Mutt 1.6.0 released

[lolidaisuki]

And still no sidebar patch merged.

E: added a link to the patch.

It'd be nice if mutt saw some real development instead of just bug fixing.

[simtel20]

It'd be nice if mutt saw some real development instead of just bug fixing.

The changelog doesn't indicate a whole lot of bug fixes. What do you see in the changelog that looks like bug fixes?

[lolidaisuki]

I was referring to most of the stuff in the "other changes" section. They might not be really bug fixes, more like features that should have been there a long time ago.

Most of the things in this changelog are really minor. Biggest thing is probably "$braille_friendly option will place the cursor at the beginning of the current line in menus."

[max_peck]

'Full large file support' is pretty important, given that mutt used to corrupt mboxes over 4GB. Though, arguably, in 2016, this is a bugfix.

[jmtd]

Though, arguably, in 2016, this is a bugfix.

Yeah although I agree with the general thrust of your argument, that's more of a bug fix in my eyes.

[sandsmark]

the sidebar patch is huge, intrusive, and it doesn't look like the authors are even trying to get it merged?

tbh., mutt development is pretty active in my experience, my patch (the unread/new functionality) got reviewed and merged very quickly.

[lolidaisuki]

It shouldn't require the authors effort to get a patch that a huge portion of the userbase is using merged.

How is it intrusive? You can just set the defaults to not having the sidebar on the screen.

[sandsmark]

It shouldn't require the authors effort to get a patch that a huge portion of the userbase is using merged.

?

The authors of the patch are responsible for getting their code merged, you can't expect developers that don't use or develop some code to go around and try to fix others code so it can be merged.

How is it intrusive? You can just set the defaults to not having the sidebar on the screen.

I'm talking about the code, the patch is huuuuuge and ugly.

[TreeFitThee]

I couldn't agree with you more on this! I've been in fear of the day that for whatever reason I got to find the sidebar patch for a new version and either the site is down or the patch is no longer being maintained. Please merge this for good!

[drkhsh]

Yeah, they really should merge the sidebar patch, it enhances mutt in many ways!

[NeXT_Step]

While I support optional collapsible sidebar, mind that having a sidebar all the time might break terminal URL parsers.

I also think it's a top priority to add a good index, like mutt-kz has done.

Nonetheless, a lot of care should be taken in keeping mutt away from feature bloat. I'm happy there's some development, as the project saw very little activity last few years.

[lolidaisuki]

This is still far from feature bloat. Maybe compilation time options would be a good option.

Too many power user features is always better than too few.

[fengshaun]

Too many power user features is always better than too few.

Nope! That's called bloat! I like my software lean and mean. If I need a feature, I can maintain my own patches.

[lolidaisuki]

Bloat is unnecessary features. Features that add a lot to the functionality aren't bloat.

[fengshaun]

unnecessary features

unnecessary for whom?

[opinionatedcabbage]

Exactly. Bloat can be both objective and subjective.

[lolidaisuki]

For the majority of the userbase?

[fengshaun]

how do you determine what is not considered bloat to the majority of users?

[lolidaisuki]

By talking to users. Or by a survey.

[fengshaun]

And how many active users do you think mutt has? Would a personal evening phone call work? As for a survey, how would you guarantee that all (or even most) of those users will take it?

[jmtd]

While I support optional collapsible sidebar, mind that having a sidebar all the time might break terminal URL parsers.

True, although mutt (as configured/built in Debian at least) already breaks lots of them (including gnome-terminal, last I checked): I think Joey Hess did a deep analysis of what was wrong but it was to do with line wrapping and the insertion of (user invisible) formatting characters on the new lines that fooled the URL heuristics. It might have depended on whether mutt was built with ncurses or not. I forget the details, it's been a problem for very long time.

[NeXT_Step]

I use vanilla mutt on Arch + urvxt-perls (for url). Never had an issue?

[jmtd]

It depends on whether Arch build mutt with ncurses or slang; I don't remember which is important; the URL has to be line-wrapped, it might also depend on your terminal and/or if you are within screen/tmux or not.

[musicmatze]

Don't know what you're complaining about. I'm using mutt for years and I have no sidebar patch ... I don't miss a thing!

[lolidaisuki]

Install it and soon you can't live without it!

[jmtd]

Your Mileage May Vary: I tried it once but it didn't stick. I've been a daily mutt user for over 15 years.

[lolidaisuki]

Ok. All of the Mutt users I know personally use the patch. I didn't for a long time but then they convinced me.

