This is a description of some hidden Mail.app preferences. To use these, you typically have to enter the dwrite commands in a Terminal shell window (or use a defaults editor). You also have to quit and restart Mail for these changes to take effect. Some of the more useful of these may make it into a new Preferences panel in EnhanceMail someday... I've included the original (slightly edited) news articles for now. Enjoy! --Tom. -------- From: cedman@princeton.edu (Carl Edman) Subject: Secrets of Mail.app 3.3 uncovered ! Message-ID: Originator: news@hedgehog.Princeton.EDU Sender: news@Princeton.EDU (USENET News System) Nntp-Posting-Host: cedman.remote.princeton.edu Organization: Princeton University Date: Sun, 26 Feb 1995 21:36:53 GMT Lines: 126 Here are a few undocumented features of Mail.app 3.3 which I discovered with gdb. Some may already exist in older versions of Mail.app, but for most I doubt it. This is the list of the dwrites, their meaning and some typical values. dwrite Mail BigPieChart YES dwrite Mail BigPieChartColor Green In combination these two dwrites grow the mail receipt progress indicator in the Mail.app icon from stamp size to full size. They also allow you to set the color. dwrite Mail DisplayFilter "/tmp/snoop" This one is neat. If it is set to the full path of an executable, every time a mail message is displayed, it is first piped through this executable. In principle you can use this hook to allow Mail.app to display absolutely any message type. dwrite Mail DoubleClickRestores YES dwrite Mail RestrictedRestore NO If these are set double clicking on a message calls up a Compose window with that message in it, just like "Restore Draft" does. The second dwrite allows you to do this in any mailbox, not you the drafts mailbox. dwrite Mail LoadNetInfoAddresses NO This adds the users and aliases from netinfo into the addresses window. dwrite Mail SpacePages YES Simple, but useful. With this dwrite hitting space in a mailbox window advances the message one screen, jumping from message to message as needed. dwrite Mail StatusLine YES Don't like the new 3.3 mailbox status line ? This dwrite kills it. dwrite Mail ComposeStatusLine YES dwrite Mail DelayedComposeUpdateSize NO dwrite Mail ComposeSizeDelay 0 These dwrites give every compose window a status line as well which contains the size of the current message. dwrite Mail NXCommandKeys "Page Layout...,.,Encryption Keys...,E,Sort by Date,D,Sort by Name,N,Sort by Number,.,Sort by Subject,S,Deliver,.,Reply,.,Reply All,.,Forward,.,Get New Mail,G,Search,.,Restore Draft,r,Sort by Size,Z,Show All Headers,t,Font Panel...,." This is not really a Mail.app specific dwrite, but I find it useful in particular with Mail.app. It modifies the command key equivalents. dwrite Mail SendSizeLimit 1000000000 If you try to send a message longer than this number (in kBytes), you will be querried by Mail.app. dwrite Mail TocFont Helvetica dwrite Mail TocFontSize 12 Font and size for the table of contents. dwrite Mail Debug YES Enables some additional information about Mail.app in the console. dwrite Mail Encrypt YES Causes messages to be set to be encrypted by default. dwrite Mail ReadReceipt NO Does the same for ReadReceipts. dwrite Mail 24HourClock NO This selects whether the clock in the mailbox window is a 12 hour or a 24 hour clock. dwrite Mail ActiveMailbox "Active.mbox" dwrite Mail DraftsMailbox "Drafts.mbox" dwrite Mail OutgoingMailbox "Outgoing.mbox" These dwrites change the names of the standard mailboxes which Mail.app refers to. dwrite Mail PeopleDir "/LocalLibrary/Images/People" This is the directory where Mail.app looks for images to be displayed. dwrite Mail CompressCommand "" dwrite Mail TarCommand "" I believe these two dwrites allow you to alter the tar and compress commands used by NeXTmail. dwrite Mail IconFont "" dwrite Mail IconFontSize "" dwrite Mail ShowIconCount "YES" These three dwrites allow you to change the font and size of the number of unread messages displayed in the Mail.app window. Or to disable this feature completely. dwrite Mail LoadBundles YES dwrite Mail PriorityValues "" dwrite Mail PriorityHeader "" dwrite Mail MailFilter1 "" dwrite Mail AutoCompact "" dwrite Mail IncAllMailboxes "" dwrite Mail AutoSelectFont "" dwrite Mail CCPollTime 0.1 dwrite Mail MailMarker "Subject:From:To:Cc:Attachment:Date:Reply-To:Sender:In-Reply-To" dwrite Mail RemoteFetch "" dwrite Mail Send8BitMime "" dwrite Mail SendRtfEnrichedMime "" dwrite DatabaseKit DBKitBundlePath "" These dwrites intrigue me, and seem to have some effect, but I have not yet figured out what exactly they do. If you can explain some of them, please let me know. But if you find any of these features publicly documented anywhere, please keep it to yourself. Carl Edman -------- From: yoda@cis.uni-muenchen.de (Marc Guenther) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.software Subject: Re: Secrets of Mail.app 3.3 uncovered ! Date: 1 Mar 1995 16:45:55 GMT Organization: Institut fuer Informatik der Universitaet Muenchen Lines: 71 Message-ID: <3j28c3$511@arcadia.informatik.uni-muenchen.de> References: Reply-To: yoda@cis.uni-muenchen.de (Marc Guenther) NNTP-Posting-Host: optoflop.cis.uni-muenchen.de In article cedman@princeton.edu (Carl Edman) writes: [see above --TRH] > dwrite Mail AutoCompact YES this seems to automatically compact the mailbox (nice for users, who don't know, that delete doesn't delete) But I didnt test it. dwrite Mail RemoteFetch "somehostname" this is nice !! If you set this to a hostname, Mail fetches the mail fro that host !! I don't know how it does that, but I have the host I tried it with in my /Net directory. Don't know if that's needed. I tried to make it a list of hostnames, but it didnt accept it. Some others I found: dwrite Mail ReadReceiptOption Ask (or "Always" or "Never") Pops up a confirmationpanel, whenever you read a message. (or just sends the receipt, or doesn't) dwrite Mail Uuencoder /usr/bin/uuencode ... TarCommand dwrite Mail CompressCommand /usr/ucb/compress ... UncompressCommand all the utilities Mail uses (TarCommand is probably safetar ?) It would be nice, if we could use gzip instead of compress, but then nobody else could read our email. At least, everybody should use gzip for uncompressing. In addition to Active, Outgoing and Drafts, there is a Templates.mbox (whatever it is) dwrite Mail TemplatesMailbox Templates.mbox dwrite Mail DeleteAlwaysSelects NO when you delete a mesage, and there is no undeleted below it, nothing is selected (instead of slecting the next or previous available message) I don't know what these two are: IncludePrefix FoundDisplayDelay I just noticed, that Shift-Tab inside the Compose Text moves the cursor back to the Cc: Field !! What else did NeXT hide in there ??? have fun, -- Marc Guenther ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Centrum fuer Informations | Wagmuellerstr. 23 | Phone: +49 89 211 0670 und Sprachverarbeitung | 80538 M"unchen | Fax: +49 89 211 0674 University of Munich | Germany | yoda@cis.uni-muenchen.de -------------------------------------------------------------------------