--- a/content/blog/2012/07/the-homely-mutt.html Mon Jul 30 09:47:26 2012 -0400
+++ /dev/null Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 1970 +0000
@@ -1,897 +0,0 @@
- {% extends "_post.html" %}
-
- {% hyde
- title: "The Homely Mutt"
- snip: "Sparrow's dead? Why not try Mutt?"
- created: 2012-07-23 10:00:00
- flattr: true
- %}
-
-{% block article %}
-
-Now that [Sparrow][] is [effectively dead][sparrow-dead] many of its users will
-be looking for a new email client. If you're not afraid of the terminal you may
-want to give [Mutt][] a try.
-
-Mutt certainly isn't the prettiest email client around, and its
-setup/configuration process is one of the ugliest out there. But once you get
-it set up it's got a lot of advantages over many other email clients.
-
-In this post I'll show you how to set up Mutt on OS X like I do.
-
-[Sparrow]: http://sparrowmailapp.com/
-[sparrow-dead]: http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/20/3172222/google-buys-sparrow-mail
-[Mutt]: http://www.mutt.org/
-
-[TOC]
-
-How I Use Email
----------------
-
-This setup is going to be specific to the way I work with email. Notably:
-
-* I have a Google Apps account that provides my steve@stevelosh.com email address.
-* I have a lot of other email addresses, but they all simply forward to my main one.
-* All mail I send comes from steve@stevelosh.com.
-* I store my contacts in the OS X address book.
-* All email comes into my inbox (or to a folder for a specific mailing list).
-* Once I'm done with an email, I remove it from my inbox and it lives in the
- "All Mail" archive. I don't sort email into folders.
-* I sometimes read email offline and mark it for deletion, then sync that
- deletion back to the server once I get online again.
-* Sometimes I write email without an internet connection and send it once I get
- connected again.
-
-My email setup is tailored around those requirements, so that's what it does
-best. Mutt is very configurable though, so if you work differently you can
-probably bend it to make it work like you want.
-
-In particular, extending this setup to work with multiple email accounts
-wouldn't be too much trouble. I used to work with two separate accounts until
-I said "screw it, I'll just use the one".
-
-Other Guides and Resources
---------------------------
-
-I've used a lot of other guides to figure out how to get this giant Rube
-Goldberg machine of an email client working. Here are a few of them:
-
-* <http://thomas.pelletier.im/2010/10/low-memory-mail-client/>
-* <http://www.andrews-corner.org/mutt.html>
-* <http://jstorimer.com/shells/2010/01/19/using-mutt-with-gmail-on-osx.html>
-* <http://www.vijaykiran.com/2010/01/27/mutt-for-gmail-imap-on-mac-os-x/>
-* <http://hynek.me/articles/my-mutt-gmail-setup/>
-* <https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Mutt>
-* <http://linsec.ca/Using_mutt_on_OS_X>
-* <http://www.mutt.org/doc/manual/manual.html>
-* <http://pbrisbin.com/posts/two_accounts_in_mutt>
-
-Overview
---------
-
-I'm going to give it to you straight: getting this whole contraption set up is
-going to take at least an hour from start to finish, not counting the time it'll
-take to download all of your email and install stuff.
-
-It's an investment, and you might not want to make it. If not, go use
-Thunderbird, er, Sparrow, er, I don't know, the Gmail web interface or
-something.
-
-Mutt on its own doesn't do very much, so we're going to combine it with a few
-other things to get the job done. Here's a bird's eye view of what it'll look
-like when we're done:
-
-
-
-If this diagram doesn't make you run screaming, you might just be masochistic
-enough to make it through the initial setup of Mutt. If you do, you'll be
-rewarded with email bliss that won't go away when Google or Facebook decide to
-toss some money around.
-
-Getting Email
--------------
-
-First thing's first: we're going to pull down our email from Gmail to our local
-machine. All of it. It'll take a while the first time you sync, but has a few
-benefits.
-
-### Why Local Email?
-
-Having a local copy of all of your email means you've always got access to it,
-no matter where you are. Looking for that one person's address they emailed you
-six years ago when you're trying to find their house and you don't have an
-internet connection? No problem, it's on your hard drive.
-
-This also acts as a backup in case Google ever decides to kill your Gmail
-account. It'll be stored in a common format that a lot of programs can read, so
-you've got a safety net. And the email is stored as normal files, so if you use
-something like Time Machine or [Backblaze][] that's yet another backup.
