1Balsa(1) Gnome Manpage Balsa(1)
2
6 Balsa - the GNOME email client.
7
10 You can use Balsa to fetch, read, write and send e-mails.
11 It supports
13 * local mailboxes in maildir, mbox and/or mh format,
14 * nested mailboxes,
15 * protocols POP3, IMAP and SMTP,
16 * multithreaded mail retrieval,
17 * GnuPG/GPG encryption, LDAP, Kerberos and SSL,
18 * MIME (view images, save parts),
19 * multiple character sets,
20 * GPE address book,
21 * printing and spell-checking.
22 Balsa is an integral part of the GNOME desktop environment, but it can
24 also be used standalone though it may print some error messages then.
25 For help on using Balsa, see the documentation in its help menu using
27 Yelp Gnome 2 help/documentation browser.
28 This man page tells about the options of the 'balsa' command,
30 which is used to start Balsa.
31 Most of these options let you tell Balsa that when it starts
32 it should immediately open a mailbox, or the composer ,
33 and things like that.
34 There is also an option to debug POP connections.
35 When you start Balsa from the command line of an (x)terminal,
37 not only can you use the command line options described below,
38 any error messages are printed to that terminal too
39 (whether you execute that command in the background or not).
40
43 balsa [ --help ]
44 [ --version ]
45 [ -c | --check-mail ]
46 [( -m | --compose=)email-address ]
47 [( -a | --attach=)filename ]
48 [( -o | --open-mailbox=)mailbox[:mailbox]... ]
49 [ -u | --open-unread-mailbox ]
50 [ -d | --debug-pop ]
51 [ -D | --debug-imap ]
52
54 -? , --help
55 Displays a message describing command line syntax of Balsa,
56 giving many more options than are presented in this man page;
57 Balsa exits immediately after that.
58 Some of these options work (and thus should be in this man page)
59 for example --display ,
60 others may not -
61 for example --disable-crash-dialog which is provided by GNOME
62 GUI Library.
63 --version
66 Balsa prints its version and exits.
67 -c , --check-mail
70 Balsa starts and checks for new mail immediately.
71 -i , --open-inbox
74 Balsa starts and opens the Inbox.
75 -m email-address , --compose=email-address
78 When invoked with this option,
79 Balsa will open its email-composer for a new message
80 with the specified address in the To: field.
81 The email-address parameter can be specified
82 as user@host, e.g. balsa-list@gnome.org ,
83 or in URL format, e.g. "Balsa List <balsa-
84 list@gnome.org>" .
85 You can use Balsa as mailto protocol handler
86 by, in the URL handlers section of the GNOME control
87 center,
88 setting the mailto protocol command to : balsa -m "%s"
89 -a FILENAME , --attach=FILENAME
91 When invoked with this option,
92 Balsa will open its email-composer for a new message
93 with the specified file already attached to the mes‐
94 sage.
95 Example : balsa -a ~/balsa-new.1.gz
96 -o MAILBOX, --open-mailbox=MAILBOX...
98 This makes Balsa start and open the specified mailbox.
99 The mailbox should be specified by its full URL.
100 Example : balsa -o imap://user@mail.example.com/INBOX
101 balsa -o file:///var/mail/user
102 -u , --open-unread-mailbox
104 Open all mailboxes that may contain unread messages.
105 -d , --debug-pop
107 Makes Balsa print the POP3 communication to stderr,
108 including the full text of every message.
109 The former can be useful for debugging POP3 connections.
110 -D , --debug-imap
112 Makes Balsa print the IMAP communication to stderr.
113 This feature is useful for debugging IMAP problems.
114
116 Balsa's website is http://balsa.gnome.org
117
120 Any bugs found in Balsa can be reported through
121 the Balsa Developer mailing list at balsa-list@gnome.org ,
122 or the online bug-tracking system at http://bugzilla.gnome.org/ .
123 See http://balsa.gnome.org/bugs.html for more information on reporting
124 Balsa bugs.
125 Before reporting bugs, please check to see if the bug is mentioned in
127 the FAQ's or the mailing list archive http://mail.gnome.org/mail‐
128 man/listinfo/balsa-list
129 When reporting Balsa bugs, it is important to include
131 * a reliable way to reproduce the bug,
132 * version number of Balsa (as well as GTK and GNOME),
133 * OS name and version,
134 * any relevant hardware specs.
135 If a bug is causing a crash, it is very useful if a stack trace can be
137 provided.
138 And of course, patches to rectify the bug are even better.
139
142 See the AUTHORS file included with Balsa, probably at
143 /usr/share/doc/balsa-2.3.20/AUTHORS .
144
147 ~/.gnome2/balsa Balsa's preferences file.
148 ~/.gnome2_private/balsa Balsa's POP and IMAP passwords file.
149 /etc/sound/events/balsa.soundlist system-wide configuration file
150
153 Package names given in parenthesis are Debian package names.
154 mailcap [22m(5) - metamail capabilities file (package: mime-support)
156 metamail (1) - infrastructure for mailcap-based multimedia mail
157 (package: metamail)
158 sendmail (8) - a Mail Transfer Agent (package: exim4-daemon-light)
159 yelp [22m(1) - browse Gnome documentation (package: yelp)
160 GNOME [22m(1) - modern desktop environment (package: gnome-bin)
161
164 (c) 1997-2003 Stuart Parmenter and others, see AUTHORS for a list of
165 people.
166 This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is
168 NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
169 PURPOSE.
170Version 2.3.20 03 January 2003 Balsa(1)