Re: mutt manual: i have bad startings into learning mutt

[Ken Moffat]

On Thu, Feb 08, 2018 at 03:39:55PM +1100, Cameron Simpson wrote:
> On 07Feb2018 22:37, kalle  wrote:
> > 
> > I usually use thunderbird and thus already have some experience with
> > e-mail, but what I got from trying to learn mutt is just depressing for
> > me.
> 
> Ok, it sounds like mutt is presenting the local default UNIX mailbox on your
> system.
> 
> If you are using Thunderbird then it is likely that either your mailbox is
> an IMAP service hosted at your ISP or at some place like Google Mail.
> 
> Is this the case?
> 

A few minutes gargling suggests that, at least on a previous ubuntu
version, thunderbird stored mail somewhere under ~/.thunderbird.

> Without some configuration, mutt looks in your local machine's mail system.
> It is likely that nothing is using that if it is a personal machine such as
> a laptop, so you have no local mail.
> 

I've used mutt for many years, but before that I used pine - and
before that I read my mail in netscape.  And that was all local mail
held somewhere in /home.  So I suspect that Kalle also has past mail
stored in ~/.

As an aside, for a single user system, particularly where /home
might be shared by multiple linux systems (or in my case by
older/current systems), keeping mail in /var is unpleasant.  To fix
that with new incoming mail I use fetchmail and procmail.

But yes, configuration is needed if mail is not kept in /var.

ĸen
-- 
Truth, in front of her huge walk-in wardrobe, selected black leather
boots with stiletto heels for such a barefaced truth.
 - Unseen Academicals

Re: mutt manual: i have bad startings into learning mutt

[Cameron Simpson]

On 07Feb2018 22:37, kalle  wrote:

In the manual v.1.9.2, chapter "2.1 Index" it says

"The index is the screen that you usually see first when you start 
Mutt. It gives an overview over your emails in the currently opened 
mailbox."


The problem is: there are no mails to see, because there is no mailbox 
of mine open and I don't know how to do this.


It is the third time already that I try to learn mutt but having no 
mails to start with, not knowing what is meant by a 'mailbox' and how 
to administrate it, even when reading in the newbie manual not getting 
to a point.


I usually use thunderbird and thus already have some experience with 
e-mail, but what I got from trying to learn mutt is just depressing for me.


Ok, it sounds like mutt is presenting the local default UNIX mailbox on your 
system.


If you are using Thunderbird then it is likely that either your mailbox is an 
IMAP service hosted at your ISP or at some place like Google Mail.


Is this the case?

Without some configuration, mutt looks in your local machine's mail system. It 
is likely that nothing is using that if it is a personal machine such as a 
laptop, so you have no local mail.


Instead, you'll need to configure mutt to access your ISP-hosted mail server, 
if that is what you are using.


Could you please elaborate on your Thunderbird setup (obviously omitting 
account passwords, and if you like using placeholder names like "my-login-name" 
instead of you actual mail login name)?


It seems likely that we need to guide you through a basic setup to use the same 
mail arrangements as your Thunderbird.


Cheers,
Cameron Simpson  (formerly c...@zip.com.au)

Re: mutt manual: i have bad startings into learning mutt

[Erik Christiansen]

On 07.02.18 22:37, kalle wrote:
> In the manual v.1.9.2, chapter "2.1 Index" it says
> 
> "The index is the screen that you usually see first when you start Mutt. It
> gives an overview over your emails in the currently opened mailbox."
> 
> The problem is: there are no mails to see, because there is no mailbox of
> mine open and I don't know how to do this.

Then mutt is failing to find your spoolfile:

»
3.299. spoolfile

Type: path
Default: (empty)

If your spool mailbox is in a non-default place where Mutt cannot find it, you
can specify its location with this variable. Mutt will initially set this
variable to the value of the environment variable $MAIL or $MAILDIR if either
is defined.
«

If further diagnosis is needed, it might be useful to post your mutt
version number. (From mutt -v)

Although I have neither $MAIL nor $MAILDIR defined in the environment,
mutt has always found the mail spool, as is the case for most mutt users,
I expect.

In the index view, press y for the mailboxes view, which in my case
presents:

1 -rw---  1 erik erik 6.1M Feb 05 15:41 =avr_chat_u
2 -rw---  1 erik erik  12M Jan 17 13:23 =avr_gcc_u
...
16 -rw-rw  1 erik mail 9.4M Feb 08 12:05 
/var/spool/mail/erik

If your spoolfile is in some unusual place, then you now have three ways
to tell mutt where it is located.

As you are using linux on your host, try:

$ ls /var/spool/mail/

to see what is there. (And go from there.)

For later: If you use some utility to fetch and sort mail into multiple
inboxes, e.g. one per mailing list, then the "mailboxes" command can be
used in ~/.muttrc to configure those as well.

> 
> It is the third time already that I try to learn mutt but having no mails to
> start with, not knowing what is meant by a 'mailbox' and how to administrate
> it, even when reading in the newbie manual not getting to a point.

The  manual does discuss mailboxes, describing both mbox and maildir
formats. Once you've found your spoolfile, then you can inform yourself:

$ file /var/spool/mail/erik
/var/spool/mail/erik: UTF-8 Unicode text, with very long lines

$ view /var/spool/mail/erik

to see what the mbox format looks like.

Your persistence is admirable, and with the help of a few answered
questions, I'm sure you'll succeed. It'll be interesting to hear how the
spoolfile managed to hide.

Erik

Re: mutt manual: i have bad startings into learning mutt

[Yubin Ruan]

On Wed, Feb 07, 2018 at 10:37:14PM +0100, kalle wrote:
> hello,
> 
> In the manual v.1.9.2, chapter "2.1 Index" it says
> 
> "The index is the screen that you usually see first when you start Mutt. It
> gives an overview over your emails in the currently opened mailbox."
> 
> The problem is: there are no mails to see, because there is no mailbox of
> mine open and I don't know how to do this.
 
