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Mutt Fork Adds Features From Notmuch
Karel Zak started a fork of Mutt back in January to integrate features the upstream authors deemed too radical, and today released the first status update. So far implemented is native notmuch support (inspired by Sup) which adds fast search, tagging, and virtual folders from notmuch queries. Unlike the current hackish solutions, all of these are available as native mutt commands and can be used in your muttrc. Additionally, patches from Debian and other distributions will be integrated. Source is over at Github, and a few screenshots are on their wiki.
"Whats in your new release?"
"Notmuch"
"That's what I'm asking, what did you add that's not in the original software?"
"Notmuch"
"Oh... well, did you improve on the performance?"
"No, that's still the same as Mutt"
"Still as slow as a dog?"
"No, it's at least as fast as Mutt"
* it's fast
* it *doesn't* run javascript or display images
* it doesn't try to display messages in some ghastly proportional font.
* it doesn't fuck with my mailboxes or try to move/import them into it's own format.
* it's a mail reader. it doesn't pretend to be a mail sorter/filter as well, i leave that to procmail.
* excellent searching and tagging operations.
* regexp support for searching and tagging.
* it works identically for me whether i'm physically in front of the machine or connected via ssh.
* in combination with screen, I don't even have to restart mutt when i login, i just connect to the screen session.
* i get multi-folder support by running 20 or so mutts in the background, each one with a different mailbox open. switch using ^Z and shell fg command.
* no crappy built-in editor.
* 'set edit_headers' in .muttrc lets me edit the ALL of the headers as well as the body - convenient for trimming the To:/CC: list, or deleting unwanted In-Reply-To or References headers (i.e. lazy group reply for a new msg without hijacking an existing thread).
* lots of other benefits, too numerous to mention.
I use Mutt. I've also used various incarnations of Mozilla Mail, KMail, Apple Mail, Microsoft Outlook, a few webmail systems, and done test runs with a few mail clients I forgot the names of.
In the end, I came back to Mutt. It's the mail client I'm most productive with. I customized it to work the way I want. I'm used to it.
I think Mutt's strengths are:
* Customizable. Mutt is fairly easy to customize, and the customization goes a long way. Define things you want to do in terms of s-lang functions or shell commands, bind a key to them, and boom, now you can do everything you often do with a single keystroke.
* Good support for multiple e-mail addresses. I have a single account that I use with multiple e-mail addresses. Mutt makes this easy. A number of other mail clients I have used make this tedious. Some do not support it at all.
* Works in the terminal. I like to work in the terminal. I know many people don't. But if you do, this is an advantage.
* It works. I never have problems with it. I wish the same was true of all mail clients I've used.
Weaknesses:
* Slow on large maildirs. I have folders with tens of thousands of messages. These take long to open. Part of this is "many files that need to be statted, and stat is slow", but part of it is implementation choice. Some mail clients are way faster at this.
* Slow on IMAP folders. It looks like Mutt fetches messages or message headers one by one for each message. My mail server is over 100ms away. This makes things slow. My fault? Mutt's fault? Anyway, it's a disadvantage. Some mail clients do better.
* Wastes screen real-estate. I like that Mutt works in the terminal. But it wastes space. Graphic-mode mail clients can fit more information in the same space than Mutt does.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I use mutt. I tend to like straightforward programs that do what I need and nothing else, free of bloat, and, especially, that I can control from the keyboard without a mouse. Mutt is teh awesome.
-- tonybaldwin.me
Strongly seconded. Mutt is my mail client of choice -- and I've used quite a few over the decades that I've been online.
Mutt also:
- plays nice with tools like fetchmail, procmail and grepmail
- lets me use MY editor-of-choice (vi, of course)
- runs beautifully over low-bandwidth connections
- does not fill up my screen with pretty-but-useless crap
- allows me to define key bindings and macros to my taste
- I can use color-coding (when on a color-supporting tty) to highlight things like URLs, email addresses, etc.
- it does NOT parse HTML (HTML email is used exclusively by two groups of people: (1) spammers and (2) ignorant newbies who don't know any better.)
- it handles MIME sanely -- and has a nifty feature that lets you delete individual MIME attachments, which is very handy on occasion. Adding attachments is also quite easy.
- it supports multiple mailbox formats, it supports POP and IMAP
- it's highly resistant to attacks by design AND implementation
And so on.
"Any serious email user who doesn't top-post."
I once proposed that anyone who top-posted or full-quoted should lose a finger every time they did so. I believe that the overall quailty of mail traffic, particularly on large mailing lists, would be markedly improved in short order.
Regrettably, the RFC didn't find traction within the IETF. Pity.
Have you set your index_format? And have you tried pager_index_lines to split the screen into index + message view?
"Any serious email user who doesn't top-post." I once proposed that anyone who top-posted or full-quoted should lose a finger every time they did so. I believe that the overall quailty of mail traffic, particularly on large mailing lists, would be markedly improved in short order. Regrettably, the RFC didn't find traction within the IETF. Pity.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.