Imported Upstream version 1.98

[pkg/t-prot.git] / t-prot.1

.\" $Id: t-prot.1,v 1.97 2005/02/24 23:34:29 jochen Exp $
.\"
.TH T-PROT "1" "Feb 2005" "T-PROT"
.SH NAME
t-prot \- TOFU Protection - Display Filter for RFC 822 messages
.SH SYNOPSIS
.BI "t-prot [" OPTIONS "]..."
.SH DESCRIPTION
.PP
This program is a filter which shall improve the readability
for messages (emails and posts) by *hiding* some annoying parts,
e.g. mailing list footers, signatures, and TOFU (see definition below),
as well as squeezing sequences of blank lines or punctuation.
.br
The filter is written in Perl and relies on input to be a single
message conforming to RFC 822 or it's successor, RFC 2822. Messages
conforming to RFCs 2045, 2046 and 2049 should be treated reasonably
correct.
.PP
For easy usage, you can download a file to be included in your ~/.muttrc:
.I http://www.escape.de/users/tolot/mutt/t-prot/muttrc.t-prot
.br
And here is an example S-Lang macro to use t-prot from within slrn:
.I http://www.escape.de/users/tolot/mutt/t-prot/t-prot.sl
.SH OPTIONS
.TP
.BR "\-A" =DIRECTORY
"ad footer directory":
Defines the directory which contains the advertisement list footers (one
footer per file) which are to be tested when removing them with options
.B -a
or
.BR --ftr-ad .
.br
This option is also needed if you do not want signature lengths to be
counted wrong or fullquotes get undetected when an ad footer is
appended at the bottom of the message (especially when using 
.B "\-S"
or
.BR "\-t" ).
.TP
.B "\-a"
"commercial signature":
Hides "footers" (signatures) from commercial email providers.
.br
This option compares the last lines of the message body with any
footer file found in the directory specified with
.BR "\-A" =DIRECTORY
(which is mandatory for this option). The comparison is done by perl's
.B index()
function (please try
.I perldoc -f index
for details).
.sp
.IR NOTE :
This option is not needed if
.B --ftr-ad
is specified.
.TP
.BR "\-\-bigq" [=n[,x]]
"shrink big quotes":
Blocks of quotes with more than n lines will be shrinked to x lines.
Defaults are 30 for n and 10 for x.
.TP
.B "\-c"
"compress":
Squeezes a sequence of blank lines to two blank lines at maximum.
.TP
.BR "\-\-check" [=FLAGS]
Run checks. If successful, print an error message and quit with
an appropriate exit code. Useful e.g. for rejecting messages from
within INN2.
.IP
Flags are separated by commas (no whitespaces), and can be the
following (right now just one flag):
.IP
.IR ratio [=n]
.br
If the quoting ratio is n or more, the message is rejected. Must be
between 0 and 1, or else it is entirely disabled.
.TP
.B "\-d, \-\-debug"
"debug":
Print envelope info to syslog when bouncing TOFU contaminated email.
Default syslog facility is mail.debug. Requires
.BR \-p .
.TP
.B "\-\-diff"
"tolerate diff":
Tolerate unified diff (see 
.BR diff (1)
and
.BR patch (1))
appended *after* the signature (which usually makes the signature too long
to be valid). Not entirely consequent but sometimes useful, e.g. at the
Linux kernel mailing list.
.TP
.B "\-e"
"ellipsis":
Squeezes a sequence of four or more dots, exclamation marks, or question marks
to only three dots or marks, respectively.
.TP
.B "\-\-ftr\-ad"
"enable aggressive ad footer matching":
With this option enabled t-prot makes footer detection really greedy: We
assume that commercial email providers aren't even frightened to append
changing texts *under* their ads which are appended to the message body.
Because these texts even have changing *lengths* we simply detect the
lines of the footer *anywhere* in the body of the message and assume that
everything below belongs to the footer. (Man, if life where always that
easy! ;)
.br
With this option even GMX ads should be easy to hide -- you buy this with
a slight performance hit (which is the reason this option is disabled by
default), and with the possibility that sometimes the algorithm is just a
little *too* greedy.
.sp
.IR NOTE :
This requires a directory with footer files to be given with option
.BR "\-A" =DIRECTORY.
.TP
.B "\-\-ftr\-ml"
"enable aggressive mailing list footer matching":
With this option enabled t-prot makes footer detection really greedy: Should
be helpful with broken list servers, or even if your email provider munges
the bodies of your messages.
