: Andrew Birrell
comments to: Birrell@pa.dec.comCopyright 1994 Digital Equipment Corporation.
Distributed only by permission.
Last modified on Mon Nov 28 14:17:25 PST 1994 by glassman modified on Wed Apr 27 16:39:13 PDT 1994 by birrell modified on Thu Feb 25 16:39:09 PST 1993 by meehan modified on Fri Oct 13 16:03:09 PDT 1989 by mcjones modified on Tue Sep 19 10:52:36 PDT 1989 by denning modified on Tue Jan 12 18:21:39 PST 1988 by discolo modified on Fri Jan 8 14:08:27 PST 1988 by mbrown