Mutt Fork Adds Features From Notmuch 93
Karel Zak started a fork of Mutt back in January to integrate features the upstream authors deemed too radical, and today released the first status update. So far implemented is native notmuch support (inspired by Sup) which adds fast search, tagging, and virtual folders from notmuch queries. Unlike the current hackish solutions, all of these are available as native mutt commands and can be used in your muttrc. Additionally, patches from Debian and other distributions will be integrated. Source is over at Github, and a few screenshots are on their wiki.
Re:Who uses Mutt? (Score:5, Informative)
I use Mutt. I've also used various incarnations of Mozilla Mail, KMail, Apple Mail, Microsoft Outlook, a few webmail systems, and done test runs with a few mail clients I forgot the names of.
In the end, I came back to Mutt. It's the mail client I'm most productive with. I customized it to work the way I want. I'm used to it.
I think Mutt's strengths are:
* Customizable. Mutt is fairly easy to customize, and the customization goes a long way. Define things you want to do in terms of s-lang functions or shell commands, bind a key to them, and boom, now you can do everything you often do with a single keystroke.
* Good support for multiple e-mail addresses. I have a single account that I use with multiple e-mail addresses. Mutt makes this easy. A number of other mail clients I have used make this tedious. Some do not support it at all.
* Works in the terminal. I like to work in the terminal. I know many people don't. But if you do, this is an advantage.
* It works. I never have problems with it. I wish the same was true of all mail clients I've used.
Weaknesses:
* Slow on large maildirs. I have folders with tens of thousands of messages. These take long to open. Part of this is "many files that need to be statted, and stat is slow", but part of it is implementation choice. Some mail clients are way faster at this.
* Slow on IMAP folders. It looks like Mutt fetches messages or message headers one by one for each message. My mail server is over 100ms away. This makes things slow. My fault? Mutt's fault? Anyway, it's a disadvantage. Some mail clients do better.
* Wastes screen real-estate. I like that Mutt works in the terminal. But it wastes space. Graphic-mode mail clients can fit more information in the same space than Mutt does.
Re:Who uses Mutt? (Score:5, Informative)
Have you set your index_format? And have you tried pager_index_lines to split the screen into index + message view?
Re:worth checking out? (Score:4, Informative)
yes.
if you're used to pine, it will take a day or two to get used to mutt's keybindings. it'll probably piss you off while you're learning them, because there are some subtly annoying differences.
after that, you'll be glad you did and you'll never look back.
mutt's searching and tagging features alone are worth the switch.