.br
Works similar to --ftr-ad, just that it is intended for mailing list footers.
.sp
.IR NOTE :
This requires a directory with footer files to be given with option
.BR "\-L" =DIRECTORY.
.TP
.B "\-h, \-\-help"
"help":
Displays a short help text with a summary on all options, and exits.
.TP
.BR "\-i" =FILE
"input file":
Defines a file for input; the default input is from '-' i.e. STDIN.
.TP
.B "\-k"
"anti Kammquote":
Tries to fix those broken zig-zag-shaped lines wrapped around by some MUAs
which are known as "Kammquoting" in German.
.sp
Note: This option is considered stable by now. However, sometimes Kammquotes
should have been removed but weren't. Please send a bug report if this happens
to you (after carefully reading the BUGS file, that is).
.TP
.BR "\-\-kminl" =n
Minimum line length for wrapped line detection on Kammquotes. Umm, don't
know how to explain this well without describing the complete algorithm
used. Please see the code.
.br
Anyway, lower values make the algorithm more aggressive, higher values
make Kammquotes harder to detect. Default is 65.
.sp
Requires
.BR "\-k" .
.TP
.BR "\-\-kmaxl" =n
Maximum line length for wrapped line detection on Kammquotes. Umm, don't
know how to explain this well without describing the complete algorithm
used. Please see the code.
.br
Anyway, higher values make the algorithm more aggressive, lower values
make Kammquotes harder to detect. Default is 80.
.sp
Requires
.BR "\-k" .
.TP
.BR "\-\-kdiff" =n
Minimum length difference between two lines for wrapped line detection on
Kammquotes. Umm, don't know how to explain this well without describing
the complete algorithm used. Please see the code.
.br
Anyway, lower values make the algorithm more aggressive, higher values
make Kammquotes harder to detect. Default is 20.
.sp
Requires
.BR "\-k" .
.TP
.BR "\-L" =DIRECTORY
"list footer directory":
Defines the directory which contains the mailing list footers (one footer
per file) which are to be tested when removing them with the options
.B \-l
or
.BR \-\-ftr\-ml .
.br
This option is also needed if you do not want signature lengths to be
counted wrong or fullquotes get undetected when a mailing list footer is
appended at the bottom of the message (especially when using 
.B "\-S"
or
.BR "\-t" ).
.TP
.B "\-l"
"list signature":
Hides "footers" (signatures) from mailing lists. Footer detection works like the 
.B "\-a"
option.
.sp
.IR NOTE :
This requires a directory with footer files to be given with option
.BR "\-L" =DIRECTORY.
.B \-l
is not needed if
.B \-\-ftr\-ml
is specified.
.TP
.B "\-\-lax\-security"
Allow insecure writing method. DO NOT USE UNLESS YOU REALLY KNOW WHAT
YOU ARE DOING. (This ugly workaround is needed for some early mutt versions
and should NEVER be used as a default, otherwise it will probably turn into
a security issue.)
.TP
.BR "\-\-locale" =LOCALE
"locale to use":
Here you can specify which locale to use. Right now this option is only
used when
.I "\-Mmutt"
is specified, but this may change in future. You need the Perl module
.I "Locale::gettext"
for this feature.
.sp
.IR Note :
If you use
.B mutt
or
.B gnupg
with locales, t-prot will only work correctly if you specify the corresponding
locale string.
.sp
.IR "Note also" :
You also have to make sure you are running t-prot
with matching
.B gnupg
and 
.B mutt
versions. T-prot detects
.B gnupg
and
.B mutt
locales of the recent stable versions of those programs, earlier versions
might not work well with a recent version of t-prot. There are patches available
to make t-prot fit into environments with old
.B mutt
and
.B gnupg
versions.
.TP
.B "\-m"
"Microsoft TOFU":
Hides TOFU as given by some Microsoft mailers. (You all surely know these
fullquotes beginning with
.br
"----- Original Message -----"
.br
and some header lines...)
.TP
.B "\-\-ms\-smart"
Burn CPU cycles trying to be smart with MS style TOFU.
.sp
Please note that this is probably just a waste of time because most
MS Outlook users who do produce this kind of TOFU won't care about
making their messages the least bit readable or even predictable. So
this option will probably just be interesting for mutt message hooks
(to activate it on demand when you
.BR know " the sender tries to write legible messages)."
.sp
Requires
.BR "\-Mmutt" " and"
.BR "\-m" .