-
-In this setup all of your email is stored as plain text. If you want it
-encrypted just use OS X's full-disk encryption and you're set.
-
-I use [offlineimap][] to pull email down from Gmail and get it on my hard drive.
-Offlineimap will also sync any changes you make to this local copy back up to
-Gmail.
-
-[offlineimap]: http://offlineimap.org/
-[Backblaze]: http://www.backblaze.com/partner/af3574
-
-### The Alternative
-
-You may not care as much about reading your email offline as I do. If you can
-tolerate always needing an internet connection to read your mail, you can skip
-this painful section and follow [this guide][roma] instead.
-
-You'll probably still find the other sections of this guide interesting though.
-
-[roma]: http://empt1e.blogspot.com/2009/10/using-mutt-with-gmail-imap-complete.html
-
-### Installing offlineimap
-
-I've gone through a number of laptops in the past few years, and each time
-I spend a painful half hour or so screwing around with the lastest version of
-offlineimap's backwards-incompatible changes.
-
-If you're determined to run the latest version of offlineimap, you can install
-it with pip or something. If you just want to download your fucking email and
-get on with your life, you can follow the instructions I've laid out for you
-here:
-
-* `git clone git://github.com/spaetz/offlineimap.git`
-* `cd offlineimap`
-* `git checkout 679c491c56c981961e18aa43b31955900491d7a3`
-* `python setup.py install`
-
-That's the version I'm using. It works. You can use a newer one if you want,
-but expect to spend some time figuring out how to fix the configuration in this
-post to work with whatever breaking changes have been made since then. The last
-time I tried this I got to rewrite all my nametrans stuff. That was fun.
-
-### Configuring offlineimap
-
-Once you've got offlineimap installed, you'll need to create
-a `~/.offlineimaprc` file. You can keep it in your dotfiles repo and symlink it
-into place if you want. Here's a sample to get you started:
-
- [general]
- ui = TTY.TTYUI
- accounts = SteveLosh
- pythonfile=~/.mutt/offlineimap.py
- fsync = False
-
- [Account SteveLosh]
- localrepository = SteveLosh-Local
- remoterepository = SteveLosh-Remote
- status_backend = sqlite
- postsynchook = notmuch new
-
- [Repository SteveLosh-Local]
- type = Maildir
- localfolders = ~/.mail/steve-stevelosh.com
- nametrans = lambda folder: {'drafts': '[Gmail]/Drafts',
- 'sent': '[Gmail]/Sent Mail',
- 'flagged': '[Gmail]/Starred',
- 'trash': '[Gmail]/Trash',
- 'archive': '[Gmail]/All Mail',
- }.get(folder, folder)
-
- [Repository SteveLosh-Remote]
- maxconnections = 1
- type = Gmail
- remoteuser = steve@stevelosh.com
- remotepasseval = get_keychain_pass(account="steve@stevelosh.com", server="imap.gmail.com")
- realdelete = no
- nametrans = lambda folder: {'[Gmail]/Drafts': 'drafts',
- '[Gmail]/Sent Mail': 'sent',
- '[Gmail]/Starred': 'flagged',
- '[Gmail]/Trash': 'trash',
- '[Gmail]/All Mail': 'archive',
- }.get(folder, folder)
- folderfilter = lambda folder: folder not in ['[Gmail]/Trash',
- 'Nagios',
- 'Django',
- 'Flask',
- '[Gmail]/Important',
- '[Gmail]/Spam',
- ]
-
-It's kind of a beast, so let's go through it line by line and see what's going
-on.
-
- [general]
- ui = TTY.TTYUI
- accounts = SteveLosh
- pythonfile=~/.mutt/offlineimap.py
- fsync = False
-
-First we tell offlineimap to use the `TTY.TTYUI` ui. Yes, this program that
-syncs yoiur email has multiple user interfaces. I guess if you can't decide
-what color the bikeshed should be you can just build a whole bunch of bikesheds
-instead.
-
-Then we specify the accounts. There's only one, because as I said before:
-I only use a single email account that all my addresses forward to. If you
-wanted to have many, you'd change this line.
-
-The `pythonfile` is just a file that offlineimap will parse (as Python) before
-loading the rest of the config, so you can define custom helper functions more
-easily. We'll see more of this later.
-
-We're also telling offlineimap that it doesn't need to fsync after every single
-operation. This will speed things up, and since it's just a local copy it's
-typically not a big deal if we lose an email here and there from a crash (it'll
-just be synced the next time anyway).
