Re: mutt + squirrelmail

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

On Thursday 18 November 2004 13:28, Richard Lyons wrote:
> On Thursday 18 November 2004 12:02, Maurits van Rees wrote:
> > On Thu, Nov 18, 2004 at 10:34:41AM +0000, Richard Lyons wrote:
> > > Do mutts and squirrels play together?
> > > 
> > > Imap access has become sooo sloooow using kmail (seems even slower 
> since 
> > > my most recent upgrade on my desktop box - sid, BTW) and it is 
> > > sometimes as bad using squirrelmail.  So I ssh-d to the server and 
> > > tried mutt.  As far as I can tell, mutt cannot see subfolders that 
> > > squirrelmail and kmail can.  
> > 
> > I use both (almost exclusively mutt though) and don't seem to have
> > those problems, but I haven't really checked. But your problem may 
be
> > solved with the following snippet from the mutt doc:
> > 
> >   6.3.85.  imap_list_subscribed
> > 
> >   Type: boolean
> >   Default: no
> > 
> >   This variable configures whether IMAP folder browsing will look 
for
> >   only subscribed folders or all folders.  This can be toggled in 
the
> >   IMAP browser with the toggle-subscribed function.
> 
> Aah!  That looks likely.  I'll check when I get back later.  THanks.

Update:

I thought I had got mutt working, on the local box using imap (with the 
help of http://mutt.sourceforge.net/imap/ and other help found on 
google.  But writing a muttrc from scratch is seriously unsympathetic, 
not to say hostile, and it would apparently take days to learn enough 
to get it running properly.  Problems I encountered include:

 -  The presence of sub-folders prevents mutt seeing mail in a folder, 
    so for example I had to rename lists.du.keep to lists.du-keep so as
    to read the contents of lists.du.  

 -  Moving mail from INBOX to other folders fails for lack of 
    permissions apparently.

 -  Because of the subfolder problem, and because kmail/squirrelmail 
    expect folders to be inside INBOX, the INBOX can only be read in 
    mutt at startup.  Once you move into another folder, returning to 
    the top of the tree only shows the folders below it and not the
    contents of INBOX itself.  So it is necessary to exit mutt and log
    on again to see new mail.

 -  Mutt sends mail by some other route, evidently, because what I send
    from it disappears without trace.  Well, probably there is a trace
    if I knew where to look.  What I mean is, it doesn't default to 
    something that works

 -  Mutt's display gets out of sync by a line some of the time, so that 
    it is easy to delete the wrong message by mistake.  Even if you  
    notice the error in time, it is difficult to scroll back to correct
    the problem because it skips the messages marked for deletion.

 -  Mutt does not display accents pound signs, euro signs etc.  I don't 
    mind writing messages in vim, except that this too fails to insert
    accented characters correctly (usually adds a space after them, and
    refuses to produce some, such as Ç (capital c-cedilla, in case that
    fails to reproduce).

An interesting thing that mutt revealed is that the certificate that 
Courier seems to have produced at install time with a generic domain 
name.  Kmail and squirrelmail do not seem to worry about this.  When I 
have time, I shall have to investigate how to correct it.

All in all, an interesting experiment, but not a solution that is 
accessible for an inexpert user like me.  So, for now at least, I shall 
have to return to kmail and squirrelmail.  Both are slow and Kmail in 
particular takes several minutes to access the imap server sometimes, 
but at least they do work eventually.  If they become too slow to work 
with, I shall need to return to POP3 mode (which entails copying my 
Maildir to a smartmedia card every time I travel).

-- 
richard