# El manual de &kmail;

David
Rugge
Daniel
Naber
20/12/2000
1.02.00

Incluso si no le gusta leer la documentación: algunas pistas mu valiosas que, posiblemente no quiera perderse estan recogidas en la sección Introducción.

Por favor envíe un correo electrónico con sus comentarios y sugerencias a kmail@kde.org.

KDE
Kmail
correo
Cliente
POP3
PGP

## Introducción

El equipo de &kmail; le da la bienvenida a &kmail;, un programa de correo fácil de usar de K Desktop Environment. Nuestra meta es hacer un porgrama que sea bonito e intuitivo sin sacrificar la potencia.

Si nunca ha configurado un cliente de correo en un sistema Unix antes, le recomendamos que lea la sección Empezando antes para que la configuración sea sencilla.

Aunque la gente no lea la documentación, de todas formas, aqui hay una colección de pistas útiles:

- No tiene que usar el ratón para usar &kmail;. Todo es posible con teclas. &kmail; soporta todas las teclas estandar como TAB (cambia entre paneles). El truco es: cursor izquierda/cursor derecha siempre salta del anterior/siguiente mensaje, pero puedes pulsar Ctrl, puede usar el cursor izquierdo/cursor derecho para navegar en el panel de carpetas y cursor urriba/cursor abajo para navegar en el panel de cabeceras. Use espacio para seleccionar la carpeta en la que quiera entrar.

- Cuando esté escribiendo un mensaje nuevo y esté en el campo Para: , solo teclee las primeras letras del destinatario y luego pulse CtrlT para obtener una lista de opciones. Estas se cojen de su libreta de direcciones, así que mantenga su libreta de direcciones actualizada y esta función le resultará muy útil.

- En el Editor puede seleccionar texto y moverlo con el ratón.

La página web de &kmail;'s está en http://kmail.kde.org, un archivo de la lista de correo de desarrolladores está en lists.kde.org.

Por favor, avise de los errores usando Ayuda Informar de fallo....

Esperamos que disfrute de &kmail;!

## Empezando

Esto son unas pequeñas introducciones de &kmail; y su uso para que pueda empezar a trabajar del modo correcto. Para más y más detallada información mire la sección Usando &kmail; section.

Al ejecutar &kmail; la primera vez, se crea un directorio llamado `Mail` que contiene los ficheros iniciales (`inbox`, `outbox`, `sent-mail` y `trash`) en su directorio raiz. Use Opciones Configuración... para introducir alguna información inicial para que &kmail sea capaz de conseguir y enviar sus mensajes.

La ventana de configuración consiste en siete secciones: Identidad, Red, Apariencia, Editor, Cabeceras MIME, Seguridad, y Otros.

Para nempezar a enviar y recibir correo deberá únicamente cambiar la condiguración de Identidad y Red .

### Configurando su identidad

La configuración en el campo de Identidad son bastante directas. Rellene el campo Nombre con su nombre completo (e.j. `John Doe`) y el campo Organización (opcional) con la información adecuada.

Después, rellene los campos Dirección correo-e y Direccion responder a (opcional) con su dirección de correo electrónico. Finalmente, ponga la localización de su fichero de forma en el campo Archivo de firma. Puede saltarse la configuración del fichero de firma si no tiene uno, pero cada vez que escriba un mensaje nuevo, &kmail le preguntará por su fichero de firma. Así que si no quiere uno, seleccione Especificar firma abajo y no teclee nada en el campo de debajo.

Si quiere una firma aleatoria, puede especificar un programa y marcar el cuadro El archivo es un programa box.

### Configurando su cuenta

La etiqueta Red contiene la configuración que le dirá a &kmail; como enviar y recibir su correo electrónico. Muchas de esas configuraciones pueden variar mucho dependiendo de la configuración de su sistema, de la clase de red donde está su servidor de correo. Si no sabe que configuración usar o que poner en algún campo, pregunte a su proveedor de servicios de internet (ISP) o administrador de sistema.

La sección Propiedades le permite decidir como y cuando se envían los mensajes.

El método de envío por defecto le permite definir que pasa cuando se envía un mensaje. Si selecciona Enviar ahora el mensaje se envía al servidor de correo einmediatamente, mientras que si selecciona Enviar más tarde el mensaje se queda en la cola de salida para ser enviado más tarde con el comando Archivo Enviar mensajes en cola o automáticamente cuando compruebe si tiene correo, dependiendo de las configuraciones en la etiqueta Propiedades.

Las Propiedades del mensaje let permite seleccionar como se codificará su mensaje al ser enviado. Permitir 8-bit significa que &kmail; enviará su mensaje en ASCII de 8 bits, lo que significa que los caracteres especiales, como las letras acentuadas, se enviarán tal cual. Si se selecciona Compatible MIME , los caracteres especiales se codificarán usando el estandar MIME, que será más portable a otros sistemas que el ASCII de 8 bits.

#### Enviando correo

La sección Enviando correo proporciona dos opciones para enviar correo: sendmail y SMTP. Sendmail tiene reputación de ser complicado de configurar, asi que si no tiene una configuración corriendo de sendmail, elija SMTP y rellene el campo Servidor con el nombre y el dominio de su servidor de correo. Probablemente no necesitará cambiar la configuración de puerto.

Si quiere usar sendmail y está usando una conexión no permanente siga las instrucciones para configurar sendmail para una conexión no permanente en la sección FAQ.

#### Recibiendo correo

Para condigurar una cuenta para recibir correo, presione el botón A¤adir... en la sección button in the Incoming Mail section. You will then be prompted for the type of account. Most users should select Pop3 (IMAP accounts are not yet supported). After pressing OK you will be presented with the Add Account window. First, fill in the Name field to name your account. You can choose any name you like. Login, Password, and Host should be filled in with the appropriate information from your ISP or System Administrator. Again, you should not need to change the Port setting.

