[techtalk] Mutt functionality

[Akkana]

Conor Daly writes:
> > > 3.  Can we cut and paste text within and between
> > > emails with Mutt?
> > 
> > Well, you can run two mutts open on different messages
> > and cut and paste like that. 
> 
> This is the one thing that bothers me about mutt.  I suppose I could have
> vi shell out and start another mutt to get the text from.  That'd be cool!

I usually just run another copy of mutt in a different shell window.
Or if I'm not in X (running on the console or over a telnet line),
I ctrl-Z to suspend the mutt process, use more or vi or another mutt
or whatever is easiest to view the text I want to copy, quit that
then fg back into mutt.  

> But very customisable.  In colour, this list (and others) shows up very
> nicely with things like threaded conversations, new messages in bright
> red, old ones in plain red, personal new messages in bright yellow and
> messages that I've replied to in blue (bright).

Mutt's color handling is one of its strongest features.  I love being
able to highlight specific headers in different colors, and its
ability to colorize quoted text so it stands out from original text.
Though I admit that speed (compared to any of the GUI mailers) is
really the biggest reason I'm using it instead of a GUI.

> > It will do things like
> > display pics if you tell it to, but it assumes you may be
> > reading on a console so it won't do that by default. (It
> > tells you the attachment is present, and you can either
> > open them on a "as you meet them" basis, or you can set it
> > up always to open certain sorts.

And you can have it autodisplay attachments, e.g. I get a lot of
html mail (at work) so I have it automatically run html attachments
through w3m (like lynx but smarter about tables).

Also, the code's pretty clean so if you ever need to add or change
anything, it's easy to do.

There's a mutt-users list which is great for sharing mutt tips;
unfortunately, it has some sort of glitch and kept dropping me,
and I got tired of having resubscribe twice a week so I gave up.

-- 
	...Akkana       http://www.shallowsky.com