Message

1.1 New Mail Message

The message-mail command pops up a new message buffer.

Two optional parameters are accepted: The first will be used as the To header and the second as the Subject header. If these are nil, those two headers will be empty.

1.2 New News Message

The message-news command pops up a new message buffer.

This function accepts two optional parameters. The first will be used as the Newsgroups header and the second as the Subject header. If these are nil, those two headers will be empty.

1.3 Reply

The message-reply function pops up a message buffer that’s a reply to the message in the current buffer.

Message uses the normal methods to determine where replies are to go (see Responses), but you can change the behavior to suit your needs by fiddling with the message-reply-to-function variable.

If you want the replies to go to the Sender instead of the From, you could do something like this:

(setq message-reply-to-function
      (lambda ()
       (cond ((equal (mail-fetch-field "from") "somebody")
               (list (cons 'To (mail-fetch-field "sender"))))
             (t
              nil))))

This function will be called narrowed to the head of the article that is being replied to.

As you can see, this function should return a list. In this case, it returns ((To . "Whom")) if it has an opinion as to what the To header should be. If it does not, it should just return nil, and the normal methods for determining the To header will be used.

Each list element should be a cons, where the CAR should be the name of a header (e.g., CC) and the CDR should be the header value (e.g., ‘larsi@ifi.uio.no’). All these headers will be inserted into the head of the outgoing mail.

1.4 Wide Reply

The message-wide-reply pops up a message buffer that’s a wide reply to the message in the current buffer. A wide reply is a reply that goes out to all people listed in the To, From (or Reply-To) and CC headers.

Message uses the normal methods to determine where wide replies are to go, but you can change the behavior to suit your needs by fiddling with the message-wide-reply-to-function. It is used in the same way as message-reply-to-function (see Reply).

Addresses that match the message-dont-reply-to-names regular expression (or list of regular expressions or a predicate function) will be removed from the CC header. A value of nil means to exclude only your email address.

message-prune-recipient-rules is used to prune the addresses used when doing a wide reply. It’s meant to be used to remove duplicate addresses and the like. It’s a list of lists, where the first element is a regexp to match the address to trigger the rule, and the second is a regexp that will be expanded based on the first, to match addresses to be pruned.

It’s complicated to explain, but it’s easy to use.

For instance, if you get an email from ‘foo@example.org’, but ‘foo@zot.example.org’ is also in the CC list, then your wide reply will go out to both these addresses, since they are unique.

To avoid this, do something like the following:

(setq message-prune-recipient-rules
      '(("^\\([^@]+\\)@\\(.*\\)" "\\1@.*[.]\\2")))

If, for instance, you want all wide replies that involve messages from ‘cvs@example.org’ to go to that address, and nowhere else (i.e., remove all other recipients if ‘cvs@example.org’ is in the recipient list:

(setq message-prune-recipient-rules
      '(("cvs@example.org" ".")))

If message-wide-reply-confirm-recipients is non-nil you will be asked to confirm that you want to reply to multiple recipients. The default is nil.

1.5 Followup

The message-followup command pops up a message buffer that’s a followup to the message in the current buffer.

Message uses the normal methods to determine where followups are to go, but you can change the behavior to suit your needs by fiddling with the message-followup-to-function. It is used in the same way as message-reply-to-function (see Reply).

The message-use-followup-to variable says what to do about Followup-To headers. If it is use, always use the value. If it is ask (which is the default), ask whether to use the value. If it is t, use the value unless it is ‘poster’. If it is nil, don’t use the value.

1.6 Canceling News

The message-cancel-news command cancels the article in the current buffer.

The value of message-cancel-message is inserted in the body of the cancel message. The default is ‘I am canceling my own article.’.

When Message posts news messages, it inserts Cancel-Lock headers by default. This is a cryptographic header that ensures that only you can cancel your own messages, which is nice. The downside is that if you lose your .emacs file (which is where Gnus stores the secret cancel lock password (which is generated automatically the first time you use this feature)), you won’t be able to cancel your message. If you want to manage a password yourself, you can put something like the following in your ~/.gnus.el file:

(setq canlock-password "geheimnis"
      canlock-password-for-verify canlock-password)

Whether to insert the header or not is controlled by the message-insert-canlock variable.

Not many news servers respect the Cancel-Lock header yet, but this is expected to change in the future.

1.7 Superseding

The message-supersede command pops up a message buffer that will supersede the message in the current buffer.

Headers matching the message-ignored-supersedes-headers are removed before popping up the new message buffer. The default is
‘^Path:\\|^Date\\|^NNTP-Posting-Host:\\|^Xref:\\|^Lines:\\|
^Received:\\|^X-From-Line:\\|^X-Trace:\\|^X-Complaints-To:\\|
Return-Path:\\|^Supersedes:\\|^NNTP-Posting-Date:\\|^X-Trace:\\|
^X-Complaints-To:\\|^Cancel-Lock:\\|^Cancel-Key:\\|^X-Hashcash:\\|
^X-Payment:\\|^Approved:’.

1.8 Forwarding

The message-forward command pops up a message buffer to forward the message in the current buffer. If given a prefix, forward using news.

message-forward-ignored-headers ¶

In non-nil, all headers that match this regexp will be deleted when forwarding a message.

message-forward-included-headers ¶

In non-nil, only headers that match this regexp will be kept when forwarding a message. This can also be a list of regexps.

message-forward-included-mime-headers ¶

In non-nil, headers that match this regexp will be kept when forwarding a message as MIME, but MML isn’t used. This can also be a list of regexps.

message-make-forward-subject-function ¶

A list of functions that are called to generate a subject header for forwarded messages. The subject generated by the previous function is passed into each successive function.