Have you set up the default mailbox, like this:

set mbox=+INBOX

It would be better to attach your .muttrc so that others can see what is going
wrong with your mutt configuration.
 
> It is the third time already that I try to learn mutt but having no mails to
> start with, not knowing what is meant by a 'mailbox' and how to administrate
> it, even when reading in the newbie manual not getting to a point.
> 
> I usually use thunderbird and thus already have some experience with e-mail,
> but what I got from trying to learn mutt is just depressing for me.

--
Yubin

Re: Color headers in pager based on message patterns

[Cameron Simpson]

On 07Feb2018 20:35, Scott Kostyshak  wrote:

Example (untested):

 message-hook . 'set my_hdr_colour=green'
 message-hook ~p!~l 'set my_hdr_colour=yellow'
 message-hook . 'color header $my_hdr_colour default'

so that a colour is chosen per message, then applied to your settings.


I think that does the trick! I had to change the last of the three hooks
to be the following (note the dot at the end):

 message-hook . 'color header $my_hdr_colour default .'


Ah, yes.


Thank you very much for taking the time to understand what I was trying
to achieve, and for the helpful solution, Cameron.


Glad to be of service,
Cameron Simpson  (formerly c...@zip.com.au)

All the doors in this ship have nice sunny dispositions. It is their
pleasure to open for you, and their satisfaction to close with the knowledge
of a job well done. - Marvin _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_

Re: Color headers in pager based on message patterns

[Scott Kostyshak]

On Wed, Feb 07, 2018 at 10:00:33PM +, Cameron Simpson wrote:
> On 07Feb2018 01:05, Scott Kostyshak  wrote:
> > I would like to color all header lines in the pager if a message pattern
> > matches.
> > 
> > As an example, I can use the following to color the index if a message
> > was sent to me and not sent to a list:
> > 
> >  color index yellow black ~p!~l
> > 
> > But I cannot do the following:
> > 
> >  color header yellow black ~p!~l
> > 
> > to color all headers in the pager if a message was sent to me and not
> > sent to a list. This is understandable, as the pattern is matched
> > against each header.
> > 
> > As for why I would like to do this, I rarely look at the index. I
> > configure mutt to go directly to the pager, so that I focus on one email
> > at a time. However, I find the message pattern matching useful so I
> > would like to be able to use them to color headers in the pager.
> > 
> > Is it possible to use the message pattern mechanism to color headers
> > showing in the pager?
> 
> Yes, you need to be a little indirect.
> 
> My setup has these lines:
> 
>  color header $colour_hl1 default "^(from|subject):"
>  color header $colour_hl1 default "^(x-spam-status):"
> 
> Where $colour_hl1 happens to be cyan. What you want to do is, instead of
> defining your header rules once, define them per message via a message-hook.
> Example (untested):
> 
>  message-hook . 'set my_hdr_colour=green'
>  message-hook ~p!~l 'set my_hdr_colour=yellow'
>  message-hook . 'color header $my_hdr_colour default'
> 
> so that a colour is chosen per message, then applied to your settings.
> 
> Cheers,
> Cameron Simpson  (formerly c...@zip.com.au)

I think that does the trick! I had to change the last of the three hooks
to be the following (note the dot at the end):

  message-hook . 'color header $my_hdr_colour default .'

Thank you very much for taking the time to understand what I was trying
to achieve, and for the helpful solution, Cameron.

Best,

Scott


-- 
Scott Kostyshak
Assistant Professor of Economics
University of Florida
https://people.clas.ufl.edu/skostyshak/

Re: Color headers in pager based on message patterns

[Cameron Simpson]

On 07Feb2018 01:05, Scott Kostyshak  wrote:

I would like to color all header lines in the pager if a message pattern
matches.

As an example, I can use the following to color the index if a message
was sent to me and not sent to a list:

 color index yellow black ~p!~l

But I cannot do the following:

 color header yellow black ~p!~l

to color all headers in the pager if a message was sent to me and not
sent to a list. This is understandable, as the pattern is matched
against each header.

As for why I would like to do this, I rarely look at the index. I
configure mutt to go directly to the pager, so that I focus on one email
at a time. However, I find the message pattern matching useful so I
would like to be able to use them to color headers in the pager.

Is it possible to use the message pattern mechanism to color headers
showing in the pager?


Yes, you need to be a little indirect.

My setup has these lines:

 color header $colour_hl1 default "^(from|subject):"
 color header $colour_hl1 default "^(x-spam-status):"

Where $colour_hl1 happens to be cyan. What you want to do is, instead of 
defining your header rules once, define them per message via a message-hook.  
Example (untested):


 message-hook . 'set my_hdr_colour=green'
 message-hook ~p!~l 'set my_hdr_colour=yellow'
 message-hook . 'color header $my_hdr_colour default'

so that a colour is chosen per message, then applied to your settings.

Cheers,
Cameron Simpson  (formerly c...@zip.com.au)

mutt manual: i have bad startings into learning mutt

[kalle]

hello,

In the manual v.1.9.2, chapter "2.1 Index" it says

"The index is the screen that you usually see first when you start Mutt. 
It gives an overview over your emails in the currently opened mailbox."


The problem is: there are no mails to see, because there is no mailbox 
of mine open and I don't know how to do this.



It is the third time already that I try to learn mutt but having no 
mails to start with, not knowing what is meant by a 'mailbox' and how to 
administrate it, even when reading in the newbie manual not getting to a 
point.


I usually use thunderbird and thus already have some experience with 
e-mail, but what I got from trying to learn mutt is just depressing for me.



greetings,

kalle