Re: Split-screen mode in mutt?
Thus spake Kyle Wheeler on Sun, Apr 30, 2006 at 10:58:56AM -0400 or
thereabouts: <kyle-mutt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> [2006-04-30 14:51]:
> On Sunday, April 30 at 12:12 AM, quoth cga2000:
> >Thanks. Partly does what I want. Since most displays are wider than
> >they're high and with 1000+ horizontal pixels pretty much the
> >standard nowadays, I was hoping there would be some means of
> >splitting the screen vertically. I always use a full-screen xterm
> >(occasionally a framebuffer console) at a 1400x1050 resolution and
> >the result is that mutt uses roughly only one-third of the available
> >space. With the smallish font I generally use I have 221 characters
> >/ line.. and since most email messages wrap at column 72 or
> >thereabout I would have preferred splitting vertically.
>
> Unless I???m misunderstanding you, it doesn???t sound like it???s
<OT>
any idea why the quotes/apostrophes (') in the above "I'm".. "doesn't"..
"it's" each come out as three question marks in my mutt setup - ie. "I'm"
materializes as "I" + "???" + "m" - are you using some peculiar
encoding or is something broken my end?
</OT>
> particularly necessary for the two sides of your split to talk to each
> other.
well, say I'm done reading a particular message and I want to view the
next-in-thread. I can either hit 'i' to return to close the pager and
return to the index, followed by 'j' to move the cursor to the next
message, and then hit enter to view the message.. or remain in the
pager and use the <down> arrow to access the next message.
Neither is very efficient and so I was hoping I could use some key
combination to switch focus from the pager to the index, hit a key such
as 'j' or other to move to a different message, and then hit enter
select the message and have mutt automatically switch the 'focus' -
so-to-speak - to the pager.
Now since I wrote this I have found that while still in the pager you
can use key combos (Alt/Ctrl) modifiers + key to move around in the index.
So the solution to this particular problem was too close to my nose and
somehow I did not see it.
>If that???s the case, then you can use ways to divide your
> terminal and run multiple instances of mutt in order to best use the
> space you have.
>
Yes this can be of some use under some circumstances - at least as a
workaround: example that comes to mind is that you are writing an email
message and you need to take a look at a couple of mails you recently
received. Although it would be somewhat more convenient if you could
split your main mutt instance's screen - ala vim - I guess in this
instance firing up vim on another terminal is not too much of a hassle.
But what I had in mind was more along the lines of the presentation
made popular by MS Outlook and a bunch of others such as Evolution,
Mozilla-mail etc. where you can display concurrently in separate
subwmindows, your mailboxes, and the index of the current mailbox, and
the contents of one particular message.
As a matter of fact, I much prefer the vim paradigm of (sub)windows and
buffers, which I find considerably more flexible than the
above-mentioned gui hacks since you can have an intelligent screen
setup that you can modify on the fly and the ability to switch easily
between an unlimited number of hidden/visible buffers.
> You can try using the program ???screen???, and then running multiple
> instances of mutt. It won???t be a vertical split, but it???s something.
I am a fervent user/admirer of gnu/screen. Not sure if they are
planning to add vertical split at some point in the future. But combined
with the current horizontal split it would, imo, make it the perfect
'window' manager because it would give you the ability to visualize
date from different sources concurrently - for instance you could have
a 3x2 subwindow setup where you could keep an eye on the logs of six
different systems.. or six windows running 'top' etc.
>
> Another way to do it would be to use either vim or emacs to split your
> screen, and run a shell inside the split (for vim, you???d need the
> VIM-shell extension: http://www.wana.at/vimshell/). That will get you
> a vertical split.
yeah.. nice try.. but I *won't* change my precious vim into an emacs
clone :-)
Thanks for your suggestions.
cga