exmh uses X resources to specify its buttons and menus on the main display, the editor window, and the What Now dialog. You can add a button to one of these areas of the user interface by listing it in a ubuttonlist resource and adding resources that describe the button. X resource names are hierarchical; these are the button list resources used by exmh:
*Main.ubuttonlist
*Fops.ubuttonlist
*Mops.ubuttonlist
*Sedit.Menubar.ubuttonlist
*WhatNow.ubuttonlist
These resources are necessary because there's no easy way to
enumerate the contents of the resource database.
When exmh starts up, it asks for the definition of both buttonlist and ubuttonlist resources. app-defaults has definitions for its buttons under the buttonlist resource; users should add new buttons with the ubuttonlist resource. To remove some system buttons, you have to override the definition of the buttonlist resource. This is best explained by an example. Here are the definitions for the main buttons:
*Main.buttonlist: quit pref alias
*Main.quit.text: Quit
*Main.quit.command: Exmh_Done
*Main.pref.text: Preferences
*Main.pref.command: Preferences_Dialog
*Main.alias.text: Aliases
*Main.alias.command: Aliases_Pref
The *Main.buttonlist resource names the buttons that appear
in the top row of buttons. The value of
the *Main.buttonlist resource, in turn, causes exmh
to look for other resources that define the text and command
attributes for each button. The command is a Tcl command;
most are simple commands of one or two words. If you are really
inspired, you can set many different attributes of a Tk button via
resources -- get the details from the Tk manual page
for button.
The next example adds a Repl button to the message buttons. By default, there are a few variations on Reply under the Reply... menu. You might like a Repl button for your most common form of reply. The Msg_Reply Tcl command takes regular arguments for the MH repl program.
*Mops.ubuttonlist: myrepl
*Mops.myrepl.text: Repl
*Mops.myrepl.command: Msg_Reply -filter myrepl.filter -cc all
See the Section Replying to Mail
with repl for an overview of repl. Beware
of repl options like -query that prompt you and
expect an interactive response; these will lock up exmh.
The MH Reference Guide has a summary
of repl options.