The provided functions are:

message-forward-subject-author-subject ¶

Source of article (author or newsgroup), in brackets followed by the subject.

message-forward-subject-fwd

Subject of article with ‘Fwd:’ prepended to it.

message-wash-forwarded-subjects ¶

If this variable is t, the subjects of forwarded messages have the evidence of previous forwards (such as ‘Fwd:’, ‘Re:’, ‘(fwd)’) removed before the new subject is constructed. The default value is nil.

message-forward-as-mime ¶

If this variable is t, forwarded messages are included as inline MIME RFC822 parts. If it’s nil (the default), forwarded messages will just be copied inline to the new message, like previous, non MIME-savvy versions of Gnus would do.

message-forward-before-signature ¶

If non-nil, put forwarded message before signature, else after.

1.9 Resending

The message-resend command will prompt the user for an address and resend the message in the current buffer to that address.

Headers that match the message-ignored-resent-headers regexp will be removed before sending the message.

1.10 Bouncing

The message-bounce command will, if the current buffer contains a bounced mail message, pop up a message buffer stripped of the bounce information. A bounced message is typically a mail you’ve sent out that has been returned by some mailer-daemon as undeliverable.

Headers that match the message-ignored-bounced-headers regexp will be removed before popping up the buffer. The default is ‘^\\(Received\\|Return-Path\\|Delivered-To\\):’.

1.11 Mailing Lists

Sometimes while posting to mailing lists, the poster needs to direct followups to the post to specific places. The Mail-Followup-To (MFT) was created to enable just this. Three example scenarios where this is useful:

• A mailing list poster can use MFT to express that responses should be sent to just the list, and not the poster as well. This will happen if the poster is already subscribed to the list.
• A mailing list poster can use MFT to express that responses should be sent to the list and the poster as well. This will happen if the poster is not subscribed to the list.
• If a message is posted to several mailing lists, MFT may also be used to direct the following discussion to one list only, because discussions that are spread over several lists tend to be fragmented and very difficult to follow.

Gnus honors the MFT header in other’s messages (i.e., while following up to someone else’s post) and also provides support for generating sensible MFT headers for outgoing messages as well.

• Composing a correct MFT header automagically
• Honoring an MFT post

1.12 System Mailer Setup

Emacs can be set up as the system mailer, so that Emacs is opened when you click on ‘mailto:’ links in other programs.

How this is done varies from system to system, but commonly there’s a way to set the default application for a MIME type, and the relevant type here is ‘x-scheme-handler/mailto;’.

The application to start should be ‘emacs -f message-mailto %u’. This will start Emacs, and then run the message-mailto command. It will parse the given URL, and set up a Message buffer with the given parameters. If you prefer to use emacsclient, use ‘emacsclient -e '(message-mailto "%u")'’ as the application.

For instance, ‘mailto:larsi@gnus.org?subject=This+is+a+test’ will open a Message buffer with the ‘To:’ header filled in with ‘"larsi@gnus.org"’ and the ‘Subject:’ header with ‘"This is a test"’.

2.1 Buffer Entry

You most often end up in a Message buffer when responding to some other message of some sort. Message does lots of handling of quoted text, and may remove signatures, reformat the text, or the like—depending on which used settings you’re using. Message usually gets things right, but sometimes it stumbles. To help the user unwind these stumblings, Message sets the undo boundary before each major automatic action it takes. If you press the undo key (usually located at C-_) a few times, you will get back the un-edited message you’re responding to.

2.2 Header Commands

• Commands for moving to headers
• Commands to change headers

2.3 Movement

C-c C-b ¶

Move to the beginning of the body of the message (message-goto-body).

C-c C-i ¶

Move to the signature of the message (message-goto-signature).

C-a ¶

If at beginning of header value, go to beginning of line, else go to beginning of header value. (The header value comes after the header name and the colon.) This behavior can be disabled by toggling the variable message-beginning-of-line.

2.4 Insertion

C-c C-y ¶

Yank the message that’s being replied to into the message buffer (message-yank-original).

C-c C-M-y ¶

Prompt for a buffer name and yank the contents of that buffer into the message buffer (message-yank-buffer).

C-c C-q ¶

Fill the yanked message (message-fill-yanked-message). Warning: Can severely mess up the yanked text if its quoting conventions are strange. You’ll quickly get a feel for when it’s safe, though. Anyway, just remember that C-x u (undo) is available and you’ll be all right.

C-c C-w ¶

Insert a signature at the end of the buffer (message-insert-signature).

C-c M-h ¶

Insert the message headers (message-insert-headers).

C-c M-m ¶

Mark some region in the current article with enclosing tags. See message-mark-insert-begin and message-mark-insert-end. When called with a prefix argument, use slrn style verbatim marks (‘#v+’ and ‘#v-’).

C-c M-f ¶

Insert a file in the current article with enclosing tags. See message-mark-insert-begin and message-mark-insert-end. When called with a prefix argument, use slrn style verbatim marks (‘#v+’ and ‘#v-’).

2.5 MIME

Message is a MIME-compliant posting agent. The user generally doesn’t have to do anything to make the MIME happen—Message will automatically add the Content-Type and Content-Transfer-Encoding headers.

The most typical thing users want to use the multipart things in MIME for is to add “attachments” to mail they send out. This can be done with the C-c C-a command (M-x mml-attach-file), which will prompt for a file name and a MIME type.

If your Emacs supports drag and drop, you can also drop the file in the Message buffer. The variable mml-dnd-protocol-alist specifies what kind of action is done when you drop a file into the Message buffer. The variable mml-dnd-attach-options controls which MIME options you want to specify when dropping a file. If it is a list, valid members are type, description and disposition. disposition implies type. If it is nil, don’t ask for options. If it is t, ask the user whether or not to specify options.

