Re: Rolling in sidebar, other mutt-ng type bits?
Now here's a weird thing. I'm using mutt 1.5.18 right now (on ubuntu 8.10) to read my gmail account over imap, I don't have the sidebar patch installed, and I'm finding that if I press 'y' I get taken to a list of all my imap folders (these have not been listed by me in the muttrc, mutt is finding them itself on the imap server) and beside each folder it's telling me how many unread mails are in the folder. What the? Since when was mutt able to do this? Here's a screenshot: http://img66.imageshack.us/img66/2584/muttrk6.png (Take a look at that mail volume by the way, and you'll see why some of the earlier suggestions such as pressing '.' or 'c' then return would not work for me). I've attached my muttrc file, not sure which part of it (if any) is enabling this feature, but there you go. It does exactly what I was looking for when I was trying to use the sidebar patch and asking what other people do, I just didn't know mutt could do this. Regarding the biff programs that someone mentioned ... I went looking for linux mail notification programs. There are many out there, most of which look rubbish, there's a few funny ones too, such as opening a cd tray when new mail arrives, or flashing keyboard LEDs when new mail arrives. In short, I settled on gnubiff for my non-gmail accounts that do not have lots of folders, I didn't find any that could handle my gmail account, with the large number of folders. To be useful it would have to at least present me a list of all the folders and how many unread mails in each, without me having to tell it about every folder one by one, and nothing can do that. But mutt is now doing that for me so it doesn't matter. There are a large number of gmail-specific mail notifiers out there for linux that I did not look at though (I was looking for imap ones). For my non-gmail accounts which do not have a large number of different folders or a high-volume of email, I found that gnubiff works best, it does the job nicely, although it's not perfect. It's nice to have a program that runs in the background and just tells me if I have mail, so I don't have to keep opening my mail client to check. Gnubiff and mail-notification seem to be the two main choices. Here's a comparison in case anyone's interested: Both of these programs use what seems a bizarrely huge amount of memory for what they do -- almost 10mb, when they're just sitting there waiting to check email. gnubiff http://gnubiff.sourceforge.net/ - Works as a gnome panel applet, in a system tray (gnome or compatible) or as a GTK standalone window. - Keeps its configuration in a single ~/.gnubiffrc file. - Has a cute icon and new-mail sound. - The configuration dialog does not feel very nice, it's one of those gnome/gtk apps that doesn't quite feel like a gnome app. But worse, it doesn't work. Not exactly reassuring. On my first several tries it just kept ignoring me when I added my imap account. Eventually I did get it to work, by a combination of manually editing the config file and using the GUI. - Once configured it does actually work, for both my home and mail accounts, including autodetecting and using ssl. So it does the jon just fine. - It can tell you how many unread mails are in each configured account, and show you the subject line, from header, etc. for each mail. Mail Notification http://www.nongnu.org/mailnotify/ - It works as a system tray icon only, so should work outside of gnome as long as you have a gnome-compatible system tray. - The configuration dialog is a lot nicer than gnubiff, feels right and actually works. - The popup messages it shows when new mails arrive are much nicer than gnubiffs (it's using the newer gnome notifications system). - Unfortunately mail-notification itself does not work for either of my imap accounts, it worked for the first test only, after that it never shows me any notification of new mails, and for my work account that requires ssl it simply says it cannot login. - In gnubiff if you want to force it to check for new mail right now you just click on the gnubiff icon. Since mail-notification shows no icon when there's no new mail you can't do this, so if you want to force it to check for mail, you have to run mail-notification -u in a terminal (which doesn't work, in line with mail-checking in general not working). There's a long list of more linux mail-notification programs here, but nothing that looks more promising than the above two: http://www.linuxlinks.com/Software/Internet/Mail/Notification/index.shtml This Python script for checking email through the system monitor tool conky looks promising: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=869771 For now I think I'm content with gnubiff and its cutesiness.
Re: Rolling in sidebar, other mutt-ng type bits?
