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   1 .TH MH-MAIL 5 RAND
   2 .SH NAME
   3 mh-mail \- Message format for MH
   4 .SH DESCRIPTION
   5 .I MH,
   6 the Rand message-handling system, processes messages in
   7 a particular format.  It should be noted that neither
   8 the Berkeley mailer nor the Bell mail program produces
   9 message files in precisely the correct format for
  10 .I mh.
  11 .PP
  12 Each user possesses a mail drop box which initially receives
  13 all messages processed by
  14 .I deliver(8).
  15 .I Inc(1)
  16 will read from that drop box and incorporate the new messages
  17 found there into the user's own mail folders.   The mail drop
  18 box consists of one or more messages.  To facilitate the
  19 separation of messages, each message begins and ends with
  20 a line consisting of nothing but four Control-A (octal 001)
  21 characters.
  22 .PP
  23 Each message consists of two parts: a header, consisting of
  24 one or more header lines, and a body, containing the actual
  25 text of the message.  These parts are separated by an empty
  26 line, i.e. two consecutive Newline characters.
  27 Within MH, the header and body may be separated by a line
  28 consisting of dashes.
  29 .PP
  30 Each header item can be viewed as a single logical line of ASCII
  31 characters.
  32 If the text of a header item extends across several
  33 real lines, the continuation lines are indicated by leading
  34 spaces or tabs.
  35 .PP
  36 Each header item is called a component and is composed of a
  37 keyword or name, along with associated text.
  38 The keyword begins at the
  39 left margin, may contain spaces or tabs, may not exceed 63
  40 characters, and is terminated by a colon (:).
  41 Certain
  42 components (as identified by their keywords) must follow rigidly
  43 defined formats in their text portions.
  44 .PP
  45 The text for most formatted components (e.g., ``Date:'' and ``Message-Id:'')
  46 is produced automatically.
  47 The only ones entered by the
  48 user are address fields such as ``To:'', ``cc:'', etc.
  49 ARPA addresses
  50 are assigned mailbox names and host computer specifications.
  51 The
  52 rough format is ``mailbox at host'', such as ``Borden at Rand-Unix''.
  53 Multiple addresses are separated by commas.
  54 A missing host is
  55 assumed to be the local host.
  56 .PP
  57 Following is a list of header components that are considered
  58 meaningful to various MH programs.
  59 .TP 15
  60 .I Component
  61 .I Usage
  62 .br
  63 .TP
  64 Date:
  65 Added by
  66 .I deliver(8),
  67 contains date and time of delivery.
  68 .br
  69 .ns
  70 .TP
  71 From:
  72 Added by
  73 .I deliver(8),
  74 contains the userid of the sender.  But see "Sender:"
  75 .br
  76 .ns
  77 .TP
  78 Sender:
  79 Added by
  80 .I deliver(8)
  81 in the event that the user has supplied a "From:" line,
  82 contains the userid of the sender.
  83 .br
  84 .ns
  85 .TP
  86 To:
  87 Contains address of recipient of message.
  88 .br
  89 .ns
  90 .TP
  91 cc:
  92 Contains addresses of additional recipients.
  93 .br
  94 .ns
  95 .TP
  96 Bcc:
  97 Still more recipients.  However, the Bcc line is not
  98 copied onto the message as delivered, so these recipients
  99 are not listed.
 100 .br
 101 .ns
 102 .TP
 103 fcc:
 104 Causes
 105 .I deliver(8)
 106 to copy the message into the specified folder.
 107 .br
 108 .ns
 109 .TP
 110 Subject:
 111 Sender's commentary.  It is displayed by
 112 .I scan(1).
 113 .br
 114 .ns
 115 .TP
 116 Message-ID:
 117 A unique message identifier glued on by
 118 .I deliver
 119 if the
 120 .B \-msgid
 121 flag is set.
 122 .br
 123 .ns
 124 .TP
 125 In-Reply-To:
 126 A commentary line added by
 127 .I repl(1)
 128 when replying to a message.
 129 .br
 130 .ns
 131 .TP
 132 Replied:
 133 Reply date added by
 134 .I repl(1)
 135 under the "annotate" option.
 136 .br
 137 .ns
 138 .TP
 139 Forwarded:
 140 Forwarding date added by
 141 .I forw(1)
 142 under the "annotate" option.
 143 .br
 144 .ns
 145 .TP
 146 Distribute-to:
 147 New recipients for a redistributed message processed
 148 by
 149 .I dist(1).
 150 .br
 151 .ns
 152 .TP
 153 Distribute-cc:
 154 Still more recipients.  See "cc:".
 155 .br
 156 .ns
 157 .TP
 158 Distribute-bcc:
 159 Even more recipients.  See "bcc:.
 160 .br
 161 .ns
 162 .TP
 163 Distribute-fcc:
 164 Copy distributed message into a folder.  See "fcc:".
 165 .br
 166 .ns
 167 .TP
 168 Distribute-from:
 169 Added when redistributing a message.
 170 .br
 171 .ns
 172 .TP
 173 Distribution-date:
 174 Is to distribute-from as Date: is to From:.
 175 .br
 176 .ns
 177 .TP
 178 Distribution-id:
 179 Added if msgid option is in effect.
 180 .br
 181 .ns
 182 .TP
 183 Distributed:
 184 Annotation for
 185 .I dist(1)
 186 .SH FILES
 187 /usr/spool/mail/*
 188 .SH SEE ALSO
 189 \fIThe MH Message Handling System: User's Manual\fR
 190 by B. Borden, R. Gaines, and N. Shapiro
 191 .br
 192 \fIStandard for the Format of ARPA Network Test Messages\fR
 193 by D. Crocker, J. Vittal, K. Pogran, and D. Henderson, Jr.