more mutt questions

[Richard Lyons <richard@the-place.net>]

I assume from the popularity of mutt here that it must be good.  Over 
time, I have received the impression from various discussions here that 
it is possible to filter incoming mail to different folders and then 
read it with mutt.  I have restructured the folders in kmail so that 
they can be seen from mutt and have been experimenting reading them 
from mutt.  I am now getting doubts about the convenience of using 
mutt. 

THis is what I do with kmail.  The incoming mail picked up from the pop3 
server is filtered to topic or client folders and the presence of 
unread mail is visible from bold face titles.  It is then easy to read 
the unread mail, in the order of priority I feel appropriate, and 
ignoring folders with no new mail.  This still works even after 
eliminating nested folders (which are invisible in mutt whether mbox or 
maildir).

To compare with mutt, I have simply opened the ~/Mail directory in which 
the folders are, and tried to read new mail.  Unread mail is not 
identified by default, so I went through a handful of the 70-odd 
folders and marked some recent mail as unread.  Then I tried to find it 
again.  The read next unread instruction in mutt appears to only 
operate inside a folder.  The folders containing unread mail are not 
flagged in any way.  I can only find the 'unread' mail by opening every 
folder (c then ? then scroll to the next folder and press enter -- not 
very simple) and looking for entries marked N.  

I'm baffled.  If so many d-u members use it there must be a simpler 
strategy other than reading all mail in the inbox and manually sorting 
it to folders _after_ reading.  

Even supposing I eventually manage to set up spam filters to cut out the 
150-200 spam messages each day, I would prefer to deal quickly with the 
categories I see as important and to be able to defer the less urgent 
ones when I feel like it.  And in kmail, all I need to do to check the 
spam is to open the spam folder and scan the 'subject' and 'from' 
columns - move any misfiltered items (very rare) and delete everything 
else unopened.  In mutt it seems that I would need to c-?-scroll-enter 
to the spam folder, then mark each message for deletion.  

And then, I have found no method to get back to the mail spool file that 
is displayed by default at opening, other than laboriously stepping 
back through the directory tree from the ~/Mail directory, or typing 
the spooldirectory by hand, or closing the application and reopening 
it.

This isn't intended to be a rant.  I just want to know how mutt can get 
near to the convenience of a gui mail client like kmail.

-- 
richard