3 ms·

Is it groundbreaking to display mail with an external pager or to pipe it to filters? These were/are core features of elm, from 1986.

Sir_Cmpwn 7y ago
IMO the key innovation is that aerc does it with an embedded terminal emulator, tmux-style. This allows you to keep using the client for other things while reading or composing emails.
- shereadsthenews 7y ago
  That is interesting and different. I guess I am accustomed to the "unix way": I use screen to multiplex my terminal and I have no bad problems from running multiple instances of mutt on the same maildir.
  - Sir_Cmpwn 7y ago
    That workflow to me seems like more of a hack begging to be improved than a comfortable daily driver. I've never had a problem running mulitple instances of mutt, either - and I run multiple instances of aerc sometimes, actually - but since aerc has ownership over your emails and mail accounts it only makes sense to me that it would multiplex them for you.
    - zokier 7y ago
      I'd argue that the aerc approach is also bit of hack[1], but ultimately it mostly boils down to the limitations of terminals; to have "sub-windows", you need to implement basically a whole windowing system and terminal emulation layer. Makes me think what would email client designed for and integrated with tmux look like, i.e. the client would open new tmux panes for editors etc. [1] don't take that as a hard criticism, I happen to think lot of things, especially around terminals, being hacks.
      - Sir_Cmpwn 7y ago
        Well, it's not as hacky as you portray it to be. The windowing system already needed to be there for other aerc features (and the embedded terminal is used in more integrated contexts than just windows, too). The terminal emulation is delegated to libvterm, the same library vim uses for this purpose. The actual aerc code is pretty simple: https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/aerc/tree/master/widgets/terminal.go https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/aerc/tree/master/widgets/termina... <500 lines.
- mhd 7y ago
  It's interesting that these days it's quite easy to get into deep terminal emulator inception: xterm/Terminal.app/WSL -> tmux/screen -> vim and now aerc.

Sir_Cmpwn 7y ago

IMO the key innovation is that aerc does it with an embedded terminal emulator, tmux-style. This allows you to keep using the client for other things while reading or composing emails.

shereadsthenews 7y ago
That is interesting and different. I guess I am accustomed to the "unix way": I use screen to multiplex my terminal and I have no bad problems from running multiple instances of mutt on the same maildir.
- Sir_Cmpwn 7y ago
  That workflow to me seems like more of a hack begging to be improved than a comfortable daily driver. I've never had a problem running mulitple instances of mutt, either - and I run multiple instances of aerc sometimes, actually - but since aerc has ownership over your emails and mail accounts it only makes sense to me that it would multiplex them for you.
  - zokier 7y ago
    I'd argue that the aerc approach is also bit of hack[1], but ultimately it mostly boils down to the limitations of terminals; to have "sub-windows", you need to implement basically a whole windowing system and terminal emulation layer. Makes me think what would email client designed for and integrated with tmux look like, i.e. the client would open new tmux panes for editors etc. [1] don't take that as a hard criticism, I happen to think lot of things, especially around terminals, being hacks.
    - Sir_Cmpwn 7y ago
      Well, it's not as hacky as you portray it to be. The windowing system already needed to be there for other aerc features (and the embedded terminal is used in more integrated contexts than just windows, too). The terminal emulation is delegated to libvterm, the same library vim uses for this purpose. The actual aerc code is pretty simple: https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/aerc/tree/master/widgets/terminal.go https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/aerc/tree/master/widgets/termina... <500 lines.
mhd 7y ago
It's interesting that these days it's quite easy to get into deep terminal emulator inception: xterm/Terminal.app/WSL -> tmux/screen -> vim and now aerc.