The first, and probably the most exciting feature, is the ability to send encrypted mail! Unfortunately, at many non-US sites, it's quite probable that you won't be able to use this feature since you won't have the crypt() library available due to licensing restrictions.
To do this is extremely simple: You need merely to have two key lines [encode] and [clear] in the message body.
Consider the following outgoing message:
Joe, Remember that talk we had about Amy? Well, I talked to my manager about it and he said... uhh...better encrypt this...the usual `key'... [encode] He said that Amy was having family problems and that it had been affecting her work. Given this, I went and talked to her, and told her I was sorry for getting angry. She said that she understood. We're friends again!! [clear] Exciting stuff, eh? MikeWhile this is obviously quite readable while being typed into the editor, as soon as the message is confirmed as wanting to be sent, the elm mailer prompts with: and accepts a key (a series of 8 or less characters) without echoing them to the screen. After entry, it will ask for the same key again to confirm it, then *poof* it will encrypt and send the mail.
If you have the copy option enabled, the program will save your copy of the message encrypted too. (This is to ensure the privacy and security of your mail archive, too.)
If the mailer doesn't ask for the encryption key, it's because you don't have the [encode] entered as the first 8 characters of the line. It MUST be so for this to work!!
On the other end, a person receiving this mail (they must also be using elm to receive it, since this mailer has a unique encryption program) will be reading the message and then suddenly be prompted:
and will again be asked to re-enter it to confirm. The program will then on-the-fly decrypt the mail and display each line as it is decoded. The [clear] line signifies that the block to encrypt is done.Note that it is not possible currently to pipe or print encrypted mail.
The other option on outgoing mail is the ability to specify what section of the message you want to have archived (assuming copy is enabled) and what section you don't. This is most useful for sending out source file listings and so on.
To indicate the end of the section that should be saved in the archive, you need merely to have the line
[nosave] or [no save]appear by itself on a line. This will be removed from the outgoing mail, and will indicate the last line of the message in the saved mail. Other than this, the saved mail is identical to the outgoing mail.