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Mutt email client 25 years old

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Re: Mutt email client 25 years old

#71

Post by ninjin »

jjav wrote: post #60
ninjin wrote: post #9

Thank you Mutt (and also NeoMutt for pushing the envelope), you have been my e-mail client now for the last four years and as an academic that spends a significant amount of time reading and responding to e-mail it is (somehow?) the best option out there. Setup: * Mutt (I had slowdowns with NeoMutt) * Vim with four e-mail specific lines in the `vimrc` * fdm for retrieval and delivery rules * Syncthing for synchronisa…

> the configuration is very arcane at times and monolithic; For my needs it seems quite modular. I have one ~/.mutt directory with separate muttrc files for every email account (10+) and within each account I use folder-hook to have separate (many are shared) config files. Arcane is more subjective, but I like it.

It does get more intuitive over time once you grasp some of the fundamentals of interactions with external programmes and how the query language and hooks are what you should first reach for. This I suppose is the “arcane” part, it can be difficult to both grasp and find good resources that teach you the ropes. However, this is fairly common for the *NIX command line and can be a strength as well in the end.

What usually gets me is how some functionality is just barely out of reach, unless I am mistaken for example there is no way to pipe the path(s) (not the message(s) themselves!) to an external programme. So for my snooze script I instead pipe the messages(s), parse them to extract the Message-ID(s), pass them to Notmuch to turn them into path(s), save to a temporary file, launch another command pointed at the temporary file, query the user for input, create a directory based on the input, and move the file(s) into the directory. It works, but it is awfully roundabout and I do at times wish I had some sort of scripting language that interacted with Mutt primitives rather than a monolithic set of functions which can only be extended by patching the source.

Re: Mutt email client 25 years old

#72

Post by ninjin »

ohlookabird wrote: post #59
ninjin wrote: post #9

Thank you Mutt (and also NeoMutt for pushing the envelope), you have been my e-mail client now for the last four years and as an academic that spends a significant amount of time reading and responding to e-mail it is (somehow?) the best option out there. Setup: * Mutt (I had slowdowns with NeoMutt) * Vim with four e-mail specific lines in the `vimrc` * fdm for retrieval and delivery rules * Syncthing for synchronisa…

> tmux to give me a single horizontal split so that I can browse and compose at the same time Do you mind sharing how you do this? Browsing plus composing has been the one thing that keeps annoying me for not being streamlined and typically I just open multiple mutts/neomutts.

I will not be much help I am afraid: `mutt` for the upper and `mutt -R` for the lower.

Re: Mutt email client 25 years old

#73

Post by ohlookabird »

ninjin wrote: post #72
ohlookabird wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> tmux to give me a single horizontal split so that I can browse and compose at the same time Do you mind sharing how you do this? Browsing plus composing has been the one thing that keeps annoying me for not being streamlined and typically I just open multiple mutts/neomutts.

I will not be much help I am afraid: `mutt` for the upper and `mutt -R` for the lower.

Oh okay, so that's basically what I do manually anyway then. Thanks.

Re: Mutt email client 25 years old

#74

Post by hvdijk »

feanaro wrote: post #70
dancek wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A great example of the HN use of the word "just".

I'm not sure what you are implying. That it is hard? It is only a single line added to the `mailcap` file: text/html; firefox '%s' &; test=test -n "$DISPLAY"; needsterminal; After that's in place, you simply open attachments (via `view-attachments`) and call `view-attach` (usually via a key binding) on the HTML attachment.

For anyone currently using a GUI mail client where HTML mail works out of the box, this is not something they will spend time figuring out before concluding that HTML mails just don't work. And this is a complete non-starter for those who like Mutt on the basis of having something that also works in non-graphical environments.

Re: Mutt email client 25 years old

#75

Post by feanaro »

hvdijk wrote: post #74
feanaro wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you are implying. That it is hard? It is only a single line added to the `mailcap` file: text/html; firefox '%s' &; test=test -n "$DISPLAY"; needsterminal; After that's in place, you simply open attachments (via `view-attachments`) and call `view-attach` (usually via a key binding) on the HTML attachment.

For anyone currently using a GUI mail client where HTML mail works out of the box, this is not something they will spend time figuring out before concluding that HTML mails just don't work. And this is a complete non-starter for those who like Mutt on the basis of having something that also works in non-graphical environments.

That's fair enough, but this is why I'm not recommending this to someone who is not willing to spend half a minute searching for this one-liner. I'd also wager that the intersection of such people with the people who would even consider using Mutt in the first place is basically empty.

My point is that if you don't have those two constraints, it's trivial to do and it works perfectly.

