4 ms·

I love to use the terminal—I'm a Vim and tmux user—but I was never really able to switch to Mutt. I often receive emails with attached images or HTML code. Mayb

by Gxorgxo 10y ago

I love to use the terminal—I'm a Vim and tmux user—but I was never really able to switch to Mutt. I often receive emails with attached images or HTML code. Maybe some Mutt user can share with me some of the reasons why they like it so much?

h43z 10y ago
Mutt makes writing/reading/searching/managing email just really fast. Mutt also allows to pass the message body to an external program. This helps for formatting HTML mails. This is a snippet from my .mailcap file which renders HTML mail through lynx. text/html; lynx -dump -force_html %s; needsterminal; copiousoutput
- baldfat 10y ago
  I output my mutt to w3m with using feh for images. Not always the right tool for the job but it is an easy way to find out if it is.
setrofim_ 10y ago
- Seamlessly use Vim to write and edit email - Can easily deal with large volumes of email -- quickly tab through unread messages - Highlights text from previous emails in a thread, making it easy to see who replied to what - You can also set up highlighting for diffs, making it easy to review attached patches and change snippets - Powerful search via external indexers (mu, notmuch) - Keyboard navigation for everything (if you're using vim and tmux, then you're already spending most of your time with your hands on the keyboard, and having to fish for the mouse just to quicky reply to an email starts to feel really slow). For handling HTML email, I use a two-pronged approach: for most email I use links browser to automatically render HTML as ASCII so I can view it directly in mutt; for email that has images or otherwise cannot be rendered sensibly with links, I have mapped a key to open it in a graphical browser (dwb for fast launching or Firefox+vimperator if I need to deal with login forms, etc). EDIT: formatting
rsync 10y ago
I am a 20+ year (al)pine user (without gmail - I host my own mail server) and I have a fairly decent attachment/images/links setup ... First, I use ripmime to dump every single attachment to a folder with dated naming - and so if there is an email in pine with an attachment I want to view, I just web browse a simple apache directory listing and click it. It's not sexy, but it's fast and efficient. Second, I have a terminal PDF reader installed on my system and defined in alpine as a helper app for pdf files. So I cannot read word or excel right in alpine but I can read PDF docs. So that's nice and slick. Finally, I never actually click links in alpine, but I defined lynx as a web viewer anyway because that allows me to get the very simple "do you want to view this http link ?" prompt from alpine ... which I always say NO to, but not until I have copied the full URL which they display for me. Then I just open it in a browser. Fairly happy with this setup.
- YPCrumble 10y ago
  I would love to read a blog post on this setup.
- AlexeyBrin 10y ago
  It will be great if you could write a blog post about how to reproduce your setup.
- _atc 10y ago
  Also been using pine/alpine/re-alpine now for 16 years, and also not with gmail. Last I checked their IMAP wasn't fully IMAP. Fastmail FTW
  - bsg75 10y ago
    Using v2.20 [1] built from http://repo.or.cz/alpine.git http://repo.or.cz/alpine.git I have Gmail working without much hassle using these docs: https://www.sjwrc.com/guides/alpine-and-gmail/ https://www.sjwrc.com/guides/alpine-and-gmail/ - namely just the IMAP paths. [1] http://patches.freeiz.com/alpine/release/ http://patches.freeiz.com/alpine/release/
- superdaniel 10y ago
sigil 10y ago
> I often receive emails with attached images or HTML code. Here's my ~/.mailcap file: text/html; w3m -T text/html image/gif; gm display - image/jpg; gm display - image/eps; gm display - application/postscript; gm display - application/pdf; evince /dev/stdin In mutt's pager view (reading a message), hit "v" to see all the mime parts, j and k to select one, and enter to view it with the associated mailcap command. In my mailcap I'm popping up images in GraphicsMagick, and viewing rendered html pages in w3m. Pretty rare for me when that doesn't cut it -- most mail has a readable plaintext part or a w3m-readable html part. > Maybe some Mutt user can share with me some of the reasons why they like it so much? It lets me fully reside in "the world of text:" - I can compose emails in my text editor (vim, like you) instead of a crappy textarea. - Mutt feels much faster than gmail and other gui mail clients. The keyboard shortcuts are amazing. - I can use tmux's activity monitor feature as a text-based growl notification for new mail. - All my mail (300k+ messages over 10+ years) is available locally, offline, in Maildirs. It's searchable and pliable by the unix toolset, enabling all kinds of fun things like [1]. I use and recommend offlineimap. - Control. Mutt has changed conservatively over the years. You can configure it to your liking, and be reasonably certain it will continue working to your liking. No "New Compose" crap here. Tools like mutt are a great long haul investment. One thing I find seriously lacking with mutt: the folder-centric message index (instead of tag-centric or search-centric index). You can get by okay with mutt's searching and limiting, but if you're jumping between folders often, it kinda sucks. Reminds me, I need to revisit mutt-kz. [1] https://twitter.com/alangrow/status/448965593564078080 https://twitter.com/alangrow/status/448965593564078080
- necessity 10y ago
  The w3m bit doesn't work for me, mutt itself opens it and fails to format it. I have to type | to pipe it to w3m (or save the file).
  - sigil 10y ago
    Sounds a problem with your mailcap.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
SerSwimsALot 10y ago
Number one reason why I switched to mutt was after mailbox was discontinued, I wanted an easy way to move my mail between several organized folders (this requires 3+ clicks in gmail). Now I have keyboard shortcuts to move a message to my various frequented folders, and I can move through dozens of email in less than a minute.
Lio 10y ago
iTerm2 (and I'm sure there's Linux equivalents) can display images inline in the terminal. It would be cool if Mutt could be configured to support that, maybe through the w3mimgdisplay command. I think that's how [ranger file browser](https://github.com/ranger/ranger https://github.com/ranger/ranger) does it.

