[comp.unix.questions] Using a pager from within 'mail'

ramon@skye.mit.edu (Ramon F Herrera) (11/18/90)

Is there any way to use 'more' from within the mail program
to see long messages one page at a time??

The scrolling speeds these days are exceeding the reflexes
needed to press ^S ans ^Q.

Ramon Herrera



--
Ramon F. Herrera
Research Laboratory of Electronics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
ramon@iona.mit.edu

gwyn@smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn) (11/18/90)

In article <1990Nov17.190806.15414@athena.mit.edu> ramon@skye.mit.edu (Ramon F Herrera) writes:
>Is there any way to use 'more' from within the mail program
>to see long messages one page at a time??

Most mail-reading interfaces that I'm familiar with support a command
that sends the message to a user-specified command or pipe.  I use this
to spool the message to a printer and to pipe it through a paginator
when it's scrolling too fast to read otherwise.

Some mail-reading interfaces have an option (usually specified in a file
such as .mailrc in your home directory) that enables pagination by the
mail-reading interface itself.  Check your manual..

ifas730@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (11/18/90)

In article <1990Nov17.190806.15414@athena.mit.edu> ramon@skye.mit.edu (Ramon F Herrera) writes:
>Is there any way to use 'more' from within the mail program
>to see long messages one page at a time??
>
>The scrolling speeds these days are exceeding the reflexes
>needed to press ^S ans ^Q.

On a BSD machine, mail has a more subcommand.  Just type 'more #', where
# is the message number.  I don't know if the mail program on a SysV machine
has the more subcommand, so another solution is to create a .mailrc file
in your home directory with the following two lines:
   set crt=24
   set PAGER=pg
On a BSD machine, set PAGER to more.
This will allow you to use the print or type subcommands for long messages.
Crt determines how long the message must be before the PAGER is used.

I hope this helps.

Kathy

seanf@sco.COM (Sean Fagan) (11/19/90)

In article <1990Nov17.190806.15414@athena.mit.edu> ramon@skye.mit.edu (Ramon F Herrera) writes:
>Is there any way to use 'more' from within the mail program
>to see long messages one page at a time??

System Vish mail programs (mailx, in particular 8-)) need to have two
variables set.  One is crt; if that is set, then a pager ($PAGER, pg by
default, I believe) is used.  (PAGER is the other variable, sorry to be a
bit confusing...)

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