Hello Mutt users!
I am currently revamping my old "avatarlookup" tool [1] to work with
terminal sixel graphics [2], so that I can see the sender's profile
picture in the top right corner when viewing an email in mutt.
Previously, I used to use w3m's terminal image hack for that (drawing
over an X11 window, like in [3]), but now that I am using a Wayland
terminal, this is not a good option any more.
Using sixel graphics, the hack works similar, like this:
message-hook . "set display_filter='/home/gnoack/bin/muttface'"
Unfortunately, the muttface shell script is quite a hack: It
immediately prints the exact input mail back, but then it starts a
subprocess in the background(!) which will after a delay(!) draw the
sender's face directly onto /dev/tty.
Drawbacks are:
* It depends on timing, and that's unreliable. The delay is needed
so that it draws over mutt's own rendering of the email.
* Mutt is unaware of the profile picture and scrolling the mail will
usually render on top of it, sometimes resulting in ugly
artifacts.
Is there a better way to hook into mutt for this use case?
Would it be reasonable to make this a mutt feature? :)
That way, mutt could redraw the picture when needed,
without destroying the layout.
Thanks,
–Günther
[1] https://github.com/gnoack/avatarlookup
[2] https://www.arewesixelyet.com/
[3] https://www.df7cb.de/projects/mutt/x-face/