.TP
.BR "\-M, \-\-mua" =MUA
"mail user agent":
Turn on special treatment for some mail user agents. (Right now only 
.BR mutt (1)
is supported, but more might be added in future.)
.IR Caveat :
If your MUA is supported by this feature you must ensure t-prot makes
use of it when called from within your MUA to work as desired.
.TP
.BR "\-o" =FILE
"output file":
Define the file to be written *to*; the default output is to STDOUT.
.sp
If "NONE" is specified as file name, there will be no output at all (useful
if all you need is t-prot's exit code). Use something like "./NONE" if you
really want to write to a file of this name.
.TP
.BR "\-p" [=ADDRESS]
"picky delivery":
If we really find some TOFU, abort with exit code 
.IR EX_UNAVAILABLE .
Otherwise redirect the message to ADDRESS if given.
.sp
Intended for use from within mail delivery agents (MDAs) or mail transport 
agents (MTAs), so the message bounces if TOFU is detected, and does not get
on *your* nerves. :) 
.sp
As an example for usage with
.BR sendmail ,
put this line into your alias file and invoke
.BR newaliases :
.sp
notofu: |"/usr/local/bin/t-prot -mt -p=user@mydomain"
.sp
This will bounce messages for <notofu@domainname> if any TOFU is detected
inside the message, and deliver it to <user@mydomain> otherwise.
.I Note
that TOFU is only detected if you specify
.B "\-t"
respectively
.BR "\-m" .
.sp
.B PLEASE be careful not to bounce messages to mailing lists!
.TP
.BR "\-P" =MESSAGE
"user defined bounce message for picky delivery": 
You may specify your own bounce message to be returned when we try to deliver
an email and bounce it because there is TOFU inside.
.TP
.B \-\-pgp\-move
Move pgp verification output to bottom; requires
.BR "\-Mmutt" .
.TP
.B \-\-pgp\-move\-vrf
Move pgp verification outout to bottom only if verification shows a good signature
and the signature could be verified as authentic (using a trust path). If there is
any problem with the signature, the pgp output should not be moved so the user is
more likely to notice. Requires
.BR "\-Mmutt" .
.sp
.IR Note :
If gpg is terminated before finished (e.g. hitting Ctrl-C, or using
.IR kill (1)),
we cannot always detect if the check was interrupted. Though t-prot tries
to be smart, there will be false positives.
.TP
.B \-\-pgp\-short
Hide non-relevant pgp key uids; requires
.BR "\-Mmutt" .
.TP
.B "\-r"
"rip header off":
Hides all mail header lines.
.TP
.BR "\-S" [=n]
"supression of overlong signatures":
Signatures are to be n lines (not including the one containing dash-dash-space)
or less. If there are more, it is probably not that spirited after all. So
with this option you trade it for a
.B truely
nice line.
.br
If no n is given, default is 4. (\fINote\fR: We do not recommend using a 
value other than 4. Consider this old-fashioned, but we actually do *like*
RFC conformance.)
.sp
.IR Note :
The line containing "-- " ist not counted when testing for an overlong 
signature, but it is included when displaying how many lines were deleted.
.TP
.B "\-s"
"signature deletion":
Hides signatures, i.e. all lines after a "signature dashes" line,
i.e. a line with three characters: dash-dash-space (no more, no less).
.TP
.BR "\-\-sigsmax" [=n]
"maximum number of tolerated signatures":
Here you can define how many signatures you accept to be treated as such.
(Most significant behaviour is when microsoft style quotes are removed.
Experts please see the code for the more subtle implications of this
option.)
.br
Leave empty or specify zero to have an unlimited number of sigs. 
Default is 1.
.TP
.B "\-\-spass"
"SpamAssassin workaround":
SpamAssassin (available at
.IR http://spamassassin.org/ ") often is configured that it adds some"
lines to the message body containing information about the spam criteria
which were found matching for the message. This option enables an extra
test to avoid false positives for Microsoft style TOFU on such messages.
.TP
.B "\-t"
"TOFU deletion":
Hides "traditional style" TOFU, where each line begins with an
indent string like "> ".
.br
(You may edit the indent pattern in the script itself to suit your needs,
but it is surely
.I not
recommended at all.)
.TP
.B "\-w"
"whitespace deletion":
Hides trailing whitespace (sequences of space and tab).
CAVEAT: This may lead to interesting effects with crossposts
between mailing lists or with undetected signature attempts.
.TP
.B "\-v, \-\-version"
"version info":
Prints the current version number and release date, and exit.
