* Summary: Rmail Summary. Summaries show brief info on many messages.
* Sort: Rmail Sorting. Sorting messages in Rmail.
* Display: Rmail Display. How Rmail displays a message; customization.
+* Coding: Rmail Coding. How Rmail handles decoding character sets.
* Editing: Rmail Editing. Editing message text and headers in Rmail.
* Digest: Rmail Digest. Extracting the messages from a digest message.
* Out of Rmail:: Converting an Rmail file to mailbox format.
@findex rmail-bury
You can exit Rmail with @kbd{q} (@code{rmail-quit}); this expunges and
saves the Rmail file and then switches to another buffer. But there is
-no need to `exit' formally. If you switch from Rmail to editing in
+no need to ``exit'' formally. If you switch from Rmail to editing in
other buffers, and never happen to switch back, you have exited. (The
Rmail command @kbd{b}, @code{rmail-bury}, does this for you.) Just make
sure to save the Rmail file eventually (like any other file you have
means to show the full header.
@vindex rmail-highlighted-headers
- When used with a terminal that supports multiple fonts, Rmail
+ When the terminal supports multiple fonts or colors, Rmail
highlights certain header fields that are especially interesting---by
default, the @samp{From} and @samp{Subject} fields. The variable
@code{rmail-highlighted-headers} holds a regular expression that
-specifies the header fields to highlight; if it matches the beginning of
-a header field, that whole field is highlighted.
+specifies the header fields to highlight; if it matches the beginning
+of a header field, that whole field is highlighted.
If you specify unusual colors for your text foreground and background,
the colors used for highlighting may not go well with them. If so,
To turn off highlighting entirely in Rmail, set
@code{rmail-highlighted-headers} to @code{nil}.
-@findex goto-addr
-URLs in messages may be highlighted and activated for following with the
-mouse or keyboard by using the Goto-address package. Customize the hook
-@code{rmail-show-message-hook} to add @code{goto-addr}.
+ You can highlight and activate URLs in incoming messages by adding
+the function @code{goto-address} to the hook
+@code{rmail-show-message-hook}. Then you can browse these URLs by
+clicking on them with @kbd{Mouse-2} or by moving to one and typing
+@kbd{C-c @key{RET}}. @xref{Goto-address}.
+
+@node Rmail Coding
+@section Rmail and Coding Systems
+
+@cindex decoding mail messages (Rmail)
+ Rmail automatically decodes messages which contain non-@sc{ascii}
+characters, just as it does with files you visit and with and
+subprocess output. Rmail uses the standard
+@samp{charset=@var{charset}} header in the message to determine how
+the was message encoded by the sender. It maps @var{charset} into the
+corresponding Emacs coding system (@pxref{Coding Systems}), and uses
+that coding system to decode message text. If the message header
+doesn't have the charset specification, or if the @var{charset} it
+specifies is not recognized, Rmail chooses the coding system with the
+usual Emacs heuristics and defaults (@pxref{Recognize Coding}).
+
+@cindex fixing incorrectly decoded mail messages
+ Occasionally, a message is decoded incorrectly, either because Emacs
+guessed the wrong coding system in the absence of the @samp{charset}
+specification, or because the specification was inaccurate. For
+example, a misconfigured mailer could send a message with a
+@samp{charset=iso-8859-1} header when the message is actually encoded
+in @code{koi8-r}. When you see the message text garbled, or some of
+its characters displayed as empty boxes, this may have happened.
+
+@findex rmail-redecode-body
+ You can correct the problem by decoding the message again using the
+right coding system, if you can figure out or guess which one is
+right. To do this, invoke the @kbd{M-x rmail-redecode-body} command.
+It reads the name of a coding system, encodes the message body using
+whichever coding system was used to decode it before, then redecodes
+it using the coding system you specified. If you specified the right
+coding system, the result should be readable.
+
+ Decoding and encoding using the wrong coding system is lossless for
+most encodings, in particular with 8-bit encodings such as iso-8859 or
+koi8. So, if the initial attempt to redecode the message didn't
+result in a legible text, you can try other coding systems until you
+succeed.
+
+ With some coding systems, notably those from the iso-2022 family,
+information can be lost in decoding, so that encoding the message
+again won't bring back the original incoming text. In such a case,
+@code{rmail-redecode-body} cannot work. However, the problems that
+call for use of @code{rmail-redecode-body} rarely occur with those
+coding systems. So in practice the command works when you need it.
@node Rmail Editing
@section Editing Within a Message
runs the hook @code{rmail-edit-mode-hook} (@pxref{Hooks}). It adds the
attribute @samp{edited} to the message. It also displays the full
headers of the message, so that you can edit the headers as well as the
-body of the message, and your changes in the the headers will be
+body of the message, and your changes in the headers will be
permanent.
@node Rmail Digest
POP mail when @code{rmail-pop-password} and
@code{rmail-pop-password-required} are unset.
-@cindex POP inboxes in reverse order
+@cindex reverse order in POP inboxes
Some POP servers store messages in reverse order. If your server does
this, and you would rather read your mail in the order in which it was
received, you can tell @code{movemail} to reverse the order of