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Switching to the Mutt Email Client

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Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#101

Post by dagw »

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.

Normal people send me pictures in emails all the time. Very often it's a screenshot of something where they have drawn a circle around some part and written some variation of "this part is wrong" or "can you take a closer look at this".

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#102

Post by szastupov »

rekado wrote: post #91
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…

I get the point about Emacs being a OS, but don't you think it's kind of a dated clunky OS? Like "Mac OS 9" was, lacking memory protection and pre-emptive multitasking. Why would anyone want to be limited by technology when the rest of the world is moving forward?

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#103

Post by pge »

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 mutt for several years as my primary email client. Once I got it configured, I was able to handle attachments reasonably well. The thing that killed it for me was inability to integrate with Exchange server at my office, for accessing addresses when sending and for responding to calendar invitations.

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#104

Post by icebraining »

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.

Setting up? What is there to set up? You configure your account info just like in any other client, and off you go.

I use Alpine for personal email and Gmail for my work email, and I've wasted more time configuring the latter than the former.

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#105

Post by bluedino »

extra88 wrote: post #96
morganvachon wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

>> 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?

Trillian is IM, but I believe it works that way

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#106

Post by icebraining »

szastupov wrote: post #102
rekado wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I get the point about Emacs being a OS, but don't you think it's kind of a dated clunky OS? Like "Mac OS 9" was, lacking memory protection and pre-emptive multitasking. Why would anyone want to be limited by technology when the rest of the world is moving forward?

The roots of the current macOS are much older than the classic Mac OS. Is that moving forward? What does it even mean?

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#107

Post by bluedino »

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.

They shouldn't but they do. Almost every time someone sends me an image I think of a better place they could have put it. Attached to the ticket in our ticketing system, in our bug database, on our file server, etc

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#108

Post by angry_octet »

I love mutt and tin (Network News, google it youngsters), and I persisted in sending plain text email for many years, even signed it with pgp. I snickered many times over the years as people got hacked by their own email clients. I sent back 'Meeting Invite' emails to people who couldn't draft a proper meeting request using words.

But ultimately when gmail came along I realised there was a better way. It is only a problem that we give up our privacy and agency by using Google's software and computers. And nobody was checking my PGP signatures anyway.

If you feel like you want to get the benefits of a nice email GUI, in a sandboxed browser, but also want privacy and some control, check out Mailpile:

https://www.mailpile.is/

It isn't finished, but it is promising.

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#109

Post by icebraining »

TurboHaskal wrote: post #26

Ugh, no thanks. I already use enough arcane tools on a daily basis due to my work. For mundane stuff like reading and sending mail, I'd rather take a break and use tools that even my tech illiterate father could effectively use. It's really detoxicating to become a normie from time to time. Disclaimer: Used to read mail with emacs back in the day. Tried mutt for a while.

Doing like the "normies" is switching from a decent red wine to piss beer. Not what I would call detoxicating.

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#110

Post by upofadown »

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.

In mutt you just hit "v" for instant access to the images/attachments/{html only emails} ... which is as fast and convenient as security conscious graphical clients that don't show images by default. I really don't want my client to run an html interpreter without forethought.
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