[Gllug] Giving mutt a try

[Richard Turner]

Hi,

After all the talk about CLI versus GUI MUAs here recently I thought I'd
give mutt a try to see what all the fuss is about. I can see how it
could be advantageous to learn to use a CLI agent instead of something
bloated like Evolution or Thunderbird and then there's a certain geeky
coolness in reading and writing email from a terminal ;)

I can see how many people might initially be put-off from using
something like mutt - configuration takes ages and it's all setting-up
stuff that a GUI MUA will do out of the box: wrapping text after 72
columns, spell-checking as you type, etc. However, I quite like what
I've seen of mutt so far.

The thing is, in order to give this a go I've had to try to configure
all the rest of my mail system properly. It's something I've been
meaning to do for a while, mostly as a learning exercise, but using Evo
as my mail agent allowed me to be lazy. I think I have most of the stuff
I want to do set-up OK now, but there are a few things left and I'm not
really sure I've done things in the best way.

Neither wanting to pollute this list with a huge mass of config files,
(nor spread evidence of my ignorance far and wide ;), I wonder if
there's anyone on the list who'd be willing to critique my config and
perhaps offer help (even if only in the form of URLs to good, succinct
resources) with the things I have yet to setup. I'll email the lucky
volunteer the config files I've created so far and he can rip them to
shreds!

The software line-up:
 * fetchmail
 * postfix
 * procmail
 * spamassassin
 * mutt
 * vim (I'm only just beginning to learn this too)
 * gpg

The stuff I've not done yet (including stuff I don't necessarily need
help with):
 * spell-checking as-you-type for emails in vim 
 * configuring mutt to sign messages with gpg
 * (there's probably more, but I can't think of it at the moment)

All I'll offer in return for help is lavish praise on the list, but I
suppose in a gift culture that's often enough ;) I'll probably put a web
page with all the config files online too, since all the good information
I've found so far has been spread all over the Web and it'd be nice to
have a single page with it all on.

Thanks in advance for offers of help!

Cheers,

Richard.
-- 
"Racing turtles, the grapefruit is winning..."

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