Balsa(1)							   Gnome Manpage							  Balsa(1)

NAME

	Balsa - the GNOME email client.

DESCRIPTION

       You can use Balsa to fetch, read, write and send e-mails.

       It supports
	 * local mailboxes in maildir, mbox and/or mh format,
	 * nested mailboxes,
	 * protocols POP3, IMAP and SMTP,
	 * multithreaded mail retrieval,
	 * GnuPG/GPG encryption, LDAP, Kerberos and SSL,
	 * MIME (view images, save parts),
	 * multiple character sets,
	 * GPE address book,
	 * printing and spell-checking.

       Balsa is an integral part of the GNOME desktop environment, but it can
	 also be used standalone though it may print some error messages then.

       For help on using Balsa, see the documentation in its help menu using
	 Yelp Gnome 2 help/documentation browser.

       This man page tells about the options of the 'balsa' command,
	 which is used to start Balsa.
       Most of these options let you tell Balsa that when it starts
	 it should immediately open a mailbox, or the composer ,
	 and things like that.
       There is also an option to debug POP connections.

       When you start Balsa from the command line of an (x)terminal,
	 not only can you use the command line options described below,
	 any error messages are printed to that terminal too
	 (whether you execute that command in the background or not).

SYNTAX

       balsa [	     --help				  ]
	     [	     --version				  ]
	     [	-c | --check-mail			  ]
	     [( -m | --compose=)email-address		  ]
	     [( -a | --attach=)filename 		  ]
	     [( -o | --open-mailbox=)mailbox[:mailbox]... ]
	     [	-u | --open-unread-mailbox		  ]
	     [	-d | --debug-pop			  ]
	     [	-D | --debug-imap			  ]

OPTIONS

       -? , --help
	      Displays a message describing command line syntax of Balsa,
		giving many more options than are presented in this man page;
		Balsa exits immediately after that.
	      Some of these options work (and thus should be in this man page)
		for example --display ,
		others may not -
		for example --disable-crash-dialog which is provided by GNOME GUI Library.

	      --version
		     Balsa prints its version and exits.

	      -c , --check-mail
		     Balsa starts and checks for new mail immediately.

	      -i , --open-inbox
		     Balsa starts and opens the Inbox.

	      -m email-address , --compose=email-address
		     When invoked with this option,
		       Balsa will open its email-composer for a new message
		       with the specified address in the To: field.
		     The email-address parameter can be specified
		       as user@host, e.g. balsa-list@gnome.org ,
		       or in URL format, e.g. "Balsa List <balsa-list@gnome.org>" .
		     You can use Balsa as mailto protocol handler
		       by, in the URL handlers section of the GNOME control center,
		       setting the mailto protocol command to : balsa -m "%s"

	      -a FILENAME , --attach=FILENAME
		     When invoked with this option,
		       Balsa will open its email-composer for a new message
		       with the specified file already attached to the message.
		     Example : balsa -a ~/balsa-new.1.gz

	      -o MAILBOX, --open-mailbox=MAILBOX...
		     This makes Balsa start and open the specified mailbox. The mailbox should be specified by its full URL.
		     Example : balsa -o imap://user@mail.example.com/INBOX balsa -o file:///var/mail/user

	      -u , --open-unread-mailbox
		     Open all mailboxes that may contain unread messages.

	      -d , --debug-pop
		     Makes Balsa print the POP3 communication to stderr,
		       including the full text of every message.
		     The former can be useful for debugging POP3 connections.

	      -D , --debug-imap
		     Makes Balsa print the IMAP communication to stderr.
		     This feature is useful for debugging IMAP problems.

WEBSITE

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

SUGGESTIONS AND BUG REPORTS

       Any bugs found in Balsa can be reported through
	 the Balsa Developer mailing list at balsa-list@gnome.org ,
	 or the online bug-tracking system at http://bugzilla.gnome.org/ .
       See http://balsa.gnome.org/bugs.html for more information on reporting Balsa bugs.

       Before	reporting   bugs,   please   check   to   see	if   the   bug	 is   mentioned   in   the  FAQ's  or  the  mailing  list  archive
       http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/balsa-list

       When reporting Balsa bugs, it is important to include
	 * a reliable way to reproduce the bug,
	 * version number of Balsa (as well as GTK and GNOME),
	 * OS name and version,
	 * any relevant hardware specs.

       If a bug is causing a crash, it is very useful if a stack trace can be provided.
       And of course, patches to rectify the bug are even better.

AUTHORS

       See the AUTHORS file included with Balsa, probably at /usr/share/doc/balsa-2.4.12/AUTHORS .

FILES

	~/.gnome2/balsa 		  Balsa's preferences file.
	~/.gnome2_private/balsa 	  Balsa's POP and IMAP passwords file.
	/etc/sound/events/balsa.soundlist system-wide configuration file

SEE ALSO

       Package names given in parenthesis are Debian package names.

       mailcap	(5) - metamail capabilities file (package: mime-support)
       metamail (1) - infrastructure for mailcap-based multimedia mail
						 (package: metamail)
       sendmail (8) - a Mail Transfer Agent	 (package: exim4-daemon-light)
       yelp	(1) - browse Gnome documentation (package: yelp)
       GNOME	(1) - modern desktop environment (package: gnome-bin)

COPYRIGHT

       (c) 1997-2003 Stuart Parmenter and others, see AUTHORS for a list of people.

       This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO  warranty;  not  even  for  MERCHANTABILITY  or  FITNESS  FOR  A
       PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Version 2.4.12							  03 January 2003							  Balsa(1)