If your system supports it, you can also insert screenshots directly into the Message buffer. The C-c C-p (message-insert-screenshot) command inserts the image into the buffer as an MML part, and puts an image text property on top. The message-screenshot-command variable says what external command to use to take the screenshot. It defaults to "import png:-", which is an ImageMagick command.

You can also create arbitrarily complex multiparts using the MML language (see Composing in The Emacs MIME Manual).

2.6 IDNA

IDNA is a standard way to encode non-ASCII domain names into a readable ASCII string. The details can be found in RFC 3490.

Message is a IDNA-compliant posting agent. The user generally doesn’t have to do anything to make the IDNA happen—Message will encode non-ASCII domain names in From, To, and CC headers automatically.

Until IDNA becomes more well known, Message queries you whether IDNA encoding of the domain name really should occur. Some users might not be aware that domain names can contain non-ASCII now, so this gives them a safety net if they accidentally typed a non-ASCII domain name.

The message-use-idna variable control whether IDNA is used. If the variable is nil no IDNA encoding will ever happen, if it is set to the symbol ask the user will be queried, and if set to t (which is the default if IDNA is fully available) IDNA encoding happens automatically.

If you want to experiment with the IDNA encoding, you can invoke M-x message-idna-to-ascii-rhs RET in the message buffer to have the non-ASCII domain names encoded while you edit the message.

Note that you must have GNU Libidn installed in order to use this functionality.

2.7 Security

By default, e-mails are transmitted without any protection around the Internet, which implies that they can be read and changed by lots of different parties. In particular, they are analyzed under bulk surveillance, which violates basic human rights. To defend those rights, digital self-defense is necessary (in addition to legal changes), and encryption and digital signatures are powerful techniques for self-defense. In essence, encryption ensures that only the intended recipient will be able to read a message, while digital signatures make sure that modifications to messages can be detected by the recipient.

Nowadays, there are two major incompatible e-mail encryption standards, namely OpenPGP and S/MIME. Both of these standards are implemented by the GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG), which needs to be installed as external software in addition to GNU Emacs. Before you can start to encrypt, decrypt, and sign messages, you need to create a so-called key-pair, which consists of a private key and a public key. Your public key (also known as certificate, in particular with S/MIME), is used by others (a) to encrypt messages intended for you and (b) to verify digital signatures created by you. In contrast, you use your private key (a) to decrypt messages and (b) to sign messages. (You may want to think of your public key as an open safe that you offer to others such that they can deposit messages and lock the door, while your private key corresponds to the opening combination for the safe.)

Thus, you need to perform the following steps for e-mail encryption, typically outside Emacs. See, for example, The GNU Privacy Handbook for details covering the standard OpenPGP with GnuPG.

1. Install GnuPG.
2. Create a key-pair for your own e-mail address.
3. Distribute your public key, e.g., via upload to key servers.
4. Import the public keys for the recipients to which you want to send encrypted e-mails.

Whether to use the standard OpenPGP or S/MIME is beyond the scope of this documentation. Actually, you can use one standard for one set of recipients and the other standard for different recipients (depending their preferences or capabilities).

In case you are not familiar with all those acronyms: The standard OpenPGP is also called PGP (Pretty Good Privacy). The command line tools offered by GnuPG for OpenPGP are called gpg and gpg2, while the one for S/MIME is called gpgsm. An alternative, but discouraged, tool for S/MIME is openssl. To make matters worse, e-mail messages can be formed in two different ways with OpenPGP, namely PGP (RFC 1991/4880) and PGP/MIME (RFC 2015/3156).

The good news, however, is the following: In GNU Emacs, Message supports all those variants, comes with reasonable defaults that can be customized according to your needs, and invokes the proper command line tools behind the scenes for encryption, decryption, as well as creation and verification of digital signatures.

Message uses the MML language for the creation of signed and/or encrypted messages as explained in the following.

• Signing and encrypting commands
• Using S/MIME
• Using OpenPGP
• OpenPGP Header
• Passphrase caching
• Compatibility with older implementations
• Encrypt-to-self
• BCC Warning

(require 'epg)

$ openssl pkcs12 -in ns.p12 -clcerts -nodes > key+cert.pem

(add-hook 'message-header-setup-hook 'message-add-openpgp-header)

eval `gpg-agent --daemon`

gpg --use-agent --sign < /dev/null > /dev/null

(setq mml-signencrypt-style-alist '(("smime" separate)
                                    ("pgp" separate)
                                    ("pgpauto" separate)
                                    ("pgpmime" separate)))

2.8 Various Commands

C-c C-r ¶

Caesar rotate (aka. rot13) the current message (message-caesar-buffer-body). If narrowing is in effect, just rotate the visible portion of the buffer. A numerical prefix says how many places to rotate the text. The default is 13.

C-c C-e ¶

Elide the text between point and mark (message-elide-region). The text is killed and replaced with the contents of the variable message-elide-ellipsis. The default value is to use an ellipsis (‘[...]’).

This is a format-spec string, and you can use ‘%l’ to say how many lines were removed, and ‘%c’ to say how many characters were removed.

C-c M-k ¶

Kill the address under point.

C-c C-z ¶

Kill all the text up to the signature, or if that’s missing, up to the end of the message (message-kill-to-signature).

C-c C-v ¶

Delete all text in the body of the message that is outside the region (message-delete-not-region).

M-RET ¶

Insert four newlines, and then reformat if inside quoted text.

Here’s an example:

> This is some quoted text.  And here's more quoted text.

If point is before ‘And’ and you press M-RET, you’ll get:

> This is some quoted text.

*

> And here's more quoted text.

‘*’ says where point will be placed.

C-c M-r ¶

Rename the buffer (message-rename-buffer). If given a prefix, prompt for a new buffer name.