If you select Store POP password in configuration file &kmail; will remember your password so you won't have to type it every time you start &kmail; and fetch new mail. Be warned that we cannot really encrypt the password, so people who can access your configuration files (e.g. system administrators) can see your password if you select this option.

Select Delete mail from server if you don't want to leave your mail on the server. Leave the account's mailbox set to inbox for now, although you may want to change it if you add more accounts later.

Select Retrieve all mail from server if you want to get all mails, not only the new ones.

Select Exclude from "Check Mail" if you don't want to check this account whenever you use Check mail.... You can still check for new mail on this account with File Check Mail in....

Select Enable interval mail checking if you want &kmail; to check for new mail automatically. The interval can be specified below under Check interval (minutes).

inbox is the default folder for incoming mail. If you want to change that for some reason, you can do so with Destination folder. But what you probably want is a filter, which has nothing to do with this option.

With Precommand you can specify any program &kmail; will execute just before fetching mail. Please specify the full path and note that &kmail; will not continue until the program returns.

You are now ready to send and receive mail!

### Testing your Setup

First, we will send an email to test our configuration. To send an email, hit CtrlN, select the Compose new message icon (the empty sheet of paper) or select the File New Composer menu item. The Composer window will appear. Fill in the To: field with your email address and type something in the Subject field. Send the mail by selecting Message Send.

To check your email, select File Check Mail... In the lower right corner of the main window, a progress bar will indicate how much mail is being downloaded. If you receive the message you just sent, then congratulations! If, however, you receive any error messages while testing your setup, make sure that your network connection is working and recheck your settings by selecting Settings Configuration...

## Using &kmail;

### The Mail Reader Window

The Mail Reader window is the window that appears when &kmail; is started. It is divided into three panes:

Folders pane (upper left pane)

  This pane contains a list of your message folders (other email programs call them mailboxes). If there's a number after the folder name this indicates that this folder contains unread mails. To select a folder, simply click on it. The messages contained in the folder will now appear in the Headers pane. The number of unread messages and the total number of messages in the selected folder is now displayed in the status bar. The folders can be displayed in both a short view, which takes up only a small portion of the left side of the screen, and a long view, which takes up the entire left side of the screen but is able to show more mailboxes. See the Folders Section for more information about how to use folders.

Headers pane (upper right pane)

  This pane lists header information (message Status Flags, Sender, Subject, Date) for the messages in the currently selected folder. Clicking on a header will select that message and display it in the Message pane. You can also select a series of messages by clicking on one message, holding down the Shift key, and clicking on another message. The two messages you just clicked on will be selected, along with all the messages in between. By holding down the Ctrl key you can select any number of messages without those in between. You may sort the messages by clicking on the column that you wish to sort. If you click on the same column more then once, sort order will toggle between ascending/descending. If you click on the Subject column, you can toggle sorting between Subject ascending/descending and Status ascending/descending.

Message pane (lower pane)

  Displays the header and body of the currently selected message. Attachments appear at the bottom of the message as icons based on the MIME type of the attachment. You can scroll through the message page by page using the Page Up and Page down keys, or line by line using the arrow up and arrow down keys. You can also use the following key shortcuts to skip through your messages without having to use the mouse:

  - N or the left arrow key - Next message

  - P or the right arrow key - Previous message

  - + - Next unread message

  - - - Previous unread message

  - Ctrl+ - Goto next folder with unread messages

  - Ctrl- - Goto previous folder with unread messages

Messages can have several status flags, which can be changed from the Message Set Status submenu. The status flags are described below:

- New: (red dot, message colored red) The message has been received for the first time and is unread.

- Unread: (green dot, message colored blue) The message has already been retrieved off the server at least once, but has not been read yet.

- Read: (dash) The message has been read.

- Replied: (blue u-turn arrow) A reply has been composed to this message.

- Queued: (envelope) The message has been queued in the outbox to be sent later.

- Sent: (angled envelope) The message has been sent.

### The Composer Window

The Composer window is used to write new messages. It can be invoked from the File menu or from the document icon on the Mail Reader window button bar. If you have not set the location of your signature file and you have Use a signature from file checked in the Composer tab of the Configure dialog, you will be prompted for the location of your signature file before the Composer window opens.

#### Composing a Message

To write your message, fill in the appropriate fields in the Composer window. There are a variety of shortcuts to help you with writing your messages. The ellipses buttons next to the To:, Cc:, and Bcc: fields will call up the address book so that you can select addresses from there instead of trying to remember them. If you already started typing an adress you can also press CtrlT to get a list of possible completions. When you are finished with your message, hit the Send button (the envelope) to queue or send the message. Note that you can use the View menu to set up the header fields offered to you.

#### Attachments

You can attach files to your message by using one of the methods below:

- Push the paper clip button and select the file you wish to attach.

- Drag a file from the desktop or another directory into the Composer window.

- Selecting one of the options in the Attach menu.

The Message Part Properties dialog will appear to prompt you for information about your attachment. The MIME-type and file name fields are automatically filled in with the appropriate values (Sometimes the MIME-type value may be wrong. You can then type in any content type by hand or choose from the list of common MIME-types). You should then select an encoding method for your file from the list of encoding options (normally, the default value works fine).

Once a file is attached to your message, it appears in the Attachments pane at the bottom of the Composer window. You may remove, save, or get information about an attachment by selecting its name in the Attachments pane and selecting Remove, Save..., or Properties... from the Attach menu.

PGP keys may also be attached to your message by using the appropriate options in the Attach menu. PGP key attachments are handled like file attachments.

#### Checking the Spelling of your Message

To check the spelling of your message, select Edit Spelling.... &kmail; uses KSpell to check spelling, which is the KDE frontend to the the ispell or aspell spelling checker. Note that you may need to configure the spellchecker using Settings Spellchecker....

### Message Folders

Message Folders are used to organize your email messages. By default, all message folders are stored in the directory `Mail`, which is created in your home directory. When you first start &kmail; the inbox, outbox, sent-mail, and trash folders are created. These folders each have special functions:

- inbox: where &kmail; puts your new messages when you ask it to check your mail.

