4 ms·

If you don't need to work with images or formatted content, Mutt is far superior than Gmail and other webmail solutions. There is no perceptible delay, everythi

If you don't need to work with images or formatted content, Mutt is far superior than Gmail and other webmail solutions. There is no perceptible delay, everything is happening instantly. I feel like I can answer dozens of emails in an hour and keep an empty inbox just because the experience is so smooth.

enriquto 6y ago
OK for the limitations about "formatted content" (these limitations are a feature to many people). But images and other file attachments are much easier to deal with in mutt than in gmail. They are just seamlessly opened by whatever image viewer you have chosen.
- leephillips 6y ago
  And you can put a shell pipeline in your mailcap file, so you can pre- or post-process your attachments as well as simply viewing them.
- pge 6y ago
  The two things that I had trouble with last time I used Mutt were calendar invitations from outlook or google calendar, and html pages (without opening firefox). Any suggestions on best practices?
  - leephillips 6y ago
    For HTML, set auto_view text/html in your startup file, and Mutt will consult your mailcap file to see what viewer you prefer. It will use that (lynx, w3m, etc) to display the HTML email in the pager as a default. For calendar invitations: I've never tried to integrate that, but if they are attachments with a mime type, you can put instructions for processing them in the mailcap as well.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - johnisgood 6y ago
      I have it set for text/x-patch text/x-darcs-patch along with a macro pager. Could do git, too, if you receive pull requests or patches often via e-mail.
ssivark 6y ago
Is there anything that has a clean and responsive viewer that supports HTML/formatted email with images, with an efficient keyboard-driven interface like mutt/notmuch/etc? Ideally, I would like my mail storage to be separated from indexing to be separated from access interface. I don't know why the graphical programs don't modularize the problem space that way.
- t0astbread 6y ago
  Have you looked at astroid before? https://astroidmail.github.io/ https://astroidmail.github.io/
  - ssivark 6y ago
    Wow, astroid seems quite close to what I had in mind. I'll definitely give it a try -- thanks! Seems also like it is not actively maintained currently, but I'm hoping it's probably feature-complete and stable enough to be in mostly maintenance mode. For anyone else who might be interested: https://github.com/astroidmail/astroid/issues/669 https://github.com/astroidmail/astroid/issues/669
- u801e 6y ago
  I'm not sure whether Thunderbird would meet your criteria, but there are a number of keyboard bindings and it can handle HTML messages reasonably well (especially if you set the view option to plain text).
b20000 6y ago
I've been wanting to transition off fastmail and google apps mail for a while to mutt but sometimes I get email with attachments and images and I still don't understand what the best practice is to deal with those. I'm on debian buster. I also need to migrate like 50 gigs worth of email. Some of that is in those 2 services and some of that in mail folders on Mac OSX.
herewulf 6y ago
Agreed. I used mutt for all my email for a good six years or so until about 2012. However, all the HTML mail with no plaintext version that I was getting killed it for me. There's .mailcap and dumping the HTML through w3m trickery that I know about now that probably bears revisiting mutt.

enriquto 6y ago

OK for the limitations about "formatted content" (these limitations are a feature to many people). But images and other file attachments are much easier to deal with in mutt than in gmail. They are just seamlessly opened by whatever image viewer you have chosen.

leephillips 6y ago
And you can put a shell pipeline in your mailcap file, so you can pre- or post-process your attachments as well as simply viewing them.
pge 6y ago
The two things that I had trouble with last time I used Mutt were calendar invitations from outlook or google calendar, and html pages (without opening firefox). Any suggestions on best practices?
- leephillips 6y ago
  For HTML, set auto_view text/html in your startup file, and Mutt will consult your mailcap file to see what viewer you prefer. It will use that (lynx, w3m, etc) to display the HTML email in the pager as a default. For calendar invitations: I've never tried to integrate that, but if they are attachments with a mime type, you can put instructions for processing them in the mailcap as well.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - johnisgood 6y ago
    I have it set for text/x-patch text/x-darcs-patch along with a macro pager. Could do git, too, if you receive pull requests or patches often via e-mail.

ssivark 6y ago

Is there anything that has a clean and responsive viewer that supports HTML/formatted email with images, with an efficient keyboard-driven interface like mutt/notmuch/etc? Ideally, I would like my mail storage to be separated from indexing to be separated from access interface. I don't know why the graphical programs don't modularize the problem space that way.

t0astbread 6y ago
Have you looked at astroid before? https://astroidmail.github.io/ https://astroidmail.github.io/
- ssivark 6y ago
  Wow, astroid seems quite close to what I had in mind. I'll definitely give it a try -- thanks! Seems also like it is not actively maintained currently, but I'm hoping it's probably feature-complete and stable enough to be in mostly maintenance mode. For anyone else who might be interested: https://github.com/astroidmail/astroid/issues/669 https://github.com/astroidmail/astroid/issues/669
u801e 6y ago
I'm not sure whether Thunderbird would meet your criteria, but there are a number of keyboard bindings and it can handle HTML messages reasonably well (especially if you set the view option to plain text).

b20000 6y ago

I've been wanting to transition off fastmail and google apps mail for a while to mutt but sometimes I get email with attachments and images and I still don't understand what the best practice is to deal with those. I'm on debian buster. I also need to migrate like 50 gigs worth of email. Some of that is in those 2 services and some of that in mail folders on Mac OSX.

herewulf 6y ago

Agreed. I used mutt for all my email for a good six years or so until about 2012. However, all the HTML mail with no plaintext version that I was getting killed it for me. There's .mailcap and dumping the HTML through w3m trickery that I know about now that probably bears revisiting mutt.