26-Mar-02 at 11:33, Will Yardley ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote :
> jennyw wrote:
> 
> > Also, I notice that when I open up a folder, it gets all the headers
> > before it displays them. Is there a way to get it to a) cache
> > information) or b) read only some of the headers instead of all of
> > them?

If you stay in the index, rather than going to the pager, then you can
see which headers are available without downloading. It is annoying,
however, to have to dl a whole message (especially when some fool sends
you a screenshot of their problem with LookOut Express in Windows BMP
format at 3Mb when they could have done the same in JPEG with about 40Kb).
I feel that IMAP support is still incomplete; Mutt is primarily a
MUA for reading local mail, or for integrating with fetchmail and a POP
scenario, which amounts to the same thing for Mutt since all mailboxes are
local.

Mutt does have a canny advantage though: you can delete attachments and
keep only the message body, which I find useful for trouble tickets with
big attachments that I no longer need, but want to archive.

> if you have shell access on your mail machine, and it's on a good
> connection, i'd just run mutt on the machine itself.

Well, you might not be able to compile mutt on a public mail server for
one, or get shell access. Mail servers are often too busy to have SSH
sessions on them all over the place. 

Secondly, on a dialup link, it's too slow if you SSH somewhere and you
have to /compose/ mail. For moving around the screen, even if you're good
with vim (or whatever you set $THE_ONE_TRUE_EDITOR to) is not responsive
enough. And if you have a connection that is fast enough not to notice
that, you can probably download mail fast anyway. I SSH to my workstation
from a fixed IP authenticated dialup connection at home and it's too slow
to compose mail, although reading mail is quicker with Mutt than PINE
running locally and just fetching mail from the server. This is largely
due to the pager allowing faster browsing of mail.

Even on 10Mbps local network, this IMAP issue needs improving - it causes
Mutt to wait around sometimes, especially when in the pager and I forget
to go back to the index, and wait for the messages to be downloaded one by
one as I hit down arrow.

Attachments should /never/ be systematically downloaded, that is the
beauty of IMAP. And, to be able get my mail with PINE or other IMAP
clients from wherever I happen to be. keeping mail locally is a travesty
if you travel and move around a lot... you never know when you will need
to refer back to some old email when you are challenged by a client whilst
on site.

--
[Simon White. vim/mutt. [EMAIL PROTECTED] GIMPS:56.62% see www.mersenne.org]
Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I
can't help but cry. I mean, I'd love to be skinny like that but not with
all those flies and death and stuff.  -- Mariah Carey
[Arbitrary quotes signature rotation, a simple bash script by Simon White]

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