12 The Speedbar

You can also use the speedbar (see the section Speedbar Frames in The GNU Emacs Manual) to view your folders. To bring up the speedbar, run M-x speedbar <RET>. You will see a new frame appear with all of your MH folders. Folders with unseen messages appear in boldface. Click on a folder name with Mouse-2 to visit that folder in a similar fashion to the command F v (mh-visit-folder) (see Folders). Click on the ‘+’ icon to expand and view the sub-folders of that folder.

The speedbar can be manipulated with the keyboard as well. Use the Emacs navigational keys (like the arrow keys, or C-n) to move the cursor over the desired folder and then use the shortcuts for the menu items listed in the table below.

‘Visit Folder (<RET>)’

Visits the selected folder just as if you had used F v (mh-speed-view).

‘Expand Nested Folders (+)’

Expands the selected folder in the speedbar, exposing the children folders inside it (mh-speed-expand-folder).

‘Contract Nested Folders (-)’

Contracts or collapses the selected folder in the speedbar, hiding the children folders inside it (mh-speed-contract-folder).

‘Refresh Speedbar (r)’

Regenerates the list of folders in the speedbar. Run this command if you've added or deleted a folder, or want to update the unseen message count before the next automatic update (mh-speed-refresh).

You can click on Mouse-3 to bring up a context menu that contains these items. Dismiss the speedbar with C-x 5 0 (delete-frame).

The MH-E speedbar uses the MH command flists¹ to generate the list of folders. The ‘mh-speedbar’ customization group contains the following option which controls how often the speedbar calls flists.

mh-speed-update-interval

Time between speedbar updates in seconds (default: 60). Set to 0 to disable automatic update.

You can modify the appearance of the folders in the speedbar by customizing the following faces.

mh-speedbar-folder

Basic folder face.

mh-speedbar-folder-with-unseen-messages

Folder face when folder contains unread messages.

mh-speedbar-selected-folder

Selected folder face.

mh-speedbar-selected-folder-with-unseen-messages

Selected folder face when folder contains unread messages.