Re: Moving a non-trivial mail setup to mutt
Hi,
On Wed, Jan 23, 2008 at 12:02:56PM +0100, Dan H wrote:
> for the umptieth time I'm trying to give mutt a spin. I've heard it
> recommended many times, and I'd like to try it out. After getting
> dissatisfied with pine I've come a long way to Claws-Mail via Opera
> and Thunderbird. I'm happy with Claws except that I'm not happy with
> GUI apps in general.
>
> So, let's try out mutt. However, there doesn't seem so be a "just try
> it out". There is a steep learning curve to be mastered first.
It took me a while to get used to it. Now I couldn't even think about
using anything else (except Thunderbird when someone forces me to reply
to HTML mail...)
> For instance, after half a day of tearing out my hair and having
> so many mutt webpages open that I the tabs on the top of my
> browser started getting blurriy, I managed to connect to my IMAP
> server like this:
>
> set spoolfile=imap://email.server.org/INBOX
>
> Great. Now I can see my inbox. And nothing else. How can I see my
> other folders on that server? 'c ?' doesn't show anything.
Are you subscribed to the folders?
Try:
set folder="imap://user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/"
c =<folder>
= is something that expands to 'folder'.
Setting the spoolfile to INBOX won't tell mutt much else than 'I get new
mail in INBOX'.
> Speaking of folders. Mutt looks into the same folder hierarchy as my
> current sylpheed-claws setup. But it only shows me top-level
> folders. When I enter a folder it doesn't show me any subfolders.
> Does mutt not support nested folders? Then I can't use it.
It does support them, at least for me. There is a difference between
select-entry (bound to enter at least here) and view-file (space) in the
folder list.
view-file opens the folder and select-entry will show subfolders.
> I've also managed to set up fetchmail, which fetches mail from
> several POP3 accounts into one repository where I can access it if
> and only if I comment out the above line. To sort out those mails I
> guess I'll have to feed them through procmail, but where will they
> end up then, and how will mutt check for new mails and tell me about
> it? Is there some kind of overview of folders that can receive mail?
There is: 'mailboxes' specified in muttrc. 'imap_check_subscribed' might
also be of interest.
Maybe you should post your muttrc and fetchmail config...
You will probably be able to get to your mail using c /path/to/mailbox
even with your spoolfile being defined as an IMAP folder. The location
of the mail is probably in your MAIL environment variable.
> How can I have "multiple identites"? Sometimes I'm sending mail
> under my private address, sometimes as an employee of my company. How
> can this be managed by mutt? When I reply to mail, can mutt
> automatically use the address under which I received that mail as the
> sender identity?
Yes - see reverse_name, alternates and their friends in man muttrc.
Some hooks may also be useful to automate the selection of a from
address, based on, for example, the folder you are in.
> Next thing. The address book. There seems to be an external program
> called "abook" that adds some rudimentary address book functionality.
> But I work on largish projects that frequently require me to set up
> ad-hoc lists of eight or more people which I can send mail to by
> typing a single "nick name". I also need to be able to quickly add
> addresses to those lists by some selection method (like Pine's "List
> mode").
I currently need such functionality very rarely, sorry.
However, AFAIK mutt allows you to use many different address book
implementations, abook is not the only one, so you probably can find
something you like.
> Judging from its nerdy user base I had hoped (and am still hoping)
> that mutt was some kind of power-user MUA, but especially the
> apparent lack of advanced address management might turn out to be a
> deal breaker.
It is, but it's not an out-of-the box usable one :)
Expect a few evenings of muttrc tuning (read the man page at least once)
and you should get quite a bit farther.
Many features in mutt can be automated with hooks and other ways which
are not very obvious at first, and different from the concepts in other
mailers. It takes some time and head scratching to understand them.
> I hope someone can clue me in. I have a repository for software that
> I will never get my head around. Emacs has been in there after
> invoking it once and not being able to quit it except by killing it
> from another console. Vi after one week during which I forced
> myself to use nothing but vi. Mutt seems so be ready to join. Maybe
> I'm just not the geek I'd like to be.
Vi is easy, scripting vim or emacs to do all the things you want will
take a lifetime :)
> In short, my requirements are:
>
> - Multiple accounts (both local and remote)
> - Multiple identites
> - Folders with subfolders
> - Powerful address management
>
> Does mutt cutt it?
It does that for me. If you don't want to spend some time customizing it
and reading the man page, I guess you are better off with another
mailer. For me, going through every muttrc option and setting it to my
liking resulted in the first usable configuration and I was hooked (no
pun intended) pretty soon after.
--
Jussi Peltola