- outbox: where messages are put while they are waiting to be delivered.

- sent-mail: contains copies of all messages that you have sent.

- trash: contains all messages that you have deleted.

You may find that the standard folders are fine for your needs. Eventually, though, you will probably need folders to help you organize your messages. To create a new folder, select Folder Create... A window will then prompt you for the name of the folder. If you don't want it to be a top level folder, you may choose the folder under which it will appear. If you ever need to change the settings for a folder, select the folder you wish to modify in the Folders pane and select Folder Modify....

To move messages from one folder into another, select the message(s) you want to move and press the M key or select Message Move to. A list of folders will appear. Select the folder from the list that you want to move the messages to. Messages can also be moved by dragging them from the Headers pane into the Folders pane.

You may find that your folders are taking up a lot of disk space after they have been used for a while even though they may not have very many messages in them. To fix this problem, select the folder and choose Folder Compact. Note that you can also select Compact all folders on exit in the Configure dialog.

If you want to clear all of the messages out of a folder choose Folder Empty. All the messages in the selected folder will be moved to the trash folder. If the selected folder is the trash folder, all of the messages will be permanently deleted.

### The Address Book

The address book is a place to store your commonly used email addresses. You can call up the address book from the File menu, the address book button on the Main window, or the address book button in the Composer window.

To add addresses to the address book, type an email address into the lower section of the window and hit the Add button. The address will then appear in the list. To remove an address, select it from the list and hit the Remove button.

Addresses can also be added to the address book from the Mail Reader window by right-clicking on an email address in the To: or From: fields and selecting Add to address book.

### Filters

After using &kmail; for a while, you may find that you have trouble sorting out the new messages in your inbox when they arrive. Filters allow you to automatically perform certain actions on incoming messages and to manually perform actions on selected messages in a folder.

Usually, filters are used on incoming messages, but they can also be applied to a message or group of messages. To selectively filter messages in a message folder, select the messages you want to filter and type CtrlJ or select Message Apply Filters. Note that this will apply all of your filters to that message; there is no way to apply only certain filters to a message.

If you ever need to remove a filter, select it from the Filter Rules window and press the Delete button.

#### Filter Action

The most common use of filters is to sort incoming messages to certain folders. This can be done by choosing transfer. But there are other actions a filter can start:

- transfer will move the message to another folder.

- set identity will set your identity if you reply to this message

- set transport will set the method of transport (e.g. SMTP) if you reply to the message.

- set Reply-To will modify the Reply-To field of this message. This can be useful for mailing lists that automatically set a Reply-To which you don't like.

- forward to will forward the message to another email address.

- execute will execute a program, but will not modify the message. Specify the full path to any program you want to execute. &kmail; will block until the program returns. You can feed the program with the parts of the mail: `%0`, `%1`, etc will stand for files representing the message parts. For common mails `%0` is the text, `%1` the first attachment and so on.

- filter app will feed the message to a program. If that program returns output, the entire message (including the headers) will be replaced with this output. If the program doesn't return output, the message won't change. Specify the full path to the program. Be cautious with this action, as it will easily mess up your messages if the filter program does return garbage or extra lines.

#### Filter Examples

If I am subscribed to the KDE User List, I could create a folder for the list (I'll call it KDE-User) and use a filter to automatically transfer new messages from my inbox to my KDE-User folder if they are from the KDE User List. Here is how to create this filter:

1. Think of a unique way of identifying the messages you want to filter. The unique property of my KDE User List messages is that they always contain "kde-user@kde.org" in the To: or Cc: field.

2. Select Settings Filter Rules....

3. Press the New button to create an empty filter. It will appear as Unnamed.

4. The right side of the Filter window contains two sections: matching criteria and actions. In the matching criteria area, select <To: or Cc:> from the first pull-down menu, contains from the second pull-down menu, and type `kde-user@kde.org` in the text field.

5. Skip down to the actions section. Select transfer from the first pull-down menu. A new pull-down menu containing a list of folders will appear. Select the folder that you want the filtered messages to be transferred to if they match the criteria you selected. For this example, you would select "KDE-User" from the pull-down menu.

You may find that you need to use more complicated criteria to properly filter your messages. For example, you may only want to save the KDE User List messages that are written by your friend Fred Johnson <fj@anywhere.com>. This is where the rest of the matching criteria section comes into play:

1. Open up the Filter Rules window and select the filter you just created.

2. Since you want to filter all messages that have "kde-user@kde.org" in the To: or Cc: field AND that are from Fred, select the and option from the pull down menu between the two criteria sections.

3. Now, go to the bottom criteria section and select the following from the pull-down menus: From, contains. Now, type `fj@anywhere.com` in the text field.

You now have a filter that transfers all KDE User List messages that are from Fred Johnson.

### Multiple Accounts

Multiple accounts are used to check mail from more than one email address and/or mail server. Select Settings Configuration... and click on the Network tab to add or change your account settings. See the Getting started section for more information on the settings in the Network tab.

To check mail from a particular account, use the File Check Mail in... submenu to select the account to use to check your mail. You can also press the mouse button on the Check Mail icon for some time to get a list of accounts.

### Pretty Good Privacy / PGP

This is a short introduction on how to setup &kmail;'s pgp support. It will give some hints on the use of pgp too. It's written for people who are beginners in this area. If you are familiar with the use of pgp, you can skip most of the steps. (Note that working with GnuPG is generally the same, but some command line parameters may be different.)

You can encrypt your messages sent with &kmail;, but this does not mean that the attachments are encrypted. You have to encrypt your attachments manually, using a shell command or some other tool before you attach them.

To setup and use pgp support in &kmail; it is necessary to have pgp installed and set up properly. Of course we cannot give you a full introduction of pgp here. We will only mention the steps you have to do to get pgp going. For details you should have a look at the excellent pgp command line documentation.

It is certainly a good idea to study this documentation as well as an introduction into public key cryptography (e.g. out of the pgp 6.5.x package). There you can learn a lot about the basic concepts, which will help you to understand what is going on. As well, many security related issues you should know about are discussed there.

