44. Mailer

The Mailer reads and sends e-mail, from as many accounts as you have. It is modelled on the CDE Mailer, with what a mail program needs today: the folders of the mail server in a column of their own, several accounts in one window, and mail in HTML shown safely.

Start it with the Mail & Internet slot of the Front Panel, or with amade-mail.

Setting up an account

On the first start, the Mailer opens Mail Options with the Accounts page, because it has nothing to show yet. Later it is at Mailbox → Mail Options….

1. Click Add….
2. Enter a name for the account, such as Private, your name and your e-mail address.
3. Click Guess settings. The Mailer fills in the servers of the common providers from the address.
4. Check the servers: Incoming (IMAP) and Outgoing (SMTP), each with its port and security (SSL/TLS or STARTTLS). Your provider's help pages list them.
5. Enter the user name, usually the address, and the password.
6. Click Test connection, then OK.

Each account gets a colour, which marks its mail when the inboxes are shown together. Signature is added below every message you write from that account.

Gmail

For Gmail, Guess settings chooses the sign-in with Google (OAuth2), which needs an access key of your own from Google. The simpler way is a Google app password: turn on 2-step verification in your Google account, create an app password at myaccount.google.com/apppasswords, set Authentication to Password and enter the 16 characters without spaces.

Reading mail

• The folder column on the left (View → Show Folders) shows each account with its folders: Inbox, Drafts, Sent, Junk, Trash and your own, with the number of unread messages. With more than one account, All inboxes shows them together.
• The message list: sender, subject, date, and the letters of the CDE Mailer: N new, A answered, ! flagged, @ with attachment.
• The message below, with the buttons Delete, Next, Previous, Reply to Sender and Forward.
• Attachments in a bar under the message: Open or Save As….

View → Plain Text or HTML switches how mail in HTML is shown. The Move menu moves the selected message to another folder of its account. Message → Show Source shows the message as it arrived.

Writing mail

Compose → New Message, or Reply to Sender, Reply to All and Forward. The compose window has From (the account), To, Cc, Subject and the attachments; Format → Show Bcc Field adds Bcc. Files dropped on the window become attachments.

Addresses from your contacts. Start typing a name, a nickname or a part of an address into To, Cc or Bcc, and a list below the field shows the matching people from Contacts; "mull" also finds "Müller". Down and Up choose, Enter or Tab takes the address, Esc closes the list. A group from Contacts, such as Chor, puts in the addresses of all its members at once.

A mail with an appointment in it, as an .ics file or as text from the Calendar, shows a bar with Schedule in Calendar (chapter 45).

Your data

• Pictures from the internet are blocked in HTML mail, because senders use them to see whether and when you read their mail. A bar offers Load images for this message or Always for this sender.
• Links are never followed inside the Mailer. A click shows where the link really goes and asks before opening the web browser.
• Scripts, forms and frames are removed from HTML mail before it is shown.
• Passwords are never written to a settings file. They are kept in your keyring, which your login password locks and unlocks: it opens when you log in and stays closed to everybody else.
• The connection to the server is encrypted and the server's certificate checked. STARTTLS never falls back to an unencrypted connection.

Planned

In the Mailer: new mail shown at once, folders to create and rename, drafts and templates, search, threads and printing, and reading mail without a network.

Under the hood

The accounts, without passwords, are in ~/.config/amadeos/mail/accounts.conf, the settings of Message View in mail.conf. The Mailer reads mail over IMAP and keeps it on the server; it sends over SMTP.