-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 I like Mutt's motto: All e-mail clients suck; mutt just sucks less. And I used to believe it too, until I started trying to use GPG regularly. I switched from Pine to mutt specifically for its built-in support for PGP/GPG. But I found that either I don't understand how to best make use of this support, or it really needs some work. I'd like to offer my opinions about how to make mutt REALLY suck less, and at the same time ask for help about how to fix some of the problems. Also note that I'm using "Mutt 1.3.22.1i (2001-08-30)" so I guess it's possible that some of this stuff may have changed in some of the recent updates. But that's not the sense that I get...
Here's my current list of gripes: - forwarded messages not included in quoting There seems to be no way to make mutt include a forwarded message in quoted text. MUCH more often than not, that's the behavior I want, so that I can comment on what the original writer wrote. Maybe a way does exist, since it seems intuitive that people would want to do this, but I couldn't find a way. IIRC, Pine (for example) has a handy option for this. - sigs not included in quoting Occasionally, you run across a sig that's just damn cool, or otherwise warrants comment. I can find no way to make mutt include the sig in e-mail, temporarily or otherwise. I'm certain that Pine has a handy option for this. - HTML mail I hate HTML mail as much as anyone. Honestly. But the fact is, a lot of people use it. And sometimes, important people use it. Yes, mutt does have ways to display these messages, but they are inconvenient at best. And, AFAIK, mutt does not include a means of QUOTING these messages, when one must reply to them. This sucks. I'll grant you that I toss these messages out usually anyway, but I need to have the option of dealing with them if I need to. - encrypting attachments Often when one sends an encrypted e-mail, one wants to send attachments too. Sometimes you want the attachment encrypted, and sometimes you don't (or actually, I ALWAYS do, but I can conceive of reasons why one might not, or at least not care). Mutt seems to do the latter by default, and there doesn't seem to be any way to do the former in mutt, other than to uuencode all the files manually, and paste them into the message that you're typing. This defeats the whole point of having PGP support, IMO. - pgp userid identification Despite the fact that I've composed an e-mail to a person whose e-mail address matches exactly one of the userid's in my gpg key ring, and despite the fact that gpg will select the correct key every time when invoked seperately on the command line, mutt insists on prompting me to choose between several keys with somewhat similar e-mail addresses attached to them. This is, IMO, really dumb. If I've got only one key that matches an e-mail address exactly, mutt should use that key and never prompt me to choose between other keys that might be similar. For example, I have two keys in my key ring, one of which is for the e-mail address [EMAIL PROTECTED], and [EMAIL PROTECTED] When I send e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], I'm always prompted to choose between these two keys. This makes NO sense. If there's one, and only one exact match, mutt should be smart enough to use it. - pgp hooks The behavior of mutt wrt PGP hooks seems particularly brain dead. I attempted to solve the above problem by using a pgp hook to associate [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a particular key id. Now, instead of prompting me to choose between keys, mutt prompts me TWICE to see if I really, really want to use that key. I wouldn't have created a pgp hook if I didn't!!!! Come on! The pgp hook should eliminate the need for prompting! What's the point, if it's just going to ask you to select the key anyway? - clearsigned and/or ascii-armored messages Whether you guys like it or not, most of the rest of the world uses clearsigning and ascii-armored plaintext messages. Mutt falls down here. You apparently refuse to support this, which makes no sense since the majority of the PGP-using world uses this form of message. This has caused me and a few of my mutt convertees and people we converse with no end of headaches. The FAQ mentions using procmail to "convert" these kinds of e-mail, but I have two problems with that: 1) It is not and should not be the job of my MDA to modify messages which are in a format in common use so that my MUA can read them. My MUA should be able to handle all forms of e-mail that are in common usage. Or at the very least, those described by RFCs, which this IS. 2) THIS DOES NOT ALWAYS WORK. There are cases where, IIRC, if the e-mail has attachments, the procmail filters recommended make the e-mail in question unreadable by mutt. THIS IS NOT A WORKABLE SOLUTION. Also, mutt will only *send* PGP-MIME messages. However, there are only a handful of clients that can properly handle PGP-MIME, while virtually all off them (with the exception of mutt) handle clearsigning and ASCII-armored plaintext messages just fine. This appears to be a case of trying to force people to do the right thing by restrictive/partial implementation of standards. In my experience, trying to force people to do it the "right" way usually guarantees that no one will want to play nice with you, unless you're the guy with monopoly power (like Microsoft). Well, mutt isn't, and probably never will be. I'm aware of (and use) the patch to make mutt send "outlook-compatible" messages, since almost NO ONE I converse with on a regular basis can read PGP-MIME messages, but it still sends PGP-MIME messages when the message includes attachments, and doesn't seem to give me the option not to. This sucks. With these problems, IMO mutt does not suck less than other mailers; it just sucks differently. If they were fixed, IMO, it really would suck a lot less. Thanks in advance. - -- Derek Martin [EMAIL PROTECTED] - --------------------------------------------- I prefer mail encrypted with PGP/GPG! GnuPG Key ID: 0x81CFE75D Retrieve my public key at http://pgp.mit.edu Learn more about it at http://www.gnupg.org -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE8OeuedjdlQoHP510RAo/yAJ9RqZgpltcdZ/bsf6y3m2LTsGqFzwCgjl/D 8cf+upkjdmj8HxhoRAIP5lY= =7q0y -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
