Re: more mutt questions
On 2004-04-25, Richard Lyons penned:
> 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.
Mutt's fan club has nothing to do with its out of the box ease of use --
it's the configurability and the smart handling of threads.
I've been tweaking my .muttrc for years, and I'm still finding things to
play with. Without my .muttrc, I'd be lost!
Anyway, here are some suggestions/thoughts:
> 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).
I'm not sure what you mean by nested folders -- I do have directories
with subdirectories in mutt, using mbox. Unfortunately, I can't have a
directory that stores both messages and directories. I have always
assumed this was a shortcoming of mbox and wouldn't be the case with
other storage systems -- maybe I'm wrong?
Filtering, as others have mentioned, is best handled by an MDA (mail
delivery agent), like procmail or maildrop. I use a combination of
procmail and tmda. I find tmda's filtering rules extremely easy to read
and write -- but its default configuration challenges unfiltered mail;
something to be aware of.
> 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.
Unread mail isn't identified? Isn't there a 'N' at the front of each
new message?
In addition, I have the following to colorize my new messages:
color index brightgreen default '~N'
You can tell mutt that you care about new messages in certain mailboxes
with the 'mailboxes' keyword. When you hit 'c', it will automatically
suggest a mailbox that has new mail.
You can also view *only* new messages for a given mailbox by using
limits. Type 'l', then '~N' ... voila, you will only see new messages.
When you want to see everything again, type 'l', then '.*'.
Limits are cool things. So are mutt's regular expressions.
> 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.
As numerous people have said, this isn't a MUA (mail user agent)'s job
so much as it is the MDA's job.
That being said, if you do find yourself in a situation where you need
to do some bulk processing, mutt has extremely powerful tagging
capabilities. For example, if you want to tag all messages with the
word bike, then save them off somewhere:
'T' 'bike'
';' 's' <some mailbox>
> 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.
The following command will mark all messages in the current mailbox as
deleted:
'D' '.*'
Is that what you were looking for?
> 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.
Me, I create a symbolic link called "inbox"
ln -s /var/spool/mail/monique /home/monique/mail/inbox
Then, to change to my inbox, I just type
'c' '=inbox'
> 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.
It's the customization.
Mutt will let you set a different 'From' value based on the name of the
recipient or the mailbox you're in. (check out 'hooks')
Mutt will cleverly thread messages; this is a lifesaver for mailing
lists. Mutt will even let you set which type of sorting you use (date,
threads, size, whatever) on a per-mailbox basis. Of course, you can
always change the current sort method using 'o'.
Mutt will let you custom color code just about anything you can think
of. I have new stuff colored green, stuff from myself yellow, spam red,
tagged messages yellow background.
Mutt lets me configure so many little things, so easily.
When I go to save a message from netflix, it defaults to the
proper mailbox:
save-hook '~f discship*' ~/mail/netflix
Mutt shows me dotfiles in directories:
set mask=".*"
Mutt shows me only the headers that I care about:
#only see these headers by default ('h' displays all)
ignore *
unignore Date: From: To: Cc: Subject: X-Spam-Report:
hdr_order * Date: From: To: Cc: Subject: X-Spam-Report:
Mutt doesn't move my messages out of the spool once they're read:
set move=no
Mutt doesn't prompt me for stuff I don't care about:
#Don't make me confirm deletions
set delete=yes
#Don't prompt me to confirm reply address and subject
set fast_reply
If you really want to get a feel for the amazing capabilities of mutt,
skim these two links:
http://www.mutt.org/doc/manual/manual-6.html#ss6.2
http://www.mutt.org/doc/manual/manual-6.html#ss6.3
Then read through the mutt mailing list archives. The stuff that some
people manage to do with their mutt configurations is nothing short of
mind boggling.
--
monique
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