On Wed, Aug 30, 2006 at 05:51:27PM -0700, Steve Lamb wrote: > Michelle Konzack wrote: > > I send E-mails via smtp... => set sendmail="sendmail -oi" > > No, that is via command line. If sendmail were not there how would > you get mail out? But it IS there... so what's the problem? A simple minimal ESMTP engine might be more convenient -- and numerous solutions for that are available for mutt -- but being able to choose to use a full-fledged MTA like sendmail offers the user (or system administrator) a great deal of power. And if you are configuring mail on a mail server for a large number of users, it also saves them from having to make ANY configuration settings in their mail client for SMTP. So I would say zero is better than one. ;-) You claim that the lack of an SMTP engine is a weakness of Mutt. Even though I think Mutt would be better with that, I don't think it's a weakness. In some ways, it's a benefit: numerous SMTP engines already exist, so not including one makes Mutt easier to debug and maintain, which make its overall code quality better. This is the Unix Philosophy. It also provides the flexibility of allowing the user or system administrator to choose the SMTP engine they prefer, rather than forcing you to use theirs, which you may not like at all. > Or, more importantly, which is easier to set up, sendmail (exim, > postfix, qmail) or a single configuration option which consists of > "smtp.host.com". I happen to agree that Mutt should have a minimal SMTP engine, to make this easier for inexperienced and/or braindead users. But oh, wait... there's a patch (kind of like add-ons for Tbird) that does exactly that. So I guess this functionality really isn't lacking in Mutt, after all (using your own logic)... > I don't know of an MTA which runs perfectly off a single > configuration option and I've run or currently run Exim, Sendmail, > Postfix and nullmailer. Even still, here again you're just making a mountain out of an ant hill. When you install Debian, it installs a MTA for you, and the installer asks you a couple of very basic configuration questions which are sufficient to meet the needs of the vast majority of basic users. Perhaps it's not one single configuration option, but the few questions it asks are not any more difficult, and there are only a handfull of them, so the practical difference is minute. > > > It lacks filtering. > > > This is a job for procmail and maildrop > > Procmail, the line noise of mail filters, no thanks. And neither of > these are able to retrieve mail. Oh, right, that pesky MTA again. Fetchmail does a fine job of retrieving the mail. As far as procmail being line noise, that's just poppycock. If you want to feed it dumb regular expressions like "joe@foo.bar" that will mostly work, certainly enough for someone like yourself who apparently only wants simple-minded filtering. But by using regular expressions, it offers the user so much more power to filter on very complex rules and criteria. You can't be bothered to take an hour to learn how to write regular expressions? Your loss... Regular expressions abound in the Unix world. They are so incredibly useful that if you take the time to use them, you will not believe how much easier they can make your life. Tools like grep, sed, perl, etc. become like instruments with which you can play masterful music. > > The others are sucking more... Mutt CAN handel IMAP boxes with > > more then 2 million Messages and there is not a singel GUI client > > which can handel this > > I've yet to fathom a need for a 2 million message mailbox. Not to > mention the support structure behind it since 2 million would break > or strain both maildir and mbox. Well, the numbers are silly, but the point is Mutt will not break until long after any of your favorite GUI programs will. Please try to remember that Michelle is not a native English speaker, and is trying to make his points as best he can in a language which is not his first. Actually I think he did a fine job. Mutt's memory footprint is so small that it can handle gargantuan mail folders, half the size of which would cause most GUI mailers to crash due to memory exhaustion. > > > It lacks a decent multi-account implementation. Having to > > > configure every single item by hand without the concept of > > > account inheritance is a nightmare. Here again you display your unwillingness to learn how to use your tools. Mutt's various hooks offer immense power; they can give you the same functionality as "personalities", though you need to think about it a little differently. You may need to organize your mail very carefully into folders, to make your folder hooks easy to configure. You can have essentially an infinite number of "personalities" using them, and in addition to that you can change individual configuration options, set custom headers, and do a whole lot more, based on the folder you're in, the people you're sending to, or various other criteria. It's a LITTLE more complex to set up than filling out a "personalities" dialog in some GUI, but in return you get an ENORMOUS amount of additional power. > > ??? And How do you configure GUI clients? > > > You must setup things for each account. > > Yes, which is why I said "account inheritance." When I create a > subfolder under "grey@dmiyu.org" I don't have to configure the > folder for my address, my real name, my signature. It inherits all > of that from the account! I create a folder in mutt and I have to > exit, vim .mutt/folders and add a freakin' folder_hook! Sorry, but no you don't. folder hooks match patterns of folder names, so you can have a folder hook matching Mail/account1/.* and all mail folders under that will match. There's your inheritance. Man, it sucks to be wrong, after being so adamant, doesn't it? On Wed, Aug 30, 2006 at 06:03:45PM -0700, Steve Lamb wrote: > > > A rediculously complicated system? What's so complicated about > > > it. Let's see, I have home mail and I have work mail. I > > > configure my home account with 1 signature, 1 POP/IMAP server, 1 > > > SMTP server. All the mail remains separate. All my home > > > filters only apply to my home mail. I need a work account I > > > configure 1 signature, 1 POP/IMAP server, 1 SMTP server. All > > > mail remains separate. All my work filters only apply to my > > > work mail. > > > And? - I use such thin daily with mutt! > > Liar. I've thus far resisted the overwhelming temptation to call you names... but frankly I think you deserve to be called names. You are being extremely arrogant, and you're just plain wrong. > As pointed out you can't do SMTP, you need to configure multiple > things externally so my second case is what you do. 1. Yes, you can do SMTP with the ESMTP patch. 2. Yes, you can do SMTP with sendmail, or a different MTA, if you prefer. Furthermore, I've done this myself as well, so I know for a fact that Michelle need not be lying. There are at least 4 ways I can think of to do all of what you describe using mutt and/or the MTA you choose to use with Mutt. 1. Use different configurations of Mutt on different machines (maybe log in remotely over VPN to a machine at work, or whatever) 2. Mutt's configuration can be entirely generated by a program. Use such a program to generate your config based on where you are. I have done this. Er, I mean I am doing this. 3. Use a boot script to reconfigure your laptop's MTA based on the network configuration (IP address, hostname, etc.) it gets at boot time. I have done this in the past as well. 4. Configure your MTA to relay mail through your work server if you're using your "work account", using mailertable or some such mechanism. Sendmail is unbelievably powerful, and can do virtually anything you can think of if you take the time to learn how to do it. So, now will you please shut the hell up about how bad mutt is? Every single thing you have said about mutt is either dead wrong (mostly), or not a huge problem for any reasonable human, or is designed that way intentionally to give the user more power and flexibility than you apparently can handle. Mutt is largely for power users of e-mail, which you obviously are not. -- Derek D. Martin http://www.pizzashack.org/ GPG Key ID: 0x81CFE75D
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