Ofcourse, I forgot to attach that muttrc file. On Sat, Nov 15, 2008 at 04:03:44PM +, tchomby wrote: Now here's a weird thing. I'm using mutt 1.5.18 right now (on ubuntu 8.10) to read my gmail account over imap, I don't have the sidebar patch installed, and I'm finding that if I press 'y' I get taken to a list of all my imap folders (these have not been listed by me in the muttrc, mutt is finding them itself on the imap server) and beside each folder it's telling me how many unread mails are in the folder. What the? Since when was mutt able to do this? Here's a screenshot: http://img66.imageshack.us/img66/2584/muttrk6.png (Take a look at that mail volume by the way, and you'll see why some of the earlier suggestions such as pressing '.' or 'c' then return would not work for me). I've attached my muttrc file, not sure which part of it (if any) is enabling this feature, but there you go. It does exactly what I was looking for when I was trying to use the sidebar patch and asking what other people do, I just didn't know mutt could do this. Regarding the biff programs that someone mentioned ... I went looking for linux mail notification programs. There are many out there, most of which look rubbish, there's a few funny ones too, such as opening a cd tray when new mail arrives, or flashing keyboard LEDs when new mail arrives. In short, I settled on gnubiff for my non-gmail accounts that do not have lots of folders, I didn't find any that could handle my gmail account, with the large number of folders. To be useful it would have to at least present me a list of all the folders and how many unread mails in each, without me having to tell it about every folder one by one, and nothing can do that. But mutt is now doing that for me so it doesn't matter. There are a large number of gmail-specific mail notifiers out there for linux that I did not look at though (I was looking for imap ones). For my non-gmail accounts which do not have a large number of different folders or a high-volume of email, I found that gnubiff works best, it does the job nicely, although it's not perfect. It's nice to have a program that runs in the background and just tells me if I have mail, so I don't have to keep opening my mail client to check. Gnubiff and mail-notification seem to be the two main choices. Here's a comparison in case anyone's interested: Both of these programs use what seems a bizarrely huge amount of memory for what they do -- almost 10mb, when they're just sitting there waiting to check email. gnubiff http://gnubiff.sourceforge.net/ - Works as a gnome panel applet, in a system tray (gnome or compatible) or as a GTK standalone window. - Keeps its configuration in a single ~/.gnubiffrc file. - Has a cute icon and new-mail sound. - The configuration dialog does not feel very nice, it's one of those gnome/gtk apps that doesn't quite feel like a gnome app. But worse, it doesn't work. Not exactly reassuring. On my first several tries it just kept ignoring me when I added my imap account. Eventually I did get it to work, by a combination of manually editing the config file and using the GUI. - Once configured it does actually work, for both my home and mail accounts, including autodetecting and using ssl. So it does the jon just fine. - It can tell you how many unread mails are in each configured account, and show you the subject line, from header, etc. for each mail. Mail Notification http://www.nongnu.org/mailnotify/ - It works as a system tray icon only, so should work outside of gnome as long as you have a gnome-compatible system tray. - The configuration dialog is a lot nicer than gnubiff, feels right and actually works. - The popup messages it shows when new mails arrive are much nicer than gnubiffs (it's using the newer gnome notifications system). - Unfortunately mail-notification itself does not work for either of my imap accounts, it worked for the first test only, after that it never shows me any notification of new mails, and for my work account that requires ssl it simply says it cannot login. - In gnubiff if you want to force it to check for new mail right now you just click on the gnubiff icon. Since mail-notification shows no icon when there's no new mail you can't do this, so if you want to force it to check for mail, you have to run mail-notification -u in a terminal (which doesn't work, in line with mail-checking in general not working). There's a long list of more linux mail-notification programs here, but nothing that looks more promising than the above two: http://www.linuxlinks.com/Software/Internet/Mail/Notification/index.shtml This Python script for checking email through the system monitor tool conky looks promising:
Re: Rolling in sidebar, other mutt-ng type bits?
* Sander Smeenk on Thursday, October 30, 2008 at 00:48:34 +0100 Quoting tchomby ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): It's a shame the sidebar patch is so problematic. What do mutt users who don't use the sidebar patch do instead? Then i have this macro for the default 'c' command change-folder: macro index c change-folder?entertab macro pager c change-folder?entertab Now when i press 'c' i am presented with the list of all my subscribed folders. Those with new mail in them have an 'N' in front and I really don't care about the amount of new/oldnew/read messages. I usually idle in my 'INBOX' (~/Maildir), new mail notifications appear in the statusbar and can be recalled with '.'. There's also the poor man's sidebar already configured in the default system Muttrc: # show the incoming mailboxes list (just like mutt -y) and back when pressing y macro index,pager y change-folder?toggle-mailboxes show incoming mailboxes list bind browser y exit I really really love mutt the way it is. Whatever the outcome of this debate is, please make it a toggle ;-) 1+ c -- \black\trash movie_C O W B O Y_ _C A N O E_ _C O M A_ Ein deutscher Western/A German Western -- http://www.blacktrash.org/underdogma/ccc.html -- http://www.blacktrash.org/underdogma/ccc-en.html
Re: Rolling in sidebar, other mutt-ng type bits?
Quoting Christian Ebert ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): macro index c change-folder?entertab There's also the poor man's sidebar already configured in the default system Muttrc: macro index,pager y change-folder?toggle-mailboxes show incoming mailboxes list bind browser y exit Oh, right. Much like starting mutt with -y. My macro does the same ;-) -Sndr. -- | Have you ever imagined a world with no hypothetical situations? | 1024D/08CEC94D - 34B3 3314 B146 E13C 70C8 9BDB D463 7E41 08CE C94D
Re: Rolling in sidebar, other mutt-ng type bits?
On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 10:04:37PM +0100, Anders Karlsson wrote: mutt 1.5.18; use set nomark_old Works with imap(s), maildir and mbox. I have it running here. ;-) What I have not tried is MH folders, because I have never had a reason to. I'm quite sure you're mistaken: :set ?nomark_old nomark_old: unknown variable $ /usr/local/bin/mutt -v |grep -i mutt Mutt 1.5.18 (2008-08-25) [...] I do, however, have mark_old unset: :set ?mark_old mark_old is unset And the behavior is exactly as I described: If I visit a folder stored in mbox, but don't view any of the messages, then move to a different folder, mutt no longer thinks there is new mail in that folder, and *will not* prompt for that folder when I hit c... at least not until new mail is subsequently delivered there. If I choose that folder manually, the index does, of course, show the messages which I didn't read marked as new. -- Derek D. Martinhttp://www.pizzashack.org/ GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02 -=-=-=-=- This message is posted from an invalid address. Replying to it will result in undeliverable mail due to spam prevention. Sorry for the inconvenience. pgpRgZB63VLpf.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Rolling in sidebar, other mutt-ng type bits?
