I'd like to share the results of my latest "freshmeat" spree. For context, I keep all my email on a University server, so I can access it from anywhere (No, there are no webmailers!). I have access through IMAP which I used with Thunderbird, until yesterday -- when I finally got fed up with it. Thunderbird regularly mixes up its idea of which mail folders there are on the IMAP server, and where. So there I was, looking for a new MUA. Lot's of dissatisfaction ensued. Until I found two wonderful programs:
The first does something very simple (but in a smart way): It synchronizes IMAP mailboxes with a local repository. Both ways. So I set it up with all my IMAP settings (through a nice, and "unuserfriendly" config file -- sic!) and let it sync every five minutes. New mails get pulled into local Maildir folders where any old MUA can conveniently handle them. And whatever changes I make to them are propagated back to the server. And no, it doesn't lose any mails; so the author assures. The author, btw., turns out to be a fellow Haskell programmer -- John Goerzen, thank you: You just made my day!
Thanks to OfflineIMAP I can finally use my old-time favourite MUA again: Mutt. But wait, as I discovered, there is even Mutt-NG now, which finally adds the one thing I had been missing all along: A sidebar that shows an overview of (new/old/etc.) messages in my incoming mail folders! Oh, and for extra pleasure, it also speaks SMTP, so I don't even have to set up a local delivery agent.
And here's some more general Mutt praise: With just a few pretty simple config file (sic!) settings, mutt pretty much takes care of moving read mails away into yearly archive folders all by itself:
save-hook ~A =sa-spam
This means that pressing 's' to move a message to another folder presents sa-spam as default, which happens to be the folder my spamassasin learns from.
set record="=Archive/`date +%Y`/Sent"
This is where mutt saves Fcc's, i.e. copies of sent messages. Notice the automatic year selection.
set mbox="=Archive/`date +%Y`/Inbox" mbox-hook =Somelist =Archive/`date +%Y`/Somelist mbox-hook =Otherlist =Archive/`date +%Y`/Otherlist
Finally, these are the real fun: Remember how default Mutt setups usually ask on quit whether they should save read messages to "mbox" in your homedir? A completely stupid question, nobody wants that. But with the above, this suddenly changes to something sensible: The correct archive folder for the current year, sorting different input folders into a corresponding archive subfolder. Wonderful.
Maybe you cannot really appreciate how good this is. But that's usually the case with improved usability, you don't notice until afterwards how much better things feel with just that little tweak. Compare my previous post about bitlbee. Life just started being fun again! Time to throw out all those black clothes and start listening to eurodance.
Enjoy.
PS. Friendly apologies for praising config files go to lkcl who recently bitched about "this crap obscure text file editing shit". ;-P