On Wed, Jul 10, 2002 at 09:03:04AM +0200, Rocco Rutte wrote: > Hi, > > * Martin Siegert [02-07-10 08:34:56 +0200] wrote: > > I am planning to replace elm and pine with mutt as the > > university wide default email reader. > > Just do: > > $ rm `which elm` > $ ln -s `which pine` /bin/false > > ;-) > > I wouldn't replace it. I would let the users choose their > MUA.
This is undesirable: pine is a nightmare to maintain (hard-coded paths, etc.) and, more importantly, a reoccuring security problem. We have to get rid of elm, because we want to get rid of NFS exported mail spools. Thus, we want to switch to pop/imap exclusively. Without those reasons I wouln't even consider switching to mutt with all its undesirable consequences (i.e., faculty members complaining about not being able to use their favorite email reader). > > This will only be possible, if it is "convenient" to > > switch to mutt. > > It is. There's a system-wide config file. Without a > ~/.muttrc it works just fine. All settings you find usefull > just go in there (/etc/Muttrc, or whatever, depending on the > OS). Yes, I know. The problem starts when a user decides that (s)he does not like the settings I choose in Muttrc. > > Thus, the biggest show-stopper I can find right now that > > mutt does not seem to have an "option" menu that allows > > users to modify the default settings to their liking. > > The problem with an option menu is that mutt has kind of > static and dynamic configuration. Static can be easily done > by just presenting editing fields for variables. But what to > do with the dynamic part (all the hooks, for example)? Not that important. The options menu should only contain the most basic settings. The expert can edit ~/.muttrc. > > Thus, the question is: has anybody expanded mutt to > > include something like an option menu that can be called > > from within mutt? > > Not that I know. I am right now considering using something like the muttrc builder (http://mutt.netliberte.org/) running under lynx. I could bind the whole thing to some key in mutt. I was hoping that somebody had done something like that already. (I guess this is kind of contradictory: using a web browser to configure a command line email reader that users use because they do not want to use a web browser for email). Thanks for the comments. Cheers, Martin
