Re: [dev] Suckless mail client solution?

From: markus schnalke <meillo_AT_marmaro.de>
Date: Tue, 06 Oct 2009 20:54:45 +0200

[2009-10-06 20:14] Antoni Grzymala <antoni_AT_chopin.edu.pl>
> pancake dixit (2009-10-06, 18:24):
>
> > Stuff like gpg, html2text (or text2html for those who wants to raise
> > hate on mailing lists), filters to format a mail into a 'reply' format
> > prefixing lines with '>' ... are just pre and post-hooks when calling
> > the $EDITOR or $PAGER.
>
> Isn't that what mh (nmh) and the surrounding ecosystem have been doing
> for the past 25 or so years?

Yes. It's the MUA that fits best into the Unix system.

Unfortunately, email is no longer like it was back then when MH was designed.
Hence, MIME was retro-fitted, GPG needs to be done by hand, and UTF-8 is not
supported at all.

I switched to nmh just these days and I'm greatly impressed. It gives this
feeling that you know from using Unix. But you need to do a lot of stuff by
hand. (OTOH you can!)

It should definately be reworked. (At least to add UTF-8 support.)

But back on topic: nmh is only a MUA that operates on local mail boxes. IMO
that's all it should be. The separation between the different mail clients
makes sense.

Mounting remote mail boxes into your local file system seems to be the right
thing. Then there is no local--remote difference. (This kind of thinking is
what I learned from Plan9.)

meillo
Received on Tue Oct 06 2009 - 18:54:45 UTC

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