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Re: Moving a non-trivial mail setup to mutt



Hi Dan!

On Wed, 23 Jan 2008, Dan H wrote:

> 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.

You need to define your mailboxes. I have
mailboxes = =mutt ...
You can even dynamically generate it:
mailboxes `~/bin/list_imap.pl`
where your bin/list_imap.pl looks like this:

,----[ cat ~/bin/list_imap.pl ]-
| #!/usr/bin/perl 
| 
| use Net::IMAP::Simple; 
| 
| my $password="password"; 
| my $user="username"; 
| my $host="hostname"; 
| my $seperator="."; 
| 
| my $imap = Net::IMAP::Simple->new($host) || 
| die $Net::IMAP::Simple::errstr."\n"; 
| unless($imap->login($user, $password)){ 
|     die "Login failed: " . $imap->errstr() . "\n"; 
| } 
| my @mb; 
| push @mb,sort($imap->mailboxes); 
| 
| foreach (@mb){ 
|     s/^/=/; 
|     s|/|$seperator|g; 
|     print "$_ "; 
| }; 
| print "\n"; 
| 
| $imap->quit; 
`----
(This was a quick hack, to dynamically generate the list)

> 
> 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.

Yes, you can browse your imap-Server with c and at the prompt enter ?
> 
> 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?

You tell mutt where you expect your mail to reside. How your mail actually
gets there is the task of procmail/maildrop/.. 
So you'll probably need to tell your MTA or fetchmail that all local mails
need to be delivered via procmail/maildrop...

> 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?

I am using profiles which get loaded using folder-hooks:

,----
| folder-hook . "source ~/.mutt/profile.256bit.de"
| folder-hook mutt.* "source ~/.mutt/profile.256bit.org"
| folder-hook vim "source ~/.mutt/profile.lists"
`----
You might also look into muttprofile
(see http://www.acoustics.hut.fi/~mara/mutt/muttprofile.html)
Although I have muttprofile set up, I am not using it ;)

> 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").

Basic adress functionality is provided by the aliases. But you can
also use e.g. abook.

> 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.
> 
> In short, my requirements are:
> 
> - Multiple accounts (both local and remote)
> - Multiple identites

Both can be done via hooks or muttprofile

> - Folders with subfolders

no problem

> - Powerful address management

probably external address book, like abook or lbdb 

> Does mutt cutt it?

sure. You probably want to look at the Wiki http://wiki.mutt.org 
and you might want to look at http://www.muttrcbuilder.org for
generating your .muttrc, although I do not know alive this project
currently is.

regards,
Christian
-- 
:wq