On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 09:54:16PM -0600, lee wrote: > > So, in other words, you would need to manually mark the message as > > belonging to a category. You would need to take action to associate > > the message with a category. So, what's the problem with just moving > > the mail to a category-specific mail folder, exactly? > > 1.) It is awkward. My point above was that it's going to be awkward regardless; you're going to have to take some action to manually mark your messages with your category. Even if Mutt remembers a list of categories (or mail folders) for you, you're still going to have to bring up the list somehow and select the right one... exactly like selecting the mail folder you want. > 2.) It would mess up the folder hierarchy I already have by greatly > increasing the number of folders. It's too complicated. You can adress this with the macros I suggested to put you in "category" mode vs. "normal" mode. It has the effect of distinguising the folders for categories from your regular mail folders. > 3.) It's incompatible with the folder hierarchy I have. Given the above, I don't see how... > 4.) The messages would be out of sight and not easy to access and > would be forgotten. I already covered this; you leave them marked new, and Mutt will remind you that they are there. This is not any different from the way you are currently managing new mail in different folders... > If there's another new message that would belong to a category I > have, I would have to browse through the folder hierarchy, and I > would have to remember for each directory I see in the list if it's > a maildir or a directory that contains maildirs. Changing folders in > mutt is fumbly (c TAB TAB enter CTRL-g CTRL-g c TAB TAB down down > ... enter ?? q ??? CTRL-g ... Hmm.? c ...). This is simply false. Press 'c' to change folders. Now press '?' to bring up the list of mailboxes you've told Mutt to watch with the mailboxes configuration keyword. They're all there. Now type the number of the folder you want to enter, or use your keyboard's directional keys to select it if you prefer. It's that easy. > 5.) There's no way to delete maildirs from within mutt. Mutt is not a > file manager and shouldn't have to be one. This seems not relevant; there's no need for Mutt to delete the maildir. Just ignore it if there's no mail in it. Remove it by hand if you feel you really need to (but you don't). But as we've discussed in a different thread, it's not safe for Mutt to remove maildirs -- the implementation is a bit difficult and can't be made safe in all cases. > > As far as I can see, what you're trying to accomplish is exactly why > > mail clients have the ability to handle mail in multiple mail folders: > > When you receive a message that you think belongs in a particular > > category, move (or copy!) it into a mail folder associated with that > > category. > > Yeah, I think I can understand why you say that. But it's not the way > I'm using mail folders, or the purpose I'm using them for. Sure, but aside from being accustomed to the way you're doing it now, there's no good reason for you not to change the way you're handling your mail. This method works, and works very well. And best of all, it's not *that* different from what you're doing now, so you don't need to change very much. > What I'm not done with has to stay in the inbox so that I keep being > remembered of it and don't have to remember that I should search for > something and do something with/about it. This is also simply false. If you have new mail in other folders, Mutt will remind you that it's there, so you can't possibly forget about it unless you choose to stubbornly ignore Mutt telling you about new mail in other folders. This requirement is arbitrary and self-imposed, and it is not a real requirement at all. > > Better yet, let a filtering program like procmail do it for you. > Before the computer is able to understand what mails are about, such > programs remain unable to decide into what category I might want to > put a particular mail. To edit my .forward file so that a mail is > delivered into the appropriate maildir (category), I would have to > predict that I'm going to get this mail and to predict the contents of > it. This may or may not be difficult, depending on your particular needs. But I am strongly inclined to think that you're making this a lot more difficult than it needs to be. You can solve your problem TODAY, simply by changing the way you think about how you handle your mail. The tools to do what you want already exist in Mutt (and many other mail clients); you simply need to choose to use them the way they were intended to be used. If you don't want to do that, then I think you'll most likely find the only way to get what you want is to write it yourself. > It works fine for mailing lists because it is predictable that I'm > going to get mail from them and what search pattern can be used to > identify mail from the list, but that's it. Once the list admin makes > a change and the same search pattern isn't in the mail anymore, it > won't be delivered into the correct directory. You simply filter on the list address. The only way that's ever going to change is if the list address changes, and you're going to need to know that to be able to post there... This seems like a non-problem. > And I'm hoping that computers never get intelligent enough to read my > mail. They already are; this is essentially no different from how spamassassin filters spam. You just have to teach it what you want. > Well, I wouldn't want to separate working with categories from working > with incoming mail. Using different maildirs to simulate categories > creates such a separation. That is precisely what I'm trying to avoid. I don't see that at all. I use procmail to filter my mail into "categories" (based mostly on the sender, I admit, though not entirely) and I have no trouble to handle new mail. As I've pointed out repeatedly, Mutt will tell me when any of my "categories" has new mail in it. > Separation is for mailing lists and for final storage. That's what I'm > using different maildirs for. It's not applicable