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Mutt email client 25 years old

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Re: Mutt email client 25 years old

#81

Post by roel_v »

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.

That's fine when you run mutt on your local machine, but the whole reason to use mutt is so that you have a dedicated email machine that you can ssh into and use screen to access email from anywhere. And then things like this become 10x harder (I never found a way, although last I tried was 15+ years ago). Attachments, too.

Re: Mutt email client 25 years old

#82

Post by philjackson »

peteretep wrote: post #79
res0nat0r wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?!

Are you being sarcastic? Very hard probably.

Re: Mutt email client 25 years old

#83

Post by dm319 »

kashyapc wrote: post #80

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.

Same here, though I moved to mbsync a few years ago and I need to check out postfix.

It is such a great email client that I feel lost and walking through treacle using anything else. I don't work in the tech field, but I have a lot of emails to deal with. People come to me now to ask me if I can find specific important emails from a while ago that they are after. Outlook is hilariously bad at searching. I wish I could use mutt instead of outlook for my work.

EDIT: It looks like I'm using msmtp instead of postfix - any advantages to switching over to postfix?

Re: Mutt email client 25 years old

#84

Post by feanaro »

roel_v wrote: post #81
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.

That's fine when you run mutt on your local machine, but the whole reason to use mutt is so that you have a dedicated email machine that you can ssh into and use screen to access email from anywhere. And then things like this become 10x harder (I never found a way, although last I tried was 15+ years ago). Attachments, too.

That's certainly a valid reason to use mutt, but this is not at all why I use. I use because I prefer keyboard control, customizability and a simple, clean UI. Also because it's actually the least sucky (IMO) of local email clients.

Re: Mutt email client 25 years old

#85

Post by pbhjpbhj »

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.

Presumably you could use Links (or some other console friendly web client).

Re: Mutt email client 25 years old

#86

Post by dm319 »

dancek wrote: post #64
feanaro wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can just set up Mutt to open HTML mail in Firefox.

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

It isn't hard. I don't often come across emails that won't show up in text, but if I do I hit 'v' and 'enter' and it opens up in my web browser.

Re: Mutt email client 25 years old

#87

Post by dm319 »

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.

Same here, I was at university, and we used Pine too. I also wish the same. Often my colleagues find it strange I use a text-based program for email - as if 99% of communication online isn't using language.

Re: Mutt email client 25 years old

#88

Post by dm319 »

ohlookabird wrote: post #73
ninjin wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Me too, but sometimes no need to make things more complicated. It's also a feature of mutt - that I can fire several instances almost instantaneously and use them for different purposes. I have to use outlook at work, and there's nothing more frustrating than waiting for it to load up, and not being able to view and search my old emails when I am composing emails (or is it when I'm selecting contacts - I can't remember).

Re: Mutt email client 25 years old

#89

Post by dm319 »

jjav wrote: post #61
codetrotter wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The really annoying thing is that some mail is multipart where the text/plain is just “sorry, your email client does not support html”. Yeah thanks a lot but it does, it’s just I have it set to prefer text/plain, because I don’t want to look at the html dump version unless I have to. If those people had simply sent only text/html and not a useless text/plain that only says that kind of stuff then everything would hav…

That's mildly annoying indeed, but I just press v and select the html version in those cases. As you say, not mutt's fault.

Yes, and this is still usually quicker than firing up a full-fat email client (as I often have a web browser open anyway).

Re: Mutt email client 25 years old

#90

Post by dm319 »

jjav wrote: post #65
samcheng wrote: post #6

I remember the mind-blowing switch from pine to mutt. Then, a few years later, gmail, which has to be about 20 years old or so. I haven't used much mutt since.

gmail is such a huge regression from mutt (or even pine or elm). I rank the email experience of gmail on par with /bin/mail. It's that useless. I use mutt as an IMAP client for gmail when I can, that works mostly ok. At current $DAYJOB they only allow gmail web client which is a complete disaster of unusability. So I mostly just zoom or slack people since gmail is so useless. gmail is email written by those who have…

As the search experts, I'm always surprised how poor and unreliable search in gmail is. I also use mutt with my gmail account via mbsync. At least you get to use gmail webmail. I have to use Outlook at work.
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