-
- [Account SteveLosh]
- localrepository = SteveLosh-Local
- remoterepository = SteveLosh-Remote
- status_backend = sqlite
-
-This next section hooks up a few things. First, it tells offlineimap which
-local and remote repositories to use for the account. Manual configuration
-instead of sane defaults is a recurring theme we'll see throughout this process.
-
-Hey, I titled the entry "The *Homely* Mutt" for a reason.
-
-We're also going to use a SQLite-based cache for this account. If you don't
-already have SQLite you'll want to get it with `brew install sqlite`.
-
- [Repository SteveLosh-Local]
- type = Maildir
- localfolders = ~/.mail/steve-stevelosh.com
- nametrans = lambda folder: {'drafts': '[Gmail]/Drafts',
- 'sent': '[Gmail]/Sent Mail',
- 'flagged': '[Gmail]/Starred',
- 'trash': '[Gmail]/Trash',
- 'archive': '[Gmail]/All Mail',
- }.get(folder, folder)
-
-Now we're getting to the meat of the configuration. This "local repository" is
-going to be the mail as it sites on our hard drive. We're going to use the
-[Maildir format][maildir] because it plays nicely with Mutt (and tons of other
-stuff).
-
-Then we specify the path where we're going to keep the mail. This is going to
-take a lot of space if you've got a lot of mail. Attachments are downloaded
-too. When I said you're getting an offline copy of your email I meant all of
-it.
-
-I think offlineimap needs the `~/.mail` directory created for it. It's been
-a while since I did this, so I might be wrong, but if it complains about not
-being able to access the mail folders just go ahead and `mkdir ~/.mail`.
-
-Next we have the craziest part of the offlineimap configuration: name
-translation.
-
-Here's the issue: offlineimap needs to know how to translate the names of
-folders on the IMAP server to folder names on your hard drive.
-
-Also, Gmail doesn't actually use *folders* but its own concept called "labels".
-But since the IMAP protocol doesn't know about labels, it fakes them by making
-them appear to be folders.
-
-User-created labels in Gmail (like "Mercurial" or "Clients") will appear as
-folders with those names through IMAP.
-
-Built-in, special Gmail folders have names that start with `[Gmail]/`. We need
-to turn those into something sane for our hard drive, so that's what this
-nametrans setting is for. It's a Python function that takes the remote folder
-name and returns the name that should be used on your local hard drive.
-
-Yes, you read that right. This is Python code embedded in the right hand side
-of an INI file's setting assignment. I am not fucking with you, this is
-seriously how you do it. Go ahead and crack open that beer now.
-
-So the "Sent Mail" folder in your Gmail account will be synced to
-`~/.mail/steve-stevelosh.com/sent`. Cool.
-
-(No, I don't know what would happen if you created a label called `[Gmail]/All
-Mail` in Gmail. If you try, let me know, but I take no responsibility if it
-ends with all your email deleted.)
-
-[maildir]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maildir
-
- [Repository SteveLosh-Remote]
- maxconnections = 1
- type = Gmail
- remoteuser = steve@stevelosh.com
- remotepasseval = get_keychain_pass(account="steve@stevelosh.com", server="imap.gmail.com")
- realdelete = no
- nametrans = lambda folder: {'[Gmail]/Drafts': 'drafts',
- '[Gmail]/Sent Mail': 'sent',
- '[Gmail]/Starred': 'flagged',
- '[Gmail]/Trash': 'trash',
- '[Gmail]/All Mail': 'archive',
- }.get(folder, folder)
- folderfilter = lambda folder: folder not in ['[Gmail]/Trash',
- 'Nagios',
- 'Django',
- 'Flask',
- '[Gmail]/Important',
- '[Gmail]/Spam',
- ]
-
-Finally, the home stretch. The last section described the folder on our local
-hard drive, and this one describes our Gmail account.
-
-First, we tell offlineimap to only ever use a single connection at a time. You
-can try increasing this number for better performance, but in my experience
-Google is not stingy with its rate limits and would cut me off fairly often when
-I tried that. Just leave it at one if you want to be safe.
-
-Next is the type. Luckily offlineimap provides a `Gmail` type that handles
-a lot of the craziness that is Gmail's IMAP setup. Nice.
