MBLAZE(7)

💌 MBLAZE(7) — NAME: introduction to the mblaze message system 💌

Okay so this is the mblaze(7) page from the Miscellaneous Information Manual, and it’s about mblaze — introduction to the mblaze message system. Bestie, buckle up, because this is a whole toolkit and it is iconic. 🫶

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

The mblaze message system is a set of Unix utilities for processing and interacting with mail messages which are stored in maildir folders. It’s giving “tiny tools, one job each, group-chat energy for your inbox.” 💅

Its design is roughly inspired by MH, the RAND Message Handling System, but it is a complete implementation from scratch.

mblaze consists of these Unix utilities that each do one job:

• maddr(1) — extract mail addresses from messages, just the addresses, no cap 🧚
• magrep(1) — search messages matching a pattern
• mbnc(1) — bounce messages
• mcom(1) — compose and send messages
• mdeliver(1) — deliver messages or import mbox file
• mdirs(1) — list maildir folders, recursively
• mexport(1) — export messages as mbox file
• mflag(1) — manipulate maildir message flags
• mflow(1) — reflow format=flowed plain text messages
• mfwd(1) — forward messages
• mgenmid(1) — generate a Message-ID
• mhdr(1) — print message headers
• minc(1) — incorporate new messages
• mless(1) — conveniently read messages in less(1)
• mlist(1) — list and filter messages
• mmime(1) — create MIME messages
• mmkdir(1) — create new maildir folders
• mpick(1) — advanced message filter
• mrefile(1) — move or copy messages between maildir folders
• mrep(1) — reply to messages
• mscan(1) — generate one-line message summaries
• msed(1) — manipulate message headers
• mseq(1) — manipulate message sequences
• mshow(1) — render messages and extract MIME parts
• msort(1) — sort messages
• mthread(1) — arrange messages into discussions

mblaze is a classic command line MUA and has no features for receiving or transferring messages; you can operate on messages in a local maildir spool, or fetch your messages using fdm(1), getmail(1), offlineimap(1), or similar utilities, and send it using dma(8), msmtp(1), sendmail(8), as provided by OpenSMTPD, Postfix, or similar. It’s very much “you bring the mail, I’ll bring the utilities.” 🎀

mblaze operates directly on maildir folders and doesn’t use its own caches or databases. There is no setup needed for many uses. All utilities have been written with performance in mind. Enumeration of all messages in a maildir is avoided unless necessary, and then optimized to limit syscalls. Parsing message metadata is optimized to limit I/O requests. Initial operations on a large maildir may feel slow, but as soon as they are in the file system cache, everything is blazingly fast. The utilities are written to be memory efficient (i.e. not wasteful), but whole messages are assumed to fit into RAM easily (one at a time).

mblaze has been written from scratch and is now well tested, but it is not 100% RFC-conforming (which is neither worth it, nor desirable). There may be issues with very old, nonconforming, messages. So yeah: mostly slay, occasionally “bestie what is this ancient artifact.” 😭

mblaze is written in portable C, using only POSIX functions (apart from a tiny Linux-only optimization), and has no external dependencies. It supports MIME and more than 7-bit messages (everything the host iconv(3) can decode). It assumes you work in a UTF-8 environment. mblaze works well with other Unix utilities such as mairix(1), mu(1), or offlineimap(1).

🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

mblaze utilities are designed to be composed together in a pipe. They are suitable for interactive use and for scripting, and integrate well into a Unix workflow. Basically: pipe it, script it, live your truth. 💫

For example, you could decide you want to look at all unseen messages in your INBOX, oldest first.

mlist -s ~/Maildir/INBOX | msort -d | mscan

To operate on a set of messages in multiple steps, you can save it as a sequence, e.g. add a call to mseq -S to the above command:

mlist -s ~/Maildir/INBOX | msort -d | mseq -S | mscan

Now mscan will show message numbers and you could look at the first five messages at once, for example:

mshow 1:5

Likewise, you could decide to incorporate (by moving from new to cur) all new messages in all folders, thread it and look at it interactively:

mdirs ~/Maildir | xargs minc | mthread | mless

Or you could list the attachments of the 20 largest messages in your INBOX:

mlist ~/Maildir/INBOX | msort -S | tail -20 | mshow -t

Or delete messages beyond a certain age:

mlist ~/Maildir/INBOX | mpick -t 'mtime < "-365d"' | xargs rm

Or apply the patches from the current message:

mshow -O. '*.diff' | patch

As usual with pipes, the sky is the limit. 🌈

🦋 CONCEPTS 🦋

mblaze deals with messages (which are files), folders (which are maildir folders), sequences (which are newline-separated lists of messages, possibly saved on disk in ${MBLAZE:-$HOME/.mblaze}/seq), and the current message (kept as a symlink in ${MBLAZE:-$HOME/.mblaze}/cur).

Messages in the saved sequence can be referred to using special syntax as explained in mmsg(7).

Many utilities have a default behavior when used interactively from a terminal (e.g. operate on the current message or the current sequence). For scripting, you must make these arguments explicit. No vibes-based guessing in scripts, bestie. 🫶

For configuration, see mblaze-profile(5).

🎨 COLORS 🎨

mblaze color output of mshow(1) and mscan(1) can be configured via environment variables starting with MCOLOR_. For example:

export MCOLOR_FROM=226

will turn the color of From= header line to bright yellow. Boom, instant glow-up. 💛

All programmable colors:

• MCOLOR_CUR — current message in mless
• MCOLOR_DIFF_D — diff deleted lines
• MCOLOR_DIFF_I — diff inserted lines
• MCOLOR_DIFF_R — diff line range
• MCOLOR_FOOTER — footer
• MCOLOR_FROM — from header line
• MCOLOR_HEADER — rest of header
• MCOLOR_QUOTE — quote
• MCOLOR_QQUOTE — double-nested quote
• MCOLOR_QQQUOTE — triple-nested quote
• MCOLOR_SEP — message separator
• MCOLOR_SIG — message signature

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

mailx(1), mblaze-profile(5), nmh(7)

👑 AUTHORS 👑

Leah Neukirchen <leah@vuxu.org>

There is a mailing list available at mblaze@googlegroups.com (to subscribe, send a message to mblaze+subscribe@googlegroups.com); archives are available at https://inbox.vuxu.org/mblaze/. There also is an IRC channel #vuxu on irc.libera.chat. Please report security-related bugs directly to the author. 🛡️

📜 LICENSE 📜

mblaze is in the public domain.

To the extent possible under law, the creator of this work has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this work.

http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/

Signed off with 💖 from the Debian edition of this MBLAZE(7) page, dated January 18, 2020.