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                      Cone: COnsole Newsreader And Emailer

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                                  Introduction

   Cone is a text-based mail client. Cone seamlessly handles multiple POP3,
   IMAP accounts, and local mail folders. Cone is also a simple newsreader.
   Cone's interface is foolproof enough to be used by inexperienced users,
   but it also offers advanced features for power users.

Overview

     * An online tutorial provides a quick overview of Cone's main features.

     * A built-in text editor for editing new messages, with search/replace
       and spell checking (requires aspell or pspell).

       Shortcuts - assign frequently used text to a function key, or to an
       abbreviation. Insert the text by pressing the function key or typing
       its abbreviation.

     * Supports UTF-8 consoles (requires the wide-character version of the
       curses library).

     * Displays HTML mail, with automatic de-moronization ("smart quotes",
       and similar clutter, is replaced by plain garden-variety punctuation).

     * Displays attached images, if invoked from an X terminal, by running
       Gnome's eog, or KDE's kview image viewer. Displays PDF attachments by
       running xpdf. Other, or alternative, helper applications will be added
       as time permits.

     * After attachments are downloaded, they can be optionally removed from
       the message.

     * Handles local mail folders, maildirs, IMAP and POP3 accounts, and
       Usenet newsgroups. All folders are shown in a hierarchical tree-like
       display.

     * Supports access to servers through a Socks 5 proxy, using the Courier
       Socks 5 API toolkit.

     * Sends mail using an external SMTP server (with/without
       authentication), or the local sendmail command.

     * All network protocols support SSL/TLS and SASL (CRAM-MD5, CRAM-SHA1,
       and LOGIN).

     * Address books (which can be stored in an IMAP folder).

     * Optional support for LDAP address books.

     * Remote configuration (share a common configuration between different
       instances of Cone).

     * An optional "single sign-on". Use a single master password for
       multiple remote mail server accounts.

     * PGP/GPG based encryption, and digital signatures. Sent messages are
       automatically signed. Different signing keys may be selected for
       different mail accounts, and the appropriate key is automatically
       selected when replying to a message from an account. Selecting a
       message for an encryption automatically looks up keys that match the
       recipients' E-mail addresses.

       Import, export, forward and receive PGP/GPG keys as MIME attachments.

       When a single sign-on master password is installed, the master
       password also handles access to passphrase-protected keys.

     * Cone shares a lot of its code base with the Courier mail server, which
       is why they share the same web site together.

     * Cone also serves as a platform for development of a new experimental
       network mail access protocol, SMAP, that offers additional
       functionality not available with IMAP or POP3. When Cone logs on to a
       SMAP-capable server, such as the current development version of
       Courier, additional features become available:

         1. Folder names may utilize the full UTF-8 character set, without
            any reserved folder hierarchy separator characters. The user does
            not need to be aware of the underlying mail folder
            implementation.

         2. Faster downloading of attachments.

         3. Faster mail sending. SMAP does not require the client to open a
            second SMTP connection, and send a second copy of the message via
            SMTP.

         4. Fast opening of large folders. Cone does not need to download the
            complete folder index every time the folder is opened, only
            what's changed to the folder since the last time it was open.

         5. Many other useful features that are waiting to be implemented.

     * Cone owes its versatility in handling a large variety of mail
       protocols to the fact that it's based on  LibMAIL, a generic C++
       library that provides a high-level mail-handling API. Using the
       --with-devel configuration setting installs the LibMAIL toolkit, which
       allows for development of independent E-mail software.

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References

   Visible links
   . file:///home/mrsam/src/cone/cone/html/book.html
   . file:///home/mrsam/src/cone/cone/html/x13789.html
   . file:///home/mrsam/src/cone/cone/html/install.html
   . file:///home/mrsam/src/cone/cone/html/x13789.html
   . file:///home/mrsam/src/cone/cone/html/install.html
   . http://sourceforge.net/projects/courier/
   . file:///home/mrsam/src/cone/cone/html/leaf.html
   . http://www.courier-mta.org/
   . file:///home/mrsam/src/cone/cone/html/smap1.html
   . file:///home/mrsam/src/cone/cone/html/libmail.html
   . file:///home/mrsam/src/cone/cone/html/x13789.html
   . file:///home/mrsam/src/cone/cone/html/book.html
   . file:///home/mrsam/src/cone/cone/html/install.html