TAB ¶

If message-tab-body-function is non-nil, execute the function it specifies. Otherwise use the function bound to TAB in text-mode-map or global-map.

2.9 Sending

C-c C-c ¶

Send the message and bury the current buffer (message-send-and-exit).

C-c C-s ¶

Send the message (message-send).

C-c C-d ¶

Bury the message buffer and exit (message-dont-send).

C-c C-k ¶

Kill the message buffer and exit (message-kill-buffer).

2.10 Mail Aliases

The message-mail-alias-type variable controls what type of mail alias expansion to use. Currently two forms are supported: mailabbrev and ecomplete. If this variable is nil, no mail alias expansion will be performed.

mailabbrev works by parsing the /etc/mailrc and ~/.mailrc files. These files look like:

alias lmi "Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@ifi.uio.no>"
alias ding "ding@ifi.uio.no (ding mailing list)"

After adding lines like this to your ~/.mailrc file, you should be able to just write ‘lmi’ in the To or CC (and so on) headers and press SPC to expand the alias.

No expansion will be performed upon sending of the message—all expansions have to be done explicitly.

If you’re using ecomplete, all addresses from To and CC headers will automatically be put into the ~/.ecompleterc file. When you enter text in the To and CC headers, ecomplete will check out the values stored there and “electrically” say what completions are possible. To choose one of these completions, use the M-n command to move down to the list. Use DOWN or M-n and UP or M-p to move down and up the list, and RET to choose a completion.

The ecomplete-sort-predicate variable controls how ecomplete matches are sorted.

2.11 Spelling

There are two popular ways to have Emacs spell-check your messages: ispell and flyspell. ispell is the older and probably more popular package. You typically first write the message, and then run the entire thing through ispell and fix all the typos. To have this happen automatically when you send a message, put something like the following in your .emacs file:

(add-hook 'message-send-hook 'ispell-message)

If you’re in the habit of writing in different languages, this can be controlled by the ispell-message-dictionary-alist variable:

(setq ispell-message-dictionary-alist
      '(("^Newsgroups:.*\\bde\\." . "deutsch8")
        (".*" . "default")))

ispell depends on having the external ‘ispell’ command installed.

The other popular method is using flyspell. This package checks your spelling while you’re writing, and marks any mis-spelled words in various ways.

To use flyspell, put something like the following in your .emacs file:

(defun my-message-setup-routine ()
  (flyspell-mode 1))
(add-hook 'message-setup-hook 'my-message-setup-routine)

flyspell depends on having the external ‘ispell’ command installed.

3.1 Message Headers

Message is quite aggressive on the message generation front. It has to be—it’s a combined news and mail agent. To be able to send combined messages, it has to generate all headers itself (instead of letting the mail/news system do it) to ensure that mail and news copies of messages look sufficiently similar.

message-generate-headers-first ¶

If t, generate all required headers before starting to compose the message. This can also be a list of headers to generate:

(setq message-generate-headers-first
      '(References))

The variables message-required-headers, message-required-mail-headers and message-required-news-headers specify which headers are required.

Note that some headers will be removed and re-generated before posting, because of the variable message-deletable-headers (see below).

message-draft-headers ¶

When running Message from Gnus, the message buffers are associated with a draft group. message-draft-headers says which headers should be generated when a draft is written to the draft group.

message-from-style ¶

Specifies how From headers should look. There are four valid values:

nil

Just the address—‘king@grassland.com’.

parens

‘king@grassland.com (Elvis Parsley)’.

angles

‘Elvis Parsley <king@grassland.com>’.

default

Look like angles if that doesn’t require quoting, and parens if it does. If even parens requires quoting, use angles anyway.

message-deletable-headers ¶

Headers in this list that were previously generated by Message will be deleted before posting. Let’s say you post an article. Then you decide to post it again to some other group, you naughty boy, so you jump back to the *post-buf* buffer, edit the Newsgroups line, and ship it off again. By default, this variable makes sure that the old generated Message-ID is deleted, and a new one generated. If this isn’t done, the entire empire would probably crumble, anarchy would prevail, and cats would start walking on two legs and rule the world. Allegedly.

message-default-headers ¶

Header lines to be inserted in outgoing messages before you edit the message, so you can edit or delete their lines. If set to a string, it is directly inserted. If set to a function, it is called and its result is inserted.

message-subject-re-regexp ¶

Responses to messages have subjects that start with ‘Re: ’. This is not an abbreviation of the English word “response”, but it comes from the Latin “res”, and means “in the matter of”. Some illiterate nincompoops have failed to grasp this fact, and have “internationalized” their software to use abominations like ‘Aw: ’ (“antwort”) or ‘Sv: ’ (“svar”) instead, which is meaningless and evil. However, you may have to deal with users that use these evil tools, in which case you may set this variable to a regexp that matches these prefixes. Myself, I just throw away non-compliant mail.

Here’s an example of a value to deal with these headers when responding to a message:

(setq message-subject-re-regexp
      (concat
       "^[ \t]*"
         "\\("
           "\\("
             "[Aa][Nn][Tt][Ww]\\.?\\|"     ; antw
             "[Aa][Ww]\\|"                 ; aw
             "[Ff][Ww][Dd]?\\|"            ; fwd
             "[Oo][Dd][Pp]\\|"             ; odp
             "[Rr][Ee]\\|"                 ; re
             "[Rr][\311\351][Ff]\\.?\\|"   ; ref
             "[Ss][Vv]"                    ; sv
           "\\)"
           "\\(\\[[0-9]*\\]\\)"
           "*:[ \t]*"
         "\\)"
       "*[ \t]*"
       ))

message-subject-trailing-was-query ¶

Controls what to do with trailing ‘(was: <old subject>)’ in subject lines. If nil, leave the subject unchanged. If it is the symbol ask, query the user what to do. In this case, the subject is matched against message-subject-trailing-was-ask-regexp. If message-subject-trailing-was-query is t, always strip the trailing old subject. In this case, message-subject-trailing-was-regexp is used.

message-alternative-emails ¶

Regexp or predicate function matching alternative email addresses. The first address in the To, CC or From headers of the original article matching this variable is used as the From field of outgoing messages, replacing the default From value.

