Sending E-mail: Elm

Emma upgraded Elm on turing to a more recent, Y2K compliant version (2.5 PL2) which behaves differently from the old one in various ways. Here are all the differences I know about:

1. Several variables have been renamed, so if you had changed their values you will have to do it again for the new variable name.
Specifically, if you had "ask" switched OFF is now divided into "askdelete", "askkeep", and "askstore", all of which are ON by default.
If you had "autocopy switched ON, this is now "askreplycopy" (i.e. the question is asked the other way around), which is ON by default, and needs to be OFF to have the same effect.
If you had "savename" switched OFF: that variable is now called "savebyname", and it's ON by default.

2. If you were saving messages in folders by username before: The default behavior is now to save by alias if there is one, and by username otherwise. If you want to change this to what it used to be, i.e. always by username, the you need to set savebyalias = OFF in your .elmrc. (Hmm, it looks like Emma has already make that the default in the meantime.)

3. Elm now marks messages by whether they are sent
- to you only (unmarked by default)
- to you and others (marked with "T" by default)
- to others and cc-ed to you (marked with "C" by default)
- not directly to you (e.g. to a mailing list) (marked with "*" by default)
This will work correctly only if you tell elm what *your* e-mail address(es) are, including username@csli (it only knows about @turing) and those you are having forwarded, e.g.:

alternatives = username@csli.stanford.edu username@stanford.edu

If you want to mark these with different characters, you need to change the variable "tochars" in your .elmrc, e.g.

tochars = _TC* (default values)
tochars = _GG* (don't distinguish between "to" and "cc")
tochars = *TC_ (mark personal as opposed to list messages with an asterisk)

4. The list of options one has right after composing a message has changed. In particular:
"s" used to be "send" and is now "edit subject"
("send" is now "y")
"c" used to be "copy" and is now "edit cc"
("copy" is now "p")

Here's a complete list of the old and new options:
old default was "s" (send), options were:
e)dit message, h)eaders, c)opy, i)spell, !)shell, s)end, or f)orget
new default is "y" (send), options are:
e)dit message, all h)eaders, a)ttachments, co(p)y, i)spell, !)shell, f)orget, T)o: C)c: B)cc: S)ubject: R)eply-to:

5. There is a new variable "confirmtagsave" which is ON by default. This may cause a change in behavior if you are used to having all the "confirm" variables OFF.

6. Elm's messages no longer distinguish in the wording of its messages between "saving" to a (new) folder and "appending" to an (existing) folder. Now "save" is used for both, at least when "confirmcreate" is off.

7. "l(imit)" (show only messages from/to certain people) doesn't work the way it used to :( As far as I can tell only "from yourusername" does not work at all - perhaps it expects an @ sign now?? Also, "to" now matches items in the cc-list.

8. It doesn't think it's the year 100 :-)

You can just add the new variables like "savebyalias = OFF" to your old elmrc, but if you want to start from scratch with the new default elmrc, rename ~/.elm/elmrc first and then use "o" followed by ">" to save a fresh copy.

Here is a version of the new default elmrc, but note that when you save it yourself, it will automatically fill in your shell, fullname, maildir, and calendar location for you.

Here is a list of all the differences in the variables and their default values of the new and old elmrc.

Let me know if you notice anything else! (sr@csli.stanford.edu)

Here's a link to the old elm help page - most of it should still apply but I haven't checked.


Last modified: January 18, 2000
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