MailFaces Help - Usage

Menubar Options

• File
Servers
If multiple servers were defined in the .opt file, this will allow you to switch between different servers.
Check for new Mail
Wakes up MailFaces and forces it to go check the server for more mail.
Verify Icon Selection
Allows the user to enter any mail header or the "From:" userid and domain host. This information will be used to select and display a PIcon as if you had recived mail that contained that mail header or was from the specified user. This service is useful in the following cases:
• You are adding a SELECT entry with a regular expression and refering to a GIF image. You can use this to verify that your regular expresion will match and that the image will display properly.
• You want to update your cache with a new image from the PIcon database. By not selecting the "Use Cache" option, it will do a search of the PIcon Database and update your cache with the new results of the search.
Reset
Causes MailFaces to drop the current icons and start over reading all of the mail messages.
• Options
Edit Options
This will open a simple editor to allow you to edit the current Options file. After saving the file, you can use the Refresh Options to have MailFaces reread the options. The File->reset will then use the new options to reprocess the eMail. The Edit Options is only available if you are running Java 2 which has the required Swing support.
Refresh Options
This will cause the Options file to be reprocessed so that any changes will be reflected. Since there is no dialog to update MailFaces options, you must use an editor and then use the Refresh button to process the changes. If you have changed the Select statements, then use file->Reset to reprocess the mail with the new Select statements.
Audio
Turns the audio support on or off.
Status Message
Turns the Status Message line on or off.
Delay 'N' minutes
In the .opt file, you can define 2 time intervals, these 2 menu buttons will switch between the 2 times. This is intended for dial up lines where you sometimes only want to dial in and check your mail once evry hour or more but other times, you have a connection and you want to check frequently.
SMS
Turns the Cellphone notification (SMS) support on or off.
debug
This will control the display of Debug information.
• View
Status Message
This will turn the Status Display line on or off.
ListMail
This will display a list of all of your mail items.
DebugInfo
This will display some debug information in the DebugFile. It is mainly for use in diagnosing problems in MailFaces. Hopefully you will never need to use this.
Groups
Dispaly the Group list in the DebugFile.
Cache
Some options for managing the ICON cache
Cache Expire
Deletes all Cache entries that have not been used in the last "N" days. "N" must be defined by the CacheExpire entry in the Options file.
Cache Clear
Deletes all Cache entries. This may be useful if you are getting strange results especially after making changes to you .OPT file.
Cache List
Displays Cach items to the Debug file. You must have specified a DebugFile or have started MailFaces from a command window.
Cache Verify
This will go reread the icons from the PiconDB. Hopefully not needed.
• Help

The help information for MailFaces is all contained in the Web pages which you are now reading. All that the MailFaces Help key will do is give you the address of the Help URL.

MailFaces Icon Buttons

The icon images that you see in the MailFaces window are really buttons and can be selected with the mouse. When selected, they will display a list of the mail messages that are represented by that image button. Each entry will show:

• Who the message is from.
• The size of the message in bytes.
• The Subject line for the message.

Each listed entry is proceeded by a selection checkbox. If the Deleted Checked Mail button is pushed, then any selected mail messages will be deleted at the server. If the button represents a KillSelect message, than this checkbutton will be automatically turned on. If the Deleted Listed Mail button is pushed, then all of the listed mail messages will be deleted at the server.
Note: The deleted mail messages can not be recovered.

You can also display the text of the mail message by pressing the Show Checked Mail button. The mail message text will be displayed in a new dialog box for the first checked mail message. If no message is checked, then the first (or only) mail messaged is displayed.

From the Display dialog, you can push the Show Headers button and have the complete set of mail headers displayed. This can be very useful in determining how to write Select statements to handle mail icon selection.

Cellphone Notification (SMS Support)

In addition to displaying a custom icon for Email, you can have Mailfaces send a message to your cellphone when Email arrives from people that you have selected. This message will contain the Subject of the Email, who it is from and as much text as will fit in the constraints of the Short Message Service (usually 160 characters). To enable the service, you have to do the following:

• Add SMS to the Select Statement that describes the email for which you want to get notification on your cellphone. See the Select statement.
• Add a SMSEmail statement to specify your cellphone. See the SMSEmail statement.
• Add a SendMailHost statement to enable outgoing email. See the SendMailHost statement.
• Select Options - SMS from the MailFaces Menubar.
  You can turn SMS support on and off so that a message will be sent to your cellphone only when you are away from your computer.

I use the Cingular service. They do not currently charge for messsages sent to my cell phone using the EMail service. Note that other cellular companies may charge for each SMS message that is sent. Check with your service provider. Also, I do not know if all cellular providers provide an email interface for sending SMS messages. Feedback on cellular providers other than Cingular is very welcome.

You can select specific users or groups for this option. You can also use the following statement to send an SMS message when the subject line starts with the characters "SMS". Since no Icon is specified, it will continue searching the Select statements for an icon specification.

