Re: [dev] Suckless mail client solution?

markus schnalke dixit (2009-10-06, 20:54):

> > > 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!)

/me envies somewhat. Been planning to take the plunge and switch over
from mutt, but there's just too much in my config file that I depend on
and won't have time of reworking in mh in foreseeable future.

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

Agreed.

> 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.

Right. I also second the notion of (r)syncing mailboxes from a remote
host somebody proposed. mh or other local MUAs fit well in such a
scenario.

> 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.)

That's another solution. However this would require a good filesystem
with local caching and graceful disconnection handling. I think syncing
over SSH is at the moment simpler and good enough.

Best,

-- 
[a]