Re: Mutt email client 25 years old

#76

Post by [deleted] »

hvdijk wrote: post #74
feanaro wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you are implying. That it is hard? It is only a single line added to the `mailcap` file: text/html; firefox '%s' &; test=test -n "$DISPLAY"; needsterminal; After that's in place, you simply open attachments (via `view-attachments`) and call `view-attach` (usually via a key binding) on the HTML attachment.

For anyone currently using a GUI mail client where HTML mail works out of the box, this is not something they will spend time figuring out before concluding that HTML mails just don't work. And this is a complete non-starter for those who like Mutt on the basis of having something that also works in non-graphical environments.

[deleted]

Re: Mutt email client 25 years old

#77

Post by uaas »

pw6hv wrote: post #51
lytedev wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

would love to know more about this setup! do you have all your mail stored on disk? attachments?

Not parent but I have a similar setup. Yes, absolutely. I think storing our owns emails/attachments locally is part of best practices. That is our data and having a safe backup of it is a must.

Care to elaborate on the safety of backup? You mean it’s safe at your hard drive from availability or from privacy perspective?

Re: Mutt email client 25 years old

#78

Post by Jaruzel »

debaserab2 wrote: post #27
combatentropy wrote: post #21

I sometimes daydream that everyone at work uses Linux in general and a text-based email program in particular. It isn't too farfetched. When email took off, I was in college, and we all used Pine. Anyway, if you email me, it will arrive on my virtual private server, and I will read it with Mutt.

I’ve never been more inclined than now to do the same thing. How do you deal with spam? How do you ensure your emails don’t get junk mailed?

Adding my mail setup to those listed here.

- Hosted locally.

- Virtual Windows Server 2012 R2 running on my Hyper-V host.

- Microsoft Exchange 2013

- Self written, internet facing MTA, that filters/rejects email before passing onto Exchange

- The MTA passes all email under X size through Spamassassin (SPAMD) running on a separate Ubuntu based virtual server

- The MTA also has some internal rules to straight up reject bad IPs and emails with 'badwords' in them.

- The MTA has an internal list of email aliases that it accepts email for, then it re-addresses them to the real internal email addresses that are configured in Exchange.

I've been running this setup in one form or another for about 20 years now, upgrading parts as I go along. Due to the version of Hyper-V I'm running, I can't run Windows Server 2016 or higher as virtual servers. Also, I've upgraded through Exchange 5.5, 2000, 2003, 2010 to 2013, but I tend to upgrade when I need to, not when there's a new version, hence still running 2013, which I only migrated to a few years ago.

It's the mail system for my whole family, plus handles the email for the 3 small companies that I run. Stability is more important than anything.

Outlook Anywhere is fully configured correctly - both iOS and Android can 'auto configure' for the mail server with just an email address and password.

I've got SPF and DKIM set-up, but send email through my ISPs smarthost just to be safe. Gmail and Outlook.com happily accept my emails without issue.

Regarding spam... This is the ongoing bugbear. No matter what you do, once you've been using an email address for a long time (in my case over 20 years for some of them) fighting spam is a constant battle. This weeks spam content is all about Air Conditioners and slimming aids.

I would NOT recommend that anyone set-up their own personal email system unless it was a learning exercise. It's just too much hassle these days. Personally, I'm am in the process of moving the whole lot to Office 365, which will cost me a bit more in yearly fees, but will give me some time back not having to admin it, which at this stage in my life is more important.

Re: Mutt email client 25 years old

#79

Post by peteretep »

res0nat0r wrote: post #48
zadwang wrote: post #35

I use mutt, mbsync, maildrop, and mblaze, mairix, msmtp, oauth2 with gmail. I have local speed, two way sync, customized email filtering, fast searching, vim editing, and multiple machine freedom. I am happy.

I would love absolutely Mutt if it weren't for everyone in the world using html email. I know you can view or strip html emails down to their essentials, but it doesn't render properly enough where I can reply to everything at work and not look like a fool because I'm missing some context. Too bad because Mutt is amazing.

Headless browser + OCR ... how hard can it be?!

Re: Mutt email client 25 years old

#80

Post by kashyapc »

Another extremely happy user of the following combination waves hi:

• Mutt

• OfflineIMAP (to be replaced with `mbsync`; OfflineIMAP is not being ported to Python 3, unfortunately)

• Notmuch — for fast indexing, searching, and tagging e-mails

• Postfix — Mail Transfer Agent; offline queuing. Overall, it's one of the most robust pieces of software; Postfix never failed even once on me in nearly six years.

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