-
-Then we have the username. Nothing special here, except that if you have
-a non-apps account (i.e.: an actual vanilla Gmail account) you may or may not
-need to include the `@gmail.com` in the username. I don't know. If one doesn't
-work, just try the other.
-
-Next we have `remotepasseval`. This is a bit of Python code (drink!) that
-should return the password for the account.
-
-What is this `get_keychain_pass` function? Well, remember when we saw the
-`pythonfile` setting back in the general section? It's a function defined in
-there. I'll talk about that in the next section, for now just accept that it
-works.
-
-Next we set `realdelete` to no. If this is set to yes, then deleting an email
-in your inbox would actually delete it entirely. When you set it to no, then
-deleting an email from your inbox (or any label's folder) will leave it in
-Gmail's All Mail.
-
-If you want to really delete an email, you'll need to delete it from All Mail
-(which is named archive on our local filesystem, remember?). I feel like this
-is a good compromise. I rarely care about actually deleting mail, given that
-I have many unused gigabytes available on Gmail.
-
-Next we have another nametrans setting. This is a Python function (drink!) just
-like the one for the local repository, except it goes in the other direction.
-It takes the name of a local folder and returns the name of the folder on the
-IMAP server. Knowing this, it should be easy to understand this setting.
-
-Finally, we have `folderfilter`. This is a Python function (drink!) that takes
-a **remote** folder name and returns `True` if that folder should be synced, or
-`False` if it should *not* be synced. I've chosen to skip syncing my Spam and
-Trash folders, as well as a few mailing list labels I don't check all that
-often. Customize this to your own taste.
-
-### Retrieving Passwords
-
-We're almost ready, but there's one more thing we need to do, and that's
-implement a secure way for offlineimap to get access to our Gmail password.
-
-If you don't care too much about security, you *can* configure offlineimap with
-a plaintext password right in the config file. But don't do that. It'll only
-take a minute to do this securely.
-
-First, you need to add your Gmail password into your OS X keychain. Open the
-Keychain Access app and press the `+` button:
-
-
-
-Then fill out the form. The "Keychain Item Name" should be
-`http://imap.gmail.com`. The "Account Name" should be your email address. The
-password should be your password:
-
-
-
-Press "Add". Now repeat the process for the SMTP server. The "Keychain Item
-Name" should be `smtp://smtp.gmail.com`. The "Account Name" should be your
-email address. The password should be your password:
-
-
-
-Now we need to create the `offlineimap.py` file we pointed offlineimap to
-earlier. It needs to contain the `get_keychain_pass` function, which takes an
-`account` and `server` and return the password. Here's the file I'm using:
-
- :::python
- #!/usr/bin/python
- import re, subprocess
- def get_keychain_pass(account=None, server=None):
- params = {
- 'security': '/usr/bin/security',
- 'command': 'find-internet-password',
- 'account': account,
- 'server': server,
- 'keychain': '/Users/sjl/Library/Keychains/login.keychain',
- }
- command = "sudo -u sjl %(security)s -v %(command)s -g -a %(account)s -s %(server)s %(keychain)s" % params
- output = subprocess.check_output(command, shell=True, stderr=subprocess.STDOUT)
- outtext = [l for l in output.splitlines()
- if l.startswith('password: ')][0]
-
- return re.match(r'password: "(.*)"', outtext).group(1)
-
-In a nutshell, it uses `/usr/bin/security` to retrieve the password. Read
-through the code if you're curious.
-
-This is not *completely* secure, but it's better than having your password in
-a plaintext file in your home directory.
-
-Whew! Time to actually run this thing and pull down our email!
-
-### Running offlineimap
-
-Assuming everything is in place, open a terminal and run offlineimap:
-
- offlineimap
-
-Go read a book, because this is going to pull down all the email (with
-attachments) in any folders you didn't exclude in the config file.
-
-**If there's an error, stop and figure out what went wrong**. Remember,
-offlineimap is a *two-way* sync, so there's always the possibility it'll eat
-your email if you seriously mess something up! I wish it had a
-`--dont-touch-remote` option you could use as a safety net for the original
-sync, but it doesn't, so be careful!
-
-In the future you can use `offlineimap -q` to run it in "quick mode". It'll
-perform fewer checks but will generally be much faster.
-
-If you want to set up offlineimap to run every 5 minutes or so, you can use
-launchd. `cron` does not work for some reason. I'm not entirely sure why.