On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 10:19:38PM +0100, Anders Karlsson wrote: * Derek Martin [EMAIL PROTECTED] [20081028 21:07]: On Sun, Oct 26, 2008 at 11:46:38AM +0100, Anders Karlsson wrote: As long as you specify your mailfolders with mailboxes, you can use c or y to change to a folder with new mail or get quick overview of the folders with new mail. You just won't see how many unread there are - but do you really care about that? Yes? Sometimes? :) I used to think I did. Perhaps I should have said, yes, I absolutely do. Just not all the time. My previous professional role was a support role, and the group I worked for managed workflow (requests from users) in part via mailing lists dedicated to the specific type of request. There were about 10 such lists. Filtering them each into their own folders was essential, because different engineers would be assigned to watch different lists, and most of the lists were very high volume (in total between them I typically received 800 - 1200 messages per day). I did not use the side bar patch for various reasons, and I found it rather difficult to avoid falling behind in lists mentioned later in my muttrc... This would have been avoided completely if I had the ability to see which folders had how many new messages at a glance... [It would have also been completely avoided if the group used more sane workflow management methodologies, but that's a side issue.] procmail or Sieve to slice and dice your mail into folders, and then you can check with 'y' which ones (and you then know what's important and what's not) has new mail. As I said, this doesn't work reliably if you have mbox folders, and doesn't work terribly well if you have *a lot* of folders. The first you can fix by using maildir exclusively (which I did/do, specifically to fix this problem), but the second can't be fixed by anything other than something like the sidebar patch. I'm one of those dino's that like mutt, screen, irssi, emacs and elinks. I do too; I would just like mutt that much more if I could have 3 panes. I've been using Mutt since the 1.2 days, and one would be hard-pressed to convince me to switch to something else. If someone wrote a curses-based MUA that had most of the power of mutt, but had a 3-paned design and real pop-up menus and dialogs (the status bar should be for status, not selecting options or displaying errors), that would win me... I have to admit that I basically like the GUI mailers, except that I can't use them (reasonably) over an ssh session (which is a requirement for me), and Mutt is still more powerful than any that I've used to date. -- Derek D. Martinhttp://www.pizzashack.org/ GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02 -=-=-=-=- This message is posted from an invalid address. Replying to it will result in undeliverable mail due to spam prevention. Sorry for the inconvenience. pgpHwGh02Qsev.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Rolling in sidebar, other mutt-ng type bits?
Quoting tchomby ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): It's a shame the sidebar patch is so problematic. What do mutt users who don't use the sidebar patch do instead? I have about 10 or 15 mailinglists delivered directly to my ~/Maildir using Exim. With 'Exim Filters', messages get filtered to the correct 'folder' based on rules. It's procmail on steroids. Mutt is configured to read ~/Maildir, and only that. An automated script for the 'subscribe' and 'mailboxes' settings figures out what 'folder' represents a mailinglist and what are just plain 'folders' based on their name (.list.mutt). Then i have this macro for the default 'c' command change-folder: macro index c change-folder?entertab macro pager c change-folder?entertab Now when i press 'c' i am presented with the list of all my subscribed folders. Those with new mail in them have an 'N' in front and I really don't care about the amount of new/oldnew/read messages. I usually idle in my 'INBOX' (~/Maildir), new mail notifications appear in the statusbar and can be recalled with '.'. I really really love mutt the way it is. Whatever the outcome of this debate is, please make it a toggle ;-) -Sndr. -- | Middle age is when broadness of the mind and narrowness of the waist | change places. | 1024D/08CEC94D - 34B3 3314 B146 E13C 70C8 9BDB D463 7E41 08CE C94D
Re: Rolling in sidebar, other mutt-ng type bits?
On Sun, Oct 26, 2008 at 11:31:20PM +1300, Chris Bannister wrote: So pressing 'c' doesn't bring up next mailbox with new mail? The answer is maybe -- it depends on what mail folder format you're using, and also what exactly you consider to be new mail. If you're using mbox folders, and you've visited a folder that has new mail in it, then leave, mutt will no longer consider that mail to be new (regardless of how you have the relevant variables set), and won't show you that folder again until additional messages are delivered to it. By contrast, if you are using maildir, mutt WILL consider that mail to be new until you've actually read it (and it's therefore been moved to the cur directory of the maildir folder). But what if you have 30 mail folders that you consider important enough that you want to see if they have new mail quickly? What if you don't consider a particular folder important if it has only one or two new messages in it, but it is important if it has more than a few new mails in it? Imagine you receive 2,000+ e-mails per day -- some personal, from people you know, some delivered via some workflow management mechanism, and some from non-work technical (Internet) mailing lists -- and that as many as 500 of those require your attention within between 5 minutes and 8 hours. Do you think that 'c' will cut it? There's a reason something like this functionality exists in virtually every successful mail reader written in the last 20 years (excepting mutt)... it's useful, and people want it. -- Derek D. Martinhttp://www.pizzashack.org/ GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02 -=-=-=-=- This message is posted from an invalid address. Replying to it will result in undeliverable mail due to spam prevention. Sorry for the inconvenience. pgpZCpXc9YP4M.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Rolling in sidebar, other mutt-ng type bits?