For example, if you have two secondary email addresses john@home.net and john.doe@work.com and want to use them in the From field when composing a reply to a message addressed to one of them, you could set this variable like this:

(setq message-alternative-emails
      (regexp-opt '("john@home.net" "john.doe@work.com")))

This variable has precedence over posting styles and anything that runs off message-setup-hook.

message-allow-no-recipients ¶

Specifies what to do when there are no recipients other than Gcc or FCC. If it is always, the posting is allowed. If it is never, the posting is not allowed. If it is ask (the default), you are prompted.

message-hidden-headers ¶

A regexp, a list of regexps, or a list where the first element is not and the rest are regexps. It says which headers to keep hidden when composing a message.

(setq message-hidden-headers
      '(not "From" "Subject" "To" "CC" "Newsgroups"))

Headers are hidden using narrowing, you can use M-x widen to expose them in the buffer.

message-header-synonyms ¶

A list of lists of header synonyms. E.g., if this list contains a member list with elements CC and To, then message-carefully-insert-headers will not insert a To header when the message is already CCed to the recipient.

message-syntax-checks ¶

Controls what syntax checks should not be performed on outgoing posts. To disable checking of long signatures, for instance, add

(signature . disabled)

to this list.

Valid checks are:

approved ¶

Check whether the article has an Approved header, which is something only moderators should include.

continuation-headers

Check whether there are continuation header lines that don’t begin with whitespace.

control-chars

Check for invalid characters.

empty

Check whether the article is empty.

existing-newsgroups

Check whether the newsgroups mentioned in the Newsgroups and Followup-To headers exist.

from

Check whether the From header seems nice.

illegible-text

Check whether there is any non-printable character in the body.

invisible-text

Check whether there is any invisible text in the buffer.

long-header-lines

Check for too long header lines.

long-lines ¶

Check for too long lines in the body.

message-id

Check whether the Message-ID looks syntactically ok.

multiple-headers

Check for the existence of multiple equal headers.

new-text

Check whether there is any new text in the messages.

newsgroups

Check whether the Newsgroups header exists and is not empty.

quoting-style

Check whether text follows last quoted portion.

repeated-newsgroups

Check whether the Newsgroups and Followup-To headers contains repeated group names.

reply-to

Check whether the Reply-To header looks ok.

sender ¶

Insert a new Sender header if the From header looks odd.

sendsys ¶

Check for the existence of version and sendsys commands.

shoot

Check whether the domain part of the Message-ID header looks ok.

shorten-followup-to

Check whether to add a Followup-To header to shorten the number of groups to post to.

signature

Check the length of the signature.

size

Check for excessive size.

subject

Check whether the Subject header exists and is not empty.

subject-cmsg

Check the subject for commands.

valid-newsgroups

Check whether the Newsgroups and Followup-To headers are valid syntactically.

All these conditions are checked by default, except for sender for which the check is disabled by default if message-insert-canlock is non-nil (see Canceling News).

3.2 Mail Headers

message-required-mail-headers ¶

See News Headers, for the syntax of this variable. It is (From Subject Date (optional . In-Reply-To) Message-ID (optional . User-Agent)) by default.

message-ignored-mail-headers ¶

Regexp of headers to be removed before mailing. The default is
‘^[GF]cc:\\|^Resent-FCC:\\|^Xref:\\|^X-Draft-From:\\|
^X-Gnus-Agent-Meta-Information:’.

message-default-mail-headers ¶

This string is inserted at the end of the headers in all message buffers that are initialized as mail.

message-generate-hashcash ¶

Variable that indicates whether ‘X-Hashcash’ headers should be computed for the message. See Hashcash in The Gnus Manual. If opportunistic, only generate the headers when it doesn’t lead to the user having to wait.

3.3 Mail Variables

message-send-mail-function ¶

Function used to send the current buffer as mail. The default is message-send-mail-with-sendmail, or smtpmail-send-it according to the system. Other valid values include message-send-mail-with-mailclient, message-send-mail-with-mh, message-send-mail-with-qmail, message-smtpmail-send-it and feedmail-send-it.

The function message-send-mail-with-sendmail pipes your article to the sendmail binary for further queuing and sending. When your local system is not configured for sending mail using sendmail, and you have access to a remote SMTP server, you can set message-send-mail-function to smtpmail-send-it and make sure to setup the smtpmail package correctly. An example:

(setq message-send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it
      smtpmail-default-smtp-server "YOUR SMTP HOST")

To the thing similar to this, there is message-smtpmail-send-it. It is useful if your ISP requires the POP-before-SMTP authentication. See POP before SMTP in The Gnus Manual.

If you have a complex SMTP setup, and want some messages to go via one mail server, and other messages to go through another, you can use the ‘X-Message-SMTP-Method’ header. These are the supported values:

‘smtpmail’

X-Message-SMTP-Method: smtp smtp.fsf.org 587

This will send the message via ‘smtp.fsf.org’, using port 587.

X-Message-SMTP-Method: smtp smtp.fsf.org 587 other-user

This is the same as the above, but uses ‘other-user’ as the user name when authenticating. This is handy if you have several SMTP accounts on the same server.

