1Balsa(1)                         Gnome Manpage                        Balsa(1)
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NAME

6        Balsa - the GNOME email client.
7
8

DESCRIPTION

10       You can use Balsa to fetch, read, write and send e-mails.
11
12       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
23       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
26       For help on using Balsa, see the documentation in its help menu using
27         Yelp Gnome 2 help/documentation browser.
28
29       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
36       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).
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41

SYNTAX

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

OPTIONS

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.
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64
65              --version
66                     Balsa prints its version and exits.
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68
69              -c , --check-mail
70                     Balsa starts and checks for new mail immediately.
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72
73              -i , --open-inbox
74                     Balsa starts and opens the Inbox.
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76
77              -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
90              -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
97              -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
103              -u , --open-unread-mailbox
104                     Open all mailboxes that may contain unread messages.
105
106              -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
111              -D , --debug-imap
112                     Makes Balsa print the IMAP communication to stderr.
113                     This feature is useful for debugging IMAP problems.
114

WEBSITE

116       Balsa's website is http://balsa.gnome.org
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118

SUGGESTIONS AND BUG REPORTS

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
126       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
130       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
136       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.
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140

AUTHORS

142       See    the    AUTHORS   file   included   with   Balsa,   probably   at
143       /usr/share/doc/balsa-2.3.20/AUTHORS .
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145

FILES

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
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151

SEE ALSO

153       Package names given in parenthesis are Debian package names.
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155       mailcap  (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     (1) - browse Gnome documentation (package: yelp)
160       GNOME    (1) - modern desktop environment (package: gnome-bin)
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162
164       (c) 1997-2003 Stuart Parmenter and others, see AUTHORS for  a  list  of
165       people.
166
167       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.
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172
173Version 2.3.20                  03 January 2003                       Balsa(1)
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