On Sun, Oct 26, 2008 at 11:46:38AM +0100, Anders Karlsson wrote: * tchomby [EMAIL PROTECTED] [20081025 13:04]: It's a shame the sidebar patch is so problematic. [...] As long as you specify your mailfolders with mailboxes, you can use c or y to change to a folder with new mail or get quick overview of the folders with new mail. You just won't see how many unread there are - but do you really care about that? Yes? Sometimes? :) The sidebar patch, which I did use for a while, was quickly discarded for eating up screen realestate I could ill afford to be without. And if you keep hiding the sidebar, why bother patching it in in the first place? While your point is not lost on me (i'm a screen real estate monger too), that seems like a silly argument against the feature... A lot of folks I work with use MS Outlook (and for that matter, almost everything they use) in fullscreen mode, and switch back and forth with alt-tab -- even when they're using larger resolution external monitors. Same goes for some (but a much smaller percentage of) Linux users, using GUI mail applications. Screen real estate is not much of a limiting factor these days... You have many options, e.g. make your font smaller, minimize apps or hide them under other ones, get a bigger (or another) monitor, etc. I have always wanted mutt to have a 3-paned design, much like most any modern GUI-oriented mail reader. I use wide windows mainly so I can see more of the subject line in the index, so I would want a top pane which is the full width of the window, to see a partial index view. Then the remaining lower portion I would split between the side bar, and the mutt viewer window. If someone were to reimplement the sidebar patch, I would hope that configuration were possible, and I would very eagerly await such functionality smoothly integrated into Mutt. :) -- Derek D. Martinhttp://www.pizzashack.org/ GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02 -=-=-=-=- This message is posted from an invalid address. Replying to it will result in undeliverable mail due to spam prevention. Sorry for the inconvenience. pgpRm9IWQ22rY.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Rolling in sidebar, other mutt-ng type bits?
On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 04:05:55PM -0400, Derek Martin wrote: I have always wanted mutt to have a 3-paned design, much like most any modern GUI-oriented mail reader. I use wide windows mainly so I can see more of the subject line in the index, so I would want a top pane which is the full width of the window, to see a partial index view. Then the remaining lower portion I would split between the side bar, and the mutt viewer window. If someone were to reimplement the sidebar patch, I would hope that configuration were possible, and I would very eagerly await such functionality smoothly integrated into Mutt. :) I'll do you one better: I'll put up money for such a feature. There are a few open-source bounty sites ( http://bountycounty.org/ and https://www.bountysource.com/ are two I just found). If someone sets up a bounty for such a feature set, I'll chip in. -Robin -- They say: The first AIs will be built by the military as weapons. And I'm thinking: Does it even occur to you to try for something other than the default outcome? -- http://shorl.com/tydruhedufogre http://www.digitalkingdom.org/~rlpowell/ *** http://www.lojban.org/
Re: Rolling in sidebar, other mutt-ng type bits?
* Robin Lee Powell [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 04:05:55PM -0400, Derek Martin wrote: I have always wanted mutt to have a 3-paned design, much like most any modern GUI-oriented mail reader. I use wide windows mainly so I can see more of the subject line in the index, so I would want a top pane which is the full width of the window, to see a partial index view. Then the remaining lower portion I would split between the side bar, and the mutt viewer window. If someone were to reimplement the sidebar patch, I would hope that configuration were possible, and I would very eagerly await such functionality smoothly integrated into Mutt. :) I'll do you one better: I'll put up money for such a feature. There are a few open-source bounty sites ( http://bountycounty.org/ and https://www.bountysource.com/ are two I just found). If someone sets up a bounty for such a feature set, I'll chip in. ACK. [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Postfix - Einrichtung, Betrieb und Wartung http://www.postfix-buch.com saslfinger (debugging SMTP AUTH): http://postfix.state-of-mind.de/patrick.koetter/saslfinger/
Re: Rolling in sidebar, other mutt-ng type bits?
* Derek Martin [EMAIL PROTECTED] [20081028 20:48]: On Sun, Oct 26, 2008 at 11:31:20PM +1300, Chris Bannister wrote: So pressing 'c' doesn't bring up next mailbox with new mail? The answer is maybe -- it depends on what mail folder format you're using, and also what exactly you consider to be new mail. If you're using mbox folders, and you've visited a folder that has new mail in it, then leave, mutt will no longer consider that mail to be new (regardless of how you have the relevant variables set), and won't show you that folder again until additional messages are delivered to it. By contrast, if you are using maildir, mutt WILL consider that mail to be new until you've actually read it (and it's therefore been moved to the cur directory of the maildir folder). mutt 1.5.18; use set nomark_old Works with imap(s), maildir and mbox. I have it running here. ;-) What I have not tried is MH folders, because I have never had a reason to. -- Anders Karlsson [EMAIL PROTECTED] All-Round Linux Tinkerer RHCE
Re: Rolling in sidebar, other mutt-ng type bits?
