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Unix Operating Systems Software

Mutt Hits 1.0 126

Posted by Hemos from the but-what-about-my-pine-love-affair dept.
Albert Schueller writes "After years of alpha and beta, everybody's favorite mail client, MUTT, has an official 1.0 release. They've also got news about the release."
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Mutt Hits 1.0 More

Mutt Hits 1.0

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  • Mutt is my main email client and I am very happy with it. The one thing I don't really like about it is the fact that it won't accept plain in-line PGP-encrypted email, only PGP/Mime and application/x-pgp attachments. The procmail hack suggested in the documentation for solving this issue is not exactly elegant.

    This seems to go against Jon Postel's well-known principle: "Be conservative in what you generate, liberal in what you accept" - generate properly formatted PGP/Mime, but accept any kind of PGP encrypted message.




    ----
  • Well, I must admit I consider it a feature :-)

    When I was using elm I was annoyed by the fact that I am unable to reach other mails in the current folder while answering some mail. I never screwed up any of my mailboxes by opening them in two mutt sessions. (I just use the other session read-only.)
  • Hmmm. Must have been the link from his homepage that threw me off. Thanks for the correction!

    --
  • >>You are slowly dying past... that eventually will disapear

    Not at all. It is absurd to say that GUI is better than command line at anything (which I don't think you are saying anyways). As long as there are some things that can be done quicker and better at the command line, even client stuff, people will use the command line. Do you realize how much quicker it is to type in 'mutt' than to move your mouse over to the start button, left click, move up to programs, left click, move over to 'Qualcom', left click, move down to Eudora, left click, wait while a purty splash screen pops up, and then have your email client started? And don't tell me about desktop icons, because if you multitask it is the same thing minimizing windows and moving them around to get to the desktop. Sure, John smith isn't a nerd and we can't expect him to remember 'all' the commands of a text based interface (though in my experience it is just as hard for newbies to remember "Outlook Express == mail" and all the similiar apps. And sure, one day there will be dumb boxes that do all media stuff, and *real* computers will be delegated to true geeks, but *real* computer users will use the command line for the foreseeable future.
  • Try out 'mutt -y'

    I use it so that mutt starts with the mailboxes listed in the 'mailbox' command (from .muttrc). Every folder is tagged 'N' if there is new mail and you can also put remote imap folders in this same command.

    For instance, instead of having fetchmail download all my mail from work, I can consult what has come in during the week-end and fix it the coming monday (well, I guess that's what IMAP aims to be ;)
  • How? I use Wine to run Agent (a combination mail and news reader for Windows) on my home machine. It's not as powerful as MS Outlook which I use at work, but at least it's possible to get up and running with a trivial amount of effort. The hardest part was setting up the winerc file.

    To read mail with Agent:
    Step 1 Set up Wine
    Step 2 Run Agent
    Step 3 Go to the option menu and enter POP server, userID, password, SMTP server.
    Step 4 Click the "Get Mail" button

    To read mail with Mutt
    Step 1 Read fetchmail manual
    Step 2 Write a fetchmailrc file
    Step 3 Read sendmail manual (Go ahead and claim sendmail is easy to configure, I dare you)
    Step 4 Configure sendmail to fix the error about the wrong host
    Step 5 Wonder if you're going to get hacked now that you have sendmail running (After all, what do I know about sendmail security? At least when it was turned off I felt fairly safe)
    Step 6 Read the Mutt manual (With no menus and no point and click don't count on figuring it out just from guessing unless you have years of experience with Unix mail clients)
    Step 7 Oops, I forgot I only ran fetchmail once. Better read some more documentation to figure out which file to add it to so it runs automatically. rc.local? ifup-ppp? ifup-post? crontab?
    Step 8 Oops, what if I want to create mail while I'm not connected and then have it sent automatically? Can sendmail queue outgoing mail? I don't know, better read some more manuals and maybe even get another program.

    OK, so maybe I exagerated a little, but it's certainly a lot more work and more programs than the Windows method. End user email configuration should be "POP Server, SMTP Server, username, password, Full Name, polling frequency" five or six text boxes and maybe a couple of check boxes. It should not require require reading manual for three or more programs. I'm an end user dammit, not a sysadmin.

  • Yes, I know. The smtp comment was just to illustrate that whoever answeres doesn't need to explain smtp.
  • Fetchmail can support more than one POP3 account. Or IMAP, or KPOP, or ...

    I have fetchmail downloading from my POP3 email account, then sort via procmail into many (13) mailboxes. I used to have three POP3 accounts -- two from different ISPs and one for my actual email account (the one I use). It worked just as well then as it does now.
  • Sorry for flaming.

    But there is this thing called a learning curve. Having the mouse available eases the learning curve but eventually the user would figure out the key bindings. So eventually the user would stop or almost stop using the mouse.

