When you click the Mail ... option, the Outgoing Mail Preferences dialog appears.
The Outgoing Mail Preferences window lets you specify how messages are encoded, into which folders mail is copied when sent, which mail delivery command to use, whether to validate addresses before use, and handling of extremely large messages.
Explicit help is available in the Help pull-down menu for each of the parameters that can be customized. From the Help pull-down menu, select the On Context function, then move the cursor over the item of interest and click the mouse.
Since MIME messages ultimately encode all data as plain ASCII text, MIME-formatted messages can be read using any mail tool. However, the data format may not be very readable. The Outgoing mail type option lets you enhance MIME message readability for people using non-MIME tools. There four options. The option you set in the Outgoing Mail Preferences dialog becomes the default.
You can specify the character set that will be used to display the message. The ISO-8859 character sets are supported. You can type the name of a character set into the field, or click the button to the right of the field and pick a character set from the resulting pop-up list.
Changing the character set has two effects. First, it changes how the text appears in the Composition window. Second, a character set parameter is added to the message when it is sent. If this parameter is recognized and handled by the recipient's mail tool, your message should appear as you typed it. There's no guarantee, however, that the recipient's system will have the appropriate fonts installed to show the character set you have chosen.
For compatibility with all mail transport systems, use of character sets in mail messages, as they are sent over the network, must be limited to 7-bit ASCII. This is true even if both the sender and recipient have no trouble with 8-bit characters, since an intermediate network through which the message passes on its way to its destination may have a limitation of 7-bit characters. The MIME standard provides several methods for encoding data so that it appears, while in transit, as 7-bit ASCII.
In this window, you can specify which encoding option to use for 8-bit characters in the message body, and potentially a different encoding option for 8-bit characters in the headers. The choices for the body are:
The choices for the headers are:
You can have messages copied automatically to a folder at the time they are sent. You can use the same folder each time, or specify a folder name based on one of the following:
If you want to use the same folder each time, you specify the name of that folder. Note that if the first character of the folder name is a + or an =, this is substituted with the name of your folder directory (as specified in the Application-related Preferences dialog), which is typically $HOME/Mail.
If you specify the folder name as a variable, you also need to specify the folder directory. This can be a full path name or a name relative to your home directory.
Sometimes mail is sent that includes a Cc: to a mail alias containing a large number of recipients, such as your entire organization. You may reply to such a message, intending only to send mail to the originator, but inadvertently select Reply All:. This causes you reply to be broadcast to a much wider audience than you intended. To guard against this kind of embarrassment, you can specify mail aliases, which if used, cause a confirmation prompt to be shown.
Type the names of mail aliases you want to be careful about using into the Confirm mail to these addresses field. The field will show a vertical scroll bar if you enter more lines than fit in the field.
You may want to add extra mail headers to your mail message, for example:
Any mail headers you enter into this field will be included in every subsequent message you send.
This is the name of the mail transport command Ishmail uses to send mail. The default is the sendmail command. You may want to use a different command. Or, the sendmail command may be in a different directory on your system, and you just need to change the path name.
Ishmail passes two parameters to the sendmail command: -oi and -oem. If the message is being sent in multiple pieces, the -odi parameter is added also.
After the parameters the recipients' addresses are added, each enclosed in single quote characters. This allows addresses to have embedded double quotes and blanks (spaces).
After the addresses, a < symbol is added followed by the path name of a temporary file which holds the complete message.
If you have been composing a message but you close the Composition window without first sending the message, the message will be saved to the file you specify in the Save interrupted messages to file field.
You can disable this function by setting the toggle button Off.
Another preference you can control from this window is the handling of large messages. MIME messages can be very large, particularly if they include image files or audio files. Some older mail transport systems cannot handle huge messages and may truncate them or refuse to process them. Your messages may pass through many networks on the way to their ultimate destination. If any of the intermediate networks cannot handle huge messages, you will have a problem.
The MIME protocol has a solution for this problem. Outgoing messages can be automatically split into two or more parts, and reassembled into a single message by the recipient's MIME mail reader. You can specify whether messages are split, and if so, how large the pieces should be. The default size (100,000 bytes) is a standard size which should pass through any network.
When you apply changes, Ishmail asks whether to use the folder list preferences for the current session only, or for current and future sessions.
Toggle this button On to cause Ishmail to use the sendmail command's address checking option to validate that the address(es) in your message are valid. This will prevent mail from bouncing, but it may take a long time to do the checking depending on the address and how you are connected to the Internet.