What's in This Book

The book is divided into seven parts. The MH & xmh Road Map explains the book's organization and suggests ways to read it. The following list describes each chapter and appendix.

This book is organized so that beginners don't have to read all the chapters to get the information they need. Therefore, information on some commands is spread across several chapters. Extensive cross-references point to other related information. The index lists topics and concepts.

First is information about using this book:

The Front Matter has overall information about the book, specialized tables of contents, etc.

The Preface has information about the book itself (including this file).

Part I has overall information that applies to MH and all three front-ends.

Chapter 1 provides a quick overview.

Chapter 2 shows how MH uses the UNIX filesystem.

Chapter 3 introduces MIME multimedia email.

Part II has detailed explanations and examples of MH commands. Because MH front-ends run MH commands, users will get insight here.

Chapter 4 makes sure that your account is set up for MH so you'll be ready for the tutorials in Chapters 5, 14, 17, and 20.

Chapter 5 gives a guided tour of basic MH. This is all you need to start using MH.

Chapter 6 covers commands that read messages.

Chapter 7 covers commands that send messages.

Part III describes customizing and programming MH. xmh, mh-e, and exmh users can take advantage of this, too, in customizing their environments.

Chapter 8 contains lots of information and tips about MH folders, sequences, and commands that help you organize and find messages.

Chapter 9 explains how to customize MH with configuration files.

Chapter 10 shows how to make new versions of existing MH commands easily. The chapter has lots of useful examples.

Chapter 11 explains the mysterious MH formatting syntax that lets you display messages and message summaries exactly as you want them.

Chapter 12 gives lots of detail and examples on the tersely-documented features in the mhook(1) and rcvstore(1) manual pages.

Chapter 13 has tips for programming with MH and interpreters such as the Bourne shell and Perl.

Part IV is about xmh.

Chapter 14 gives a guided tour through xmh -- all you need to start using it.

Chapter 15 describes buttons, windows, and other interactive features of xmh in detail.

Chapter 16 shows how you can customize xmh to change the way it looks and works.

Part V covers the mh-e GNU Emacs interface to MH.

Chapter 17 is a guided tour to get you started with mh-e.

Chapter 18 describes mh-e features in detail.

Chapter 19 explains how you can customize mh-e.

Part VI is about the exmh multimedia interface to MH.

Chapter 20 is a tutorial for emxh.

Chapter 21 covers exmh features in detail.

Chapter 22 explains how you can customize exmh.

Part VII, the Appendices, have related information.

Appendix A suggests ways to do more with MH.

Appendix B was written by people involved with MH and other front-ends.

Appendix C gives a list of reference books, articles, and other documents.

Appendix D shows how to use ftp, uucp, and electronic mail to get copies of many of the files and shell programs in this book. It also explains the operation of many of the programs in this book's online archive file.

Appendix E is a chart that lists MH, xmh, mh-e, and exmh commands and features covered in this book.

Special tables of contents point you to information throughout the book that's specific to xmh, exmh, and mh-e. For information on specific topics within xmh, exmh, or mh-e, please refer to the Index.

[Table of Contents] [Index] [Previous: Why Read This Book?] [Next: New in the Third Edition]

This file is from the third edition of the book MH & xmh: Email for Users & Programmers, ISBN 1-56592-093-7, by Jerry Peek. Copyright © 1991, 1992, 1995 by O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. This file is freely-available; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation. For more information, see the file copying.htm.