Usage ===== In all views, arrows, page-up/down, j,k and space can be used to move the focus. Escape cancels prompts. You can hit ":" at any time and type in commands to the prompt. Any commandline can be mapped by using the "MODE-maps" sections in the config file. These are the default keymaps: [global-maps] $ = flush : = prompt ; = bufferlist @ = refresh I = search tag:inbox AND NOT tag:killed L = taglist U = search tag:unread \ = prompt search d = bclose m = compose o = prompt search q = exit shift tab = bprevious tab = bnext [bufferlist-maps] enter = openfocussed x = closefocussed [search-maps] & = toggletag killed O = refineprompt a = toggletag inbox enter = openthread l = retagprompt | = refineprompt [envelope-maps] a = attach enter = reedit s = prompt subject t = prompt to y = send [taglist-maps] enter = select [thread-maps] C = fold --all E = unfold --all H = toggleheaders P = print --all S = save --all a = toggletag inbox enter = select f = forward g = groupreply p = print r = reply s = save | = prompt pipeto Config ------ Just like offlineimap or notmuch itself, alot reads a config file in the "INI" syntax: It consists of some sections whose names are given in square brackets, followed by key-value pairs that use "=" or ":" as separator, ';' and '#' are comment-prefixes. The default location for the config file is `~/.alot.rc`. You can find a complete example config in `data/example.full.rc`. Here is a key for the interpreted sections: [general] global settings: set your editor etc [account X] defines the account X: realname, email address, sendmail [X-maps] defines keymaps for mode X. possible modes are: envelope, search, thread, taglist, bufferlist and global. global-maps are valid in all modes. [tag-translate] defines a map from tagnames to strings that is used when displaying tags. utf-8 symbols welcome. [Xc-theme] define colour palette for colour mode. X is in {1, 16, 256}. All configs are optional, but if you want to send mails you need to specify at least one account section. A sample gmail section looks like this: [account gmail] realname = Patrick Totzke address = patricktotzke@gmail.com aliases = patricktotzke@googlemail.com gpg_key = D7D6C5AA sender_type = sendmail sendmail_command = msmtp --account=gmail -t I use this for my uni-account: [account uoe] realname = Patrick Totzke address = ... aliases = foobar@myuni.uk;f.bar@myuni.uk;f.b100@students.myuni.uk sender_type = sendmail sendmail_command = msmtp --account=uoe -t sent_box = maildir:///home/pazz/mail/uoe/Sent draft_box = maildir:///home/pazz/mail/uoe/Drafts signature = ~/my_uni_vcard.vcs signature_filename = p.totzke.vcs abook_command = abook --mutt-query Caution: Sending mails is only supported via sendmail for now. If you want to use a sendmail command different from `sendmail`, specify it as `sendmail_command`. `send_mailbox` specifies the mailbox where you want outgoing mails to be stored after successfully sending them. You can use mbox, maildir, mh, babyl and mmdf in the protocol part of the url. The file specified by `signature` is attached to all outgoing mails from this account, optionally renamed to `signature_filename`. If you specified `abook_command`, it will be used for tab completion in queries (to/from) and in message composition. The command will be called with your prefix as only argument and its output is searched for name-email pairs. The regular expression used here defaults to `(?P.+?@.+?)\s+(?P.+)`, which makes it work nicely with `abook --mutt-query`. You can tune this using the `abook_regexp` option (beware Commandparsers escaping semantic!). Hooks ----- Before and after every command execution, alot calls this commands pre/post hook: Hooks are python callables with arity 4 that live in a module specified by `hooksfile` in the `[global]` section of your config. Per default this points to `~/.alot.py` For every command X, the callable 'pre_X' will be called before X and 'post_X' afterwards. When a hook gets called, it receives instances of 1. `alot.ui.UI`, the main user interface object that can prompt etc. 2. `alot.db.DBManager`, the applications database manager 3. `alot.account.AccountManager`, can be used to look up account info 4. `alot.settings.config`, a configparser to access the users config An autogenerated API doc for these can be found at http://pazz.github.com/alot/ , the sphinx sources live in the `docs` folder. As an example, consider this pre-hook for the exit command, that logs a personalized goodby message: ```python def pre_exit(ui, dbman, accountman, config): accounts = accountman.get_accounts() if accounts: ui.logger.info('goodbye, %s!' % accounts[0].realname) else: ui.logger.info('goodbye!') ``` Theming ------- You can change the colour settings in the section `[Xc-theme]`, where X is the colour mode you use. This defaults to 256, but 16 and 1 are also possible. The colourmode can be changed in the globals section or given as a commandline parameter (-C). The keys in this section should be self explanatory. In 16c and 256c modes you can define Y_fg and Y_bg for the foreground and background of each keyword Y. These can define colorcodes and flags like `underline` or `bold`, comma separated if you want more than one. See urwids doc on Attributes: http://excess.org/urwid/reference.html#AttrSpec Urwid privides a neat script that makes choosing colours easy, which can be found here: http://excess.org/urwid/browser/palette_test.py See `data/example.full.rc` for a complete list of widgets that can be themed. Moreover, keywords that start with "tag_" will be used to display specific tags. For instance, you can use the following to always display the "todo" tag in white on red, when in 256c-mode. [256c-theme] tag_todo_bg = #d66 tag_todo_fg = white You can translate tag strings before displaying them using the [tag-translate] section. A key=value statement in this section is interpreted as: Always display the tag `key` as string `value`. Utf-8 symbols are welcome here. See e.g. http://panmental.de/symbols/info.htm I personally display my maildir flags like this: [tag-translate] flagged = ⚑ unread = ✉ replied = ⇄