7 ms·

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 t

by preek 9y ago

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 easy to manage and productive todo management system - and it's all text, so there will never be breaking changes or paid upgrades or incompatibilities between tools that I cannot fix.

disiplus 9y ago
for me the only thing that i found that worked is Zero Inbox. i get a lot e-mail per day, most of them are not actionable ( notifications, statuses, replays for other departments and so on ) i archive them, and the ones that i have to handle are moved to wunderlist or replayed right away. this is the only solution that i found to work for me. I know that i have to handle it now inside wunderlist. but it works ok for me because is better sorted. i use evernote for some of the stuff, and i try to write everything. sure its not ideal but it is a lot better then it used to be where i would forget about some important stuff.
- preek 9y ago
  I did the same! With Things instead of Wunderlist. But my links to mail from Things and EN kept breaking. I also work with Inbox Zero and that's the primary reason for my switch - without references it got worthless.
danieldk 9y ago
I have also been using an emacs (spacemacs) + org + mu4e setup for 6 months or so. Unfortunately, everything seems to be really buggy and break at random moments. Also, there isn't a really good iOS integration story. So, I am slowly retracting and going back to vim, Mail.app, Things (and mutt every now and then ;)).
- preek 9y ago
  Well, you're using spacemacs. I know it's super popular, but it's also a huuge configuration which changes defaults. So updating will always be a little dangerous. I'm not trying to be mean, it's a great project, of course. I have my own configuration on top of vanilla Emacs and have never had any problems with things stopping to work. As for iOS I don't need more than what MobileOrg has. I need to add new todos and very seldom look stuff up. Both work totally fine. And I'm saying this after having been a paying Evernote and Things user for years^^
cmiles74 9y ago
I use Emacs (with Spacemacs) + Notmuch with mbsync to pull in new mail and msmtp for sending mail. It works pretty well and it's easy to find old messages, which is the sort of thing I need the most from my email. There are lots of these around, but if you're interested in trying it out I have a pretty simple Spacemacs layer for Notmuch as well. https://github.com/cmiles74/spacemacs-notmuch-layer https://github.com/cmiles74/spacemacs-notmuch-layer
nextos 9y ago
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.
- pyre 9y ago
  > 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."
  - gkya 9y ago
    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...
  - deong 9y ago
    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-accounts-in-gnus/ 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.
- gkya 9y ago
  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.
TeMPOraL 9y ago
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.
- avar 9y ago
  I use Emacs + mu4e with 2 GMail accounts (personal & work). AMA I guess. I use OfflineIMAP to sync the two accounts to ~/Maildir/{work,personal}, then mu4e-context to switch between settings for the two. I entirely outsource actually sending the mail to a local exim4 daemon which is configured to forward through a GMail smarthost. IMNSHO this is much better than the recommended default configuration of making Emacs actually send the mail, I don't have to worry about not having a network connection at the time, or some other transitory error with a real smtpd retrying the send if needed. You then may need a tiny hack on top of Debian's default exim configuration to make it switch between different smtp servers / accounts depending on what address you're sending mail from. For reasons I won't go into I send E-Mail through a company-run SMTP server even though I then fetch work E-Mail from GMail. 1. https://wiki.debian.org/GmailAndExim4 https://wiki.debian.org/GmailAndExim4
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    Thanks for the tips. I'm trying OfflineIMAP now (it's syncing... there's few gigs of e-mail to sync...). I'll definitely consider your trick for sending e-mail - I definitely value both Emacs not hanging and also having the ability to send e-mails off-line.
- jolmg 9y ago
  One trouble I had while configuring for my gmail account was the lacking support for Google's XOAUTH extension for SMTP and IMAP authentication. After a little research, I found that you can create app passwords[0] in Google after you've activated 2FA. This allowed me to use standard PLAIN authentication with passwords that don't allow for management of the whole google account. [0] - https://myaccount.google.com/apppasswords https://myaccount.google.com/apppasswords

by preek 9y ago

disiplus 9y ago

for me the only thing that i found that worked is Zero Inbox. i get a lot e-mail per day, most of them are not actionable ( notifications, statuses, replays for other departments and so on ) i archive them, and the ones that i have to handle are moved to wunderlist or replayed right away. this is the only solution that i found to work for me. I know that i have to handle it now inside wunderlist. but it works ok for me because is better sorted. i use evernote for some of the stuff, and i try to write everything. sure its not ideal but it is a lot better then it used to be where i would forget about some important stuff.

preek 9y ago
I did the same! With Things instead of Wunderlist. But my links to mail from Things and EN kept breaking. I also work with Inbox Zero and that's the primary reason for my switch - without references it got worthless.

danieldk 9y ago

I have also been using an emacs (spacemacs) + org + mu4e setup for 6 months or so. Unfortunately, everything seems to be really buggy and break at random moments. Also, there isn't a really good iOS integration story. So, I am slowly retracting and going back to vim, Mail.app, Things (and mutt every now and then ;)).

preek 9y ago
Well, you're using spacemacs. I know it's super popular, but it's also a huuge configuration which changes defaults. So updating will always be a little dangerous. I'm not trying to be mean, it's a great project, of course. I have my own configuration on top of vanilla Emacs and have never had any problems with things stopping to work. As for iOS I don't need more than what MobileOrg has. I need to add new todos and very seldom look stuff up. Both work totally fine. And I'm saying this after having been a paying Evernote and Things user for years^^

cmiles74 9y ago

I use Emacs (with Spacemacs) + Notmuch with mbsync to pull in new mail and msmtp for sending mail. It works pretty well and it's easy to find old messages, which is the sort of thing I need the most from my email. There are lots of these around, but if you're interested in trying it out I have a pretty simple Spacemacs layer for Notmuch as well. https://github.com/cmiles74/spacemacs-notmuch-layer https://github.com/cmiles74/spacemacs-notmuch-layer

nextos 9y ago

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.

pyre 9y ago
> 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."
- gkya 9y ago
  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...
- deong 9y ago
  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-accounts-in-gnus/ 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.
gkya 9y ago
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.

TeMPOraL 9y ago

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.

avar 9y ago
I use Emacs + mu4e with 2 GMail accounts (personal & work). AMA I guess. I use OfflineIMAP to sync the two accounts to ~/Maildir/{work,personal}, then mu4e-context to switch between settings for the two. I entirely outsource actually sending the mail to a local exim4 daemon which is configured to forward through a GMail smarthost. IMNSHO this is much better than the recommended default configuration of making Emacs actually send the mail, I don't have to worry about not having a network connection at the time, or some other transitory error with a real smtpd retrying the send if needed. You then may need a tiny hack on top of Debian's default exim configuration to make it switch between different smtp servers / accounts depending on what address you're sending mail from. For reasons I won't go into I send E-Mail through a company-run SMTP server even though I then fetch work E-Mail from GMail. 1. https://wiki.debian.org/GmailAndExim4 https://wiki.debian.org/GmailAndExim4
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  Thanks for the tips. I'm trying OfflineIMAP now (it's syncing... there's few gigs of e-mail to sync...). I'll definitely consider your trick for sending e-mail - I definitely value both Emacs not hanging and also having the ability to send e-mails off-line.
jolmg 9y ago
One trouble I had while configuring for my gmail account was the lacking support for Google's XOAUTH extension for SMTP and IMAP authentication. After a little research, I found that you can create app passwords[0] in Google after you've activated 2FA. This allowed me to use standard PLAIN authentication with passwords that don't allow for management of the whole google account. [0] - https://myaccount.google.com/apppasswords https://myaccount.google.com/apppasswords