8 ms·

We seem to be experiencing a renaissance of TUI software, particularly email clients[1] and I couldn’t be happier. Email and TUI are such a natural fit. Make i

We seem to be experiencing a renaissance of TUI software, particularly email clients[1] and I couldn’t be happier. Email and TUI are such a natural fit. Make it work with your favorite editor and most nerds will switch. [1] https://aerc-mail.org/ https://aerc-mail.org/

capdeck 7y ago
In absolute agreement here. Even though mutt's shortcuts are hardwired into my brain, I always check the new-comers out - especially ones written in a language that compiles to binary. There is something lost in this world of shady docker containers, epic javascript runtimes and infinite universe of python environment versions.
euske 7y ago
I, for one, want a pure command line based email client, not just a TUI client, that is well integrated with bash/zsh in an everyday use, e.g. $ inbox (shows the first 10 emails in the inbox) $ search from:john (shows emails from john with numbers) $ reply 4 (opens up vi to edit a reply to the email #4) ... I've been dreaming a client like this for decades, and actually started developing it, but the development is stagnating for now (due to the spec changes and other priorities).
- dpifke 7y ago
  Check out notmuch: https://notmuchmail.org/ https://notmuchmail.org/
- tambourine_man 7y ago
  I loved your take, haven’t thought of it that way, but it would be great. I hope you are able to go back to it.
- sipior 7y ago
  You might find mblaze (https://github.com/leahneukirchen/mblaze https://github.com/leahneukirchen/mblaze) interesting; it's not too far off from what you describe.
- KC8ZKF 7y ago
  mail, pipes and grep?
- em-bee 7y ago
  did you look at nmh? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MH_Message_Handling_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MH_Message_Handling_System
  - euske 7y ago
    Actually, I was a big fan of MH. But it's quite old and full of gotchas. It doesn't have decent search functions either. Also I'd like to have something written in a modern scripting language (Python, JS, etc), as I don't want to worry about buffer overflow.
- obrajesse 7y ago
  Isn’t this mh?
  - rout39574 7y ago
    yep
- waddlesplash 7y ago
  Haiku's mail system may be of interest to you -- the default UI is of course a GUI, but as the mails are stored as individual files, and their headers in extended attributes, you can use "query mail:from=john", etc. to filter mails, "mail" to send them, etc.
- marttt 7y ago
  You might also like neatmail: https://github.com/aligrudi/neatmail https://github.com/aligrudi/neatmail http://litcave.rudi.ir http://litcave.rudi.ir Or mother (and its, uh, "mother", nedmail) if you're a Plan9 person: http://plan9.stanleylieber.com/mother/ http://plan9.stanleylieber.com/mother/ http://man.cat-v.org/plan_9/1/nedmail http://man.cat-v.org/plan_9/1/nedmail
sergiotapia 7y ago
What is TUI
- vtail 7y ago
  Text UI
- tambourine_man 7y ago
  Sorry: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text-based_user_interface https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text-based_user_interface
keyle 7y ago
I'm a TUI nerd and I love them... But I've used terminal emails recently... and hum, 80% of my emails involved pictures.
- tambourine_man 7y ago
  That and html only messages are a problem indeed. In macOS, however, it is trivial to pass it to quickview, which can display most anything.
- peteretep 7y ago
  OCR and image descriptions have come on leaps and bounds...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- jethro_tell 7y ago
  Sounds like a mailcap problem? You can tell your client how to open every file imaginable. With mutt, I use an ascii preview of the image so I can screen out signatures and then when I open an image, it opens with an image viewer. I have websites, pdfs, doc, xls files all dumped to a text preview mode, then open them in an appropriate viewer if I feel the need further investigation. Turns out most of the time, those emails boil down to pictures you don't need (like logos and b roll headers) and a few words. Most of the joy of terminal email for me is filtering out all the cruft and being left with words.
dngray 7y ago
Yeah I saw this a while back https://drewdevault.com/2019/06/03/Announcing-aerc-0.1.0.html https://drewdevault.com/2019/06/03/Announcing-aerc-0.1.0.htm... He has a really nice video there demonstrating it. I wonder how it compares? I guess both are pretty alpha at the moment.
stevekemp 7y ago
I wrote a "replacement" for mutt, for my own needs a few years back - because I wanted to use a _real_ scripting language, rather than something that was not complete. The result was a client-core written in C++ with most of the UI setup and configuration handled via lua: https://github.com/lumail/lumail/ https://github.com/lumail/lumail/

capdeck 7y ago

In absolute agreement here. Even though mutt's shortcuts are hardwired into my brain, I always check the new-comers out - especially ones written in a language that compiles to binary. There is something lost in this world of shady docker containers, epic javascript runtimes and infinite universe of python environment versions.

