.TH FACES 1
.SH NAME
faces, seemail, vwhois \-  mailbox interface
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B faces
[
.B -ih
] [
.B -m
.I maildir
]
.br
.B seemail
.br
.B vwhois
.I person
\&...
.SH DESCRIPTION
The
.I faces
command monitors incoming mail and
displays in its window a representation of the user's mail box
using a small image for each message.
The image is typically a portrait of the sender. Which image to 
display is determined by two directories /usr/$user/lib/face 
and /lib/face. Entries in /usr/$user/lib/face take priority over 
those in /lib/face. See 
.IR face (6),
for how these directories are organised.
.PP
If the user is running
.IR plumber (4),
.I faces
reacts to plumb messages to the
.B seemail
port,
typically from
.BR upas/fs ,
and is thus notified of message additions and deletions.
.PP
Right-clicking on a message icon causes that message to be `plumbed' to
.BR showmail .
A typical plumb action will be to display the message, such as by
the rule
.EX
    plumb start window mail -s $0
.EE
The
.IR acme (1)
mail reader listens to the
.B showmail
port automatically.
.PP
If the user is not running
.IR plumber ,
.I faces
reads the log file
.F /sys/log/mail
and right-clicking has no effect.
.PP
If arrows are visible, clicking on them will scroll the display.
Middle-clicking on the arrows scrolls to the end.
.PP
Starting
.B faces
with the
.B -i
flag causes
.B faces
to read the messages in
.BR /mail/fs/mbox
— or the mailboxes specified with the
.B -m
flag —
upon startup.
.PP
The
.B -m
option directs
.I faces
to watch for messages arriving in
.I maildir
instead of
.BR /mail/fs/mbox .
Multiple
.B -m
flags may be used to watch multiple mailboxes.
.PP
The
.B -h
flag causes a different, venerable behavior in which
the window displays the history of messages received
rather than the current state of the mail box.
In particular, faces are not removed from the screen when messages are deleted.
Also, in this mode clicking button 1 in the display will clear the window.
.PP
.I Seemail
is an
.IR rc (1)
script that invokes
.B faces
.BR -h .
.PP
.I Vwhois
tells
.I faces
to display the icons of the named
.IR persons ,
without sending a message.
.SH FILES
.BR /mail/fs/mbox   "   mail directory.
.SH SOURCE
.B /sys/src/cmd/faces
.br
.B /rc/bin/seemail
.br
.B /rc/bin/vwhois
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.IR mail (1),
.IR marshal (1),
.IR nedmail (1),
.IR plumber (4),
.IR face (6),
.IR plumb (6)