‘sendmail’

X-Message-SMTP-Method: sendmail

This will send the message via the locally installed sendmail/exim/etc installation.

message-mh-deletable-headers ¶

Most versions of MH doesn’t like being fed messages that contain the headers in this variable. If this variable is non-nil (which is the default), these headers will be removed before mailing when sending messages via MH. Set it to nil if your MH can handle these headers.

message-qmail-inject-program ¶

Location of the qmail-inject program.

message-qmail-inject-args ¶

Arguments passed to qmail-inject programs. This should be a list of strings, one string for each argument. It may also be a function.

E.g., if you wish to set the envelope sender address so that bounces go to the right place or to deal with listserv’s usage of that address, you might set this variable to '("-f" "you@some.where").

message-sendmail-f-is-evil ¶

Non-nil means don’t add ‘-f username’ to the sendmail command line. Doing so would be even more evil than leaving it out.

message-sendmail-envelope-from ¶

When message-sendmail-f-is-evil is nil, this specifies the address to use in the SMTP envelope. If it is nil, use user-mail-address. If it is the symbol header, use the ‘From’ header of the message.

message-mailer-swallows-blank-line ¶

Set this to non-nil if the system’s mailer runs the header and body together. (This problem exists on SunOS 4 when sendmail is run in remote mode.) The value should be an expression to test whether the problem will actually occur.

message-send-mail-partially-limit ¶

The limitation of messages sent as message/partial. The lower bound of message size in characters, beyond which the message should be sent in several parts. If it is nil (which is the default), the size is unlimited.

3.4 News Headers

message-required-news-headers a list of header symbols. These headers will either be automatically generated, or, if that’s impossible, they will be prompted for. The following symbols are valid:

From ¶

This required header will be filled out with the result of the message-make-from function, which depends on the message-from-style, user-full-name, user-mail-address variables.

Subject ¶

This required header will be prompted for if not present already.

Newsgroups ¶

This required header says which newsgroups the article is to be posted to. If it isn’t present already, it will be prompted for.

Organization ¶

This optional header will be filled out depending on the message-user-organization variable. message-user-organization-file will be used if this variable is t. This variable can also be a string (in which case this string will be used), or it can be a function (which will be called with no parameters and should return a string to be used).

Lines ¶

This optional header will be computed by Message.

Message-ID ¶

This required header will be generated by Message. A unique ID will be created based on the date, time, user name (for the local part) and the domain part. For the domain part, message will look (in this order) at message-user-fqdn, system-name, mail-host-address and message-user-mail-address (i.e., user-mail-address) until a probably valid fully qualified domain name (FQDN) was found.

User-Agent ¶

This optional header will be filled out according to the message-newsreader local variable.

In-Reply-To

This optional header is filled out using the Date and From header of the article being replied to.

Expires ¶

This extremely optional header will be inserted according to the message-expires variable. It is highly deprecated and shouldn’t be used unless you know what you’re doing.

Distribution ¶

This optional header is filled out according to the message-distribution-function variable. It is a deprecated and much misunderstood header.

Path ¶

This extremely optional header should probably never be used. However, some very old servers require that this header is present. message-user-path further controls how this Path header is to look. If it is nil, use the server name as the leaf node. If it is a string, use the string. If it is neither a string nor nil, use the user name only. However, it is highly unlikely that you should need to fiddle with this variable at all.

In addition, you can enter conses into this list. The CAR of this cons should be a symbol. This symbol’s name is the name of the header, and the CDR can either be a string to be entered verbatim as the value of this header, or it can be a function to be called. This function should take no arguments, and return a string to be inserted. For instance, if you want to insert Mime-Version: 1.0, you should enter (Mime-Version . "1.0") into the list.

If the list contains a cons where the CAR of the cons is optional, the CDR of this cons will only be inserted if it is non-nil.

If you want to delete an entry from this list, the following Lisp snippet might be useful. Adjust accordingly if you want to remove another element.

(setq message-required-news-headers
      (delq 'Message-ID message-required-news-headers))

Other variables for customizing outgoing news articles:

message-ignored-news-headers ¶

Regexp of headers to be removed before posting. The default is
‘^NNTP-Posting-Host:\\|^Xref:\\|^[BGF]cc:\\|^Resent-FCC:\\|
^X-Draft-From:\\|^X-Gnus-Agent-Meta-Information:’.

message-default-news-headers ¶

This string is inserted at the end of the headers in all message buffers that are initialized as news.

3.5 News Variables

message-send-news-function ¶

Function used to send the current buffer as news. The default is message-send-news.

message-post-method ¶

Gnusish select method (see the Gnus manual for details) used for posting a prepared news message.

3.6 Insertion Variables

message-cite-style ¶

The overall style to be used when replying to messages. This controls things like where the reply should be put relative to the original, how the citation is formatted, where the signature goes, etc.

Value is either nil (no variable overrides) or a let-style list of pairs (VARIABLE VALUE) to override default values.

See gnus-posting-styles to set this variable for specific groups. Presets to impersonate popular mail agents are available in the message-cite-style-* variables.

message-cite-reply-position ¶

Where the reply should be positioned. Available styles are traditional to reply inline, above for top-posting, and below for bottom-posting

message-ignored-cited-headers ¶

All headers that match this regexp will be removed from yanked messages. The default is ‘.’, which means that all headers will be removed.

message-cite-prefix-regexp ¶

Regexp matching the longest possible citation prefix on a line.

message-citation-line-function ¶

Function called to insert the citation line. The default is message-insert-citation-line, which will lead to citation lines that look like:

Hallvard B Furuseth <h.b.furuseth@usit.uio.no> writes:

Point will be at the beginning of the body of the message when this function is called.

