Electronic Mail for Unix Systems
This software was developed in the mid 90s using the X Window System and Motif. I've kept it around for sentimental reasons, including the original web page.
Ishmail is a powerful yet easy to use tool for reading, composing, organizing, and filing electronic mail. Ishmail handles multimedia mail. It supports the Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME), a standard for mailing files containing various kinds of multimedia data across the Internet. Ishmail has a graphical user interface, built using the X Window System and OSF/Motif. It is compatible with the CDE Desktop. Ishmail is available for a variety of Unix systems, including:
- SunOS
- Solaris (SPARC and Intel x86)
- IBM AIX
- Hewlett-Packard HP-UX
- DEC Digital Unix
- Linux
- SGI IRIX
- BSDI
You can work with mail folders on your system, on systems on your local network, or on remote servers using the popular POP or IMAP protocols.
Ishmail lets you organize messages in folders, with various options for sorting the messages and searching through message contents.
Folders can be organized in directories. The file format used for the folders is common with the format used by other Unix mail tools such as mailx, Elm, mh, xmh, exmh, MMDF, and Z-mail.
Ishmail has powerful tools for automatically filing messages to selected folders as they arrive, or as they are sent. You select messages for automatic filing using patterns (simple strings or regular expressions) which are compared against message headers, body or both.
You can define alerts and icons for incoming mail. A handy dialog box allows entry of patterns to search for in incoming mail messages. When a pattern is matched, a command (alert) is run. You can specify both the patterns to be matched and the commands to be run.
Icons can be defined the same way. When incoming mail matches a pattern, the ishmail icon changes to the bitmap design of your choice.
Ishmail has a text editor tool for composing messages. It handles both standard ASCII text and MIME Enriched Text. You can apply formatting changes such as different font styles and sizes, colors, justification, and indentation. Multipart messages with attachments are easily created, and the attachments flow with the text rather than simply adding to the end of the message.
If you prefer to use a different editor tool, such as vi or emacs, you can do so easily. You can also use a tool, such as ispell, to check the spelling of your messages.
You can define aliases for other users' names or groups of user names. A dialog box provides an easy way to create or change aliases. The aliases are stored in a format (.mailrc) which is compatible with other mail tools. Ishmail can share alias files with programs such as Z-Mail and Elm.
Whether you are a beginner or an expert, you will find ishmail easy to use.
Ishmail is easily customized. You can specify many attributes, ranging from cosmetic changes (colors, fonts, window sizes) to functional changes (number of and placement of buttons and menus, preferences for default actions). Special preference dialogs let you to modify most attributes, so that editing various files or programming are not required. You can define your own short cut buttons for various windows. You control where they are placed, what the labels say, and what actions they do.
Each window in ishmail includes a help menu. Help text is available for the whole program, the current window, the context of the cursor, key definitions, the version of the program, and the help system itself. The lower left corner of each window is a message area. Brief messages are shown, describing the action that would happen if the mouse were clicked.
Moving the mouse around the screen shows messages about various parts of the window. The message area also shows status or error messages for completed actions.
A complete user's guide is included with ishmail. It is available in PostScript and HTML formats. The Help menu in the Main window has a link to a copy of the manual on the World Wide Web. You can download the manual to your system for faster performance.