Scythe Quickstart

Introduction

This page gives a very brief overview of the major Scythe functions, and pointers to more information on the various aspects covered. Example interaction logs are shown, the highlighted parts represent user input.

Install MH

Scythe works with either MH or nmh. If you haven't installed either of these yet, do so now.

If you're not already using MH tools you'll need to set up your Mail directory.

Install Scythe

Install Scythe as per the installation instructions. Now you can run Scythe for the first time:

Add clauses

The mail shown on the screen is defined by view clauses. We are going to add two clauses to the current view. The first selects all mail in the inbox, the second selects unseen mail in all folders:

Obviously you need some mail in order for these clauses to select some messages. If you've freshly installed MH don't worry if Scythe still says "0 messages in view". We can list our current clauses with the vv command:

We want to make these clauses load automatically with Scythe, so we save them as the default view:

For more information on views see the view guide.

Viewing mail

To actually list the mail selected use the v command, or just press return without entering a command:

To open a message, enter the number on the command line:

Note that here, and in other places that take a number as an argument you can list multiple numbers separated by a space, use a range (such as "1-10" - the quotes matter) or use all to select everything.

Working with mail

To refile one or more messages into another folder use the r command:

To delete one or more messages use the d command:

See the command guide for more commands.

Quitting

The q command quits Scythe.

Sources

Scythe brings in mail from one or more sources. A pop3 account is an example source. For more information on setting up sources read the source guide.

Filtering

Scythe has the ability to process mail (either incoming or already incorporated) and either refile into different folders or delete using a flexible expression language. See the filter guide for more information.