* Derek Martin [EMAIL PROTECTED] [20081028 21:07]: On Sun, Oct 26, 2008 at 11:46:38AM +0100, Anders Karlsson wrote: As long as you specify your mailfolders with mailboxes, you can use c or y to change to a folder with new mail or get quick overview of the folders with new mail. You just won't see how many unread there are - but do you really care about that? Yes? Sometimes? :) I used to think I did. Until I could really not be bothered with that detail any more. I use Sieve server-side to filter out in folders on my private mail accounts, and my work account is all in one bucket because it's all important. I action and archive pretty much everything at once if I can, otherwise I Flag it and I have a push command to set a view filter on the INBOX. My inbox is my ToDo list pretty much. How many unread do I have lost importance once I were receiving several hundred e-mails a day and it instead became important to quickly be able to scan subject lines and decide - keep, action, flag, archive or delete? procmail or Sieve to slice and dice your mail into folders, and then you can check with 'y' which ones (and you then know what's important and what's not) has new mail. I still hear your point however, so - as you said - the point is not lost on me. :) The sidebar patch, which I did use for a while, was quickly discarded for eating up screen realestate I could ill afford to be without. And if you keep hiding the sidebar, why bother patching it in in the first place? While your point is not lost on me (i'm a screen real estate monger too), that seems like a silly argument against the feature... A lot of folks I work with use MS Outlook (and for that matter, almost everything they use) in fullscreen mode, and switch back and forth with alt-tab -- even when they're using larger resolution external monitors. Same goes for some (but a much smaller percentage of) Linux users, using GUI mail applications. Screen real estate is not much of a limiting factor these days... You have many options, e.g. make your font smaller, minimize apps or hide them under other ones, get a bigger (or another) monitor, etc. My usecase is - I work in technical support, I travel to visit customers regularly and I don't want a luggable laptop just to get big screen. I have a 12.1 screen, 1024x768, and that will have to do. I also use my terminal window maximised and need, due to eyesight, to use a 11pt font. I'd love to use 6x12 or 6x10 as I could do years ago, but that don't work for me anymore. So - fitting things in on the screen is still an issue. As long as the patch is fixed to address the issues that were highlighted by developers and it's not on by default, then I have no objections to it (because I'll still never see it). I have always wanted mutt to have a 3-paned design, much like most any modern GUI-oriented mail reader. I use wide windows mainly so I can see more of the subject line in the index, so I would want a top pane which is the full width of the window, to see a partial index view. Then the remaining lower portion I would split between the side bar, and the mutt viewer window. If someone were to reimplement the sidebar patch, I would hope that configuration were possible, and I would very eagerly await such functionality smoothly integrated into Mutt. :) I'm one of those dino's that like mutt, screen, irssi, emacs and elinks. GUI e-mail readers have always bugged me something chronic, and the UI of them seems to get in the way more often that they help you. The 3-pained design - yeah, might work occasionally, but I always end up back in mutt because it just works and I've now stopped trying to use the GUI ones. The rest of the point you make - I'm totally cool with. :) Cheers! -- Anders Karlsson [EMAIL PROTECTED] All-Round Linux Tinkerer RHCE
Re: Rolling in sidebar, other mutt-ng type bits?
[Please don't top-post. Instead, remove quoted material that you're not replying to, and reply inline to the points you're responding to.] On Sat, Oct 25, 2008 at 12:03:24PM +0100, tchomby wrote: It's a shame the sidebar patch is so problematic. What do mutt users who don't use the sidebar patch do instead? The aim is to have a list of folders, which I know mutt can do, and for each folder say how many emails are in it and how many of those are unread, or at least say which folders contain new mail. It's to solve the problem where you are subscribed to a large number of email lists, for example, and filter mail from each list into its own folder, then you don't want to have to open each folder just to see if there's anything new in it. What's the best solution in mutt? So pressing 'c' doesn't bring up next mailbox with new mail? -- Chris. == I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours. -- Stephen F Roberts
Re: Rolling in sidebar, other mutt-ng type bits?
* tchomby [EMAIL PROTECTED] [20081025 13:04]: It's a shame the sidebar patch is so problematic. What do mutt users who don't use the sidebar patch do instead? The aim is to have a list of folders, which I know mutt can do, and for each folder say how many emails are in it and how many of those are unread, or at least say which folders contain new mail. It's to solve the problem where you are subscribed to a large number of email lists, for example, and filter mail from each list into its own folder, then you don't want to have to open each folder just to see if there's anything new in it. What's the best solution in mutt? As long as you specify your mailfolders with mailboxes, you can use c or y to change to a folder with new mail or get quick overview of the folders with new mail. You just won't see how many unread there are - but do you really care about that? The sidebar patch, which I did use for a while, was quickly discarded for eating up screen realestate I could ill afford to be without. And if you keep hiding the sidebar, why bother patching it in in the first place? /Anders
Re: Rolling in sidebar, other mutt-ng type bits?