    You should see me in computer class. I use the keyboard all the time on Excel spreadsheets and finish the spreadsheets before everyone else virtually everytime. You can tell a person's experience with the computer, even on a Windows or Mac machine, by how often they reach for the mouse. This is that learning thing.

    ***Beginning*of*Signiture***
    Linux? That's GNU/Linux [gnu.org] to you mister!

  • Re:Mutt (Score:1)

    by cmc ( 44956 )
    Email is strictly client side application and therefore there is absolutely no reason to use command line tool. Of course, some of you will argue that GUI is bullshit and the only true way is the command line. In that case you are no different than these people from the begining of the century who first dismissed cars as an evil machine and then same madness hapened when first planes came out.
    Can you ssh into your computer system from somewhere else (like work) and use Balsa to read the email on your home system? How about Outlook 98? Netscape Mail?
  • With high volume mailinglists it is kind of annoying because I regularly end up rereading and redeleting some hundred messages. Say I read mails 1-100 in one Mutt window, and 101-200 in another, then there's no way to merge my reading efforts.

    But indeed, I've never had corruption.
  • Well as long as you have an Xserver running that would be quite easy with ssh :)
    (except for the fact that Balsa is kind of a bad crashy example)
  • The post above may be a troll, but there's a grain of truth in it.

    There's no more than a grain of truth, if any at all. While I'll freely acknowledge that there are lots of features in Outlook, the simple fact is that its users are dependent upon M$ for the features that are there.

    In contrast to CLI tools, the GUI user has only those features available to him that the developers provide -- and no more. And the price of those features is bloat.

    To argue that the command line is "archaic" or that it's doomed to die is to display only one's own ignorance (I know you didn't do this; it was the original poster). Power users will go for the command line. They have *vastly* more control than any GUI app can hope to provide in anything less than 1GB of RAM and disk space each.

  • So use Windows like he said.
  • Scrap steps 3 through 5 and install qmail which is very secure and which has a trivial mechanism for rewriting the From header (which is answered in the qmail FAQ, not in the bowels of some obscure man page).

    What is with all the complaining about MUAs tonight? It's not only you but several others. There *are* GUI alternatives to mutt -- netscape, kmail, etc, and these do what you want.

    Mutt on the other hand does what mutt users like: one thing. I haven't heard the mutt lovers here screaming about the bloat associated with GUI mail programs; why is it that the GUI types are whining about a program they're not even required to use???

    If you're not happy with the GUI alternatives, then go scream at the developers of the GUI mail programs, not at the muttfolk. We're a happy lot. We've FOUND our mail client.

    Have a nice day.

  • From .procmailrc, sends stuff from cryptography mailing list to ~/mail/Cryptography and the rest to /var/spool/mail. (assuming you get your mail through the sendmail daemon, fetchmail does this for me)

    MAILDIR=$HOME/mail

    :0:
    * cryptography@c2.net
    Cryptography

    :0
    /var/spool/mail/svmcguir

    From .muttrc, tells mutt to use these as mailboxes

    set folder=~/mail
    mailboxes +Cryptography
    mailboxes /var/spool/mail/svmcguir

    and this tells mutt where to save mail I have read

    mbox-hook .*Cryptography$ space"+Cryptography-read-`date +%Y`"
    mbox-hook .*svmcguir$ space"+read-messages-`date+%Y`"

    (the editor's wordwrap is screwing up my lines. Replace space with a real space.) Hope this helps

  • When you've got a message selected in mutt, just press the "s" key to save, and it'll prompt you for the mailbox you want to save the message to.

    Then when you want to access that mailbox, just run mutt -f
  • This is explicitly considered a feature (see the FAQ). Mutt is actually quite intelligent about this - if you start up a second Mutt and modify the mailbox, the first one will warn you when you switch back to it; I've never had corruption, since I just kill the 2nd Mutt process immediately afterwards.

    This way you can have multiple folders on your screen open using multiple xterms, amongst other things..

    --bdj

  • I messed around with the code last night, and it seems mutt still has a problem with IMAP. Namely, if you open an imap mail box, then change to a local mailbox, then quit. What happened is mutt closes the imap mailbox without closing the connection, then open the local mailbox. And when you hit quit, mutt thinks it is in the context of a local mailbox and wouldn't try to terminate any connection, and you end up with a pending connection to the imap server. Any comments?
  • I've been trying to get Mutt to do what I want for a while. My problem is this: I'm on a bunch of mailing lists, and most of them work just fine when I save messages to a folder - but some don't. I believe it has something to do with the sender ID or the reply-to - but at any rate, on these, it always wants me to save them to a folder for the sender, and not the mailing list. This wouldn't be bad, except this is about 3/4s of my mail!

    I've tried mbox-hooks, save-hooks, and other things - but part of the problem is that the docs are very unclear as to what things mean. Nothing seems to work - can someone help me?
  • Ah, the author... Just who I need. I've been considering fetchmail, but how do you advise to do posting? I don't know how NNTP works (SMTP on the otherhand... I've edited sendmail.mc and lived :-), but how would I post?
  • When when you want to access that mailbox, just run
    mutt -f.

