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Switching to the Mutt Email Client

nullprogram.com

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Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#181

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

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…

> which makes sense because email clients, unlike HN, are pretty crap at keeping track of conversation threads

Well, then, your email client is crap? E-Mail has all the headers you need, and mutt, for example, does it perfectly.

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#182

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

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.

That's still a stupid reason.

There is a MIME type for emails, so you can attach emails to emails, retaining their identity as emails, so the receiving MUA can display the emails you receive as an attachment just like any other emails, including the user interface for replying to them, or whatever.

Also, there is threading information in email headers. So, it is actually trivial to just gather together all the emails belonging to a specific conversation and attaching them all to an email to a third party that needs the history.

Using this bottom full quote nonsense is about as sensible as attaching a screen shot of a word document or something.

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#183

Post by BeetleB »

Funny. Several years ago I went in the opposite direction: From mutt to notmuch + emacs.

I used mutt for about a decade. I got sick of it being a bit too constraining (e.g. could not auto-Fcc to multiple folders based on To fields). And frankly, for the last 5 years of my usage, there was no real development.

notmuch is great for me. Using tags and Python, filtering incoming mail is a lot easier than with procmail's arcane syntax. I've recently set up a whitelist email system to get rid of unwanted emails. If a "new" person emails me, they get sent to a web site to confirm their identity and their email gets put into a quarantine folder (not inbox). If they go to the web site and confirm, then my mail system moves their email from quarantine to the inbox and their email address is whitelisted.

No more junk mail. The only mails that get to my inbox are from whitelisted accounts.

Notmuch with tags made this a trivial thing to code.

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#184

Post by zhengyi13 »

pyre wrote: post #159
Samon wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I work in a large-ish company (~9k) who a few years back moved from Exchange/Outlook to GSuite (with POP and IMAP disabled) - so using anything but the Gmail web interface and/or the mobile apps is out of the question. Add in the obligatory (and yes, slightly annoying) corporate managed email signature (HTML), the fact that everyone is used to just copying images/screenshots inline with the text, and of cour…

There is a lot of software for working with Google services via the CLI. Your biggest hurdle is probably that POP/IMAP is disabled for email.

Naively, I could see wanting to disable POP given the potential for inadvertent mail loss, but what justification could there be for disabling IMAP?

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#185

Post by pif »

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…

> We can thank Microsoft for that one

And all the idiots who followed blindly.

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#186

Post by deong »

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."

Honestly, that's probably true. Not in some elitist, "if you have to ask, you're not smart enough" kind of way, but in a "if you have to ask, then you're the kind of person for whom figuring out how to set up an esoteric email program isn't fun, and you're not going to like it much here" kind of way.

Gnus is fairly painful to set up. I did write something up several years ago about getting it going the way I wanted (http://www.cataclysmicmutation.com/2010/11/multiple-gmail-ac...). I haven't used Gnus for a few years now, having first gone to mu4e and now due to corporate fun, Microsoft Outlook, so that document may or may not be currently useful.

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#187

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

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 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.

In addition to the obvious idiocy of sending someone a copy of what they just sent you ... I think it's funny to realize how this behaviour actually has quadratic space and bandwidth complexity:

If a thread is 10 message long, you have to store and transmit the data of 55 messages.

If a thread is 100 message long, you have to store and transmit the data of 5050 messages.

Or in general, if a thread is n message long, you have to store and transmit the data of n*(n+1)/2 messages.

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#188

Post by CPLX »

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…

> My message to you is right there in the same thread in my client. Don't send it back to me.

Dozens of times a day I add someone to the cc list when I'm replying to an email. I suspect most people that have an assistant (or are one, or collaborate with others in general) do this constantly.

It's an incredibly common use case. Should we all abandon this very common behavior in order to avoid your scorn?

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#189

Post by chilicuil »

I've been using mutt + vim + gpg + multiple gmail account for the last ~5 years and it's proven to be fast and easy to use, the only issue I have is that it disconnect from time to time from the imap servers.

Follow my configuration: https://github.com/javier-lopez/dotfiles/blob/master/.mutt/m...

Re: Switching to the Mutt Email Client

#190

Post by uberchet »

erikb wrote: post #54
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.

attachments yes, but images? There's literally zero reason to have any images in emails. Use Dropbox/Owncloud/Instagram/etc links if you want to share pictures. That's more handy for other people anyway instead of handling 2 gig of attachments for seeing your email on their smart phone.

"Literally zero reason?" Seriously?

I submit your understanding of how email works for most people in 2017 is outdated.

Email with inline images is common, useful, and not going anywhere.

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