It's a shame the sidebar patch is so problematic. What do mutt users who don't use the sidebar patch do instead? The aim is to have a list of folders, which I know mutt can do, and for each folder say how many emails are in it and how many of those are unread, or at least say which folders contain new mail. It's to solve the problem where you are subscribed to a large number of email lists, for example, and filter mail from each list into its own folder, then you don't want to have to open each folder just to see if there's anything new in it. What's the best solution in mutt? On Thu, Oct 23, 2008 at 11:51 PM, Kyle Wheeler [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Thursday, October 23 at 02:23 PM, quoth Robin Lee Powell: I gather there's now another sidebar patch. Oh? Are you sure you aren't getting confused by the transfer of maintainer from Thomer M. Gil to Terry P. Chan? Is there some reason it, and anything else useful from mutt-ng, hasn't been rolled into mutt proper? Much of what was mutt-ng *has* been rolled into mutt proper. The sidebar patch is the only significant thing I'm aware of that hasn't. The question about that particular sidebar patch is one that comes up every now and then, and has been answered several times. Rocco Rutte (one of the primary mutt bug squishers, and one of the three founders of mutt-ng) reviewed the patch in detail. He said the following (http://marc.info/?l=mutt-devm=112133798519807w=2): For example, the sidebar patch available for mutt looks to work at first sight but there're many things just heavily broken or things you really don't want to stay in the code (like using snprintf() and strlen() to calculate the amount of digits of a number.). Really to integrate a patch by means of merging its functionality with the existing to get a better code base is just much more difficult than it sounds especially when you keep in mind that it also takes time to get an idea of what the source is supposed to do [and] how. Essentially: the sidebar patch is large (1789 lines), complex, and appears to be poorly written. Those are all characteristics of code you want to stay as far away from as possible. My understanding is that that patch touches pieces of mutt's source that should have nothing to do with displaying a sidebar, such as the mbox parsing code. Because of this, it produces unfortunate side-effects. You have only to look into the mutt archives a few weeks back to find people complaining that the patch causes mutt to hang in some circumstances. And yet, the developer of the sidebar patch does not appear to provide support to those who use it (at least, not on the mutt users mailing list), and does not seem interested in cleaning it up, explaining it, or doing anything else that would be necessary or useful to getting it integrated with mainline mutt. The sidebar in particular sure seems like a really, really nice feature. Are you willing to reimplement it? Cleanly? Or explain the innards of the current sidebar patch to the primary mutt developers? Does current mutt have header caching? Yes, and has for almost four years. Mutt also has message caching (and has for almost two years), which mutt-ng does not have. Mutt enjoys ongoing development. Mutt-ng provided a good catalyst for more development in mutt, but essentially atrophied as mutt development was renewed---mutt-ng hasn't been modified since April 2006. Mutt-ng has, for all intents and purposes, been subsumed by the original mutt. The sidebar patch, as it stands, was rejected. ~Kyle - -- The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest. -- Thomas Jefferson: Rights of British America, 1774 -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Comment: Thank you for using encryption! iEYEARECAAYFAkkA//AACgkQBkIOoMqOI16LvACfTMDYD9ZLJEuvKVmUf66Y+br+ +L4AnjzC4r/1eSqI4CMZXpERZAF4ZiTR =WfCU -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: Rolling in sidebar, other mutt-ng type bits?
On Sat, Oct 25, 2008 at 12:03:24PM +0100, tchomby wrote: It's to solve the problem where you are subscribed to a large number of email lists, for example, and filter mail from each list into its own folder, then you don't want to have to open each folder just to see if there's anything new in it. What's the best solution in mutt? Dunno about best, but I've long been content with just pressing '.' for an update of mailboxes with new mail. Granted, only the first 8 - 10 fit on the status line, but they're in the priority order given in .muttrc. It hardly matters if there's also mail in the 15th most interesting list, if I have'nt yet looked in the 10 most important. A pseudo-dialogue box thingy displaying the number of new mails would only provide irrelevant data, since it's the number current when I reach that folder which counts, and that's available on the status line. How many are there when I'm preoccupied with a more important folder is of interest only to Heisenberg's cat, I think. Priority order also allows folder changing by c CR alone, since mutt knows which folder is next. If there's no fresh mail, it's neither listed nor opened. Sometimes it's only not knowing how many unread mails are in there which gives me the courage to open the folder. (Thank heavens for thread-delete.) Erik -- The universe is ruled by letting things take their course. It cannot be ruled by interfering. -- Chinese proverb
Re: Rolling in sidebar, other mutt-ng type bits?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Saturday, October 25 at 09:36 PM, quoth Erik Christiansen: On Sat, Oct 25, 2008 at 12:03:24PM +0100, tchomby wrote: It's to solve the problem where you are subscribed to a large number of email lists, for example, and filter mail from each list into its own folder, then you don't want to have to open each folder just to see if there's anything new in it. What's the best solution in mutt? Dunno about best, but I've long been content with just pressing '.' for an update of mailboxes with new mail. Granted, only the first 8 - 10 fit on the status line, but they're in the priority order given in .muttrc. It hardly matters if there's also mail in the 15th most interesting list, if I have'nt yet looked in the 10 most important. That's a good point. However, I do *occasionally* want to know what else is out there, even in folders that I don't always check all the time. Since mutt's IMAP browser is pretty much useless in this regard, I use MacBiff http://macbiff.sourceforge.net/, but you may find that there's some other version of biff or biff-like application that is useful for you. I know when my desktop was a Linux box, I really liked Gkrellm's mailbox checker. Check out the Replacements section: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biff ~Kyle - -- Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea---massive, difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it. -- Gene Spafford -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Comment: Thank you for using encryption! iEYEARECAAYFAkkDKY8ACgkQBkIOoMqOI15dQgCgt8kG6GiNBZdtcxnkGdrtZiPS m30AoPdjxykUo2KUUXDz8k9k3Cu70HOQ =5oqz -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: Rolling in sidebar, other mutt-ng type bits?
