Motivation:
I have been using mutt for nearly 10 years, comming
from unix-mail and elm under various operating systems.
I have to admit, that I never read the 165 pages of the manual
but relied on "man mutt" and "man muttrc", but first of all
on the sample muttrc-file that comes with the distribution.
As I install mutt on a new system I use the sample muttrc file
and tailor it to my needs; so I am familiar with some of the
settings suggested and commented there.
BTW, in my current environment - Ubuntu 12.4 - pressing F1 does NOT
bring up the mutt-manual, but the manual of the gnome-termial in which
it is run.
When I realized that looking at my outbox the index showed my
email-address, not that of the recipient as I would have prefered,
I was not aware of the possibility to change this via folder-hook,
index_format, and alternates.
So I asked on the list, which is, as Derek Martin pointed out,
"by far the fastest way to get the answer, if you can find
a group of people who have the knowledge and a willingness to help."
This has generated a lot of traffic on the list, some kind and helpful,
some not so friendly.
I was pointed to index_format, and found there:
%F
author name, or recipient name if the message is from you
but did not understand the concept of "from you": how knows mutt who is me?
I was then directed to the alternates command, and found
"That's the purpose of the alternates command: It takes a
list of regular expressions, each of which can identify an
address under which you receive e-mail."
This again confused me: I wanted a decision based on the From: field,
so I was thinking of sending, not receiving.
<\Motivation>
Suggestions:
Enhance the manual as follows:
1.
%F
author name, or recipient name if the message is from you.
A message is considered "from you" if the From: field matches
one of the entries in the alternates list.
(Here "alternates" should be a link to the relevant manual entry)
2.
In the alternates explanation:
It takes a list of regular expressions, each of which can identify
an address under which you receive or send e-mail.
It may be used in the index_format with the format-string %F to indicate
that a message is from you
(Here "index_format" should be a link to the relevant manual entry)
3.
When writing this message I had a hard time to find the relevant parts of
the manual.
One would, e.g., expect a list of all variables in
http://mutt-ng.berlios.de/manual/variables.html
Not so. Just obsolete variables are shown (and now valid counterparts).
So index_format is there, alternates not.
If a complete list exists somewhere, I was not able to find it.
Thanks for listening,
ulrich