by Gxorgxo 10y ago

h43z 10y ago

Mutt makes writing/reading/searching/managing email just really fast. Mutt also allows to pass the message body to an external program. This helps for formatting HTML mails. This is a snippet from my .mailcap file which renders HTML mail through lynx. text/html; lynx -dump -force_html %s; needsterminal; copiousoutput

baldfat 10y ago
I output my mutt to w3m with using feh for images. Not always the right tool for the job but it is an easy way to find out if it is.

setrofim_ 10y ago

- Seamlessly use Vim to write and edit email - Can easily deal with large volumes of email -- quickly tab through unread messages - Highlights text from previous emails in a thread, making it easy to see who replied to what - You can also set up highlighting for diffs, making it easy to review attached patches and change snippets - Powerful search via external indexers (mu, notmuch) - Keyboard navigation for everything (if you're using vim and tmux, then you're already spending most of your time with your hands on the keyboard, and having to fish for the mouse just to quicky reply to an email starts to feel really slow). For handling HTML email, I use a two-pronged approach: for most email I use links browser to automatically render HTML as ASCII so I can view it directly in mutt; for email that has images or otherwise cannot be rendered sensibly with links, I have mapped a key to open it in a graphical browser (dwb for fast launching or Firefox+vimperator if I need to deal with login forms, etc). EDIT: formatting

rsync 10y ago

I am a 20+ year (al)pine user (without gmail - I host my own mail server) and I have a fairly decent attachment/images/links setup ... First, I use ripmime to dump every single attachment to a folder with dated naming - and so if there is an email in pine with an attachment I want to view, I just web browse a simple apache directory listing and click it. It's not sexy, but it's fast and efficient. Second, I have a terminal PDF reader installed on my system and defined in alpine as a helper app for pdf files. So I cannot read word or excel right in alpine but I can read PDF docs. So that's nice and slick. Finally, I never actually click links in alpine, but I defined lynx as a web viewer anyway because that allows me to get the very simple "do you want to view this http link ?" prompt from alpine ... which I always say NO to, but not until I have copied the full URL which they display for me. Then I just open it in a browser. Fairly happy with this setup.

YPCrumble 10y ago
I would love to read a blog post on this setup.
AlexeyBrin 10y ago
It will be great if you could write a blog post about how to reproduce your setup.
_atc 10y ago
Also been using pine/alpine/re-alpine now for 16 years, and also not with gmail. Last I checked their IMAP wasn't fully IMAP. Fastmail FTW
- bsg75 10y ago
  Using v2.20 [1] built from http://repo.or.cz/alpine.git http://repo.or.cz/alpine.git I have Gmail working without much hassle using these docs: https://www.sjwrc.com/guides/alpine-and-gmail/ https://www.sjwrc.com/guides/alpine-and-gmail/ - namely just the IMAP paths. [1] http://patches.freeiz.com/alpine/release/ http://patches.freeiz.com/alpine/release/
superdaniel 10y ago

sigil 10y ago

> I often receive emails with attached images or HTML code. Here's my ~/.mailcap file: text/html; w3m -T text/html image/gif; gm display - image/jpg; gm display - image/eps; gm display - application/postscript; gm display - application/pdf; evince /dev/stdin In mutt's pager view (reading a message), hit "v" to see all the mime parts, j and k to select one, and enter to view it with the associated mailcap command. In my mailcap I'm popping up images in GraphicsMagick, and viewing rendered html pages in w3m. Pretty rare for me when that doesn't cut it -- most mail has a readable plaintext part or a w3m-readable html part. > Maybe some Mutt user can share with me some of the reasons why they like it so much? It lets me fully reside in "the world of text:" - I can compose emails in my text editor (vim, like you) instead of a crappy textarea. - Mutt feels much faster than gmail and other gui mail clients. The keyboard shortcuts are amazing. - I can use tmux's activity monitor feature as a text-based growl notification for new mail. - All my mail (300k+ messages over 10+ years) is available locally, offline, in Maildirs. It's searchable and pliable by the unix toolset, enabling all kinds of fun things like [1]. I use and recommend offlineimap. - Control. Mutt has changed conservatively over the years. You can configure it to your liking, and be reasonably certain it will continue working to your liking. No "New Compose" crap here. Tools like mutt are a great long haul investment. One thing I find seriously lacking with mutt: the folder-centric message index (instead of tag-centric or search-centric index). You can get by okay with mutt's searching and limiting, but if you're jumping between folders often, it kinda sucks. Reminds me, I need to revisit mutt-kz. [1] https://twitter.com/alangrow/status/448965593564078080 https://twitter.com/alangrow/status/448965593564078080

necessity 10y ago
The w3m bit doesn't work for me, mutt itself opens it and fails to format it. I have to type | to pipe it to w3m (or save the file).
- sigil 10y ago
  Sounds a problem with your mailcap.
- dredmorbius 10y ago

SerSwimsALot 10y ago

Number one reason why I switched to mutt was after mailbox was discontinued, I wanted an easy way to move my mail between several organized folders (this requires 3+ clicks in gmail). Now I have keyboard shortcuts to move a message to my various frequented folders, and I can move through dozens of email in less than a minute.

Lio 10y ago

iTerm2 (and I'm sure there's Linux equivalents) can display images inline in the terminal. It would be cool if Mutt could be configured to support that, maybe through the w3mimgdisplay command. I think that's how [ranger file browser](https://github.com/ranger/ranger https://github.com/ranger/ranger) does it.