.SH TOFU?
TOFU is an abbreviation which mixes German and English words;
it expands to "text oben, full-quote unten" which means
"text above - full quote below" and describes the style of so
many users who let their mailer or newsreader quote everything
of the previous message and just add some text at the top;
obviously they think that quoted text must not be changed at all.
This is quite annoying as it needlessly sends a lot of data
even when it is not required. Some editing of messages is desired.
Please point these people to the page 
.I http://www.river.com/users/share/etiquette/edit.html
- thank you!
.SH TROUBLESHOOTING
.TP
.IR Q :
I want to make my mailing list footer files match more different mailing
list footers. Can I use regular expressions, or how can I accomplish that?
.TP
.IR A :
Nope, regexp's do not work here. The comparison is made by the perl builtin
.IR index ()
function (see 
.B perldoc
for more detailed info), so you must exactly match the beginning of the
line. The longer the line you specify, the more precise the match; if
your line is empty you match unconditionally.
.PP
.TP
.IR Q :
I use the options -l and -L to supress mailing list footers when 
displaying messages in
.BR mutt (1).
This does work sometimes, but sometimes it does not: the footer is not
detected, and therefore full quotes are not deleted and signatures are
detected as too long (which they aren't).
.TP
.IR A :
This might occur if the message is badly encoded, so mutt cannot resolve
all encoded characters, e.g. if you have an encoded message on a mailing
list, and majordomo appends a mailing list footer in a different encoding
(or even plain us-ascii). "-- " simply does not match "--=20". 
.br
Another problem are non-us-ascii characters. Just avoid them, and 
everything should work fine.
.br
See the preceding Q+A for a solution.
.PP
.TP
.IR Q :
I want to write a message which contains parts that should *not* be 
deleted even when filtered with t-prot. Is this possible?
.TP
.IR A :
Yes, but please do not spread word of it. Make unobstrusive use of the
.I
verbatim
instruction:
.sp
#v+
.br
This line is protected from being filtered by t-prot !!!!!!!
.br
#v-
.br
Text coming now is not.
.SH AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT
Written by Jochen Striepe <t-prot@tolot.escape.de>.
.br
Copyright \(co 2001-2005 Jochen Striepe.
.PP
This is free software; you may use the source to whatever you like.
Just keep in mind to mention the original source of the script and the manpage
when you give it away. There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or 
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
.SH IDEAS AND INSPIRATION
Many good ideas, bug reports and support from (in alphabetical order) Bjoern
Buerger, Bjoern Laessig, Christian Borss, Gerfried Fuchs, Martin Neitzel, Martin
Dietze, Ralf Doeblitz, Sven Guckes and many more (see the ChangeLog for active
contributors). Many thanks to all of them!
.sp
Many thanks to Gerhard H. Wrodnigg who uses a TOFU protection script
in order to keep the responses to his cancel bot reasonably short.  The
entire inspiration for this hack came from the "TOFU protection" line of
his script on many usenet postings.
.SH AVAILIBILITY
You can get the latest version from
.IR http://www.escape.de/users/tolot/mutt/ .
.SH BUGS
Please note that t-prot development happens on
.BR "current stable perl versions only" . 
If you do run t-prot on earlier (or unstable) perl versions, you might
encounter perl compiler bugs (or funny t-prot behaviour). One solution
is to upgrade your perl, another is simply to write a bug report. If
you do not run a current perl version, please include this information
in your bug report. Thank you.
.PP
There is a problem when mutt gives a PGP verified or even a multipart
message to t-prot: The information where the PGP encrypted/signed data
or even attachments begin and end is plainly embedded in the text, not
really cleanly recognizeable for t-prot. The problem should be worked
around by now, please send a bug report if it does not work for you.
.PP
There probably are many more bugs in this piece of software. Feel free to
fix them - it's
.BR perl ,
so you have the sources. Ah, and while you're at it, please drop a note to
the author - thanks in advance! 
.SH "REPORTING BUGS"
Please send your bug report to <t-prot-bugs@tolot.escape.de>.
.SH TODO
Fix bugs (see the 
.I BUGS
section). Beside that, all main features should be implemented by now.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR mutt (1),
.BR muttrc (5)
and the part about "display_filter", 
.BR perl (1),
.BR aliases (5),
RFCs 822, 2045, 2046, 2049, and 2822,
.I http://got.to/quote/
(German language), 
.I http://www.river.com/users/share/etiquette/edit.html
(the Learn To Edit Messages HowTo has found a new home).