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Switching to the Mutt Email Client

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Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#61

Post by krylon »

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.

> Normal people don't put images in emails.

I am not sure of your definition of normal. ;-)

Part of my duties at work include help desk and maintenance of a few pieces of software. I get eMail with screen shots of error messages on a fairly regular basis.

(Personally, I have made my peace with HTML eMail, what I really dislike are those humongous email signatures with corporate logos and silly disclaimers that often dwarf the email body itself.)

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#62

Post by bananaboy »

torrent-of-ions wrote: post #18

I started using emacs for email back in my uni days. I used Dovecot to run an IMAP server locally which would get my mail when it could. This made it very quick in emacs because it wouldn't have to wait for any remote server. But, unfortunately, I had to go back to Thunderbird. With the exception of free software mailing lists, people simply do not know how to use email. Bottom quoting is the default. We can thank Mi…

I agree, it's a losing battle. Such a shame. I have one or two friends who quote inline, and I love getting emails from them. They look so clean and readable. But it's pointless trying to do it with most people because most people don't reply with inline quotes and just top post and it ends up as a godawful mess. So I barely even bother any more myself. I die a little every time.

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#63

Post by diegoprzl »

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.

I used mu4e in Emacs. For HTML and images there is a view in browser function.

Now I use Claws Mail with Emacs as the editor. This solution lacks integration with Org-Mode so I may end up going back to Emacs.

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#64

Post by kingosticks »

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #60
kingosticks wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

That does sound like a possible work-around, I might try moving to mutt again. But what about when you want to create one of those yourself? Or to reply inline to parts of theirs? How is that handled, do you write HTML?

One of the few reasons I have to mess around with NoMachine etc is for email, if I could get it in a terminal over ssh that'd be great. I did try a few years ago and after wasting a lot of time sorting the config, the lack of good reading experience for rich content emails was enough for me to dump the whole thing.

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#65

Post by taeric »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #22
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.

Richard Stallman (RMS) uses emacs for email as well. I can't imagine it. Too much valuable information comes in the form of rich emails for me to even try.

The only reason I still open Outlook regularly is to deal with calendar invites. Otherwise, gnus actually works just fine for email. Better, in many ways.

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#66

Post by taeric »

imurray wrote: post #20
torrent-of-ions wrote: post #18

I started using emacs for email back in my uni days. I used Dovecot to run an IMAP server locally which would get my mail when it could. This made it very quick in emacs because it wouldn't have to wait for any remote server. But, unfortunately, I had to go back to Thunderbird. With the exception of free software mailing lists, people simply do not know how to use email. Bottom quoting is the default. We can thank Mi…

if you do inline quoting, MS Outhouse web client thinks that everything after the beginning of the quotation is a copy of the previous message and folds the whole thing, meaning your recipients get back what looks like an empty message. Really. Gah; that explains it. Occasionally I get a reply saying "you just sent me a blank email", while the text of my email is quoted right there in the email they've just sent me!

Using gnus, Outlook sees my quotes correctly. You can also "wash" messages from others so they look right.

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#67

Post by taeric »

pmontra wrote: post #9

I used some good emacs mail client up to 1995, then the need to read Office attachments made me switch to some Windows client. HTML messages were not a thing yet. The switch was a regression in functionality for at least ten years, up to outbound filters in Thunderbird. Edit: third question, how do you read mail on your phone? A couple of questions for the author. How do you handle attachments and do you download mai…

I quit reading work mail on my phone. Has been a huge sanity booster.

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#68

Post by simion314 »

rtpg wrote: post #52
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.

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…

My GUI client blocks images by default and I almost never need to have the images display because all images are from advertising(maybe for other people use case they get more images)

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#69

Post by curiousGambler »

101km wrote: post #40
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?

There is a perverse kind of joy in making it work the hard way.

This is one of two honest answers to this question, thank you.

(The other is "I'm old enough to have been using text email since before graphical email clients were a thing and don't want to change.")

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#70

Post by tambourine_man »

curiousGambler wrote: post #69
101km wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a perverse kind of joy in making it work the hard way.

This is one of two honest answers to this question, thank you. (The other is "I'm old enough to have been using text email since before graphical email clients were a thing and don't want to change.")

There's also another. Navigating TUI with Vim key bindings is very fast
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