    Kluuuuuuudge! Who wants to restart their MUA with a switch every time they want to check out a different folder?

    But are you sure that's necessary? In playing with semi-recent versions of Mutt, I've found that it will let me poke around my Pine-made folders. I'd assumed that my difficulties in getting it to save to them were due to bugs or misconfiguration.

  • There's a certain level of paranoia that's prerequisite for using PGP/GPG properly, and you're a bit short. :)

    Seriously, though... if your passphrase is on the hard drive, that means it's fair game for any system cracker or entity taking physical control of your system. That's a Very Bad Thing... if you've got a system that's practically unbreakable via cryptographic means, why create a weak link as big as your OS and physical security? (Physical and OS security are still issues without your password on the hard drive, but they're much larger ones when it is).
  • Anyway, how would a text-only program do mouse support? Try to support gpm, xterm, etc.?

    I believe libgpm is enough to support both gpm and xterm...
  • Try using this sample .procmailrc [freebsd.org]. That's just a few lines of my procmailrc which sorts mail from all sorts of lists into different folders.
  • can you even set up filters in PINE?

    The best way to do filtering is via procmail.

    Good for the newbies (or uncaring), but not very flexible. Especially not for the serious text editor or email fanatic. ;)

    Pine allows you to use any editor. Look at your pine config and check "enable alternate editor command" if you want to be able to switch ( with ^_ ) or "enable alternate editor implicitly" if you want it to automatically use your favourite editor ( instead of pico ) . I do this so that I can switch to vim if I'm writing a message longer than 3 lines ...

    As for email fanatics ... real email fanatics use procmail for their filtering.

  • Maybe if you USED mutt, you'd know that it's interface is similar to a no-nonsense elm layout.

    And, if you're using unix, ALL your applications are "command-line" applications. I hate to break this to you, but why not look in the code of your window manage and see what it does to start menued programs. Wow. Amazing huh?

    The idea that "GUI" is the future isn't 100% correct. While having Gui's is nice, and it helps the learning curve, nothing beats the speed of the command line. I like to think of GUI as the first step towards being able to use the command line.

    Very few people can design truly efficent and elegant graphical user interfaces anyways, so most of them are confusing and poorly laid out. With this situation, GUI can be worse than the command line, because it can become counterintuitive to an extreme.

    The command line, however, is a constant. It's not really intuitive or counterintuitive. It's just a comand prompt.

    Just because you run a program in an xterm dosen't mean it's a command line program. Your post bespeaks both a lack of knowledge on this thread, and a lack of understanding of UNIX-style operating systems and programming in general.


    - Paradox
    Man of the C!!!
    perl -e "print join q( ), split(q.z. ,reverse qq;):zrekcahzlrepzrehtonaztey; );"
  • Really? Why don't you get off your elitist high-horse and ask yourself how mouse support is a bad thing.

    Oh no! The program is easier without taking away my flexibility! Easier! Oh, the horror!

    I am more in the opinion that most of the clueless are the people who *use* GNU/Linux.

    ***Beginning*of*Signiture***
    Linux? That's GNU/Linux [gnu.org] to you mister!
  • GPG does not appear to have the wipe option of PGP, or rather, it doesn't complain and doesn't wipe the plaintext.
  • If it's using vim that turns you on, I think most (if not all) text email clients let you use any editor you specify. Certainly Pine, Elm, or my favorite MH do.

    Mutt is pretty cool, though, I wish it were installed in my university's servers.

    ---

  • I used this script to convert my address-book. I needed to do a little manual fix-up afterwards, though.

    #!/usr/bin/perl

    while(<>) {
    if( !/^\#/ && /(.*)\t(.*)\t(.*)/ ) {
    my ($nick, $name, $addr) = ($1, $2, $3);
    if( $addr =~ /^\((.*)\)$/ ) {
    print "alias $nick $1\n";
    } else if( $addr =~ /<.*>/ ) {
    print "alias $nick $addr\n";
    } else {
    ($name =~ /(.*), (.*)/) && ($name = "$2 $1");
    print "alias $nick $name <$addr>\n";
    }
    }
    }

  • Command line mail programs are faster and easier than GUI mail programs, and there is much less overhead involved in using them vs. using GUI mail programs. Hence, they are much more efficient.

    Your analogy that I am no different than "these people from the beginning of the century who first dismissed cars as an evil machine" is correct. I don't see how we can call cars "progress"; they are *insanely* inefficient. (I don't know the actual number, but I would guess cars have a 20% feul efficiency?) Not only do we use way too much oil maintaining cars, we also have to maintain all the roads that the cars drive on. Not to mention we have to build all the cars in the first place. And we are adding more and more cars all the time, causing the amount of oil we use to exponentially go up, along with the amount of resources we must allocate to roads, and road maintinence.