euske 7y ago

I, for one, want a pure command line based email client, not just a TUI client, that is well integrated with bash/zsh in an everyday use, e.g. $ inbox (shows the first 10 emails in the inbox) $ search from:john (shows emails from john with numbers) $ reply 4 (opens up vi to edit a reply to the email #4) ... I've been dreaming a client like this for decades, and actually started developing it, but the development is stagnating for now (due to the spec changes and other priorities).

dpifke 7y ago
Check out notmuch: https://notmuchmail.org/ https://notmuchmail.org/
tambourine_man 7y ago
I loved your take, haven’t thought of it that way, but it would be great. I hope you are able to go back to it.
sipior 7y ago
You might find mblaze (https://github.com/leahneukirchen/mblaze https://github.com/leahneukirchen/mblaze) interesting; it's not too far off from what you describe.
KC8ZKF 7y ago
mail, pipes and grep?
em-bee 7y ago
did you look at nmh? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MH_Message_Handling_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MH_Message_Handling_System
- euske 7y ago
  Actually, I was a big fan of MH. But it's quite old and full of gotchas. It doesn't have decent search functions either. Also I'd like to have something written in a modern scripting language (Python, JS, etc), as I don't want to worry about buffer overflow.
obrajesse 7y ago
Isn’t this mh?
- rout39574 7y ago
  yep
waddlesplash 7y ago
Haiku's mail system may be of interest to you -- the default UI is of course a GUI, but as the mails are stored as individual files, and their headers in extended attributes, you can use "query mail:from=john", etc. to filter mails, "mail" to send them, etc.
marttt 7y ago
You might also like neatmail: https://github.com/aligrudi/neatmail https://github.com/aligrudi/neatmail http://litcave.rudi.ir http://litcave.rudi.ir Or mother (and its, uh, "mother", nedmail) if you're a Plan9 person: http://plan9.stanleylieber.com/mother/ http://plan9.stanleylieber.com/mother/ http://man.cat-v.org/plan_9/1/nedmail http://man.cat-v.org/plan_9/1/nedmail

sergiotapia 7y ago

What is TUI

vtail 7y ago
Text UI
tambourine_man 7y ago
Sorry: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text-based_user_interface https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text-based_user_interface

keyle 7y ago

I'm a TUI nerd and I love them... But I've used terminal emails recently... and hum, 80% of my emails involved pictures.

tambourine_man 7y ago
That and html only messages are a problem indeed. In macOS, however, it is trivial to pass it to quickview, which can display most anything.
peteretep 7y ago
OCR and image descriptions have come on leaps and bounds...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
jethro_tell 7y ago
Sounds like a mailcap problem? You can tell your client how to open every file imaginable. With mutt, I use an ascii preview of the image so I can screen out signatures and then when I open an image, it opens with an image viewer. I have websites, pdfs, doc, xls files all dumped to a text preview mode, then open them in an appropriate viewer if I feel the need further investigation. Turns out most of the time, those emails boil down to pictures you don't need (like logos and b roll headers) and a few words. Most of the joy of terminal email for me is filtering out all the cruft and being left with words.

dngray 7y ago

Yeah I saw this a while back https://drewdevault.com/2019/06/03/Announcing-aerc-0.1.0.html https://drewdevault.com/2019/06/03/Announcing-aerc-0.1.0.htm... He has a really nice video there demonstrating it. I wonder how it compares? I guess both are pretty alpha at the moment.

stevekemp 7y ago

I wrote a "replacement" for mutt, for my own needs a few years back - because I wanted to use a _real_ scripting language, rather than something that was not complete. The result was a client-core written in C++ with most of the UI setup and configuration handled via lua: https://github.com/lumail/lumail/ https://github.com/lumail/lumail/