Re: Features like Sup
On Mon, Jul 06, 2009 at 05:05:34PM +1000, Cameron Simpson wrote:
> | but Sup interests me for two reasons:
> | * Thread centred message listing,
>
> How different from mutt's threads?
It's probably best to just check out the Sup documentation:
http://sup.rubyforge.org/
Those screenshots that might help illustrate some of the differences.
> Search results as a folder? Mairix is the usually mutt approach for this
> one, at least for me. I have a wrapper script to do a mairix search,
> open the results folder in mutt, discard later. It's be easy to add a
> mutt macro to initialiate the invocation of that, or to cache such
> invocations for ready reuse (thus getting views).
Yeah, I've been doing the same.
Seems like Sup makes it a first class feature, and more advanced that Mairix.
> | and tagging
>
> I "tag" (crudely) by saving the same message to multiple folders, so
> certain folders are tags (like labels are folders for GMail, sort of).
I have one inbox and one archive mailbox, much like Gmail. This is the primary
use case that Sup is designed for. This means that there is no real way for me
to tag messages in mutt like I would in Gmail.
> | * Bulit-in, and advanced, search features
>
> While mutt's in-folder search is fairly flexible, isn't it better to
> use an external program for advanced search? That lets you choose the
> advanced tool of your choice, an doesn't force people to use mutt were it
> the "advanced search". Returning to my own setup, mairix is my advanced
> search (which I underutilise).
Mairix bothers me for a number of reasons.
It would be cool if Sup separated the search component, and if mutt then
provided properly integrated hooks for this. From the documentation, it looks
like search is made a first class feature of Sup.
> | It's a shame Sup's author didn't work with mutt to get these features
> working.
> | Is the mutt development team interested in developing something similar?
>
> Can you flesh out a little more detail? Many needs are already met by
> external tools to a greater or lesser degree and personally, I prefer
> "easy to invoke" over "integrated", since the latter tends to result in
> difficuties using the other tools outside the main app.
Sure.
The four things that strike me as desirable would be:
* A unified view for message threads.
Have you ever used Gmail? It's pretty hard to describe without you having
seen or used it. Basically, a whole thread is treated as a message type
thing, occupies a single line in list views, and is navigable as a single
thing when viewing. You can still reply to individual messages.
* The ability to tag messages, using some custom header.
This would necessarily include options for viewing in both message view and
list view modes. I would also want to be able to automatically tag messages
based on content. Even if it decided that the automatic tagging of messages
should be done by procmail, mutt should provide a utility script.
* The ability to include message snippets in list view.
http://sup.rubyforge.org/ss1.png
* Integration with an external search program made a first class feature.
Thanks,
--
Noah Slater, http://tumbolia.org/nslater