Now let's start.

#### PGP Preconditions

&kmail; expects that your PGP binary is called `pgp`. In case of GnuPG, it expects the binary to be called `gpg`. If that's not the case for you, just make a symlink.

If you haven't done so, you have to generate a key pair (secret and public key) for your identity. You must do this at the command line (use `pgp -kg`). &kmail; has no internal support for pgp's key generation at this time. The identity (normally your name followed by your email address within brackets, such as `John Doe <john@example.com>`) and your passphrase are important for the co-operation between &kmail; and pgp.

#### &kmail; Settings

Open the &kmail; Configure dialog and go to the Security settings page. Type your identity into the PGP user identity entry field. There are also two options:

Keep passphrase in memory: When this option is off, then &kmail; will ask for your passphrase each time you sign a message (before sending) or decrypting a message (sent to you). If you turn this option on, &kmail; will remember your passphrase from after your first successful input until you finish you &kmail; session. The passphrase is stored in memory and not written to the harddisk. Note that a user with enough privileges (e.g. root) might be able to catch your passphrase even from the computer's memory.

Always encrypt to self: If this option is off and you want send an encrypted message to somebody, then you can't read this message any longer after you have composed and encrypted it. Turn this option on to keep sent encrypted messages readable for you too. You can then read the plain text of this messages in the sent-mail folder.

On the Composer tab you can also check the Automatically sign messages using PGP option. This means that all your messages will be signed before sent. (So you don't have to set the signing for each mail manually.)

Now you are able to sign outgoing messages. To let people send encrypted messages to you and to let them verify your signature you must send them your public key. To send encrypted mails to other people or to verify their signed messages you will need their public keys. You can store your public key(s) on a public PGP key server such as http://www.cam.ac.uk.pgp.net/pgpnet/.

#### Sign your Messages

You compose your message as usual in the Composer window of &kmail;. Before you send the message, check the button with the underlining icon on it in the toolbar of the composer window. Then, you can send the message. To sign it, &kmail; needs to know your pgp passphrase. If you didn't select Keep passphrase in memory in the Security settings tab, &kmail; will ask you for it. On the other hand, if you have already given the phrase to &kmail;, it will sign the message without any further prompt. In the sent-mail folder (or on the outbox, if you don't use send immediately) you can verify the result of pgp's signing process. There you should see your message wrapped by the info that it was signed by you.

#### Send your Public Key

Prepare a message to the person you want to send your public key to. Then choose in the Composer window's menu Attach Attach My Public Key. This will attach your public key to the mail. Now you can send the mail.

Remember, that it's not save at all, if you sign the message to make sure, that the receiver will get the correct key. There can be a man-in-the-middle attack, as somebody can change the key and sign the message with that other key. That's why the recipient should verify the attached key by checking the key's fingerprint against the value he got in a secure way from you. Have a look at the pgp documentation for further details.

#### You got an encrypted Message

All you have to do is to select the message in &kmail;. You will be prompted for your passphrase. Then &kmail; will try to decrypt the message and show you the plain text if the message had been encrypted with your public key. (If not, then you won't be able to read it.) &kmail; stores the messages encrypted, so nobody can read this mail without knowing your passphrase.

#### Receiving a Public Key

You can get a public key as an attachment or simply by ftp or floppy. Before you can use this key to encrypt an e-mail to the owner of the key, you should verify the key (check it's fingerprint or look for trusted signatures). Then you can add this key to your public keyring by typing `pgp -ka <filename>` at the command line. If the key is not certified with a trusted signature, you can't use it with &kmail; to encrypt messages unless you have signed that key (use `pgp -ks <identity of the key>`).

#### Use Public Keys of other People - Encrypt your Messages

To send an encrypted message to somebody of whom you have a public key, you simply create the message in the composer window. Before you send the message, check the button with the red key icon on it in the toolbar of the composer window. Then, you can send the message.

If &kmail; can't find a key for any of the recipients, it will display a list containing all available keys. You can choose the appropriate key out of the list (or cancel the action). &kmail; might also inform you about errors throughout the encryption process.

As mentioned above, you won't be able to read encrypted sent mails if you don't check Always encrypt to self in the setting's Security tab.

## Customizing &kmail;

&kmail;'s settings window gives you a number of ways to customize &kmail; to your needs.

### Identity Tab

Please see Getting Started section.

### Network Tab

Please see Setting up your Account section.

### Appearance Tab

The Fonts section allows you to change the type and size of the display fonts.

The Colors section allows you to change the color of the text. Recycle colors on deep quoting means that even text that's quoted more than three times will appear in color.

The Layout section lets you toggle the long folder list on and off. The long folder list lists folders all the way down the left side of the screen, which lets you see more folders than in the default view, but it takes away some space for viewing the text of the messages. With Display message sizes selected there will be another column in the Header pane that show the messages' size in bytes. Thread list of message headers will put all the messages in a kind of tree, so the replies to a message are next to that message.

Prefer plain text to HTML rendering will try to show even HTML mails as plain text. It's a good idea to prefer plain text, as security problems with HTML might show up some day.

The Profiles offer several common default settings for colors and font sizes.

Addressbook allows you to choose between several address books, whereas Traditional KMail is a very simple one and Abbrowser is an advanced one. Please note the comments under the selection that tell you the packages you need to use the advanced variants. The address books' data is independent, i.e. you will not see addresses in the Abbrowser if you only entered them in the Traditional KMail address book.

### Composer Tab

The Phrases section lets you define the automatically generated lines added to message replies, forwarded messages, and quoted text. There are special %-denoted characters that will insert certain values. These are shown at the top of the Phrases section: %D to insert the date, %S to insert the subject, %F to insert the sender, and %% to insert a percent sign, %_ inserts a space. The Indentation field contains the character that will denote quoted text (you will probably want to use the default).