    So, yes, I would say that the evils of the car are somewhat analagous to the evils of a GUI mail program.

  • Re:Mutt (Score:1)

    by Gerv ( 15179 )
    Seconded (but for Netscape Messenger for Windows; although I have used Outlook and I like that too). BTW, I don't use Messenger for Unix because NS broke it by removing Offline mode.

    Question: Which would you rather have? A mail client that does everything you want easily, but which you can't add more features to, or one which doesn't do everything you want, but you're welcome to implement stuff yourself? ;-)

    There are few people in the world with the time and the coding skills to choose the second option.

    Gerv
  • Mutt also uses SIGWINCH and resize_term(), which are not found in all systems/curses implementations. I don't know if you've heard of it, but there's a useful little utility called autoconf. It's used by mutt; you might want to read up on it.

    Daniel
  • Ok.You are right. It is not command line based in the same way as ,say, "more" is.
    As to the lack of understanding Unix-style programming.Hmm ... I am not going to argue with you but there is nothing, absolutely nothing that prevents Unix software to be fully GUI based. In fact, Unix is just about only popular system which has GUI that allows users to log on remotely and still avoid command line. I am not saying that command line (or more correctly, text based)interfaces are evil. I simply cannot understand people fascination with text based intefaces - it was used for decades mainly because there was no hardware powerfull enough to allow any other interraction with the machine. Now, in my opionion, the only reason why many people use commmand line based tools is fear of change. Simple as that and furthermore, this "force" won't take you to any new frontiers.
    I hate to say that, but it is Microsoft creating future ... they stumble, make mistakes but create new stuff - while Unix doesn't really bring anything new to the table ( I am talking about workstation world ... servers is a different story.)

  • Oh come on. You are arguing against change. Don't you realize that this kind of argument won't take you anywhere ?
    And I am very interested in one thing >> how the fuck does having different opinion qualifies me as a troll. I simply don't "dig" text based tools, that's all and for me "mutt" is worthless tool. Is that trolling ??
  • " And, if you're using unix, ALL your applications are "command-line" applications. "

    Ahh, amazing !!!
    I hate to break this to you, but you can start MS Office from command line too.

  • "It is absurd to say that GUI is better than command line at anything (which I don't think you are saying anyways). "

    Yeah, right. Let's all ditch MS Office and move to text based Wordperfect from 10 years ago.
    Or better yet, why don't we go back to punched cards - I am sure there were many "true" geeks who
    argued for that when first terminals were entering the market.

  • I've been hunting mailers in an attempt to find one with gpg support since I wish to drop my use of PGP completely.

    There is the beginnings of GPG support, but it seems to break to try to compile it. Maybe I'll have to fix it myself. :-)

  • That said, mutt is the most flexible, usable mailer I know.

  • Re:Sadly, no GPG support, but then again, who does (Score:4)

    by Yarn ( 75 ) on Saturday October 23, 1999 @02:44AM (#1593357) Homepage
    GPG support's worked for me for quite a while,
    add lines like these to your .muttrc:
    # GPG settings
    set pgp_default_version=gpg
    set pgp_gpg=/home/yarn/bin/gpg
    This works with Mutt 0.95.3i (1999-02-12)
    (packaged with debian)

  • ..can you even set up filters in PINE? PINE and PICO are nice and all, but they're also pretty vanilla (anyone who is wondering why I included a text editor in this statement apparently doesn't know where either are developed). Good for the newbies (or uncaring), but not very flexible. Especially not for the serious text editor or email fanatic. ;)

    No, this is not intended as a flame, I'm geniunely curious.

  • I hope they finally included imap folder browsing. I'm suprised they haven't added a gui (xmutt?) to the program yet. Well, just a useful tidbit of information - Mutt [mutt.org] was the open source mailer ESR [tuxedo.org] developed to test the ideas he presented in CatB (The Cathedral and the Bazaar). ESR also thinks this mailer sucks - it just sucks less than all the other mailers. :^)

    --
  • vim is okay to use with mutt

    emacsclient is better

    "Run away! Run away!"

  • Mutt was not developed by ESR, you are thinking of fetchmail. It was developed by Michael Elkins, who is the one who said "All mail clients suck. This one just sucks less.", not ESR.

  • That's it... I've put it off for too long, I'm switching to Mutt [mutt.org] (from Pine).

    Sure, the functionality and the control are nice and all that, but dammit, that little dog on their FAQ page [www.fefe.de] is so doggone (pardon) cute.

    Guess that means I'll have to switch to Tin [tin.org] too...

    But I won't miss having to go around my ass to get to my pgp-encrypted elbow.

  • > Well, just a useful tidbit of information -
    > Mutt was the open source mailer ESR developed
    > to test the ideas he presented in CatB
    > (The Cathedral and the Bazaar)

    bzzzzt - wrong!

