Brian Nelson wrote: > So now I'm seriously considering going back to mutt, but I just can't > get into it.
FWIW, my mail setup[1] has evolved to mutt+offlineimap (+vim+archivemail+cron+grepmail+maildrop+subversion) and I'm pretty happy with it. The weakest link is definitly mutt. > I have a few modest requirements that a mail client must meet: > > 1. I must be able to customize the order folders, and I don't want to > give them retardedly ugly names to force a correct alphabetic order. > This is very important when you have 70 freaking folders like I do. From my .muttrc: # Only problem with this is it doesn't find new mailboxes on the fly # unless I restart mutt. mailboxes ! `find ~/Maildir/.* -type d -maxdepth 0 -not -name .. -not -name .| xargs echo` Of course you can expand on this to add whatever ordering you like. > 2. I must be able to read the folders sequentially in the order I > specify with minimal pain. Obviously, I read from highest priority > to lowest, since I may not have time to read every single folder. I > don't want to be interrupted while in the sequence, because old mails > in lower priority folders are more important to me than brand new > mails in higher priority ones. I can't conceive of reading mail this way (I'm a modal, random access kinda guy, not sequential, and I've never asked mutt to take me to the "next" folder), so I can't help you. > 5. It must have a decent summary view. I want to be able to see all of > my folders, the amount of mail in each, and be able to quickly choose > one to view the mail. I used to mess with folder_format to remove some of the useless information like owner, group, mode, etc, but I don't bother anymore. I avoid your problems with folders that fall off the side of the screen by rewriting names to avoid the "INBOX" thing. But I rarely use the folder browser since I have hotkeys to take me to any of my mailboxes instantly, and since I typically have many different instances of mutt open viewing different folders and can see all important new mail at a glance. > 6. It must have a decent expiry system. > > 7. It must not be dog slow. I have big folders and I don't want to wait > 5 minutes to load them. Mutt suffers from 7, but it's not a big deal if you keep the number of messages in a folder under control. For this I use archivemail, a nice external program which can handle flagged and unread mail. I move read mail to the archive after three days which keeps mutt under control. I have one general piece of advice regarding mail which I have said before but I think bears repeating. Don't look for one program that does it all, because when you find an area where such a program sucks, or something it can't do, you're screwed. Pick the best programs with well defined uses and put them together to create something that's right for you. The set of right programs can then morph over time with minimal pain, and just keep getting better as new programs become available. -- see shy jo [1] Publically available at http://svn.kitenet.net/trunk/; relevant files include home-full/.muttrc, home-full/.offlineimaprc, bin/trimail, cron/joey/kitenet.net, etc, etc.
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