Mutt usability [was: Dovecot and mutt]

[Piotr Auksztulewicz]

On Wed, Jan 20, 2021 at 05:58:38AM -0700, @lbutlr wrote:
> Also… grrrrr. Who though expansion inside a password string was a
> clever idea and can I introduce them to a clue bat? :p

Well, this is just the result of a generic config file parser, every
statement gets processed the same way. I guess the mutt author did not
want to create special cases for some parameters like password, and
everything is clearly stated in the manual. It is also quite intuitive
for Unix/sh people that '$xxx' is different from "$xxx".

> > PS. Also a mutt lover :-)
>
> With the amount of HTML mail out there I really don't understand how
> people are able to use it anymore. Now, if I could get a 'stip html
> down to plain text' side function to work…

Just install a text-based browser, there are several: lynx, links, w3m
and more. I prefer w3m. Make sure mutt + metamail are configured properly
and mutt will launch the browser. Most legitimate HTML email is just pure
text, just slightly marked up if at all. If you get mostly-pictures HTML
message, it's 99.99% spam.

Most HTML emails have a plain text alternative and it will be displayed
instead. Some emails have empty plain text alternative, it is a small
nuisance then, you need to hit 'v' to see the MIME parts and navigate
to HTML one.

Anyway, I still find text access very useful to check mails quickly
without having to fire up some slow beast such as Thunderbird, or
while working from some firewalled environment - it is often easy to
SSH out. Hint: run your sshd also on port 443. If that doesn't work,
run stunnel on top. It didn't work for me only once, when one company
enabled TLS hijacking on the firewall temporarily (probably by mistake),
stunnel then warned me about wrong TLS cert :-) Also I hate webmail,
and I haven't installed any on my mail server, so I need mutt, badly.

-- 
Piotr "Malgond" Auksztulewicz                     firstname at lastname.net