    Sorry, but that would be fetchmail, which is a mail retrieval-utility. See this link [tuxedo.org].
  • No probs at all .. add something like this to your .muttrc

    set pgp_gpg="/usr/bin/gpg"
    set pgp_default_version="gpg"
    set pgp_receive_version="default"
    set pgp_key_version="default"
    set pgp_send_version="default"

    I'm on mutt 1.0pre4 and gpg 1.0, and it works flawlessly.
  • Yeah, gpm support would be a possibility. But I don't (really) want Mutt to have mouse support. It's a way to get more users, but I don't need it (and I like Mutt the way it is).
  • > can you even set up filters in PINE?

    With version 4.20 Pine actually supports filtering (but there's procmail anyway) and user-defined colors just well. Still no split-screen and threading, so Mutt's still #1.
  • Mutt is the best mail client I've ever seen ... but ... what Mutt needs is: Mouse support (maybe the new version has it) for all the newbie-Linux-users. Mouse support is the thing, that all the Windows users want from their mail client. Don't you think?
    Once a friend (windoze user) asked me: "Why do you use this non-graphical mail client with no mouse support?" I explained all the nice features to him, but he said: "Really nice, but it has no mouse support!"
  • > That said, mutt is the most flexible,
    > usable mailer I know.

    Most useable I can agree with. For the most flexible one, you might want to check out Gnus [gnus.org]. You should like Emacs or XEmacs for that one though.
  • > That said, mutt is the most flexible,
    > usable mailer I know.

    Most useable I can agree with. For the most flexible one, you might want to check out Gnus [gnus.org]. You should have an affinity for Emacs or XEmacs though.
  • Actually, there is a graphical version of mutt, at least a graphical mailer based on the mutt libraries. I'm not quite sure what it's called, have a look at comp.mail.mutt on dejanews, it was mentioned there recently.
  • In addition to what the other posters have said here about GnuPG support in mutt, keep in mind that you can use GnuPG with just about any PGP 2.6-capable program by using the PGP wrapper, pgpgpg [nessie.de].

    --
    Interested in XFMail? New XFMail home page [slappy.org]

  • Re:Mutt (Score:1)

    by norn ( 19414 )
    It's also enough to only support linux. mutt is a multi-platform program.
  • Or just type c, which is the default key for change mailbox. It's even got filename completion with tab.
  • The piping can solve this afaik. I for example have the following macro:

    macro compose Y "Fpgps -ta\ny^T^Uapplication/pgp; format=text; x-action=sign\ng"

    I have more or less the default keybindings, if you don't understand what is does, feel free to mail me or reply or whatever.
  • I wouldn't know about your problem, but I have the following setup which works very nicely:

    Procmail puts all mail from incoming mailinglists in different mailboxes (a nice idea anyway), and have the following mutt hooks:

    folder-hook . set move=no sort=send-date
    folder-hook (linux-kernel|BugTraq|Humor) set move=yes sort=threads

    mbox-hook /ion/home/fvw/Mail/linux-kernel +linux-kernel
    mbox-hook /ion/home/fvw/Mail/BugTraq +BugTraq
    mbox-hook /ion/home/fvw/Mail/Humor +Humor

    This basicly moves everything that's been read to the appropriate mailbox. (/ion is an nfs mount, so +BugTraq expands to /home/fvw/Mail/BugTraq). Bit confusing because of the nfs, but it works like a dream. Feel free to mail/icq me if you need help.

  • I'd rather have my editor do nifty stuff than have my email client select my editor. ;)

  • If you want mouse support why don't you just install Windows and use Microsoft Outlook Express. I believe you even have to use a mouse to do C programming or to configure your network under Windows. I'm sure you'll like it.
  • Mutt stores its mail folders as single mbox files. Any file (/var/spool/mail/bob, ~/mbox, ~/Mail/foo) can be opened this way; as a convenience, Mutt allows you to refer to a file in ~/Mail by '='. So ~/Mail/foo is =foo. Mutt also has a concept of 'mailboxes'; these are mail folders to which mail can be delivered (by the local MTA, procmail, whatever). You can list these with the 'mailboxes' command in ~/.muttrc.
    To switch which mailbox you're viewing, type 'c'. mutt will default to switching to the next mailbox with new mail, but you can type anything. Tab completion also works, and if you hit 'tab' twice it will move to a file browser. 'tab' in the file browser shows an overview of your defined mailboxes, with information about which ones have new mail.

    I suggest you read the Mutt manual before asking any more questions, since it explains everything that I just said.

    Daniel
  • Is based on mutt. Haven't seen any new versions for a while though....
  • Personally, I think you're trying to do the wrong thing. Mail clients shouldn't be in the business of filtering mail; procmail works quite nicely for this and doesn't require you to manually move the mail (even if you just have to type 's' it's a pain when you get >100 messages a day)

    Most lists can be procmailed with something like:

    PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin
    MAILDIR=$HOME/Mail
    DEFAULT=/var/spool/mail/bob
    LOGFILE=$HOME/Mail/procmail.log
    :0:
    * X-MailingList:.*foo@bar.org
    foo

    (you may have to replace X-MailingList with some other header and
    .*foo@bar.org with some other regexp)

    Daniel
  • Is this possible?

