1. Interface

When a program (or a person) wants to respond to a message -- reply, follow up, forward, cancel -- the program (or person) should just put point in the buffer where the message is and call the required command. Message will then pop up a new message mode buffer with appropriate headers filled out, and the user can edit the message before sending it.

1.1 New Mail Message		Editing a brand new mail message.
1.2 New News Message		Editing a brand new news message.
1.3 Reply		Replying via mail.
1.4 Wide Reply		Responding to all people via mail.
1.5 Followup		Following up via news.
1.6 Canceling News		Canceling a news article.
1.7 Superseding		Superseding a message.
1.8 Forwarding		Forwarding a message via news or mail.
1.9 Resending		Resending a mail message.
1.10 Bouncing		Bouncing a mail message.

1.1 New Mail Message

The message-mail command pops up a new message buffer.

Two optional parameters are accepted: The first will be used as the To header and the second as the Subject header. If these are nil, those two headers will be empty.

1.2 New News Message

The message-news command pops up a new message buffer.

This function accepts two optional parameters. The first will be used as the Newsgroups header and the second as the Subject header. If these are nil, those two headers will be empty.

1.3 Reply

The message-reply function pops up a message buffer that's a reply to the message in the current buffer.

Message uses the normal methods to determine where replies are to go (see section 5.1 Responses), but you can change the behavior to suit your needs by fiddling with the message-reply-to-function variable.

If you want the replies to go to the Sender instead of the From, you could do something like this:

(setq message-reply-to-function (lambda () (cond ((equal (mail-fetch-field "from") "somebody") (list (cons 'To (mail-fetch-field "sender")))) (t nil))))

This function will be called narrowed to the head of the article that is being replied to.

As you can see, this function should return a string if it has an opinion as to what the To header should be. If it does not, it should just return nil, and the normal methods for determining the To header will be used.

This function can also return a list. In that case, each list element should be a cons, where the car should be the name of an header (eg. Cc) and the cdr should be the header value (eg. `larsi@ifi.uio.no'). All these headers will be inserted into the head of the outgoing mail.

1.4 Wide Reply

The message-wide-reply pops up a message buffer that's a wide reply to the message in the current buffer. A wide reply is a reply that goes out to all people listed in the To, From (or Reply-to) and Cc headers.

Message uses the normal methods to determine where wide replies are to go, but you can change the behavior to suit your needs by fiddling with the message-wide-reply-to-function. It is used in the same way as message-reply-to-function (see section 1.3 Reply).

Addresses that match the message-dont-reply-to-names regular expression will be removed from the Cc header.

1.5 Followup

The message-followup command pops up a message buffer that's a followup to the message in the current buffer.

Message uses the normal methods to determine where followups are to go, but you can change the behavior to suit your needs by fiddling with the message-followup-to-function. It is used in the same way as message-reply-to-function (see section 1.3 Reply).

The message-use-followup-to variable says what to do about Followup-To headers. If it is use, always use the value. If it is ask (which is the default), ask whether to use the value. If it is t, use the value unless it is `poster'. If it is nil, don't use the value.

1.6 Canceling News

The message-cancel-news command cancels the article in the current buffer.

1.7 Superseding

The message-supersede command pops up a message buffer that will supersede the message in the current buffer.

Headers matching the message-ignored-supersedes-headers are removed before popping up the new message buffer. The default is
`^Path:\\|^Date\\|^NNTP-Posting-Host:\\|^Xref:\\|^Lines:\\|
^Received:\\|^X-From-Line:\\|Return-Path:\\|^Supersedes:'.

1.8 Forwarding

The message-forward command pops up a message buffer to forward the message in the current buffer. If given a prefix, forward using news.

message-forward-ignored-headers

All headers that match this regexp will be deleted when forwarding a message.

message-make-forward-subject-function

A list of functions that are called to generate a subject header for forwarded messages. The subject generated by the previous function is passed into each successive function.

The provided functions are:

message-forward-subject-author-subject

Source of article (author or newsgroup), in brackets followed by the subject.

message-forward-subject-fwd

Subject of article with `Fwd:' prepended to it.

message-wash-forwarded-subjects

If this variable is t, the subjects of forwarded messages have the evidence of previous forwards (such as `Fwd:', `Re:', `(fwd)') removed before the new subject is constructed. The default value is nil.

message-forward-as-mime

If this variable is t (the default), forwarded messages are included as inline MIME RFC822 parts. If it's nil, forwarded messages will just be copied inline to the new message, like previous, non MIME-savvy versions of gnus would do.

1.9 Resending

The message-resend command will prompt the user for an address and resend the message in the current buffer to that address.

Headers that match the message-ignored-resent-headers regexp will be removed before sending the message. The default is `^Return-receipt'.

1.10 Bouncing

The message-bounce command will, if the current buffer contains a bounced mail message, pop up a message buffer stripped of the bounce information. A bounced message is typically a mail you've sent out that has been returned by some mailer-daemon as undeliverable.

Headers that match the message-ignored-bounced-headers regexp will be removed before popping up the buffer. The default is `^\\(Received\\|Return-Path\\):'.