4 ms·

If you manage large amounts of email (100K+ messages in a mailbox, 1K+ messages a day), mutt is the only reasonable choice. If you miss mh/nmh and wish that it

by dsr_ 4y ago

If you manage large amounts of email (100K+ messages in a mailbox, 1K+ messages a day), mutt is the only reasonable choice. If you miss mh/nmh and wish that it had a wrapper that could do everything and made sense, mutt is your savior. If you work with people who think that changing the colors and fonts in a message is a good way of clarifying what they are responding to, go find different people to work with. If you need to spend several minutes synthesizing a reply from a bunch of different messages all of which should be on-screen at once, (a) you have my sympathies, and (b) yes, you need a GUI mail client.

tephra 4y ago
Mutt is indeed good but as a gnus user I'd have to disagree that it is the _only_ reasonable option ;)
- dig1 4y ago
  As an emacs + notmuch [1] user, I'll agree with you :) [1] https://notmuchmail.org/ https://notmuchmail.org/
- spear 4y ago
  Yeah, I've been using Gnus for more than 25 years, although I now use mbsync to download e-mail first. Before that, I used the original GNUS for Usenet and VM for e-mail.
  - ylee 4y ago
    27 years on VM here (currently 8.2.0b), using fetchmail to download mail locally. I tried Gnus a couple of times for Usenet but never stuck with it because of Emacs's lack of multithreading. I've never tried Gnus for email because VM has always met my needs. It does an amazingly good job rendering HTML mail into something readable on a text terminal (the way I use VM and Emacs), complete with keyboard-navigable links that VM sends to an external web browser, and for the few times I need to see the actual graphics, a single keystroke sends the message's source to said browser. Personality Crisis (which is nowadays included with VM, as opposed to being separate back when you used it) automatically rewrites the From: line based on the message I'm replying to. Using BBDB, Personality Crisis also does so when creating a new message based on the recipient. Mairix handles superfast searching of my decades of mail archives. You know this of course, but I can't overstate to other people how nice being able to modify/extend VM with Elisp is. I rewrote the link-navigation code to handle all link types, and wrote the code that the abovementioned single keystroke invokes. VM isn't perfect. I know that I could do all of the above with Gnus, and quite possibly am missing out on other features that VM lacks. Overall, though, I really feel like I have a superpower for email handling with it.
- bch 4y ago
  It was a long time ago, but giving gnus a shot (and watching it c-r-a-w-l through my mailbox) makes me wonder if it’s a mutt -stand-in. My typical mutt workflow brought gnus to its gnees.
tiben_ 4y ago
as a mail client connecting to "real life" people i just have to disagree with theses dogmatic statements
chrisseaton 4y ago
> If you manage large amounts of email (100K+ messages in a mailbox, 1K+ messages a day), mutt is the only reasonable choice. I have a couple hundred thousand emails in FastMail and both their web client and Apple’s Mail app seem to scale to this absolutely no problem. 100k emails is way way less data than you think it is. Will likely fit in your laptop’s RAM!
- jethro_tell 4y ago
  it does but most mail clients don't really let you process more than a few hundred messages at a time.
- na85 4y ago
  100k emails is probably less than 10 GB, depending on attachments.
  - petre 4y ago
    It depends. 28.8k emails from google takeout = 4.2Gb.
    - chrisseaton 4y ago
      Still not even remotely in the range of requiring specialist software. Fits the RAM of a ten-year-old laptop.
na85 4y ago
>If you work with people who think that changing the colors and fonts in a message is a good way of clarifying what they are responding to, go find different people to work with. Was with you until this point. A good tool doesn't limit what the user can do on the grounds of ideological purity. If some corporate doofus wants to reply in red, that's their business. If your tool won't display colored text you need a better tool.
cycomanic 4y ago
Actually unless you install some additional extension like notmuch or mairix I would argue that mutt is worse for handling large amount of mail, because search becomes quite slow. It's even worse if you use IMAP support, if I recall correctly mutt doesn't search on the server (using sieve) so if you search in an IMAP mailbox without cache enabled it downloads all email before searching.
- mattpallissard 4y ago
  The search command is in the IMAP RFC [1]. Sieve is an entirely separate RFC for filtering email as it's accepted by the MDA [2]. And I could be wrong, but AFAIK neomutt at least supports server side search. 1. https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc9051.html#name-search-command https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc9051.html#name-search-command 2. https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5228 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5228
  - cycomanic 4y ago
    Sorry you're obviously correct about sieve. Maybe I misremember about server side search in mutt (not sure if there is a difference to neomutt), but I remember imap search was very slow if caching was not enabled (IIRC there's even a warning in the mutt documentation about this).
ubermonkey 4y ago
"If you work with people who think that changing the colors and fonts in a message is a good way of clarifying what they are responding to, go find different people to work with." This is an objectively ridiculous statement. A person using a modern email client can confine themselves to a single font and color, or they can use formatting. They can read plaintext mails, and they can read complex emails. Being flexible > being dogmatic about other people communicate.
- dsr_ 4y ago
  When was the last time you were upset that an HN comment couldn't be written with 36pt Papyrus in green to indicate how important it is? People who depend on the typeface, size and color to convey essential meaning end up communicating poorly.
  - ubermonkey 4y ago
    Plaintext is part of the agreement at HN, so that's an irrelevant question. Plaintext bigots love to assert that there's no communicative value in formatted or colored text, but that doesn't make it true. The world has moved on. This argument was litigated and lost by the plaintext partisans when Clinton was president.