* Robin Lee Powell on Thursday, October 23, 2008 at 14:23:24 -0700 Does current mutt have header caching? yes c -- \black\trash movie_C O W B O Y_ _C A N O E_ _C O M A_ Welturaufführung -- http://www.blacktrash.org/underdogma/ccc.html World première -- http://www.blacktrash.org/underdogma/ccc-en.html
Re: Rolling in sidebar, other mutt-ng type bits?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Thursday, October 23 at 02:23 PM, quoth Robin Lee Powell: I gather there's now another sidebar patch. Oh? Are you sure you aren't getting confused by the transfer of maintainer from Thomer M. Gil to Terry P. Chan? Is there some reason it, and anything else useful from mutt-ng, hasn't been rolled into mutt proper? Much of what was mutt-ng *has* been rolled into mutt proper. The sidebar patch is the only significant thing I'm aware of that hasn't. The question about that particular sidebar patch is one that comes up every now and then, and has been answered several times. Rocco Rutte (one of the primary mutt bug squishers, and one of the three founders of mutt-ng) reviewed the patch in detail. He said the following (http://marc.info/?l=mutt-devm=112133798519807w=2): For example, the sidebar patch available for mutt looks to work at first sight but there're many things just heavily broken or things you really don't want to stay in the code (like using snprintf() and strlen() to calculate the amount of digits of a number.). Really to integrate a patch by means of merging its functionality with the existing to get a better code base is just much more difficult than it sounds especially when you keep in mind that it also takes time to get an idea of what the source is supposed to do [and] how. Essentially: the sidebar patch is large (1789 lines), complex, and appears to be poorly written. Those are all characteristics of code you want to stay as far away from as possible. My understanding is that that patch touches pieces of mutt's source that should have nothing to do with displaying a sidebar, such as the mbox parsing code. Because of this, it produces unfortunate side-effects. You have only to look into the mutt archives a few weeks back to find people complaining that the patch causes mutt to hang in some circumstances. And yet, the developer of the sidebar patch does not appear to provide support to those who use it (at least, not on the mutt users mailing list), and does not seem interested in cleaning it up, explaining it, or doing anything else that would be necessary or useful to getting it integrated with mainline mutt. The sidebar in particular sure seems like a really, really nice feature. Are you willing to reimplement it? Cleanly? Or explain the innards of the current sidebar patch to the primary mutt developers? Does current mutt have header caching? Yes, and has for almost four years. Mutt also has message caching (and has for almost two years), which mutt-ng does not have. Mutt enjoys ongoing development. Mutt-ng provided a good catalyst for more development in mutt, but essentially atrophied as mutt development was renewed---mutt-ng hasn't been modified since April 2006. Mutt-ng has, for all intents and purposes, been subsumed by the original mutt. The sidebar patch, as it stands, was rejected. ~Kyle - -- The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest. -- Thomas Jefferson: Rights of British America, 1774 -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Comment: Thank you for using encryption! iEYEARECAAYFAkkA//AACgkQBkIOoMqOI16LvACfTMDYD9ZLJEuvKVmUf66Y+br+ +L4AnjzC4r/1eSqI4CMZXpERZAF4ZiTR =WfCU -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: Rolling in sidebar, other mutt-ng type bits?
On Thu, Oct 23, 2008 at 05:51:28PM -0500, Kyle Wheeler wrote: On Thursday, October 23 at 02:23 PM, quoth Robin Lee Powell: I gather there's now another sidebar patch. Oh? Are you sure you aren't getting confused by the transfer of maintainer from Thomer M. Gil to Terry P. Chan? mutt-ng had a sidebar feature; I have no idea if that's the same code as the one at http://www.lunar-linux.org/index.php?option=com_contenttask=viewid=44 , which is what I was comparing to. Is mutt-ng's sidebar the same as that one? Is there some reason it, and anything else useful from mutt-ng, hasn't been rolled into mutt proper? Much of what was mutt-ng *has* been rolled into mutt proper. The sidebar patch is the only significant thing I'm aware of that hasn't. Lovely. The question about that particular sidebar patch is one that comes up every now and then, and has been answered several times. Rocco Rutte (one of the primary mutt bug squishers, and one of the three founders of mutt-ng) reviewed the patch in detail. He said the following (http://marc.info/?l=mutt-devm=112133798519807w=2): Thank you. I did do a MARC search, but the results were unhelpful. For example, the sidebar patch available for mutt looks to work at first sight but there're many things just heavily broken or things you really don't want to stay in the code (like using snprintf() and strlen() to calculate the amount of digits of a number.). Really to integrate a patch by means of merging its functionality with the existing to get a better code base is just much more difficult than it sounds especially when you keep in mind that it also takes time to get an idea of what the source is supposed to do [and] how. Essentially: the sidebar patch is large (1789 lines), complex, and appears to be poorly written. Those are all characteristics of code you want to stay as far away from as possible. My understanding is that that patch touches pieces of mutt's source that should have nothing to do with displaying a sidebar, such as the mbox parsing code. Because of this, it produces unfortunate side-effects. You have only to look into the mutt archives a few weeks back to find people complaining that the patch causes mutt to hang in some circumstances. *Neat*. Yeah, I had been wondering about that. And yet, the developer of the sidebar patch does not appear to provide support to those who use it (at least, not on the mutt users mailing list), and does not seem interested in cleaning it up, explaining it, or doing anything else that would be necessary or useful to getting it integrated with mainline mutt. *nod* The sidebar in particular sure seems like a really, really nice feature. Are you willing to reimplement it? Cleanly? Or explain the innards of the current sidebar patch to the primary mutt developers? At this time that's unlikely, but I'll keep the option in mind. Does current mutt have header caching? Yes, and has for almost four years. Mutt also has message caching (and has for almost two years), which mutt-ng does not have. I checked man mutt before posting; I forgot to check man muttrc. My apologies. man muttrc doesn't explain why it's not on by default; can I get a pointer to that? Mutt enjoys ongoing development. Mutt-ng provided a good catalyst for more development in mutt, but essentially atrophied as mutt development was renewed---mutt-ng hasn't been modified since April 2006. Mutt-ng has, for all intents and purposes, been subsumed by the original mutt. The sidebar patch, as it stands, was rejected. Thank you for clearing things up for me! Sorry to have failed to find for what are obviously FAQs. -Robin -- They say: The first AIs will be built by the military as weapons. And I'm thinking: Does it even occur to you to try for something other than the default outcome? -- http://shorl.com/tydruhedufogre http://www.digitalkingdom.org/~rlpowell/ *** http://www.lojban.org/