Automatically append signature and Automatically sign messages using PGP let you toggle whether to automatically include your signature and PGP signature in all of your messages by default. Word wrap at column lets you turn word wrapping on and off in the Composer window and lets you set the column at which words will be wrapped.

Use smart quoting will break long lines but will keep the quoting correct (e.g. the ">" will always be at the start of the line).

### Security Tab

See the PGP section.

### Miscellaneous Tab

Empty trash on exit: The trash folder is cleared of messages when you quit &kmail; if this option is selected.

Send Mail in outbox Folder on Check: All messages queued in the outbox folder will be sent whenever you check your mail.

Automatically send receive- and read confirmations: With this option, a confirmation is automatically send to the sender of a message if he requested that. If you disable this option, no confirmation will be sent.

Compact all folders on exit: This will compact all folder every time you exit &kmail;. Compacting folders means that the messages you removed from a folder will really be removed.

Use external editor instead of composer: If you don't like the Composer you can use any editor. Note that the Composer window will still open and the external editor will open as soon as you type just one character in the body of the message.

New Mail Notification: This let's you configure actions for the arrival of new mail. Note that automatically fetching mail can be configured in your account settings under Receiving Mail.

## Using other Mailbox Files with &kmail;

This section is for all of the users who need to move email messages from their previous email client over to &kmail;. &kmail; stores its mail using the mbox format, one of the most widely used mailbox formats on UNIX systems. Mbox mailboxes store messages in one file, identifying where messages start and end with the FROM: header. For many Unix mailers, all you must do is move your mailboxes to `~/Mail` (or make `Mail` a symbolic link to the folder containing you mailboxes), make sure they are writeable by your user, and launch &kmail;. The mailboxes should now show up correctly in &kmail;.

If your old mailboxes are not in mbox format, see below for instructions on importing some other common formats.

Eudora Lite/Eudora Pro

  Eudora uses the mbox format in its mail files. To use them with &kmail;, make sure that your Eudora mailboxes have been compacted, then copy the .mbx files (Windows Eudora) or Eudora mailbox files (Mac Eudora) to your `~/Mail` directory. You don't need to copy the index files. Once you start &kmail;, the mailboxes should appear in the Folders pane and the messages should be accessible in the Headers pane.

  If messages do not appear in the Headers pane, your mailbox files may still contain Windows or Macintosh line feed characters. Use your favorite text editor, the recode command or a scripting language to change the Windows or Macintosh line feeds to Unix line feeds.

MMDF

  This format is close enough to the mailbox format that &kmail; should be able to use these mailboxes if you just copy them to your `~/Mail` directory. However, MMDF mailboxes have not been tested with &kmail;, so your results may vary. If you can get this format to work with &kmail;, please let us know so we can include more specific directions in the next documentation release.

MH mailboxes

  MH mailboxes are directories containing files that correspond to each message in that mailbox. A shell script to convert MH mailboxes to mbox mailboxes, mh2kmail, is included at least in the source releases of &kmail;, but maybe not in the packaged releases. Running this script on a MH folder will convert it to an mbox file. We strongly suggest that you back up your MH mail folders before you use this script.

Maildir

  Maildir mailboxes, used by the Qmail mail-transfer agent, are not supported by &kmail; at this time.

Forte Agent

  In Agent:

  1. Select the messages to export

  2. Select FILE SAVE MESSAGES AS

  3. Mark the UNIX FORMAT and SAVE RAW boxes

  4. Give File a .txt extension and save.

  In Linux/KDE:

  1. Move previously saves file to correct `~/Mail` folder

  2. Rename file without .txt extension

  When you open &kmail; the new folder with appropriate messages will be there.

Netscape Mail

  Copy your Netscape mail files from `~/nsmail/` to `~/Mail` and make sure they are writeable (only by your user, of course). The mailboxes will show up in &kmail; the next time you restart it.

Pegasus Mail

  Pegasus for win32 uses single files for Mail folders similar to &kmail;. Pegasus mail folder files have the extension .pmm but they are the same format as mbox except the messages do not start with the From header, but with a control character. To work around this, replace each instance of the control character with `From aaa@aaa Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 1997`. This `From:` line should be the first line of every message, before the `Received:` and other headers. Make sure to use a text editor that lets you save the files in Unix format or create new folders in Pegasus that are in Unix format and copy your mails there.

Microsoft Outlook, Lotus Notes, BeOS Mail files, cc: Mail, etc...

  First you should have a look at &kmail;'s homepage if there a tool to convert mails.

  Other mail programs probably do not work with &kmail; as they use proprietary mail formats that &kmail; cannot understand. However, there is no harm in trying! If the mailbox file looks similar to the mbox format, try copying the mailbox file (remember, the index file is not needed) to your `~/Mail` directory and see what happens. If you get mailboxes from your favorite mail client to work in &kmail;, please tell us how you did it so that we can include directions in a future revision of this documentation.

## Menus and Keyboard Shortcuts

Each menu item is discussed below. When there is a keyboard shorcut that performs a menu item function, it is listed after the menu item.

### The Main Mail Reader window

#### File Menu

New Mail Client...

  Creates a new Mail Reader window.

Save As... (CtrlS)

  Saves the currently displayed message as a plain text file.

Print... (CtrlP)

  Prints the currently displayed message.

Compact all folders

  Will compact all folders, i.e. it will really move and delete the messages on disk according to how you have moved and deleted them in &kmail;.

Check Mail (CtrlL)

  Checks for new mail in all your accounts.

Check Mail in... submenu

  Submenu that lets you check for new mail from a particular account.

Send Queued

  Sends the messages that are in your outbox.

Address Book...

  Opens up the Address Book.

Close (CtrlW)

  Closes the current Mail Reader window or exits &kmail; if there's only this one window.

#### Edit Menu

Undo (CtrlZ)

  Revoke you last move or delete action Note that you cannot undo a deletion in the trash.

Copy text (CtrlC)

  Copies selected text to the clipboard.

Delete (D)

  Moves the selected messages in the trash folder. If the selected messages are already in the trash folder, they will really be deleted.