Note that Gnus provides a feature where clicking on ‘writes:’ hides the cited text. If you change the citation line too much, readers of your messages will have to adjust their Gnus, too. See the variable gnus-cite-attribution-suffix. See Article Highlighting in The Gnus Manual, for details.

message-yank-prefix ¶

When you are replying to or following up an article, you normally want to quote the person you are answering. Inserting quoted text is done by yanking, and each line you yank will have message-yank-prefix prepended to it (except for quoted lines which use message-yank-cited-prefix and empty lines which use message-yank-empty-prefix). The default is ‘> ’.

message-yank-cited-prefix ¶

When yanking text from an article which contains already cited text, each line will be prefixed with the contents of this variable. The default is ‘>’. See also message-yank-prefix.

message-yank-empty-prefix ¶

When yanking text from an article, each empty line will be prefixed with the contents of this variable. The default is ‘>’. You can set this variable to an empty string to split the cited text into paragraphs automatically. See also message-yank-prefix.

message-indentation-spaces ¶

Number of spaces to indent yanked messages.

message-cite-function ¶

Function for citing an original message. The default is message-cite-original, which simply inserts the original message and prepends ‘> ’ to each line. message-cite-original-without-signature does the same, but elides the signature.

message-indent-citation-function ¶

Function for modifying a citation just inserted in the mail buffer. This can also be a list of functions. Each function can find the citation between (point) and (mark t). And each function should leave point and mark around the citation text as modified.

message-mark-insert-begin ¶

String to mark the beginning of some inserted text.

message-mark-insert-end ¶

String to mark the end of some inserted text.

message-signature ¶

String to be inserted at the end of the message buffer. If t (which is the default), the message-signature-file file will be inserted instead. If a function, the result from the function will be used instead. If a form, the result from the form will be used instead. If this variable is nil, no signature will be inserted at all, but you can still insert your message-signature-file by hand when desired, using the C-c C-w (message-insert-signature) command.

message-signature-file ¶

File containing the signature to be inserted at the end of the buffer. If a path is specified, the value of message-signature-directory is ignored, even if set. The default is ~/.signature.

message-signature-directory ¶

Name of directory containing signature files. Comes in handy if you have many such files, handled via Gnus posting styles for instance. If nil (the default), message-signature-file is expected to specify the directory if needed.

message-signature-insert-empty-line ¶

If t (the default value) an empty line is inserted before the signature separator.

Note that RFC1036bis says that a signature should be preceded by the three characters ‘-- ’ on a line by themselves. This is to make it easier for the recipient to automatically recognize and process the signature. So don’t remove those characters, even though you might feel that they ruin your beautiful design, like, totally.

Also note that no signature should be more than four lines long. Including ASCII graphics is an efficient way to get everybody to believe that you are silly and have nothing important to say.

3.7 Various Message Variables

message-default-charset ¶

Symbol naming a MIME charset. Non-ASCII characters in messages are assumed to be encoded using this charset. The default is iso-8859-1 on non-MULE Emacsen; otherwise nil, which means ask the user. (This variable is used only on non-MULE Emacsen.) See Charset Translation in Emacs MIME Manual, for details on the MULE-to-MIME translation process.

message-fill-column ¶

Local value for the column beyond which automatic line-wrapping should happen for message buffers. If non-nil (the default), also turn on auto-fill in message buffers.

message-signature-separator ¶

Regexp matching the signature separator. It is ‘^-- *$’ by default.

mail-header-separator ¶

String used to separate the headers from the body. It is ‘--text follows this line--’ by default.

message-directory ¶

Directory used by many mailish things. The default is ~/Mail/. All other mail file variables are derived from message-directory.

message-auto-save-directory ¶

Directory where Message auto-saves buffers if Gnus isn’t running. If nil, Message won’t auto-save. The default is ~/Mail/drafts/.

message-signature-setup-hook ¶

Hook run when initializing the message buffer. It is run after the headers have been inserted but before the signature has been inserted.

message-setup-hook ¶

Hook run as the last thing when the message buffer has been initialized, but before yanked text is inserted.

message-header-setup-hook ¶

Hook called narrowed to the headers after initializing the headers.

For instance, if you’re running Gnus and wish to insert a ‘Mail-Copies-To’ header in all your news articles and all messages you send to mailing lists, you could do something like the following:

(defun my-message-header-setup-hook ()
  (let ((group (or gnus-newsgroup-name "")))
    (when (or (message-fetch-field "newsgroups")
              (gnus-group-find-parameter group 'to-address)
              (gnus-group-find-parameter group 'to-list))
      (insert "Mail-Copies-To: never\n"))))

(add-hook 'message-header-setup-hook
          'my-message-header-setup-hook)

message-send-hook ¶

Hook run before sending messages.

If you want to add certain headers before sending, you can use the message-add-header function in this hook. For instance:

(add-hook 'message-send-hook 'my-message-add-content)
(defun my-message-add-content ()
  (message-add-header "X-In-No-Sense: Nonsense")
  (message-add-header "X-Whatever: no"))

This function won’t add the header if the header is already present.

message-send-mail-hook ¶

Hook run before sending mail messages. This hook is run very late: just before the message is actually sent as mail.

message-send-news-hook ¶

Hook run before sending news messages. This hook is run very late: just before the message is actually sent as news.

message-sent-hook ¶

Hook run after sending messages.

message-cancel-hook ¶

Hook run when canceling news articles.

message-mode-syntax-table ¶

Syntax table used in message mode buffers.

message-cite-articles-with-x-no-archive ¶

If non-nil, don’t strip quoted text from articles that have ‘X-No-Archive’ set. Even if this variable isn’t set, you can undo the stripping by hitting the undo keystroke.

message-strip-special-text-properties ¶

Emacs has a number of special text properties which can break message composing in various ways. If this option is set, message will strip these properties from the message composition buffer. However, some packages requires these properties to be present in order to work. If you use one of these packages, turn this option off, and hope the message composition doesn’t break too bad.

message-send-method-alist ¶

Alist of ways to send outgoing messages. Each element has the form:

(type predicate function)

type

A symbol that names the method.

predicate

A function called without any parameters to determine whether the message is a message of type type. The function will be called in the buffer where the message is.

function

A function to be called if predicate returns non-nil. function is called with one parameter—the prefix.