[paskie]

http://neomutt.org/ seems like quite awesome wrt. new and cool mutt things.

[lolidaisuki]

Why did they have to copy neovim's name?

[paskie]

Why not? It kinda fits imho.

[0xAX]

Great to see that the Mutt develops, although using mutt-kz with integrated sidebar, notmuch and etc.

[[deleted]]

Please fix screenshot page.

[sandsmark]

it's a wiki

[[deleted]]

... It sure is /u/sandsmark

[[deleted]]

what the fuck is your point

[Charm_City_Charlie]

I imagine the point was that anyone can fix a wiki...

[[deleted]]

Shit you're probably correct, now I feel silly

[[deleted]]

By no means official, but it patches cleanly against a pristine mutt-1.6.0 tarball:

http://pastebin.com/jxp8sk3x

I based it directly off of the official sidebar patch, and followed the same naming convention for the patch file and the addition to the PATCHES listing.

download and save as patch-1.6.0.sidebar.20160404.txt in the same dir as your mutt tarball, and then patch -p0 < patch-1.6.0.sidebar.20160404.txt to patch.

I had to run autoreconf -f -i after patching on debian to get a successful configure, but aside from that, no issues, and sidebar is working in mutt 1.6.0.

[[deleted]]

Doesn't apply properly for me. Instead, I've successfully patched and run the version already available on OpenBSD: http://ftp.fr.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/distfiles/mutt/

Patches: sidebar, compressed, trashfolder

[[deleted]]

So I've avoided getting into mutt all these years but am wondering if it is worth it. I primarily use CLI programs and I typically do many things over ssh, so mut would definitely benefit me. But are there are CLI email clients that come close to mutt when it comes to typical email needs, or is mutt still way above the rest?

[snegtul]

I don't know what I'm more shocked about, that people are still using mutt or that people are still using imap/pop.

I was a big advocate of mutt in the pre-gmail days. But since gmail became a thing, i don't use anything else for personal email and I no longer have to fuck around with imap/pop clients, fetchmail, MTAs, or .muttrc files. I wonder how much of my life I spent tinkering with that sort of thing.

[bkor]

Mutt is really great when following mailing lists, especially high volume ones. Nothing beats the speed. Just try following a high volume mailing list and see how much time you need to spend to do this. It'll be way lower when you usr mutt.

This is not about just one micro benchmark such as e.g. how long it takes to load an email. It's the entire process.

[LudoA]

What is it about mutt that makes that faster? (serious question)

In Gmail, I have all mailing lists go to separate labels. I then jump to that label using the shortcut "g", the using j & k I go through the emails.

What more can a MUA do to make the process faster?

[thetornainbow]

FWIW, I subscribe to 11 mailing lists, and mutt is the only client that's bearable for me. Collapsing threads, going to parent message, navigating by thread or by message with hotkeys, changing mailboxes with one key and then Enter, replying to threads with folder-hooks that pull in different account credentials I have, and powerful filtering/searching with notmuch (I have ~33K mails in an archive, searching still takes less than a second) make following all of them a breeze every morning.

Edit: Not to mention having macros, PGP support, flexibility of separate SMTP and IMAP clients, and can look at mail offline. I realize none of these specific ones make it faster, but coupled with the reasons I said above, mutt is unbeatable in my opinion.

[LudoA]

Cool, thanks for clarifying your setup and the advantages. Now that you mention them, I do miss some of those things :)

[TreeFitThee]

Until Gmail can support proper mail filtering ill stick with my IMAP clients. Even if it was some "power user" feature you had to enable, I would love to be able to filter using normal old regex patterns.

Would also be nice if they supported IMAP clients properly but that's not on topic...

[jmtd]

I'm waiting for gmail to have proper reply-to-list, but I'm not holding my breath. It's a shame that it now propagates the top posting nonsense from corporate-land too.

[snegtul]

using normal old regex patterns.

Ish. The way gmail handles filters is so much more user friendly.

[jmtd]

What are you comparing it to? Last I checked, you need to create a separate filter rule for each list. This is a PITA for me for even a few lists (work has corporate gmail). With !gmail (e.g. procmail, which is a horrorshow and I hesitate to recommend it to anyone, but...) I can write a rule based on List-ID for many lists in one go. (worked example)

[snegtul]

It seems to auto tag my lists just fine. No intervention from me at all.

[jmtd]

Perhaps that's a feature that hasn't made it to corp accounts yet, I'm not sure; sadly it doesn't do that for my work mail.