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AERC-TEMPLATES(7) Miscellaneous Information Manual AERC-TEMPLATES(7)

aerc-templates - template file specification for aerc(1)

aerc uses the go text/template package for the template parsing. Refer to the go text/template documentation for the general syntax.

Template files are composed of headers, followed by a newline, followed by the body text.

Example:

X-Clacks-Overhead: GNU Terry Pratchett
Hello,
Greetings,
Chuck

If you have a template that doesn't add any header, it must be preceded by a newline, to avoid parsing parts of the body as header text.

All headers defined in the template will have precedence over any headers that are initialized by aerc (e.g. Subject, To, From, Cc) when composing a new message, forwarding or replying.

The following data can be used in templates. Though they are not all available always.

Addresses

An array of mail.Address. That can be used to add sender or recipient names to the template.

•From: List of senders.
•To: List of To recipients. Not always Available.
•Cc: List of Cc recipients. Not always Available.
•Bcc: List of Cc recipients. Not always Available.
•OriginalFrom: List of senders of the original message. Available for quoted reply and forward.

Example:

Get the name of the first sender.

{{(index .From 0).Name}}

Get the email address of the first sender.

{{(index .From 0).Address}}

Date and Time

The date and time information is always available and can be easily formatted.

•Date: Date and time information when the compose window is opened.
•OriginalDate: Date and time when the original message of received. Available for quoted reply and forward.

To format the date fields, dateFormat and toLocal are provided. Refer to the TEMPLATE FUNCTIONS section for details.

Subject

The subject of the email is available for quoted reply and forward.

{{.Subject}}

MIME Type

MIME Type is available for quoted reply and forward.

•OriginalMIMEType: MIME type info of quoted mail part. Usually text/plain or text/html.

Original Message

When using quoted reply or forward, the original message is available in a field called OriginalText. 

{{.OriginalText}}

Besides the standard functions described in go's text/template documentation, aerc provides the following additional functions:

wrap

Wrap the original text to the specified number of characters per line. 

{{wrap 72 .OriginalText}}

quote

Prepends each line with "> ". 

{{quote .OriginalText}}

exec

Execute external command, provide the second argument to its stdin. 

{{exec `/usr/local/share/aerc/filters/html` .OriginalText}}

toLocal

Convert the date to the local timezone as specified by the locale. 

{{toLocal .Date}}

dateFormat

Format date and time according to the format passed as the second argument. The format must be specified according to go's time package format. 

{{dateFormat .Date "Mon Jan 2 15:04:05 -0700 MST 2006"}}

version

Returns the version of aerc, which can be useful for things like X-Mailer. 

X-Mailer: aerc {{version}}

Function chaining

All of the template functions can be chained together if needed.

Example: Automatic HTML parsing for text/html mime type messages

{{if eq .OriginalMIMEType "text/html"}}
{{exec `/usr/local/share/aerc/filters/html` .OriginalText | wrap 72 | quote}}
{{else}}
{{wrap 72 .OriginalText | quote}}
{{end}}

aerc(1) aerc-config(5)

Originally created by Drew DeVault <sir@cmpwn.com> and maintained by Robin Jarry <robin@jarry.cc> who is assisted by other open source contributors. For more information about aerc development, see https://sr.ht/~rjarry/aerc/.

2023-04-23