Using RMAIL to Send a Message

RMAIL is a mail reader which comes with Emacs. Many of the Emacs commands can be used in RMAIL. To send a message, you first need to start up the Emacs editor with the RMAIL option. For example:
math joe % emacs -f rmail
If you have no unread mail you will get a screen that looks like the one below. If you do have incoming mail you will see the first message on the screen.
BABYL OPTIONS:
Version: 5
Labels:
Note: This is the header of an rmail file.
Note: If you are seeing it in rmail,
Note: it means the file has no messages in it.




--- Emacs: RMAIL (RMAIL Narrow)----All-----------------
(No new mail has arrived)
To send a message, type m. Your Emacs screen will split in half, and in the bottom you will see the following:
To:
Subject:
--text follows this line--




-----Emacs: *mail* (Mail)----All-----------------------
Loading mailalias...done
To move around the screen you can use the arrows on the side of your keypad. Complete the header sections and then move below the line that says --text follows this line-- and type your message. After you have finished typing in your message, the screen will look something like this:
To: larock
Subject: Learning Rmail
--text follows this line--

I am learning how to use Emacs' Rmail, so I thought
I'd send you a test message.

--**-Emacs: *mail* (Mail)----All-------------------------
When your message is ready to be mailed, type C-c C-c (Hold down the Ctrl or Control key and type the letter c, twice). Your screen will go back to one buffer and the message will be sent.

To see how many messages are currently in your queue, notice the numbers in the mode line on the bottom of the screen. It could for example say 1/3. This means that you are currently looking at the first message and that there are three total. To read the next message in the queue, press n. To go back to the previous message, type p. To see a summary listing of all of your messages, type h. The cursor will be to the left of the current message. To switch between the summary window and the RMAIL window, use C-x o. To get rid of the summary window, type C-x 1 while the cursor is in the other window.

If you type d while viewing a message, the message will be marked for deletion and it will be discarded when you exit the RMAIL session. Messages that are marked for deletion have a D next to their message number and will be skipped over when scrolling through the messages. To see a message that has been marked for deletion, use C-p and C-n while scrolling in the summary of message headers. To undelete a message, type a u while viewing a message that is marked for deletion.

To exit the RMAIL session, type q The messages that you did not delete will be saved in a file called RMAIL in your home directory. The next time you start RMAIL these will be in your queue. To quit Emacs without deleting your messages, type C-x C-c. Emacs will ask you if you want to save the file called RMAIL. Type a y to save it.