[techtalk] Which mail client is best for viewing/sorting mail?

[Amanda Babcock]

On Wed, Jan 09, 2002 at 01:17:07PM -0500, Tania Morell wrote:

> Is procmail the only option for sorting mail?   which client do y'all use,
> mutt, pine, or something else?      I'll be using this for reading/sorting
> dozens of e-mail from lists.

Procmail is my favorite option for sorting mail; I find it the most unix-y
of the options.  Others include slocal, which comes with MH, and I forget
what else.

Procmail is as powerful as you want it to be; there's a manpage, "man
procmailex", which has plenty of examples of it being configured to save
messages to different mailboxes, or bounce them to other addresses, or 
send autoreplies, or save the last X number of messages to a backup folder,
all kinds of things.

Mutt, in my opinion, is also the most powerful and configurable option.
It's good code - never crashes on me, unlike pine, and pine has also been
known to contain security holes in the past - it seems to handle large
mailboxes better than pine, and it's just infinitely more configurable;
its keystrokes can be changed to just about whatever you want them to be.
It comes with some useful example configuration files to show you what 
it's capable of.

I exclude graphical mail programs as they do not interest me :)

Amanda