[ILUG] gpg, mutt, netscape

[Lars Hecking]

> i've also downloaded a copy of mutt since it seems nifty keen by kate's
> standards and him being a nifty cool guy i figured he might be right. 
> plus petreley has an article on and he seems keen on it too.
 
 Hey, I'm using mutt, too ;-))

> so, my main box for email is a laptop.  it follows me to work and to
> home.  insert nursery rhyme here.  so...  mutt...  can it easily import
> netscape mailboxes?

 Hhm.

$ mutt -f ~/nsmail/Sent

 Yep, they seem to be ordinary Unix mboxes.

>                      can i configure my from address?

 The my_hdr/unmy_hdr command.

 You can configure mutt to use different from addresses depending
 on who you're replying to. For example, I'm using a send-hook to use
 an obscured from address when replying to a certain mailing list which
 is gatewayed into Usenet:

send-hook '~C info-gnuplot' my_hdr From: 'Lars Hecking <lhecking+u\$e-net at nmrc.ucc.ie>'

 Not quite for the faint-hearted, but a quick read through the manual and
 an idea about regexps help.

>                                                       can it snatch
> mail from $MAIL?

 [TFM, Section 6.3, Configuration Variables; around 200 by now ...]

  6.3.176.  spoolfile

  Type: path
  Default: ""
  If your spool mailbox is in a non-default place where Mutt cannot find
  it, you can specify its location with this variable.  Mutt will
  automatically set this variable to the value of the environment
  variable MAIL if it is not set.

>                   can it let me edit more than one message at a time? 

 What exactly do you mean? mutt is a text mode mailer, there is no way
 to have it open several edit windows. It is possible to run several
 instances of mutt on the same mailbox, though.

 mutt has a feature known as message tagging: tag an arbitrary number of
 messages and perform an operation on all tagged messages. For example,
 I could tag all messages in this thread (casual remark: mutt can thread
 messages just like a newsreader), ";-L" (tag-listreply) and answer them
 all in one email.

> can i use vi?

  6.3.35.  editor

  Type: path
  Default: ""


  This variable specifies which editor is used by mutt.  It defaults to
  the value of the EDITOR or VISUAL environment variable, or to the
  string "vi".

>               can i easily view/create attachments?

 Creation is simple: just type "a" in the send menu, and type in
 (casual remark: mutt has tab filename completion) the name of the file,
 return, that's it.

>                                                      how does the view
> interface work - i.e. when an attachment comes up does it let pick
> save/view/ignore?

 mutt follows the Unix toolbox philosophy - different tools for different
 tasks. Attachment viewing works through the mailcap interface.
 There is a neat script at http://www.hagbard.demon.co.uk/mutt.html
 for viewing attachments of type application/octet-stream.

 If all else fails, save the attachment as a file and do with it as you
 please.

 The downside: mutt's attachment handling requires a lot more configuration
 effort than the likes of Outlook, netrape, dtmail etc.


 In addition to all this, mutt gives you full IMAP, MIME/PGP, GPG support,
 message postponing for later recall, colour support with the appropriate
 terminals (dtterm, xterm-color), key bindings, keyboard macros, regexp
 searches, mailing list handling, and a facility to limit the view of a
 mailbox based on a pattern matching language (e.g. I could load my ilug
 mail archive and view only those mails in the message index which are
 from Kevin Lyda and have mutt in the Subject: (press "l"),
 Limit to messages matching: (enter following string) ~f kevin at suberic ~s mutt