Search messages... (S)

  Opens up a search window that lets you search for messages with certain characteristics, e.g. a certain subject. Start the search by entering some values and press Search. Click on one of the resulting messages and it will appear in the Message pane.

Find in message... (CtrlF)

  Lets you search for a string in the current message.

Select all messages (K)

  Selects all messages in the current folder.

#### View Menu

Brief, Fancy, Standard, Long, and All Headers

  Changes the number of headers that are displayed and the formatting of the headers in the Message pane.

Iconic, Smart, and Inlined Attachments

  Changes the way that attachments appear in the Message pane.

#### Folder Menu

Create...

  Opens the New Folder dialog which lets you create a new folder.

Modify...

  Opens up the Modify Folder dialog which lets you change the settings for the selected folder.

Compact

  Compacts the folder file to reduce its disk space usage. Use this command if your mailboxes seem to be much larger than they ought to be.

Empty

  Moves all of the messages in the selected folder into the trash folder. If the selected folder is the trash folder, the messages are permanently deleted.

Remove...

  Removes the selected folder.

Prefer HTML to plain text

  This will show HTML messages using HTML rendering.

Thread messages

  Shows the messages in the Header pane in a tree-like list, with replies showing up directly under the message they reply to.

#### Message Menu

New Message (CtrlN)

  Opens the Composer window so you can write a new mail.

Next (N or the right arrow key)

  Selects the next message in the Headers pane.

Next Unread (+)

  Selects the next unread message in the Headers pane.

Previous (P or the left arrow key)

  Selects the previous message in the Headers pane.

Previous Unread (-)

  Selects the previous unread message in the Headers pane.

Reply... (R)

  Opens up the Composer window with the contents of the selected message's Reply-To field in the To: field.

Reply All... (A)

  Opens up the Composer window and copies the contents of the selected message's Reply-To: and To: fields into the To: field, and the Cc: field into the Cc: field of the Composer window.

Forward... (F)

  Forwards the message to a new recipient. The message's text will be copied into the body of the new message with a text marking the forwarded part. Attachments will be forwarded, too.

Redirect... (E)

  Works like forward, except that the message stays the same (even the From field). The user who redirected the message is added in special header fields (Redirect-From, Redirect-Date, Redirect-To, etc).

Bounce...

  Sends the message back to the sender with a notice that it cannot be delivered. This is nearly exactly the message you get from a mail relay if the user does not exist.

Send Again...

  Sends the message again.

Set encoding submenu

  Lets you choose the character encoding to be used in the Message Pane.

Edit... (T)

  Edits the selected message if it is editable. Only messages in the outbox folder can be edited.

Set Status submenu

  Allows you to change the status of the selected message to one of the below:

  - New

  - Unread

  - Read

  - Replied

  - Queued

  - Sent

Move to submenu

  Moves all of the selected messages to a certain folder.

Copy to submenu

  Copies all of the the selected messages to a certain folder.

Apply Filters (CtrlJ)

  Applies your filters to the selected messages.

View Source...

  Views the message and its complete headers in plain text format in a new window.

#### Settings Menu

Show Toolbar

  If enabled, the Toolbar is visible (the Toolbar is the one with the icons to compose a new message etc.)

Show Statusbar

  If enabled, the Statusbar is visible (the Statusbar is the small one on the bottom which shows useful short messages and link targets)

Configure Key Bindings...

  Opens a window that lets you configure the keyboard shortcuts for many menu command.

Configure Toolbars...

  Opens a window that lets you choose which icons are visible in the toolbar.

Configuration...

  Opens the Configure window.

Filter Rules...

  Opens the Filter Rules window.

#### Help Menu

Contents (F1)

  Invokes the KDE help system with the &kmail; help pages displayed.

What's This? (ShiftF1)

  Selecting this option changes the cursor to an arrow with a question mark. Now if you click on any component of the control panel pane, you get short context sensitive help about that item (sorry, not implemented yet).

Report Bug...

  Open a window for you to report a bug. Please note that bug reports are only useful if you tell us exactly how to reproduce the bug. Also look at bugs.kde.org to see if the bug has been reported already.

About &kmail;...

  Displays information about &kmail; (version, authors).

About KDE...

  Displays information about KDE.

### The Composer Window

#### Message Menu

Send (CtrlReturn)

  Sends the message immediately.

Queue

  Queues the message in the outbox for sending it later.

Insert File...

  Inserts the selected text file into the message, starting at the cursor position.

Print... (CtrlP)

  Prints the current text.

Address Book...

  Opens up the address book.

New Composer... (CtrlN)

  Opens up a new Composer window.

Open Mailreader

  Opens up a new Mail Reader window.

Close (CtrlW)

  Closes this Composer window.

#### Edit Menu

Undo (CtrlZ), Redo (CtrlShiftZ)

  Undo or Redo your steps of editing the current mail.

Cut (CtrlX), Copy (CtrlC), Paste (CtrlV)

  These items are for cutting, copying, and pasting text. They work like in most editors. Hint: You can also select text and drag it to a new position. If you hold down Ctrl while dragging the text, it will not be moved, but copied.

Select all

  Selects all of the text in your message.

Find... (CtrlF)

  Finds words, phrases, or expressions in the message.

Replace... (CtrlR)

  Lets you replace words, phrases, or expressions in your message with other words or phrases.

Clean Spaces

  This replaces multiple spaces with single spaces in the current selection.

Spelling...

  Uses KSpell to check the spelling in the body of your message. Note that you have to configure KSpell with Settings Spellchecker... if you use it for the first time.

#### View Menu

This menu lets you toggle the display of the header fields (like Subject, Cc, Bcc, ...) in this Composer window.

#### Options Menu

Urgent

  Sets the priority of the message to Urgent.

Confirm delivery

  If you choose this option, you request a confirmation email once your message is successfully delivered to its destination mail server. This has to be supported on the receiver's side in order to work.

Confirm read

  If you choose this option, you request a confirmation email once your message is downloaded and read by its recipient. This has to be supported and enabled by the receiver's mail client in order to work.

