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Switching to the Mutt Email Client

nullprogram.com

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Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#121

Post by e40 »

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'm surprised no one has mentioned MH-E. I've used it continuously since the 80's. About 15 years ago it got multipart MIME support, which has improved every year. I can handle attachments like a boss. I even wrote a filtering system that sits on top of it (a replacement for the inc program that sorts into different inboxes).

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#123

Post by icebraining »

sotojuan wrote: post #114
icebraining wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This kind of attitude is not helpful. Sometimes even tech people want things that work "good enough" with no configuration or thinking involved. No need to go full normie.

I'm not trying to be helpful. But I find this worry about having to configure CLI tools to be overstated. Just because they allow you to configure everything doesn't mean you have to. My personal email setup is: "sudo apt install alpine", configure account info, done.

You don't even have to memorize the action keys, Alpine shows the available actions for the current screen at the bottom, with helpful labels. It's arguably clearer than Gmail, with its unlabeled icons.

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#124

Post by cmiles74 »

preek wrote: post #5

Interestingly, I went the other way. I used to have mutt for years, then went through a dark phase (macOS Mail.app, Evernote and Things) and finally concluded to Emacs with mu4e. Integrating mail with Emacs was the best idea ever, because Emails include either todos or serve as reference in projects. Creating todos from Mails as well as linking to them from org-mode is only a shortcut away. I have never had a more ea…

I use Emacs (with Spacemacs) + Notmuch with mbsync to pull in new mail and msmtp for sending mail. It works pretty well and it's easy to find old messages, which is the sort of thing I need the most from my email.

There are lots of these around, but if you're interested in trying it out I have a pretty simple Spacemacs layer for Notmuch as well.

https://github.com/cmiles74/spacemacs-notmuch-layer

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#125

Post by weinzierl »

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.

> 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.

I don't know if you are joking, but this was not uncommon for quite some time. It used to be that color printing was much more expensive than black and white. Text books often only had a few pages with illustrations and images in color. The color printed sheets were added last so they ended up exactly in the middle of the book.

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#126

Post by tokenizerrr »

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!

The only correct response to that is, "No, I haven't. Please fix your email client, or learn how to use it properly."

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#127

Post by cmiles74 »

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.

I have to strongly disagree with your "cargo cult" and "waste of time" comment. Everyone has different needs and expectations and I have found managing my email in Emacs to be quick, easy and straightforward. This could be in part because I receive more mail that I need to read and comparatively little I need to respond to directly.

While I do use Emacs as an IDE (I do some work in Clojure), I have another instance that I keep open and use solely to manage myself: email, calendar, list of to-do items and their status, miscellaneous notes, etc. At one point I had separate tools for each of these functions but over time I've decided that specialized tools aren't really worth the hassle. Emacs works just fine and everything is in one spot and easy to find.

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#128

Post by cmiles74 »

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.

It's probably pretty weak for me to admit, but I accept calendar invitations on my phone. As you say, accepting them in Emacs or Mutt doesn't seem worth the hassle (I get a handful a week).

At this point, it's pretty rare for me to get an email that I need to read that I can't, mostly those are spam or sales messages. Where I work, the company uses the "G Suite" of products.

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#129

Post by kingosticks »

weinzierl wrote: post #125
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.

> 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. I don't know if you are joking, but this was not uncommon for quite some time. It used to be that color printing was much more expensive than black and white. Text books often only had a few pages with illustrations and i…

I should have said:

> it doesn't exist anymore

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#130

Post by [deleted] »

ams6110 wrote: post #111
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 use emacs for my mail, with the notmuch mail package which gives me Gmail-like search ability. w3m is used to display HTML email in the emacs frame, and it does a good job with tables and inline images. I find the emacs editing experience so superior to anything else that I feel hamstrung in Gmail or Outlook.

[deleted]
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