IMAIL provides several variables and commands to give you control over how messages are formatted in the message buffer.
By default, IMAIL automatically wraps long lines at the right
margin. It uses adaptive fill1 to do the wrapping, which means that common prefixes
such as `>' and `Chris>' will be automatically copied down
with the wrapped line. Generally, this wrapping makes messages easier
to read. Specifically, it is important for messages sent by clients
that use “soft” line breaks, because such clients expect the mail
reader to wrap lines. However, if you'd rather not have IMAIL
do this for you, you can disable wrapping by setting the variable
Another feature of IMAIL is that it filters message headers,
showing you only the most relevant ones. There are two variables that
control how this is done, and a command that can override the filtering.
imail-kept-headers contains a list of regular
expressions that are matched against message-header names (the name is
everything to the left of the colon, e.g. `From' in `From:
imail-kept-headers is a non-empty list, then only the
headers matching those regular expressions are shown. Furthermore, the
shown headers will be in the same order as the regular expressions.
imail-kept-headers is an empty list, then all of the message
headers are shown, except those matching the regular expression that is
the value of the variable
imail-ignored-headers. By default, the
imail-ignored-headers contains some common uninteresting
header names; this expression is identical to the default used by Rmail.
imail-ignored-headers is a single regular expression,
imail-kept-headers is a list of regular expressions. This
imail-ignored-headers is meant to be an exact analog
of the Rmail variable
Regardless of how the message-header filtering is done, you can toggle
between viewing the filtered headers and the unfiltered headers using
the t command (
imail-toggle-header). If filtered headers
are shown, this command replaces them with unfiltered headers, and vice
As you can see, IMAIL performs extensive transformation of a mail message before presenting it to you: MIME formatting, line wrapping, and header filtering. Sometimes, it's desirable to see the original message, exactly as it was received, without any formatting at all. The command C-c C-t C-m toggles the entire message between a formatted view and a raw view. This should be used with care, as a message with a large attachment might not fit in memory in its raw form.
 See the online help for
adaptive-fill-regexp for more information about