Ask HN: Best Command Line Email Client?

I've used Alpine / Elm / Mutt. I've used gMail / Yahoo Mail / HotMail. I've used Evolution. I don't like any of them.

I spend 90%+ of my time on urxvt/screen/emacs/irssi. If I can get a email client that integrates nicely into this, it'd be ideal. What I think I really want is something that allows me to FUSE mount my email directory. So I can cd into my directories, ls to see new messages, write messages in a directory, and move them into ~/Mailbox/send/ ... to have them sent, etc ...

Anyone know of anything remotely like this? (Or a really cool email setup they use themselves.)

[On, on the FUSE side, I really like this since it allows me to use tools like grep, rm, sed / awk, ... to do funky things with my email.]

You want mh (mail handler) or perhaps a modern variant. I haven't used it in over a decade, but it's totally command line. Messages are actually files and folders are directories, so there's no need for FUSE or any wierd hacks like that. And there's a pretty decent emacs mode.

I think I'm going to use this for some week.

Mutt -> Gmail -> Sup ? I hope so.

After the first 10 minutes of testing, imported my gmail account, wrote few test emails, I don't think this is really read for prime time. Also does not play well with my messing with my IMAP account via other clients. Is slower than gmail since for some reason the IMAP account is accessed to retrieve messages when I open a thread.

Btw to be able to write new emails with vim again is a joy... Still almost everything Sup is doing is in theory possible to do in a web-based or resident application with improved font rendering, simple icons to signal status of messages and so on.

Remember xchat? This IRC client had a lesson, it was possible to retain everything of good there was in text-only IRC clients, and add the good stuff of GUIs. The nerd email client I'm waiting for is something like this.

Fast: just scan IMAP for new messages but take everything local otherwise.

Great interface: mixed between curses but with improved rendering and config menus thanks to GUI toolkit or even web-based can be ok.

Easy to configure: unlike mutt for example. Spun is nice from this POV at least for the first steps.

Give me my editor: if resident, fire vim for me in some way, otherwise implement a decent editor with vim and emacs key bindings if it's web based.

It's worth to note that even a web-mail can be scriptable, using javascript.