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Switching to the Mutt Email Client

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Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#51

Post by jstanley »

collyw wrote: post #38
grive wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Images are opened like any image on your system: by using an image viewer. For non-text formats, I only deal with HTML. For them, I pipe the mail through a terminal-based browser before reading it. All of this is done automatically, literally a one-line configuration in the proper file, a thing that is explained at length in most mutt guides.

Wouldn't it just be easier to use a graphical client that does that sort of thing by default?

Graphical email clients are universally buggy and slow. That's the advantage of mutt.

That said, I still find Thunderbird better than mutt, even though it takes ages to do anything and crashes 3 times a day.

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#52

Post by rtpg »

grive wrote: post #31
MikeTaylor wrote: post #21

This is all very nice, but the fact that the article doesn't even _mention_ images or attachments shows how divorced it is from the reality of most people's email experience. I happily used emacs as my mail-reader from 1989 to about 2009 (first RMAIL mode, then VM). The increasing importance of non-text formats made it cumbersome, and I somewhat reluctantly switched to GMail. It's hard to imagine switching back now.

Images are opened like any image on your system: by using an image viewer. For non-text formats, I only deal with HTML. For them, I pipe the mail through a terminal-based browser before reading it. All of this is done automatically, literally a one-line configuration in the proper file, a thing that is explained at length in most mutt guides.

No one is questioning one's ability to look at an image attachment through an image viewer. I think you know this, which makes this sort of reply doubly frustrating.

Think about how word processors were a thing so early in personal computers, despite then actually being some of the most complicated bits of software one can build. What are e-mails if not documents?

Having some control over formatting (at least in the semantic sense, like HTML) is a core part of using computers for a huge part of the population. Yes, even the people using only their phone. People like bolding text.

A lot of people aren't good at it, but a lot of people aren't good at talking either.

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#53

Post by simias »

oblio wrote: post #15

I feel that the folks that do this aren't working for big companies. In most big companies you can't really afford to do any email client shenanigans. You probably need to see HTML emails, handle calendar invites, etc.

Calendar invites are just attachments, you can handle them in external scripts and programs any way you like. Personally I just display them in plain text next to the email, but if you wanted to interface them with your calendar application I'm sure there are plenty of scripts doing that out there.

As for HTML email, what I take from this entire thread is that I either I've been extremely lucky so far or people in general vastly overestimate the importance of it. For one thing, most decent services will send multipart/alternative emails that are suitable for plain text display.

For instance Amazon's emails use rich HTML features, but they also have a text/plain alternative that works perfectly in a text client and carries the same informations. And when there's only HTML the vast majority of the time it's still mostly text with some light styling and it works just fine (sometimes better) in text mode.

The main problem working in big companies and using mutt as my client is that most of the time those systems have a 2nd class non-compliant IMAP servers and you have to go through oops to reliably receive and send your email. I always managed to get it to work after some tweaking though.

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#54

Post by erikb »

MikeTaylor wrote: post #21

This is all very nice, but the fact that the article doesn't even _mention_ images or attachments shows how divorced it is from the reality of most people's email experience. I happily used emacs as my mail-reader from 1989 to about 2009 (first RMAIL mode, then VM). The increasing importance of non-text formats made it cumbersome, and I somewhat reluctantly switched to GMail. It's hard to imagine switching back now.

attachments yes, but images? There's literally zero reason to have any images in emails. Use Dropbox/Owncloud/Instagram/etc links if you want to share pictures. That's more handy for other people anyway instead of handling 2 gig of attachments for seeing your email on their smart phone.

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#55

Post by erikb »

Headline: Huuuuugely important topic, give me content!

Opening the text: That looks like 5% of what people need to get started. If you could summarize it to such a degree everybody would use mutt.

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#56

Post by pilif »

jstanley wrote: post #51
collyw wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it just be easier to use a graphical client that does that sort of thing by default?

Graphical email clients are universally buggy and slow. That's the advantage of mutt. That said, I still find Thunderbird better than mutt, even though it takes ages to do anything and crashes 3 times a day.

> Graphical email clients are universally buggy and slow. That's the advantage of mutt.

that's what they said back in the early 2000s too, so I tried it, but I was appalled by the horrible support for message threading and IMAP support that was missing most of the features you'd expect an IMAP client to have plus the stuff that was there was full of bugs.

I'm sure this has gotten better by now, but a blanket statement of "Graphical clients are buggy" is totally not valid. All software has bugs and depending on your priorities some might be worse than others.

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#57

Post by [deleted] »

user5994461 wrote: post #43
chii wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the only images i find are either from spammy adverts or tracking pixels. Normal people don't put images in emails. As for attachments, you can open them in their native programs just fine.

Normal people absolutely put images in their emails. Email clients like gmail/outlook put images in the content of the email (NOT an attachment) when you drag/drop files onto the window or when you copy/paste a picture inside the mail. There was a time when this all went to attachment, that is not the case anymore.

[deleted]

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#58

Post by jk2323 »

I tried Mutt a long time ago but did not like it (may not even got it to work properly).

I always like Pine/Alpine. I only moved to Thunderbird, which is buggy and a resource hog, after I had to handle a dozen email accounts.

Question: How are many POP/IMAP accounts are currently handled under Pine/Alpine? Possible?

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#59

Post by huskyr »

chii wrote: post #23
MikeTaylor wrote: post #21

This is all very nice, but the fact that the article doesn't even _mention_ images or attachments shows how divorced it is from the reality of most people's email experience. I happily used emacs as my mail-reader from 1989 to about 2009 (first RMAIL mode, then VM). The increasing importance of non-text formats made it cumbersome, and I somewhat reluctantly switched to GMail. It's hard to imagine switching back now.

the only images i find are either from spammy adverts or tracking pixels. Normal people don't put images in emails. As for attachments, you can open them in their native programs just fine.

I suppose you have never worked together with a designer (but maybe those are not normal people).

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#60

Post by yakshaving_jgt »

kingosticks wrote: post #46
JoshTriplett wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Normal people then don't use email for creative work involving designs, mockups, sketches, etc. Sure they do, by attaching them.

Inline images are incredibly helpful when explaining things via email, which can be hard enough as it is. Imagine a textbook where all the diagrams were at the end of the chapter and you had to keep flicking between pages to refer to them. You have to imagine that as it doesn't exist, for some reason.

My colleague makes these images-with-commentary emails every week. For when I need to view those, I hit `H` in mutt, which opens the email in my web browser.

It's all quite painless really.

https://github.com/jezen/dotfiles/blob/master/.mutt/muttrc#L...

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