Set Encoding submenu

  Set the charset encoding of this message. It will appear in the header of the outgoing mail.

Wordwrap

  Toggle the automatic wordwrap. It may be useful to turn it off if you want to paste long lines that shouldn't wrap.

#### Attach Menu

This menu lets you select attachment options.

Append Signature

  Appends your signature to the end of the message.

Attach Public Key / Attach My Public Key

  Attaches the corresponding PGP/GnuPG key to your message using the default encoding.

Attach...

  Attaches a file to the message using the encoding you select in the dialog.

Remove

  Removes the attachment that is selected in the attachment window.

Save...

  Saves the attachment that is selected in the attachment window to a file.

Properties...

  Displays the properties of the attachment that is selected in the attachment window.

#### Settings Menu

Show Toolbar

  If enabled, the Toolbar is visible (the Toolbar is the one with the icons to send the message etc.)

Show Statusbar

  If enabled, the Statusbar is visible (the Statusbar is the small one on the bottom which shows useful short messages)

Configure Key Bindings...

  Opens a window that lets you configure the keyboard shortcuts for many menu command.

Configure Toolbars...

  Opens a window that allows you to decide which icons appear in the toolbar.

Spellchecker...

  Allows you to configure KSpell, KDE's spellchecker.

#### Help Menu

These entries have the same meaning as the entries in the Mailreader window.

## Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Does &kmail; support IMAP?

Not yet. No, we have no idea when it will be ready. Currently you can still receive mails via IMAP by using fetchmail:

- Create a file `~/.fetchmailrc` which contains the following lines:

      poll <your-mail-server>
      proto IMAP
      user <your-username>
      pass <your-password>

  If your mail username and your local username differ you have to add the following entry:

      is <local-username>

- Execute `chmod 700 ~/.fetchmailrc`

- Create a local account in &kmail;

- Enter `fetchmail` in the field Precommand (That's not necessary if you have a permanent connection to the net. In that case you're better off leaving fetchmail running as a daemon. This also has the advantage that you won't have to add your password to `~/.fetchmailrc`, you will be asked for it when the daemon starts.)

- Check your mail

Are there any known bugs in &kmail;?

You can find a list of submitted bugs at bugs.kde.org. Not all these bugs are "real", some are based on misunderstanding of features etc. Here's a real problem: &kmail; will not delete some temporary files if it crashes. In this case, you should `cd` to `~/.kde/share/apps/kmail/tmp/` and delete all the files and folders there.

Can I use &kmail; and procmail?

Yes, but it's important to do it the right way or you might lose mail. Do not let procmail sort the mail to `~/Mail`, but to some other directory which you then access by &kmail; as a Local Mailbox. I.e. you have to add another account in the Network tab of the Configuration dialog. Also see the FAQ about lockfiles.

How do I use my Eudora/Netscape/Outlook/... mail folders in &kmail;?

See the section Using other Mailbox files With &kmail;.

&kmail; doesn't display HTML mail as HTML, I can only see the source.

Select Folder Prefer HTML to plain text. For security reasons you should only do so for mails from trusted sources.

How can I use mail folders that are not in `~/Mail/`?

Simply create a symlink in your `~/Mail` directory using `ln -s /somewhere/Mail/mymailboxfile ~/Mail/remote`. When you start &kmail; you will see a new folder with the name remote that contains the mails in your remote folder. If you want to add a whole remote mail directory use `ln -s /somewhere/Mail ~/Mail/.remotedir.directory`. For that case you also need to create a new empty folder named `remotedir` with &kmail;. The folder `remotedir` will then contain all remote mailbox folders as subfolders.

My folders keep growing even when I delete messages.

To really remove deleted messages from disk, you have to compact your folders. To do so automatically, open up the Settings Configuration... window, select the Miscellaneous tab and select Compact all folders on exit. Maybe you want to select Empty trash on exit, too. This will remove all the messages in the trash folder whenever you exit &kmail;.

What should I know if I want to use PGP/GnuPG with &kmail;?

&kmail; provides a simple and easy to use interface for basic functions of these programs. Still you should understand how these programs work and what might make them insecure. Important issues:

- Trusting a foreign public key without checking it is no good idea.

- As most other mail clients, &kmail; can encrypt your messages, but not your attachments. You have to encrypt them manually before you attach them.

- You really should test if encryption works before you use it. &kmail; relies on PGP/GnuPG's error strings, which often change between different versions.

- There's a bug in &kmail; 1.1.99 (which comes with KDE 2.0 and 2.0.1) that makes PGP not work if you use a different language than English. You can work around it this way (&kmail; will still use your favourite language):

  - Rename `/usr/bin/kmail` to `/usr/bin/kmail.original`

  - Install in `/usr/bin` the following shell script, calling it `kmail` and making sure it is owned by "root" and has 755 permissions (rwxr-xr-x):

        #!/bin/bash
        LANGUAGE=en
        export LANGUAGE
        kmail.original $*

Spellchecking doesn't recognize non-english characters.

Before you can use spellchecking the first time, you have to configure it. You can do so in the Composer window's menu under Settings Spellchecker....

Which version of &kmail; supports which version of PGP/GnuPG?

&kmail; 1.0.x: The unpatched version supports only PGP (version 2.x and 5.x). &kmail; will prefer version 5.x if both versions are installed. There is no way for the user to force &kmail; to use version 2.x in this case. There are patches for PGP6 and GnuPG support at &kmail;'s homepage. If the GnuPG patch is applied, and GnuPG and PGP are installed, &kmail; will prefer GnuPG. Here is no way to force &kmail; to use PGP.

&kmail; 1.1.x: This has at least the improvements from the patches above.

Can I use encryption with my normal (non-SSL) POP3 account?

If your POP3 server runs an ssh daemon, you can use ssh to tunnel your POP3 connection using the following command:

`ssh -L 110:127.0.0.1:110 user@host`

Modify your &kmail; configuration to fetch the mail via POP3 from `localhost`, ssh will tunnel the connection for you. You need to be root to execute this command. Alternatively, change the first port number, i.e. the first occurence of `110`, to something above 1024 and configure &kmail; to use that port.