The default is:

((news message-news-p message-send-via-news)
 (mail message-mail-p message-send-via-mail))

The message-news-p function returns non-nil if the message looks like news, and the message-send-via-news function sends the message according to the message-send-news-function variable (see News Variables). The message-mail-p function returns non-nil if the message looks like mail, and the message-send-via-mail function sends the message according to the message-send-mail-function variable (see Mail Variables).

All the elements in this alist will be tried in order, so a message containing both a valid ‘Newsgroups’ header and a valid ‘To’ header, for example, will be sent as news, and then as mail.

3.8 Sending Variables

message-fcc-handler-function ¶

A function called to save outgoing articles. This function will be called with the name of the file to store the article in. The default function is message-output which saves in Unix mailbox format.

message-courtesy-message ¶

When sending combined messages, this string is inserted at the start of the mailed copy. If the string contains the format spec ‘%s’, the newsgroups the article has been posted to will be inserted there. If this variable is nil, no such courtesy message will be added. The default value is ‘"The following message is a courtesy copy of an article\\nthat has been posted to %s as well.\\n\\n"’.

message-fcc-externalize-attachments ¶

If nil, attach files as normal parts in FCC copies; if it is non-nil, attach local files as external parts.

message-interactive ¶

If non-nil wait for and display errors when sending a message; if nil let the mailer mail back a message to report errors.

message-confirm-send ¶

When non-nil, Gnus will ask for confirmation when sending a message.

message-server-alist ¶

An alist describing the rules for generating the X-Message-SMTP-Method header to insert before sending out a new message, if the message doesn’t yet have such a header. Each element of the alist should be of the form (cond . method). If cond is a string, it will be compared with the From header, and if they compare equal, the corresponding method will be inserted as a string into the message headers as the SMTP Method. If cond is a function, it will be called in the message buffer without any arguments, and the corresponding method will be inserted into the message headers as the SMTP Method if the function returns a non-nil value; if method is nil, the value returned by the function cond is used instead.

3.9 Message Buffers

Message will generate new buffers with unique buffer names when you request a message buffer. When you send the message, the buffer isn’t normally killed off. Its name is changed and a certain number of old message buffers are kept alive.

message-generate-new-buffers ¶

Controls whether to create a new message buffer to compose a message. Valid values include:

nil

Generate the buffer name in the Message way (e.g., *mail*, *news*, *mail to whom*, *news on group*, etc.) and continue editing in the existing buffer of that name. If there is no such buffer, it will be newly created.

unique

t

Create the new buffer with the name generated in the Message way.

unsent

Similar to unique but the buffer name begins with "*unsent ".

standard

Similar to nil but the buffer name is simpler like *mail message*.

function

If this is a function, call that function with three parameters: The type, the To address and the group name (any of these may be nil). The function should return the new buffer name.

The default value is unsent.

message-max-buffers ¶

This variable says how many old message buffers to keep. If there are more message buffers than this, the oldest buffer will be killed. The default is 10. If this variable is nil, no old message buffers will ever be killed.

message-send-rename-function ¶

After sending a message, the buffer is renamed from, for instance, ‘*reply to Lars*’ to ‘*sent reply to Lars*’. If you don’t like this, set this variable to a function that renames the buffer in a manner you like. If you don’t want to rename the buffer at all, you can say:

(setq message-send-rename-function 'ignore)

message-kill-buffer-on-exit ¶

If non-nil, kill the buffer immediately on exit.

3.10 Message Actions

When Message is being used from a news/mail reader, the reader is likely to want to perform some task after the message has been sent. Perhaps return to the previous window configuration or mark an article as replied.

The user may exit from the message buffer in various ways. The most common is C-c C-c, which sends the message and exits. Other possibilities are C-c C-s which just sends the message, C-c C-d which postpones the message editing and buries the message buffer, and C-c C-k which kills the message buffer. Each of these actions have lists associated with them that contains actions to be executed: message-send-actions, message-exit-actions, message-postpone-actions, and message-kill-actions.

Message provides a function to interface with these lists: message-add-action. The first parameter is the action to be added, and the rest of the arguments are which lists to add this action to. Here’s an example from Gnus:

  (message-add-action
   `(set-window-configuration ,(current-window-configuration))
   'exit 'postpone 'kill)

This restores the Gnus window configuration when the message buffer is killed, postponed or exited.

An action can be either: a normal function, or a list where the CAR is a function and the CDR is the list of arguments, or a form to be evaled.

4.1 Responses

To determine where a message is to go, the following algorithm is used by default.

reply

A reply is when you want to respond just to the person who sent the message via mail. There will only be one recipient. To determine who the recipient will be, the following headers are consulted, in turn:

Reply-To

From

wide reply

A wide reply is a mail response that includes all entities mentioned in the message you are responding to. All mailboxes from the following headers will be concatenated to form the outgoing To/CC headers:

From

(unless there’s a Reply-To, in which case that is used instead).

CC

To

If a Mail-Copies-To header is present, it will also be included in the list of mailboxes. If this header is ‘never’, that means that the From (or Reply-To) mailbox will be suppressed.

followup

A followup is a response sent via news. The following headers (listed in order of precedence) determine where the response is to be sent:

Followup-To

Newsgroups

If a Mail-Copies-To header is present, it will be used as the basis of the new CC header, except if this header is ‘never’.