Re: Rolling in sidebar, other mutt-ng type bits?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Thursday, October 23 at 04:08 PM, quoth Robin Lee Powell: mutt-ng had a sidebar feature; I have no idea if that's the same code as the one at http://www.lunar-linux.org/index.php?option=com_contenttask=viewid=44 , which is what I was comparing to. Is mutt-ng's sidebar the same as that one? I believe so, yes; otherwise, I think Rocco would have brought the sidebar over. man muttrc doesn't explain why it's not on by default; can I get a pointer to that? I don't know *authoritatively*, but I believe there are two answers: the first being backwards compatibility (i.e. that by default, mutt should behave as it always has, not suddenly start sticking files somewhere; that would be a privacy breach waiting to happen), and second being that mutt's default mode of operation is not remote mailbox browsing (though that's what many people primarily use it for), but rather local mbox or Maildir browsing. Mutt has so many config options, the defaults have to be geared to a particular use case. In this case, mutt's default use-case is fetching mail out of /var/spool/mail/$user and depositing it into some sort of ~/mail mbox. Header caching may not be much of a win, and message caching *certainly* isn't useful in that situation. Thank you for clearing things up for me! Sorry to have failed to find for what are obviously FAQs. NP - sometimes it's worth writing a long explanation just to get it into the archive for other people (and google) to find. ~Kyle - -- You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone. -- Al Capone -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Comment: Thank you for using encryption! iEYEARECAAYFAkkBNFIACgkQBkIOoMqOI173AwCgyv7bbq6NgBfoSzjA0xzQBAE9 be4AnR3+16t9BuyeKV0TS7hd60tt2EkP =v7Ee -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: Rolling in sidebar, other mutt-ng type bits?
On Thu, Oct 23, 2008 at 09:34:58PM -0500, Kyle Wheeler wrote: I don't know *authoritatively*, but I believe there are two answers: the first being backwards compatibility (i.e. that by default, mutt should behave as it always has, not suddenly start sticking files somewhere; that would be a privacy breach waiting to happen), and second being that mutt's default mode of operation is not remote mailbox browsing (though that's what many people primarily use it for), but rather local mbox or Maildir browsing. Mutt has so many config options, the defaults have to be geared to a particular use case. In this case, mutt's default use-case is fetching mail out of /var/spool/mail/$user and depositing it into some sort of ~/mail mbox. Header caching may not be much of a win, and message caching *certainly* isn't useful in that situation. That mostly makes sense, but you must have *much* smaller folders than I do; I'm doing all my mail locally, and routinely have to wait 10-30 seconds for mutt to open a folder. -Robin -- They say: The first AIs will be built by the military as weapons. And I'm thinking: Does it even occur to you to try for something other than the default outcome? -- http://shorl.com/tydruhedufogre http://www.digitalkingdom.org/~rlpowell/ *** http://www.lojban.org/
Re: Rolling in sidebar, other mutt-ng type bits?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Thursday, October 23 at 09:17 PM, quoth Robin Lee Powell: On Thu, Oct 23, 2008 at 09:34:58PM -0500, Kyle Wheeler wrote: I don't know *authoritatively*, but I believe there are two answers: the first being backwards compatibility (i.e. that by default, mutt should behave as it always has, not suddenly start sticking files somewhere; that would be a privacy breach waiting to happen), and second being that mutt's default mode of operation is not remote mailbox browsing (though that's what many people primarily use it for), but rather local mbox or Maildir browsing. Mutt has so many config options, the defaults have to be geared to a particular use case. In this case, mutt's default use-case is fetching mail out of /var/spool/mail/$user and depositing it into some sort of ~/mail mbox. Header caching may not be much of a win, and message caching *certainly* isn't useful in that situation. That mostly makes sense, but you must have *much* smaller folders than I do; I'm doing all my mail locally, and routinely have to wait 10-30 seconds for mutt to open a folder. Me? Heck no; I use mutt to read mail from my IMAP server. My understanding is that the utility of header caching depends on the storage format - for mbox, it's (supposedly) not as important as, say, Maildir or MH or IMAP. But shrug; the issue of unexpected privacy breaches is reason enough not to make it default-on. ~Kyle - -- For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong. -- H. L. Mencken -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Comment: Thank you for using encryption! iEYEARECAAYFAkkBU+oACgkQBkIOoMqOI14Q0QCdHuI7t9bOGyJaTnJLmeLKZEMt CtIAoLIn4kZ/9OFfO1CwRB75NITTOsIN =zVjG -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: Rolling in sidebar, other mutt-ng type bits?
On Thu, Oct 23, 2008 at 11:49:47PM -0500, Kyle Wheeler wrote: But shrug; the issue of unexpected privacy breaches is reason enough not to make it default-on. Oh, *totally*. Didn't think of that, and didn't mean to argue with it. -Robin -- They say: The first AIs will be built by the military as weapons. And I'm thinking: Does it even occur to you to try for something other than the default outcome? -- http://shorl.com/tydruhedufogre http://www.digitalkingdom.org/~rlpowell/ *** http://www.lojban.org/