    Yes. Use fetchmail. Mailreaders aren't in the business of downloading mail; if they are it's a bug :)

    Daniel
  • I had to use Pine in the past and I have a lot of (~200) *Email address aliases* stored in Pine format! Under different catogories too!!

    IS there any way to preserve the catogories and convert those Email aliases to Mutt, without too much work (ie typing them back in :-)

    Thanks for any help!
    - linuxlover
  • Doh, I hadn't even noticed. I meant to type fetchnews there. The sentence makes more sence then too. Sorry.

  • Much as I like Linux I haven't found any email program that can meet my needs as well as MS Outlook.

    I really can't argue against that statement, because only you can say what your needs are. It appears that your needs involve using a mouse; as such, it seems unlikely that text-based MUAs like mutt aren't going to serve them. But I do feel the need to point up some mutt features...

    I have over 400MB of email in Outlook. It's organized in a multi-level tree of mail folders that are displayed on screen. I have icons in the Outlook bar that take me to frequently used folders with a single click.

    In mutt, you can specify a list of mailboxes, and when changing between them it only takes a few keypresses.

    Clicking on a column heading in the message list sorts by that column.

    You can resort the message lists (both primary and secondary sort criteria) with two keypresses.

    When I open a message it opens in a new window which I can leave open while I read other email. I do this all the time when I'm not ready to deal with a message right away. Fair enough, mutt can't open new windows since it's limited to the terminal it started in. As a matter of personal curiosity, though, why are you opening them if you're not going to do anything with them? If you just want to make sure to come back to them, there are relevant mutt commands, such as marking a message important, or re-marking it as new.

    With Outlook I can cntrl-click on many different messages and drag them to a folder.

    In mutt, one would 't'ag all the relevant messages, and then ';s'ave them to a folder.

    Certainly I could spend my time reading documentation ... and figure out work arounds for most of the things Outlook does "out of the box", but I just don't have the time.

    It's absolutely reasonable to stick with an interface because that's what you're used to, but you should at least say that's what you're doing. Most of the features you tout, mutt does have "out of the box", although you don't already know how to do them. But then, did you already know how to run Outlook before you started using it?

  • The post above may be a troll, but there's a grain of truth in it. Much as I like Linux I haven't found any email program that can meet my needs as well as MS Outlook. If you've been using a Unix mail client for years it won't bother you, but going from Outlook to a Unix text mode client feels like having my hands tied behind my back.

    Things that are trivially easy in Outlook require reading lots of documentation in Unix. I have over 400MB of email in Outlook. It's organized in a multi-level tree of mail folders that are displayed on screen. I have icons in the Outlook bar that take me to frequently used folders with a single click. Clicking on a column heading in the message list sorts by that column. When I open a message it opens in a new window which I can leave open while I read other email. I do this all the time when I'm not ready to deal with a message right away.

    Outlooks filters are certainly easier to use that procmail's, but neither are any use if there isn't some kind of text matching that can identify mail. I work on many projects simultaneously and have at least 50 mail folders and growing. I work with the same people on different projects so I can filter on sender and the project isn't necessarily in the subject line. With Outlook I can cntrl-click on many different messages and drag them to a folder.

    This is just a short list of the things that are easy and obvious in Outlook. Certainly I could spend my time reading documentation for Mutt and Fetchmail and Procmail and Sendmail and figure out work arounds for most of the things Outlook does "out of the box", but I just don't have the time.

  • Re:Mutt (Score:1)

    by Yakko ( 4996 )
    Oh no! The program is easier without taking away my flexibility! Easier! Oh, the horror!

    For you, perhaps. For folks like me, who don't mouse unless REQUIRED to do so, it makes it harder.

    *think* Hrrmm... oh, I don't have to use the mouse if I don't want to. Point taken.

    To those out there craving mousable mail clients, I think there's balsa, netscape, and about 8 others that I can't name off the top of my head to choose among. I'm of the opinion that mutt doesn't really need mouse support (I'm not even certain it'd be easier to use with a mouse.)

    --

  • At "anything", not "everything". Please read carefully. Or should network admins use a 'graphical' ping? And we can through scripting out the window, with no command line tools. (Ever see the gtk implementation of /bin/true ?) Please take the time to read posts carefully before hastily writing a reply because someone disagreed with you.
  • Kluuuuuuudge! Who wants to restart their MUA with a switch every time they want to check out a different folder?