by dsr_ 4y ago

tephra 4y ago

Mutt is indeed good but as a gnus user I'd have to disagree that it is the _only_ reasonable option ;)

dig1 4y ago
As an emacs + notmuch [1] user, I'll agree with you :) [1] https://notmuchmail.org/ https://notmuchmail.org/
spear 4y ago
Yeah, I've been using Gnus for more than 25 years, although I now use mbsync to download e-mail first. Before that, I used the original GNUS for Usenet and VM for e-mail.
- ylee 4y ago
  27 years on VM here (currently 8.2.0b), using fetchmail to download mail locally. I tried Gnus a couple of times for Usenet but never stuck with it because of Emacs's lack of multithreading. I've never tried Gnus for email because VM has always met my needs. It does an amazingly good job rendering HTML mail into something readable on a text terminal (the way I use VM and Emacs), complete with keyboard-navigable links that VM sends to an external web browser, and for the few times I need to see the actual graphics, a single keystroke sends the message's source to said browser. Personality Crisis (which is nowadays included with VM, as opposed to being separate back when you used it) automatically rewrites the From: line based on the message I'm replying to. Using BBDB, Personality Crisis also does so when creating a new message based on the recipient. Mairix handles superfast searching of my decades of mail archives. You know this of course, but I can't overstate to other people how nice being able to modify/extend VM with Elisp is. I rewrote the link-navigation code to handle all link types, and wrote the code that the abovementioned single keystroke invokes. VM isn't perfect. I know that I could do all of the above with Gnus, and quite possibly am missing out on other features that VM lacks. Overall, though, I really feel like I have a superpower for email handling with it.
bch 4y ago
It was a long time ago, but giving gnus a shot (and watching it c-r-a-w-l through my mailbox) makes me wonder if it’s a mutt -stand-in. My typical mutt workflow brought gnus to its gnees.

tiben_ 4y ago

as a mail client connecting to "real life" people i just have to disagree with theses dogmatic statements

chrisseaton 4y ago

> If you manage large amounts of email (100K+ messages in a mailbox, 1K+ messages a day), mutt is the only reasonable choice. I have a couple hundred thousand emails in FastMail and both their web client and Apple’s Mail app seem to scale to this absolutely no problem. 100k emails is way way less data than you think it is. Will likely fit in your laptop’s RAM!

jethro_tell 4y ago
it does but most mail clients don't really let you process more than a few hundred messages at a time.
na85 4y ago
100k emails is probably less than 10 GB, depending on attachments.
- petre 4y ago
  It depends. 28.8k emails from google takeout = 4.2Gb.
  - chrisseaton 4y ago
    Still not even remotely in the range of requiring specialist software. Fits the RAM of a ten-year-old laptop.

na85 4y ago

>If you work with people who think that changing the colors and fonts in a message is a good way of clarifying what they are responding to, go find different people to work with. Was with you until this point. A good tool doesn't limit what the user can do on the grounds of ideological purity. If some corporate doofus wants to reply in red, that's their business. If your tool won't display colored text you need a better tool.

cycomanic 4y ago

Actually unless you install some additional extension like notmuch or mairix I would argue that mutt is worse for handling large amount of mail, because search becomes quite slow. It's even worse if you use IMAP support, if I recall correctly mutt doesn't search on the server (using sieve) so if you search in an IMAP mailbox without cache enabled it downloads all email before searching.

mattpallissard 4y ago
The search command is in the IMAP RFC [1]. Sieve is an entirely separate RFC for filtering email as it's accepted by the MDA [2]. And I could be wrong, but AFAIK neomutt at least supports server side search. 1. https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc9051.html#name-search-command https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc9051.html#name-search-command 2. https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5228 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5228
- cycomanic 4y ago
  Sorry you're obviously correct about sieve. Maybe I misremember about server side search in mutt (not sure if there is a difference to neomutt), but I remember imap search was very slow if caching was not enabled (IIRC there's even a warning in the mutt documentation about this).

ubermonkey 4y ago

"If you work with people who think that changing the colors and fonts in a message is a good way of clarifying what they are responding to, go find different people to work with." This is an objectively ridiculous statement. A person using a modern email client can confine themselves to a single font and color, or they can use formatting. They can read plaintext mails, and they can read complex emails. Being flexible > being dogmatic about other people communicate.

dsr_ 4y ago
When was the last time you were upset that an HN comment couldn't be written with 36pt Papyrus in green to indicate how important it is? People who depend on the typeface, size and color to convey essential meaning end up communicating poorly.
- ubermonkey 4y ago
  Plaintext is part of the agreement at HN, so that's an irrelevant question. Plaintext bigots love to assert that there's no communicative value in formatted or colored text, but that doesn't make it true. The world has moved on. This argument was litigated and lost by the plaintext partisans when Clinton was president.