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Switching to the Mutt Email Client

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Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#91

Post by rekado »

szastupov wrote: post #78

I spent quiet some time setting up mutt or trying to make a real IDE out of vim or Emacs, but in the end it's just cargo cult and waste of time. There a modern email clients, IDEs, polished operating systems, etc., all built in this century. There is absolutely no need in wasting time scoring nerd points.

Emacs is not just an editor and mention it next to vim or mutt indicates that you misunderstand what Emacs tries to be.

Emacs gives you tight integration for everything that could possibly be represented as a buffer. Emacs is programmable glue between applications, a better "shell".

The desire to do all things in Emacs is because Emacs lets you do it and because it reduces context switching. For more on why one would want to make Emacs do things that are not traditionally the job of an editor, see also https://elephly.net/posts/2016-02-14-ilovefs-emacs.html

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#92

Post by pawadu »

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…

> how do you read mail on your phone

Some people use this to turn their smartphones into a laptop. I guess you can use it to read email too:

https://www.marcbilodeau.com/termux/

edit: this makes me want to buy a smartphone with physical keyboard. maybe I should pull the trigger on the Blackberry keyone...

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#93

Post by rekado »

skratlo wrote: post #35
godzillabrennus wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

He's not getting rich emails, he's only getting patches. Works for him. Wouldn't work for me.

He doesn't seem to get many patches. Most email discussions where I see him involved are, well, discussions. This rarely involves patches.

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#95

Post by branchless »

ziotom78 wrote: post #81
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 have to agree. After years using Thunderbird, I switched to mutt in 2015 and used it as my unique email client till a few months ago, when I switched back to Thunderbird. Despite its fantastic speed, the difficulty to handle attachments is what set me back. I am a researcher, and when my colleagues want to discuss results they have the nasty habit of sending plots and documents as email attachments. My most importa…

Mutt bg run:

https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/ppt-attachments-in-mutt/

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#96

Post by extra88 »

morganvachon wrote: post #73
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.

It's a use case thing. I would argue that for most people who actually still use email for communication with peers, images and attachments are an afterthought. For images, we have image hosting sites, and for attachments we have a plethora of cloud hosting services that allow you to send a link instead of the entire attachment. That said, there's a happy medium between console based email and bloated, buggy clients…

> for attachments we have a plethora of cloud hosting services that allow you to send a link instead of the entire attachment.

Is there an email client that, when you drag a file icon into the composition window, doesn't attach the file but instead uploads the file to cloud storage and inserts a link? Now that I think about it, that's basically what Apple Mail's Mail Drop feature does (file is uploaded to iCloud, I think on send, recipients don't have to use Apple Mail and the file only remains on the server 30 days).

Thinking about the usual steps to attach a file compared to including a link to a hosted file, I think the latter much more takes one mentally out of the composition mode to deal with the hosting/sharing; dragging in a file attachment

"I'm writing an email that references a file. I get out of email to find the file. I'm dragging the file into the message window. I'm sending the email, it seems like its taking longer to send because it's a large file attachment."

"I'm writing an email that references a file. I get out of email to find the file. I move (or copy) the file to my cloud storage place (Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.). I set the file to be shared. I copy the link to the file. I go back to my email and paste the link (or write some link text in HTML email and paste the URL). I'm sending the email."

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#97

Post by guyzmo »

seuss1969 wrote: post #3
stevekemp wrote: post #2

Console based mail-clients are very powerful and fast to use. I was a long-time mutt user before I started writing my own mail client, with complete scripting provided by Lua. Having a real scripting language allows a lot of useful features, at times using mutt felt a little bit too constrained, although it has a lot of features and is very very flexible in its own right: https://github.com/lumail/lumail

Then you should try looking at NeoMutt (www.neomutt.org). It's a pseudo fork of Mutt that has added a lot of new features. Recently it landed full Lua scripting support as well. Guess you're not the only one that was looking for more powerful configuration within mutt.

I'm guilty of the Lua feature, and even though it's only covering the existing muttrc API, it can already do quite a lot. The Lua feature is (not yet) turned on by default at compile time (and thus in systems distributions).

I'd be very happy to have more feedback and help to extend further that API and have some great scripts happening!

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#98

Post by sotojuan »

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.

Perfectly describes the kind of people that go all CLI :D

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#99

Post by mjhoy »

szastupov wrote: post #78

I spent quiet some time setting up mutt or trying to make a real IDE out of vim or Emacs, but in the end it's just cargo cult and waste of time. There a modern email clients, IDEs, polished operating systems, etc., all built in this century. There is absolutely no need in wasting time scoring nerd points.

> There is absolutely no need in wasting time scoring nerd points.

Well said.

But: I have been using mu4e + Emacs for email for about two years now. I would seriously recommend anyone who already uses Emacs -- and especially if you use org-mode -- to look into it. Not because you score nerd points for reading & composing email in Emacs (frankly, you look ridiculous) but because it might just hook in perfectly with your workflow. I hardly touch any of the power user features, I do very little customization, and still it is by far the best way for me to manage my email. I also use it side by side with a web client (both Fastmail and Gmail) and switch if I need to.

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#100

Post by szastupov »

nazri1 wrote: post #85
szastupov wrote: post #78

I spent quiet some time setting up mutt or trying to make a real IDE out of vim or Emacs, but in the end it's just cargo cult and waste of time. There a modern email clients, IDEs, polished operating systems, etc., all built in this century. There is absolutely no need in wasting time scoring nerd points.

The thing is an IDE can only do so much - depending solely on the IDE mean your ability to change/refactor the code is limited to exactly what the IDE gives you. If you need to do something that the IDE can't do for you then you're stuck. This is when being competent in Vim/Emacs/Shell is an advantage.

But you can extend IDEs just as well as you extend your vim/emacs. Not to mention, that for some users it's more convenient to hack extensions in Python (Sublime), Javascript/Coffee (Atom) or Typescript (vscode), rather than in weird dialect of lisp (lisp is cool, I encourage everyone to go and read SICP, but not elisp) or even worse, vim script.
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