    Easy... you DON'T. Simply press "c" (for "change folder," oddly enough), and you may then do one of several things:

    "?" will call up a LIST OF FOLDERS, where you can then use the arrows and ENTER to select one
    "=mailbox" will select folder mailbox
    "TAB" lets you TAB COMPLETE on a folder
    "^G" lets you cancel (^U followed by ENTER does same)

    --

  • You are arguing against change.

    I have no idea what you're talking about. I say nothing to even suggest that. Don't you realize that you have to refute what *I* say in order to win an argument with *me*?

    You said "there is absolutely no reason to use command line tool." This is patently false. Reason number 1: scripting. I have now provided sufficient proof to completely debunk your assertion that command line tools have "absolutely" no uses.

    Secondly, *my* argument was that the features in GUI apps have a price: bloat. Further, their feature lists are limited by what the developer puts into them. This does not lend itself to the freedom and creativity one may exercise at the command line with pipes, redirection, etc.

    They were saying back in the early 80's that "Unix is dead." One such voice was John Dvorak, but he was hardly alone. The simple fact is that these critics of the command line (they weren't criticizing X Window) didn't know what they were talking about.

    Lastly, I didn't call you a troll, so why are you whining to me about being called a troll?

  • Though I was *not* "arguing against change" as you suggest, it ought to be said that the simple fact of "change" is not *necessarily* good. While it is foolish to argue against change just because it's change, it's likewise foolish to be in favor of change because it's change. You have to look at the content of the change -- what you're changing from and what you're changing to, along with the reasons for the change -- before you can say anything valid about the legitimacy of the change.

    For what it's worth, I think GUI's have their place (I'm typing this in Netscape), but there are things for which I prefer the flexibility afforded by the command line. I positively deny that the GUI can completely replace the command line.

  • Um. I have two solutions: Don't. Or setup some sort of gateway. Using qmail locally, I was able to setup an 'nntp' user with a .qmail-default file that ran a little perl script and did stuff. Thus I sent mail to 'nntp-alt.os.linux@localhost' and it appears on alt.os.linux. It's a real terrible hack though so I don't intend to make that code public. :) But, well, I dunno. :)
  • Anyway, how would a text-only program do mouse support? Try to support gpm, xterm, etc.? I'd rather the developers spend their time on something more worthwhile.
    I think the best approach would be to make a simple gui for it (think gvim) That way you can use xmutt with the mouse.

    Of course, the (probably better) alternative is to just use an MUA that was designed to work in a GUI-fied way if that's the sort of thing you're into. Somehow I get the impression the complaint about no mouse support was actually a complaint about the lack of a drool-proof GUI interface.

  • I tried using Mutt with GnuPG but it does not work!

    A common problem is that you use an older version of Mutt with a new version of gnupg. Recent version of gnupg (0.9.8 and up) don't have the gpgm helper program any more which Mutt uses to access the keyring. Not only that, the gnupg installation routine will also remove gpgm from previous versions. The quick fix is to symlink gpg to gpgm.

    --
  • Posted by Julian Cross:

    I want to switch from pine to mutt. I can't figure out how to set up multiple folders to organize my saved mail using mutt. I made a few directories under ~/Mail, but mutt won't let me use them since it is using the mbox file for everything. I looked over the man page and manual.txt without success. Any tips out there for a mutt newbie?
  • Mail tends to accrete in a number of forms, and the fact that Mutt supports Maildir [uic.edu] (of Qmail [qmail.org] fame) as well as the MH [uci.edu] format is certainly a good thing.

    Mutt seems to me to have the nicest of the text interfaces; it is somewhat unfortunate that it doesn't have huge support for the multiplicity of folders that a MH user grows to. (I've got 350 mail folders and 179MB of archived email, for instance.) For managing that, the user interface of EXMH [bedub.com] combined with a variety of shell scripts are pretty much necessary.

    Mutt is still the nicest way of reading mail on a console...

  • Tried! (Score:1)

    by suprax ( 2463 )
    I tried switched to mutt a while ago, but I am just so used to pine! I know you can bind the keys in mutt, but for some reason it didn't seem right. Maybe I will try it again sometime, but god I hate it that I am so attached to pine :)

    --
    Scott Miga

  • Simplicity (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Firstly, I like and use mutt. However, whatever the case for RTM I feel mutt would benifit from either a selection of good configurations distributed along with it or a set of really simple scripts which alter your config files to do simple but common things, like save copies of sent mail and stuff. This is not intended as a criticism - I really ought to write the above myself...
  • I tried looking for a muttrc file with pine like key binding. Unfortunately couldnt find one. The muttrc file shipped with mutt is too primitive for my tastes.

    Does any /. reader have a muttrc file with pine key bindings so that I may not reinvent the wheel.

    Thanks
    CP

  • Mutt (Score:1)

    by warmi ( 13527 )
    After years of development command line (sic)email client finally hit version 1.0
    Is that news or what ??!!

