You can resize the Composition window using your window manager's resizing borders at the edges of the window. As you resize the window vertically, the message composition area grows or shrinks proportionally while the recipient fields, subject field, and additional headers fields remain the same size. As you resize the window horizontally, both areas grow or shrink proportionally.
You can select the Wrap text at right margin option in the Composition Window Preferences dialog. When this option is in effect Ishmail automatically inserts a soft newline character when you type past the right margin. This causes the cursor to return to the left margin and move down one line, so the text wraps around to the next line as if you had typed the Return (or Enter) key. Soft newlines differ from hard newlines, which are inserted when you press Return or Enter, in that soft newlines move when you resize the window. For example, if you type several lines of text then resize the window, the text re-flows to best fit the new window size.
By default, the Cc:, Bcc:, Fcc:, and Additional headers fields are not displayed in the Composition window. You can select to display them by clicking the Show Cc:, Show Bcc:, Show Fcc:, and Show Additional: buttons in the Composition window Options menu.
You can open one or more Composition windows from the Main window at any time unless a pop-up dialog window is being displayed that requires action before it can be dismissed. Ishmail attempts to reuse existing Composition windows when possible. For example, if you open a Composition window and type some text into it, then select Compose New... again, a new Composition window is opened. However, if you had cleared the text in the original Composition window, selecting Compose New... would cause the first window to be reused. The intention is to prevent losing a composition in progress, while minimizing the number of windows created.
Selection buttons just below the message composition area enable you to quickly customize messages you are currently composing. See Outgoing Mail Preferences.
The Add signature option lets you to append a custom signature to an outgoing message. If you toggle this button On, the contents of your signature file is attached to the message prior to delivery. A change to this button does not remain in effect after you close the Composition window. The default value for Add signature is Off. You can change the default value in the Signature Preferences dialog.
The Wrap text option specifies whether text should automatically wrap when you type beyond the right margin. If text is not wrapped, a horizontal scroll bar will be added to the window if one or more lines in the message are longer than the window is wide. A change to this button does not remain in effect after you close the Composition window. The default value for Wrap text is Off. You can change the default value in the Composition Window Preferences dialog.
The third selection button, Check addresses, will cause Ishmail to request that the sendmail program validate the address(es) you typed into the To:, Cc:, or Bcc: fields. A change to this button does not remain in effect after you close the Composition window. The default value for Check addresses is Off. You can change the default value in the Outgoing Mail Preferences dialog.
Below the selection buttons are four radio buttons that control whether your message is sent as a MIME message.
If you include MIME features in a message, a prompt will appear when you click the send option asking if you wish to send the message as plain text even though information will be lost.
Changes to these options do not remain in effect after you close the Composition window. See Outgoing Mail Preferences to change the default values of any of these options.