Re: Alpine vs mutt?

[Ethan Dicks via cctalk]

On Thu, Feb 22, 2018 at 4:40 PM, Tomasz Rola via cctalk
 wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 22, 2018 at 12:38:56PM -0800, geneb via cctalk wrote:
>> >Before that, I have been using pine (nowadays named alpine), which had
>> >configuration edited via builtin options editor and before that, elm,
>>
>> What about mutt do you prefer over alpine?

I started using mutt about 15 years ago when I was asked for "disc 3
of 3" on a Red Hat Linux install and I was curious what was being
pulled from the end of the shelf and it was one and only one package,
mutt.  I decided to see what was up and why I would want it and I
immediately threw out Pine for mutt.  I just found the keyboard
navigation shortcuts to be entirely intuitive (I liked elm but I never
liked Pine) and mutt handled MIME attached files acceptably well for a
textual client.

I've been using web-based MUAs since I switched to Gmail for personal,
and for many corporate e-mail accounts, including at my present
employer.  I haven't used a textual MUA on UNIX/Linux except 'mail'
and mutt since about 2003, but I did use mutt every day from about
2003-2009.

-ethan

Re: Alpine vs mutt?

[Tomasz Rola via cctalk]

On Thu, Feb 22, 2018 at 12:38:56PM -0800, geneb via cctalk wrote:
> >Before that, I have been using pine (nowadays named alpine), which had
> >configuration edited via builtin options editor and before that, elm,
> >never configured by me (AFAIR - about 20yago). So, with this
> >perspective, I can say mutt is not bad and I intend sticking to it for
> >a while.
> 
> What about mutt do you prefer over alpine?

Maybe I cannot give one strong argument for mutt over alpine, but:

 - I used pine on a "Unix shell" account attached to my address, then
   after upgrade I decided to try mutt; alpine is installed but
   somehow I never again ran it here

 - I still have alpine installed at home "Unix shell account" and use
   it for minor mail processing, but for longer reading of my huge
   mailboxes mutt feels a bit nicer to me, so I use it 

 - in mutt, I can press "l" in "mailbox view"/"index view" and limit
   displayed items only to those matching given expression; so for
   example, if I want to see only mails with "[name of certain group
   in subject]", I can do this - I have first learned about such thing
   after switching to mutt, so I have no idea if alpine can do such
   trick, too; when I am done I switch back with "l all"

 - in mutt, I can send a mail through a preconfigured script in Python
   (some kind of preprocessor written by me), which is bound to
   certain key; I had no idea how to achieve this in alpine; I
   understand I can have more such programs bound to more keys in
   mutt, never tried in alpine

 - for a while, I used to repair broken threads in my inbox using
   mutt's "link thread"; no idea about similar thing in alpine

 - I have found out that I really like the 256-color mode; it took me
   a bit of trying, and maybe not all colors are nice enough for my
   eyes, so I will have to redo some configuration later, but I find
   it easier to plow through few hundred mails a day when they are
   colored (also, some are colored differently based on certain
   properties, like "sent from family member" or "from a buddy" - I
   have set it in muttrc, for each member of the group by name or
   other factor); perhaps I could color mails based on mailing list,
   but I have to try it yet - not sure if it would do me any good,
   however.

Please note, I do not claim that alpine cannot do those things. I have
been using mutt while each of the needs arose and have been satisfied
by finding relevant mutt-based solution. I never looked for
alpine-based solution, so my preference for mutt might come from
ignorance. But I am now dug deeply in this hole.

What I dislike about mutt:

 - No built-in scripting language, for more advanced mail
   processing. But it is not really hard to go around this
   limitation, so dislike is not very strong.

-- 
Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.  **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home**
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...  **
** **
** Tomasz Rola  mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **