mutt-forwarding-attachments

From: Mike Simons msimons@moria.simons-clan.com
Subject: Re: [vox-tech] HOWTO: fiddle with mutt
To: vox-tech@lists.lugod.org
Date: Thu, 01 May 2003 16:14:37 -0400

On Thu, May 01, 2003 at 12:57:49PM -0700, Joel Baumert wrote:
> How do you forward attachments with mutt?

Two ways...
'b' bounces the message completely unmodified to a new address

'Esc E' uses a current message as a template for a new message,
allowing you to fiddle with anything like detach attachments and
such. You may have to clear the "From" address (Esc F) from
the send menu if you want it to appear to come from you.

Are those what you wanted?

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Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2002 11:54:09 +0000
From: kevin lyda kevin@suberic.net
To: Irish Linux Users Group ilug@linux.ie
Subject: Re: [ILUG] forwarding whole messages in mutt
User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i

On Mon, Mar 11, 2002 at 11:38:09AM +0000, Stephen Shirley wrote:
> One of them is the fac that if you try to write a mail without any
> subject, it says "this mail has no subject - abort [yes]/no?". You
> choose no, write the mail, and then quit the editor. Again it asks "this
> mail has no subject - abort [yes]/no?". I can kinda understand asking
> once (although this would still be annoying), but asking _twice_ and
> defaulting to aborting the message both times is just plain rude.

helpful answer:

press f1 in mutt and read the manual

less helpful answer:

add this to you ~/.muttrc to set the default to no.
set abort_nosubject ask-no

add this to you ~/.muttrc to stop the question.
set abort_nosubject no

> Anyway, the real problem I'm having is that when I recieve a mail
> with attachments and I want to forward said mail _with attachments_, I
> can't figure out how. Mutt seems to just disregard all attachmens when
> forwarding. I've tried RTFMing
> (http://www.mutt.org/doc/manual/manual-2.html#ss2.5) and STFWing
> (http://www.google.com/search?q=mutt+forward+attachment), but have come
> up empty handed so far. Any suggestions?

ok, at some point when you forward the mail, it asks if you want to
forward the message as mime. say yes. you'll see the message in the
attachment pane, but won't be able to go inside it. your recipients will
(or you will if you send it to yourself).

alternatively, you can go to the message, press v (which brings up the
list of attachments for that message), and press f on the individual
attachment you want to forward. or if you want to just forward a few
of them, just tag them and press ;f (the ; key indicates that the next
command should act across all tagged items).

kevin

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Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2002 14:17:22 +0000
From: kevin lyda kevin@suberic.net
To: Irish Linux Users Group ilug@linux.ie
Subject: Re: [ILUG] forwarding whole messages in mutt

On Mon, Mar 11, 2002 at 01:25:41PM +0000, Stephen Shirley wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 11, 2002 at 11:54:09AM +0000, kevin lyda wrote:
> > helpful answer:
> > press f1 in mutt and read the manual
> > less helpful answer:
> Heh - i'd classify this as "more" rather than less -) I wasn't so much
> asking for a solution to this as complaining that it's the default - why
> unecessarily annoy the user by default?

no, it was less helpful, because if you'd have just read through the
manual you would have come across...

> > ok, at some point when you forward the mail, it asks if you want to
> > forward the message as mime.
> That's the thing - it doesn't ask. It just plain ignores it -(

...the mime_forward_decode option which defaults to no (you should set
it to ask-no or ask-yes).

mutt comes incredibly well documented. they didn't type it out of sheer
boredom - that came during the process. take advantage of it.

> > alternatively, you can go to the message, press v (which brings up the
> > list of attachments for that message), and press f on the individual
> > attachment you want to forward. or if you want to just forward a few
> > of them, just tag them and press ;f (the ; key indicates that the next
> > command should act across all tagged items).
>
> Ugh - that's just messy. Surely there has to be a better way. Any other
> mailer i've ever used does the right thing here, why does mutt refuse
> to. Gah.

it most certainly isn't. i get tons of forwarded messages that contain
multiple (read: a dozen) rfc822's nested inside one another. if someone
sends me a scary cat poster (thank you paulj) and i'd like to forward
it on, there's no need to forward his message body, just the picture.

*very* rarely do i forward attachments from the index pane, though i
do have mime_forward_decode set to ask-no on the amazingly off chance
i might want to. usually when i'm forwarding attachments it's just
after i've viewed them so i'm already in the attachment pane.

kevin

Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2002 15:28:43 +0000
From: Lars Hecking lhecking@nmrc.ie
To: ilug@linux.ie
User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.0i
Subject: [ILUG] Re: forwarding whole messages in mutt

Ok, let's inject some facts. The below applies to mutt 1.3.x.

The nosubject-abort part has already been answered, so let's concentrate
on the fwd'ing part.

All this information is in the manual, but in several places, which may
make it a bit confusing. Also, how mutt behaves depends on interaction.

The central anchor is the mime_forward variable. It's a quad option,
defaults to "no", and I recommend setting it to "ask-no" (you want
mutt to give you a choice, and you'll want to forward just the plain
message body more often than not).

How the message is forwarded is controlled by two variables, and
their default settings are not symmetrical (which makes sense if
I think about it)

forward_decode (boolean, default "yes")

mime_forward_decode (boolean, default "no")

forward_decode is only used if mime_forward is unset, mime_forward_decode
is only used if mime_forward is set.

So, to fwd a complete mail as RFC822-attachment (!), you want mime_forward
to be set to yes, which can be achieved by

- setting it explicitly to yes in ~/.muttrc
- setting it to ask-no in in ~/.muttrc and when mutt asks, answer y(es)
- setting it to ask-yes in in ~/.muttrc and when mutt asks, press return to
accept the default

_and_ leaving mime_forward_decode unset, as it defaults to no.

Another option is to use <Esc>e (resend-message), which will use the
current message as a template for a new one, including all attachments.