Note: if non-encrypted mails have already been sent via internet, the (only) advantage of using ssh is that your password will be sent encrypted to the POP3 server.

Does &kmail; lock the folders it uses?

&kmail;'s file locking implementation uses the fcntl system calls by default. This has problems in situations where your mail account folders are mounted over nfs. There is a new hidden option where you can change the locking implementation for local mail accounts. This will enable you to use a local mail account which is mounted over nfs.

To avoid the risk of losing mail when using a local account it is necessary to ensure that &kmail; uses the same type of locking as your mail delivery agent.

There are five different locking options you can use:

- procmail_lockfile

- mutt_dotlock

- mutt_dotlock_privileged

- fcntl

- none

procmail_lockfile will use a small utility that comes with procmail called lockfile. You can use this if your mail folder is in a directory where you have write permissions. This will not work on your /var/spool/mail/user file in most cases. It will create .lock files on your account when &kmail; is checking for new mail. Please note that this will only work if procmail is installed on your system.

mutt_dotlock and mutt_dotlock_privileged will both use a small utility that comes with mutt called `mutt_dotlock`. `mutt_dotlock` can be used in the same way as the procmail_lockfile option, with the same limitation with regards to the `/var/spool/mail/` folders. However, the mutt_dotlock_privileged option can create lock files in the `/var/spool/mail` directory. `mutt_dotlock` is a setgid program and this option will run `mutt_dotlock` in setgid mode. Please note that these options will only work if mutt is installed on your system.

fcntl: the default option will use the fcntl system call.

If you don't want to use any locking, the none option is what you want. However, there are risks of losing mail when no locking is used.

In your `kmailrc`, there are group sections for each of your mail accounts. These will typically look like:

    [Account 1]
    Folder=inbox
    Location=/net/ns/home/wynnw/.newmail
    Name=Work
    Type=local
    check-exclude=false
    check-interval=10
    precommand=

To change the account to use the locking mechanism you want, change it to:

    [Account 1]
    Folder=inbox
    Location=/net/ns/home/wynnw/.newmail
    Name=Work
    Type=local
    check-exclude=false
    check-interval=10
    precommand=
    LockType=<value>

where <value> is procmail_lockfile, mutt_dotlock, mutt_dotlock_privileged, fcntl or none. So an actual working account group would look like:

    [Account 1]
    Folder=inbox
    Location=/net/ns/home/wynnw/.newmail
    Name=Work
    Type=local
    check-exclude=false
    check-interval=10
    precommand=
    LockType=mutt_dotlock

Please make the changes exactly as you see them here - case sensitivity is very important, as is spelling.

How do I leave mail on the server?

Open up the Settings Configuration... window. Click on the Network tab. Select your account from the account list and click the Modify button. This dialog contains the Delete mail from server setting which you must not select.

How do I automatically insert a text footer within my mails?

The text footer is called a signature file. Select Settings Configuration... Look in the Identity tab for the Specify signature below field. Select the radio button and type your signature below.

Why does &kmail; keep asking me for the location of my signature file?

&kmail; will ask you the location of your signature file if you have checked the option Use a signature from file in the Composer tab of the Configure dialog, but have not specified a signature file in the Identity tab. You should either specify a signature file or deselect Use a signature from file.

Why doesn't word wrap work in the Composer window?

The word wrap setting is probably turned off. Word wrap can be toggled on and off in the Composer tab of the Configure dialog.

How can I find out how many unread messages I have in a mail folder?

The number of unread messages is conveniently displayed in the Folders pane after the folder name.

How do I set up sendmail to work with &kmail; if I have a dial-up connection?

First you should check if your Linux/BSD/whatever distribution can do this for you. Perhaps it has already been set up during installation.

If that's not the case, you may want to have a look at the Mail Queue HOWTO or at UCT Linux User's group page on configuring sendmail for Dial-up connections.

## Epilogue

### Original Developers

- Stefan Taferner taferner@alpin.or.at

- Markus Wuebben markus.wuebben@kde.org

### Current Team

- Waldo Bastian bastian@kde.org

- Andreas Gungl a.gungl@gmx.de

- Michael Haeckel michael@haeckel.net

- Lars Knoll knoll@mpi-hd.mpg.de

- J. Nick Koston bdraco@darkorb.net

- Daniel Naber dnaber@mini.gt.owl.de

- Sven Radej radej@kde.org

- Espen Sand espen@kde.org

- Don Sanders sanders@kde.org (Active maintainer)

- George Staikos staikos@0wned.org

- Mario Weilguni mweilguni@sime.com

- Robert D. Williams rwilliams@kde.org

### Documentation

Update for &kmail; 1.1 by Daniel Naber dnaber@mini.gt.owl.de, PGP part by Andreas Gungl a.gungl@gmx.de

&kmail; 1.0 documentation by David Rugge davidrugge@mindspring.com

Original documentation by Markus Wuebben markus.wuebben@kde.org, Robert Williams rwilliams@kde.org (Editor)

Some of the &kmail; FAQs were taken from the &kmail; section of the KDE FAQ.

Thanks to Michael Elkins me@cs.hmc.edu for his excellent description of the different Unix mail formats in the Mutt documentation.

Thanks to

- Mendel Mobach mendel@mobach.nl (Netscape mail)

- Ed Shapard shapard@bigfoot.com (Pegasus Mail)

- Ray Muir rjmuir@ibm.net (Forte Agent)

for providing directions on using other mail clients' mailboxes with &kmail;.

Traducción de:

- Jaime Robles jaime@kde.org

### Copyright

&kmail; is (c) Copyright 1997-2000 The &kmail; developers. It is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

This documentation is (c) Copyright 1999-2000 David Rugge. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included.

Los mismos términos de licencia se aplican a la traducción al español de Jaime Robles. Diciembre - 2000.