to mail in the inbox > I'm not done with. What is "final storage" if not a categorization of the mail? This line of thought doesn't make a lot of sense to me. If you're categorizing your mail, why should you need a "final storage" folder that's anything other than the category? Besides which, you can easily move and copy mail anywhere you want to, right from inside Mutt, so this also seems like a non-problem to me... or rather, it's a problem that you're inventing for yourself. > > And of course, you can always manually edit both incoming and > > outgoing messages, to add custom headers to them, to make it easier > > for various programs to automatically sort them for you, either > > before or after you've seen them. > > But that is very tedious It doesn't have to be. You can write a script that does it, and have Mutt process the mail with your script. > --- and I don't want to edit mail I have received. It's like faking > it. That's kind of naive. Mail clients do this all the time, any time the status of your message changes (e.g. from new to read, for example, if you use mbox). The mail system does it too, to indicate various status information. Mailing lists do it, filtering programs do it, etc... There's no reason you can't too. Mail was intended to be handled this way from the very beginnings of e-mail. > > Your requirement to keep mail in your inbox until you've decided what > > to do with it is artificial and self-imposed; > > Yes, you could describe it like that. It's how I'm doing it since I'm > using mutt, 10 years or more. It's a way that has developed and been > used over a long time, and I would like to have a better way. I've offered you a better way, but you aren't interested. =8^) > But this way is as much a result of what options/ways mutt offers its > users as it is a result of what I made of it. I've been using other > MUAs and came to other ways with them, but having mail in the inbox > until I have decided what to finally do with it is something I always > did. That's one of the things the inbox is for. That's a choice that you've made, but it's completely arbitrary. With any modern e-mail system, the concept of Inbox is largely obsolete; you can have as many Inboxes as you like, and call them anything you like. Mutt is designed to handle this, as is every modern mail client (as well as most of the ancient ones). A lot of people still use an Inbox, but there is no technical reason they need to... it's a completely arbitrary choice based solely on personal preference and custom. > > if you move the mail and leave it marked new, Mutt will cheerfully > > remind you that you need to address it by prompting you to change > > folder to the next listed mailbox with new mail in it. > > That would be extremely annoying. That I'm changing a folder doesn't > mean that I want to switch to the first one mutt detects to have new > mail in it. I want to switch to, for example, =lists/debian-user, not > to one of the categories. So? If that's what you want, then do it. Mutt will prompt you, but you don't have to blindly follow what Mutt does. Just press '?' to get the list of your folders, and then choose the one you want. > > Your insistance on keeping it in your inbox may very well be getting > > in your way. I suspect no mail client has implemented a scheme like > > what you describe because the problem is rather well-solved by > > multiple mail folders, and what you describe is, while perhaps > > interesting, also a lot more complicated, for no clear benefit of > > substance. > > When you look at other MUAs, many of them make it a lot easier to move > mail into different folders and to handle different folders than mutt > does. Mutt is great for handling a lot of mail, but not for handling a > lot of folders. I strongly disagree with that statement. One of the reasons I chose Mutt is because I think it has THE BEST support for this of all MUAs, despite certain minor issues I have with it. I suspect that you may feel this way because you do not actually know all of the things that Mutt can do. > > The one thing you suggested that sounds the most interesting to me is > > the idea of having your index view contain all your messages, grouped > > by category. In this case, that would mean displaying all messages in > > your mailboxes, grouped by mailbox. > > You could see it as "displaying a list of maildirs" instead of > "displaying a list of messages". > > Displaying a list of maildirs (folders) instead would make sense. But, but, but... MUTT DOES THIS TODAY! So if this is all you need (and that's what I've been saying from the beginning), you already have it. > You could say that mutt is designed to handle a lot of mail and each > mail individually, accessible through a list of mails. That you can > switch to different folders is not actually supported and only > "merely possible". I have no idea what you're talking about. I think you just don't know how to use Mutt properly... > What you would see would be pretty much what ancient file managers > like mc or norton show you: A list of directories (mail folders) and a > list of files (mails). You would have options to get these lists > sorted the way you want and have better ways to move mail from one > folder to another. You already have this. You just need to learn how to use it. It's not in the message list, because it's not a list of messages... it's in the folder browser, because it's a list of folders. I suggest you start Mutt with "mutt -y" on the command line. It will give you a list of all your mailboxes, and allow you to select them. You can also get here by pressing 'c' to change folders, and then '?' to show the list. If you don't have anything there other than your Inbox, it is because you have not listed your mailboxes in your config file with the mailbox configuration keyword... your configuration is incomplete. -- Derek D. Martin http://www.pizzashack.org/ GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02 -=-=-=-=- This message is posted from an invalid address. Replying to it will result in undeliverable mail due to spam prevention. Sorry for the inconvenience.
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