Making MH Work Your Way

Whether you use MH or a front-end like xmh, some part of it might not work exactly the way you want it to. For a lot of the work, you don't have to be a programmer -- just follow the instructions here. Usually, you'll be making a change to your MH profile.

This chapter and the Chapter New Versions of MH Commands show you how to extend MH itself. The Chapter Introduction to UNIX Programming with MH has tips for writing programs that build completely new functionality around MH. Later parts of the books have chapters that explain how to customize front ends (xmh, exmh, and MH-E), but the information in these earlier chapters will help you adapt the parts of MH that front ends use.

This chapter starts with overall information about how MH commands work. You'll see how to use different MH directories -- including other users'. You'll read about how draft messages are built. Here are some ways to customize MH and, for example, xmh:

Make your default mail header just the way you want, so you don't have to make the same changes to the header by hand each time.
Set default options in the MH profile.
Rename, move, or "hide" your MH directory almost anywhere.
Customize MIME message handling.
For users of front-ends like MH-E, here's information about the MH commands that your interface runs and how you can change what those commands do.

Up to now, this book has covered switches for specific MH commands. There are other overall configuration entries you can put in your MH profile. Many of these affect both MH and front-ends.