   
 Select subject RE "^SMS"  SMS 

Copy or Move EMail to different EMail Server.

There is also an option to copy or move your EMail messages to a different server. There is also an SMSCopy option that will only do the copy operation if the SMS option on the menubar has been enabled.

There are numerous reasons why you might want to use copy or move.

• You might have a special eMail account that you access from a PDA. When you get eMail from important people (your boss or special friends) to your normal EMail account, you would want to send an SMS message and copy the email to the account where your PDA can access it.
• You might want to move SPAM mail to holding account so that you can check it over periodically to make sure that it really was SPAM
• You might be on vacation and want some email to be transfered to a HotMail or Yahoo Mail account so you can access it easily from the Internet.

 
  DefaultCopyAddress  "jack@hotmail.com" 
  DefaultMoveAddress  "jackSpam@yahoo.com"
  Select from "jill@hotmail.com" copy  
  KillSelect subject "FREE" move 
  Select subject RE "^SMS" smscopy  "copy(jackpda@palm.com)"
  

Group Support

You then use the Group statement to specify the group name and file location of the CSV file. This group name can then be used in a Select statement.
For example:

  Group  friends  "c:\\mailfaces\\friends.csv"
  Group  dept "c:\\mailfaces\\dept.csv"
  Select group friends "file:./images/friends.gif"
  Select group dept "file:./images/work.gif"  SMS

If you use Eudora as your mail client, you can use its address list directly.

  Group  family  "c:\\eudoradirectory\\Nickname\\family.txt"  
  Select group family "file:./images/friends.gif"  

SPAM Selection

Mailfaces can be an effective tool for filtering SPAM Email so that it can be easily or automatically deleted. The KillSelect statement can be used to group all email that matches certain criteria to be grouped under a special Icon or automatically deleted. My recomendation is to group it under the special SPAM icon and then periodically click on the SPAM icon, quickly scan the list of selected mail, unselect any email that is really not SPAM and then use the option of deleting all selected mail.

The following are some suggestions for selecting SPAM.

• SPAM EMail often arrives with no or an invalid From: header So mailfaces converts Mail without a From header to "-@-". Partial from headers result in -@host or name@- So the following regular expression can be used to select this as SPAM

      KillSelect from	RE	"@-|-@"
      

• Much of the SPAM that one gets can be identified by the fact that it is not addressed directly to the user. In other words, the users email address is not in the "to:" or "cc:" headers. So there is a special syntax for identifing mail that is not addressed to a specified email address. For example, I have the following:

     KillSelect not recipient  "jthomas@cruzio.com" 
    

  However you should note that in addition to being the case for most SPAM, this is also true of most email that is being sent because you are on a mailing list and also for email where you are on the "bcc" list (Blind Carbon Copy). So you should be sure if you use this that any mailing list that you are on have specific Select statements earlier in the Options file. Since posting from email lists can have the posting address in the "to:", "cc:" or "reply-to" headers you might want to look at the headers for typical messages to see what is used for mailing lists that you are on. See the section above for how to display the mail headers. Here are some statements that I use.

      Select to "yahoogroups.com"   "file:./images/yahoogroups.gif"
      Select to "topica.com"        "file:./images/topica.gif"
      Select reply-to "topica.com"  "file:./images/topica.gif"
      Select reply-to "opera.com"   "PICONDB"
      Select to "santa-cruz-bikes@" "file:./images/mtnbike.gif"
      Select cc "santa-cruz-bikes@" "file:./images/mtnbike.gif"
      KillSelect not recipient  "jthomas@cruzio.com"  
    

  In the example above, the PICONDB indicates that mail from "opera.com" should use the icon from the PIcon database and not be selected as SPAM.

  If there is a LIST-SUBSCRIBE: or LIST-OWNER header it is probably a mailing list. The empty search line will match any Mail that has a non null LIST-SUBSCRIBE or LIST-OWNER header

      Select list-subscribe  ""  "file:./images/mailinglist.gif"      
      Select list-owner      ""  "file:./images/mailinglist.gif" 
      

  If you are likely to be on the bcc: list for email, then you want to be sure to have Select statements for the "from" address. For example: in my case, most of the bcc: mail that I get is from people that I work with so I have a Select statement for the company mail address.

  The above will probably get rid of much of your SPAM. Specific KillSelect statemets based on the contents of the subject line are also often helpful.

   
      KillSelect subject RE "FREE|MONEY|SEX"
      

  You can specify "AutoDelete" as a parameter on any on the KillSelect statements and the mail that matches this KillSelect statement will be automatically deleted on the next pass. However, there is no way to recover this email so it should only be used when you are absolutely sure that the KillSelect statement will not select any mail that you want to see.

  The faces.log file is by default genereated with entries that include the major events that occur during MailFaces processing. It can be used to determine what mail is automatically deleted.

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