    Email is strictly client side application and therefore there is absolutely no reason to use command line tool. Of course, some of you will argue that GUI is bullshit and the only true way is the command line. In that case you are no different than these people from the begining of the century who first dismissed cars as an evil machine and then same madness hapened when first planes came out.

    You are not the future. You are slowly dying past... that eventually will disapear.


  • Mutt seems to me to have the nicest of the text interfaces; it is somewhat unfortunate that it doesn't have huge support for the multiplicity of folders that a MH user grows to. (I've got 350 mail folders and 179MB of archived email, for instance.) For managing that, the user interface of EXMH combined with a variety of shell scripts are pretty much necessary.
    Take a look at GNUS [gnus.org] running in Xemacs [xemacs.org] (or alternatively FSF Emacs [emacs.org] if you are a purist, but the user interface is not as good IMHO) for a great solution to handle large volumes of email! I can never go back. I used to be a MH user, but I grew tired of the user interfaces (console usage is tiring, really. And Athena widgets? No thank you.)

    There is a quite a learning threshold to GNUS, but it is definately worth it. You can keep browsing your MH folders if you want to, and transfer them to any of several mail folder (there are tradeoffs such as one mail per file and one directory per folder or one file per folder) formats when you feel like it. And with a full programming language (emacs lisp) under the hood, there is no end to the customization.

    Lars

    (Inspired by your .sig, I feel it is appropriate to say "Those who do not understand emacs are condemned to reinvent it, poorly". Please don't mark this as flamebait! :-)

    Lars

    --
  • I started off on mutt, but went to pine because I couldn't find a way to use multiple POP3 accounts. Is this possible, and if so, how do you do it? I liked mutt, but I have 5 POP accounts which I check daily. Any info is appreciated.

    --"A man's Palm is his best friend."
  • Here is an alternative, I got this solution from the mutt-users mailing list.

    1) In your .muttrc, add some "lists" commands.

    2) Then add a save-hook:

    save-hook ~l =%B

    This will put the name of the list as default when you want to save that mail.

    I don't like to pre-filter my mail with mailproc, because I want to have my incoming mail in one folder only, so this is the best solution (for me, at least). :-)
  • I started using Mutt a couple of weeks ago after Pine started moving my mail on the server without being told to. This kinda broke things when I went to download my mail from home.

    Since then I've become quite attached to Mutt. I'm only just getting into it, but I got it working with gpg without much hassle. Trouble is none of the other mail readers will accept it because they don't obey the relevant RFC (2015 I think). The workaround works (hence the name) but is kludgey. It would be nice if more mail readers supported the standard of PGP sigs in attachments.

    Using Mutt has also motivated me to install exim so that I can send mail from home. It's not quite working yet, but it can't be far away. Now I just have to learn how to use hooks.

    Mutt really is an excellent mail reader. If you're feeling limited by Pine, perhaps you should try it.

    Sven

  • Hmmm... Well, I guess I spoke too soon. I read the blurb in the FAQ, and assumed that the difficultues I was having compiling mutt meant that it didn't support the newer version of gpg.

    I hand edited my config.h file to remove any references to PGP (carefully avoiding removing references to GPG) because it wanted to use PGP5 if I had it, and after I did that, I got lots of compilation errors about struct pgpinfo not having a definition.

    I just took the more drastic measure of removing pgp entirely by moving the executables, then running configure. It compiled fine, and my test worked.

    Checking the config.h file shows that one thing I commented out, _PGPPATH, is defined. My mistake, but I really would expected them to key off one of the HAVE_ variables, and not _PGPPATH. Oh, well.

  • I've got a couple of Emacs instances running here and there at any given time; I've several times started with GNUS, not gotten not across the learning curve, and returned to the more spartan but still usable SLRN.

    MH-E doesn't provide anything substantially better for transferring messages from folder to folder than the shell bindings you can get for zsh. [zsh.org] EXMH provides a potent way of doing this that I've not seen in any other system; quite a lot better than the XMH front end.

    Back to the point of the thread, Mutt and Slrn strongly parallel one another; they have highly similar user interfaces which partially comes from using the same text UI library, SLANG, which happens also to buy them a 'full' programming language that, not unlike with Elisp, allows "no end" to the customization. It's definitely different from Elisp, but that does not deny that these systems are quite extensible.

  • Elm always refused to let me screw up my mailboxes, but mutt gladly allows me to open one mailbox in two mutt windows.


  • I recommend using fetchnews for all your NNTP needs. The combination of fetchnews and mutt is very enjoyable. You can find fetchnews on freshmeat, or at http://files.moo.ca/~laotzu/fetchnews.html.

    I may be slightly biased since I programmed fetchnews for just this purpose. ;)

  • If you're feeling limited by Pine, perhaps you should try [Mutt].

    Then why would anyone try Mutt. Besides, Pine is a tree; it has no ass. I guess we can only kick Mutt's ass. ;)

    Seriously, I checked out Mutt, but I still prefer Pine.

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