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<H1><a name="quickstart">Quick Start</a></H1>
<P>This section gives you a "<EM>quick start</EM>" on using
MHonArc.
</P>
<!--X-TOC-Start-->
<ul>
<li><a href="#folders">Converting mail</a>
<li><a href="#adding">Adding Messages to an Archive</a>
<li><a href="#single">Converting a single message</a>
</ul>
<!--X-TOC-End-->
<hr>
<H2><a name="folders">Converting mail</a></H2>
<P>MHonArc supports <EM>MH</EM> mail folders and
UUCP/Unix mailbox files, so the term "<EM>mail folder</EM>" represents
the <EM>MH</EM> mail folder or mailbox file to process.
To convert a mail folder to an HTML archive, use the following:
</P>
<table border=1 width="100%"><tr><td><pre class="shell">
prompt> <b>mhonarc </b><VAR>path</VAR><b>/inbox</b>
</pre></td></tr></table>
<P>Where <VAR>path</VAR> represents the directory path
containing the mail folder <EM>inbox</EM>. If you are in the
directory that contains inbox, you can leave out the
"<VAR>path</VAR><tt>/</tt>".
</P>
<p>You can specify multiple mail folders to process:</p>
<table border=1 width="100%"><tr><td><pre class="shell">
prompt> <b>mhonarc </b><VAR>path</VAR><b>/inbox1</b> <VAR>path</VAR><b>/inbox2</b> ...
</pre></td></tr></table>
<p>You can also specify standard input, "<b><tt>-</tt></b>",
as the source of mail folder:
</p>
<table border=1 width="100%"><tr><td><pre class="shell">
prompt> <b>mhonarc -- - </b><VAR>path</VAR><b>/inbox</b>
</pre></td></tr></table>
<p>The "<b><tt>--</tt></b>" (two hyphens) is required to terminate
command-line option parsing so "<b><tt>-</tt></b>" is not
treated as the start of an option. The example also illustrates
that you can specify regular mail folders along with standard
input. In this example, MHonArc processes standard input and
then <tt><VAR>path</VAR>/inbox</tt>.
</p>
<table class="note" width="100%">
<tr valign="baseline">
<td><strong>NOTE:</strong></td>
<td width="100%"><p>Mail folder data read in from standard input
<strong>must</strong> be in UUCP-style mailbox format.
</p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<P>MHonArc creates the following files after processing the mail folders:
</P>
<UL>
<LI><P><tt><strong>maillist.html</strong></tt>:
The main index file containing links
to all mail messages converted. Messages are listed with subjects and
who the messages are from. All messages are listed
by the date. </P>
<LI><P><tt><strong>threads.html</strong></tt>:
The file listing messages by threads.
</P>
<LI><P><tt><strong>msg*.html</strong></tt>: HTML versions of the mail messages, where<CODE> * </CODE>represents a
message number from 0 to the number of message processed minus 1.
</P>
<LI><P><tt><strong>.mhonarc.db</strong></tt>
(or <tt>mhonarc.db</tt> under Windows):
This database file contains archive information and
<a href="resources.html">resource</a>
settings for MHonArc to perform further updates.
</P>
<LI><P><EM>Other</EM>: If messages contain attachments, other files
may be created for images, videos, binaries, etc.
</P>
</UL>
<P>By default, all files created are put into the current
working directory. You can control the location of archive files
by using the
<a href="resources/outdir.html"><strong><tt>-outdir</tt></strong></a>
option. </P>
<P><STRONG>Example</STRONG></P>
<table border=1 width="100%"><tr><td><pre class="shell">
prompt> <b>mhonarc -outdir /home/ehood/htmlarchive /home/ehood/mail/inbox</b>
</pre></td></tr></table>
<P>Here is a sample session converting a mail folder:
</P>
<table border=1 width="100%"><tr><td><pre class="shell">
prompt> <b>mhonarc ~/mail/inbox</b>
This is MHonArc v2.6.0, Perl 5.006001 linux
Converting messages to .
Reading /home/ehood/mail/inbox ..........
Writing mail ...
Writing ./maillist.html ...
Writing ./threads.html ...
Writing database ...
10 messages
</pre></td></tr></table>
<p>By default, MHonArc prints out information about its progress.
This can be disabled with the
<a href="resources/quiet.html"><strong><tt>-quiet</tt></strong></a>
option.
</p>
<hr>
<H2><a name="adding">Adding Messages to an Archive</a></H2>
<P>If you have new messages you want to add to an existing archive,
you must utilize the
<a href="resources/add.html"><strong><tt>-add</tt></strong></a>
command-line option. With the
<a href="resources/add.html"><strong><tt>-add</tt></strong></a>,
you can do the following: </P>
<UL>
<LI>Add mail folders, or
<LI>Add a single message.
</UL>
<P>Adding a mail folder to an archive in the current working directory
can be done like the following: </P>
<table border=1 width="100%"><tr><td><pre class="shell">
prompt> <b>mhonarc -add </b><VAR><path></VAR><b>/mailfolder</b>
</pre></td></tr></table>
<P>If you are not in the same directory as the archive, then you
can specify the location of the archive with the
<a href="resources/outdir.html"><strong><tt>-outdir</tt></strong></a>
option. </P>
<table class="note" width="100%">
<tr valign=top>
<td><strong>NOTE:</strong></td>
<td width="100%"><P>MHonArc skips any messages that already exist in
the archive. Therefore, MHonArc can be used to rescan a
mail folder to auto-find any new messages to add.
</P>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<P>If no mail folders are specified, MHonArc
attempts to add a <EM>single</EM> message read in from standard
input. </P>
<P><STRONG>Example</STRONG></P>
<table border=1 width="100%"><tr><td><pre class="shell">
prompt> <b>mhonarc -add < single.msg</b>
</pre></td></tr></table>
<P>Or, from a pipe:
</P>
<table border=1 width="100%"><tr><td><pre class="shell">
prompt> <b>cat single.msg | mhonarc -add</b>
</pre></td></tr></table>
<hr>
<H2><a name="single">Converting a single message</a></H2>
<P>MHonArc converts a single
mail message, independent of creating or modifying an
archive, if the
<a href="resources/single.html"><strong><tt>-single</tt></strong></a>
option is specified.
The message to process is specified by filename,
or piped in from standard input.
The resulting HTML is sent to standard output.
</P>
<p><STRONG>Examples</STRONG></p>
<p>Input from standard input:</p>
<table border=1 width="100%"><tr><td><pre class="shell">
prompt> <b>mhonarc -single < messagefile > file.html</b>
</pre></td></tr></table>
<p>Filename on command-line:</p>
<table border=1 width="100%"><tr><td><pre class="shell">
prompt> <b>mhonarc -single messagefile > file.html</b>
</pre></td></tr></table>
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<address>
$Date: 2005/05/13 00:00:35 $ <br>
<img align="top" src="monicon.png" alt="">
<a href="http://www.mhonarc.org"
><strong>MHonArc</strong></a><br>
Copyright © 1997-1999, 2005, <a href="http://www.mhonarc.org/~ehood/"
>Earl Hood</a>, <a href="mailto:mhonarc%40mhonarc.org"
>mhonarc<!--
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-->mhonarc.org</a><br>
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