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Switching to the Mutt Email Client

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Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#161

Post by phicoh »

simias wrote: post #53
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.

Calendar invites are just attachments, you can handle them in external scripts and programs any way you like. Personally I just display them in plain text next to the email, but if you wanted to interface them with your calendar application I'm sure there are plenty of scripts doing that out there. As for HTML email, what I take from this entire thread is that I either I've been extremely lucky so far or people in ge…

Ages ago I set up my mail client to pipe HTML e-mail through 'lynx -force_html -dump'.

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#162

Post by ajross »

leblancfg wrote: post #160
ajross wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long-time internet tradition has the replies going inline with the quoted message, with judicious trimming of irrelevant bits. It's frustrating that this has to be explained in the modern world. Smart young developers exist who have literally never seen a discussion that works that way.

For most messaging in larger organisations, having "paper trail"-style replies that you can forward to others has its advantages -- it better delimits in a single page who said what, and when. If I know my conversation is intended to a small group I'll reply inline, but my default is quote-on-top.

Oh sure. The "mailing list" style presumes some archive exists where you can find the missing context. I'm not taking sides here (much), I'm just remarking how weird it is that kids today never even see the old style.

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#163

Post by pyre »

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?

Operating systems that pre-dated MacOS 9 had pre-emptive multitasking. MacOS "moved forward" by adopting one of them (NeXT OS) and building their platform on top of it. I'm really unsure what point you're trying to make here.

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#164

Post by TeMPOraL »

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…

Do you use GMail? If so, how much pain is was to configure your setup to connect to it reliably? And handle multiple e-mail accounts?

I ask, because in the past I toyed with switching to using Emacs as my e-mail client, but aways got stuck on configuring the whole setup to work reliably and seamlessly.

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#165

Post by torrent-of-ions »

mseebach wrote: post #146
u801e wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Microsoft for that one, I think. I can't understand why anyone thought it was a good idea to attach the previous message to the bottom. Most people just accept this as the way email is and never question how unbelievably stupid it is. I think a lot of email clients expect that t…

> Though I do find it interesting that people on Hacker news, Slashdot, and reddit will generally follow the convention of responding inline Actually, they don't. Most posts don't quote their parent at all, it's a unitary response to the full parent post. Which is what bottom-quoting does - it doesn't actually quote the parent post, it leaves it in for reference (which makes sense because email clients, unlike HN, ar…

The beauty of inline quoting is that if you don't see a need to use it then you don't. It is in no way arrogant to suggest a method of replying which is unambiguous. Nobody is suggesting that it is used in places in which it is not necessary.

I hate to think of the hours wasted due to ambiguity in email replies. More often than not people end up using the telephone or meeting in person which wastes even more time rather than learning how to be clear. I don't understand why all effort to be clear and precise goes out of the window when dealing with email.

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#166

Post by fusiongyro »

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 use IntelliJ for coding and Emacs for mail (mu4e) and the combination seems to be good for me. Emacs is great for editing code, but for Java and SQL, IntelliJ does so much more.

The Mac mail app would be totally sufficient for me if it could handle complex searches over the volume of mail I have with speed, but it just doesn't. It helps that I'm in an organization with a disproportionate number of Linux users; I don't get any Outlook attachments or other Microsoft nonsense in my inbox.

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#167

Post by gkya »

nextos wrote: post #144
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…

Same here. I am a long time mutt user, but recently switched to gnus. Have you considered gnus instead of mu4e? Gnus is notoriously hard to set up, but I found it has some remarkable features.

Not OP but the best email client in Emacs is RMAIL. So dead simple that you can teach it to your grandpa in a couple hours. I use Gnus because it does nntp thus helping me keep my inbox clean while still being able to follow many mailing lists. Also, many times people don't CC you when responding on lists so if you don't gmane+nntp, many times you don't get the responses without subscribing. I wonder what weird programs these use.

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#169

Post by kazinator »

pleasecalllater wrote: post #89
nazri1 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Could you tell me what was the last problem you had that an IDE couldn't do, and vim/emacs could?

Edit a file on an ARM board, where the flash filesystem is less than 100 megs.

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#170

Post by gkya »

pyre wrote: post #153
nextos wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. I am a long time mutt user, but recently switched to gnus. Have you considered gnus instead of mu4e? Gnus is notoriously hard to set up, but I found it has some remarkable features.

> Gnus is notoriously hard to set up, but I found it has some remarkable features. Maybe things have changed now, but several years ago I wanted to setup Gnus, and asked for help on IRC (#emacs IIRC) because there weren't many good resources online. The response was "if you need to ask for help, then Gnus isn't for you."

Well if you need to ask basic things that means you haven't read the manual, which can easily get you going with a relatively fancy setup. People naturally don't like explaining things that are already explained in a manual that's a C-h I away, hyperlinked and friendly. Emacs is one of the few projects that have good docs, and probably the best among them wrt the accessibility and ease of use of the manual. And still some people hate on Info, probably because they don't read/write documentation at all...
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