From: Mike Simons msimons@moria.simons-clan.com
To: vox-tech@lists.lugod.org
User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.28i
Subject: [vox-tech] HOWTO: fiddle with mutt
Date: Thu, 01 May 2003 15:19:14 -0400

I figured posting some .muttrc style changes would be of interested
to people. Here are part of my ~/.mutt/muttrc file...

If anyone else has mutt tips or tricks send them along.

Later,
Mike

- alternates: is a list of names mutt will recognize as you... so that
it will flag the messages with '+' for only to you, 'T' to you and
some other people, 'C' for you are cc'ed on the email, 'F' you
sent the email.

- my aliases are stored in a separate file ~/.mutt/aliases

- all outbound mail is copied into ~/Mail/sent

- the pager does not put '+' marks at the beginning of wrapped lines
(makes pasting long urls much easier :)

- When showing a mail message. show only a very small number of headers
are show to me in default mode, I can see the rest if I want by
pressing 'h'.

- there is a list of mailboxes which procmail makes for me from
lists I'm on... hitting 'y' from inside mutt or running 'mutt -y'
will give me a overview of which mailboxes have new mail.
hitting 'r' will refresh this list of mailboxes, they will be sorted
newest mailbox first.

- The default sort order is threaded, and the youngest message in a
thread controls what order they display in (threads with newest messages
on bottom).

- I want my mail pgp-signed and mutt should forget my pass-phrase
if I haven't sent a message in 8 hours (or when I hit ^F)

# my_hdr From: msimons@moria.simons-clan.com

# mail addresses that are really all mine
set alternates=
# set alternates=+|(Mike.Simons@wcom.com)|(msimons@fizban.sgum.mci.com)
set alternates=+|(msimons@moria.simons-clan.com)|(sys@lugod.org)

set alias_file=~/.mutt/aliases # which file holds email aliases
set alias_format="%2n %t %-10a %r"
source ~/.mutt/aliases # source that list now

set record= "~/Mail/sent" # where to save sent messages
set copy= yes # actually save sent messages
set pager_context= 1 # when scrolling, how many lines stay?
set pager_index_lines= 0 # how large is the index window?
set pager_stop= no # don't flip messages
set mark_old= no # when leaving a box don't mark new messages old
set read_inc=10 # while reading mbox, count message every X
set markers=no # don't put '+' at the beginning of wrapped lines

# Sven's draconian header weeding
# nuke all headers, allow normal headers, allow special headers
ignore *
unignore from: date subject to cc
unignore x-mailing-list: posted-to:

## Maiboxes. = means ~/mail/, ! is /var/spool/mail/$USER
set mbox=!
mailboxes ! list/calteg \
list/picnix list/sc2 list/libwww \
list/va list/vo list/vout list/vt list/vox \
list/apt
# lists linux-kernel
# list/mailm \

# Macros: make 'y' go to mailbox screen from index and browser
macro index "y" "c?\t"
macro browser "y" "\t\t"

set sort=threads # default sort messages by thread
set sort_browser=reverse-date # showing mbox list default to newest first
set sort_aux=last-date-received # showing threads with youngest message last

bind index \' next-unread # move to the next unread message
bind browser r check-new # refresh file list on ^L

set pgp_autosign # sign messages being sent
set pgp_timeout=28800 # remember the pgp key for at least

From: Jonathan McPherson jamcp@ucdavis.edu
Subject: Re: [vox-tech] HOWTO: fiddle with mutt
To: vox-tech@lists.lugod.org
Organization: University of California, Davis
User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.3i
Date: Thu, 01 May 2003 23:06:32 -0700

Mike,

> If anyone else has mutt tips or tricks send them along.

Here are some of my tips:

- To make mutt look more like a split-pane e-mail browser (Mozilla,
Outlook, etc) in which one pane contains a list of messages and
another contains the actual message, add this line to your .muttrc:

set pager_index_lines = 6

where "6" is the number of lines for the top pane.

- I find the arrow that points to selected messages to be annoying and
redundant. As long as you don't want to access mutt on a non-color
terminal, try this:

set arrow_cursor = no

- After you exit your $EDITOR, you can spell-check your message by
typing "i" before sending it (where you usually would type "y"). This
assumes you have ispell, of course.

- If you use vim to do your text editing, you might want to consider
formatting your e-mails with the program "par," which is sort of like
fmt but more flexible and better-implemented (imho). "par 72q" formats
e-mail beautifully; "par 72q 4h" is good for making lists with hanging
indents.

And some mutt questions for the group:

+ How do I selectively download parts of an e-mail? My e-mail is hosted
on a server with metered bandwidth, and sometimes I want to use mutt
to look at the text portion of the e-mail without downloading its
attachments.

+ All of my e-mail is on an IMAP server. When I move a message from one
folder to another, the flags on the message (new, replied, etc) in
the destination folder are the flags from the server. This means that
if I reply to an e-mail and then save the e-mail to an IMAP folder,
it will not be have the "replied" flag in the new folder unless I
first synchronize my current folder to the server by pressing $.
Folder synchronization takes a few seconds and seems a tiresome task
to repeat each time I save a message with locally modified flags. Is
there any way to do this more efficiently?

Jonathan.