Link: Cone: COnsole Newsreader And Emailer (start)
Link: Installing Cone (next)

                      Cone: COnsole Newsreader And Emailer
                                                                            Next

════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════

                      Cone: COnsole Newsreader And Emailer

  Sam Varshavchik

════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════

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 hunspell, 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).

  • Optional authentication using client SSL certificates.

  • 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.

════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════

                                                                            Next
                                      ToC                        Installing Cone