-
-Personally I actually *like* having to press a key to fetch new mail. It's less
-of a distraction than having new mail rolling in all the time. I can get new
-email when I'm ready to actually look at it, rather than having it nagging me
-all the time.
-
-Mutt!
------
-
-Now that you've got your email on your computer, it's finally time to start
-using Mutt itself!
-
-### Installing
-
-Mutt can be installed in a bunch of different ways, but the easiest is through
-Homebrew:
-
- brew install mutt --sidebar-patch
-
-The sidebar patch is a third-party patch that adds a sidebar to Mutt. I don't
-know why it's not in core Mutt because it's insanely useful. Oh well, at least
-Homebrew makes it simple to get.
-
-That's pretty much it for installation, but don't get too relaxed because you're
-far from done.
-
-### Configuring
-
-Mutt is *very* configurable. This is great once you've become a power user and
-want to mold it to your will, but terrible when you're just getting started.
-
-Mutt settings are kept in a `~/.muttrc` file. If this file doesn't exist Mutt
-will look for `~/.mutt/muttrc` (note the lack of a dot in the filename), so you
-can put it there if you prefer.
-
-Here's a basic `~/.muttrc` to get you started (a lot of which was taken from
-[this article][pris]). Once you've got a bit of Mutt under your belt you'll
-want to read [the documentation][muttdoc] for these settings, but for now just
-use them to keep things sane:
-
-[pris]: http://pbrisbin.com/posts/two_accounts_in_mutt
-[muttdoc]: http://www.mutt.org/doc/manual/manual-6.html
-
- # Paths
- set alias_file = ~/.mutt/alias # where to store aliases
- set header_cache = ~/.mutt/cache/headers # where to store headers
- set message_cachedir = ~/.mutt/cache/bodies # where to store bodies
- set certificate_file = ~/.mutt/certificates # where to store certs
- set tmpdir = ~/.mutt/temp # where to keep temp files
- set signature = ~/.mutt/sig # signature file
-
- # Use Vim to compose email, with a few default options.
- set editor = "vim -c 'normal! }' -c 'redraw'"
-
- # Colors!
- source ~/.vim/bundle/badwolf/contrib/badwolf.muttrc
-
- # Basic Options
- set wait_key = no # shut up, mutt
- set mbox_type = Maildir # mailbox type
- set folder = ~/.mail # mailbox location
- set timeout = 3 # idle time before scanning
- set mail_check = 0 # minimum time between scans
- unset move # gmail does that
- set delete # don't ask, just do
- unset confirmappend # don't ask, just do!
- set quit # don't ask, just do!!
- unset mark_old # read/new is good enough for me
- set beep_new # bell on new mails
- set pipe_decode # strip headers and eval mimes when piping
- set thorough_search # strip headers and eval mimes before searching
-
- # Sidebar Patch
- set sidebar_delim = ' │'
- set sidebar_visible = yes
- set sidebar_width = 24
- color sidebar_new color221 color233
- bind index,pager <down> sidebar-next
- bind index,pager <up> sidebar-prev
- bind index,pager <right> sidebar-open
-
- # Status Bar
- set status_chars = " *%A"
- set status_format = "───[ Folder: %f ]───[%r%m messages%?n? (%n new)?%?d? (%d to delete)?%?t? (%t tagged)? ]───%>─%?p?( %p postponed )?───"
-
- # Index View
- set date_format = "%m/%d"
- set index_format = "[%Z] %D %-20.20F %s"
- set sort = threads # like gmail
- set sort_aux = reverse-last-date-received # like gmail
- set uncollapse_jump # don't collapse on an unread message
- set sort_re # thread based on regex
- set reply_regexp = "^(([Rr][Ee]?(\[[0-9]+\])?: *)?(\[[^]]+\] *)?)*"
-
- # Pager View
- set pager_index_lines = 10 # number of index lines to show
- set pager_context = 3 # number of context lines to show
- set pager_stop # don't go to next message automatically
- set menu_scroll # scroll in menus
- set tilde # show tildes like in vim
- unset markers # no ugly plus signs
-
- set quote_regexp = "^( {0,4}[>|:#%]| {0,4}[a-z0-9]+[>|]+)+"
- alternative_order text/plain text/enriched text/html
-
- # Compose View
- set realname = "Steve Losh" # who am i?
- set envelope_from # which from?
- set sig_dashes # dashes before sig
- set edit_headers # show headers when composing
- set fast_reply # skip to compose when replying
- set askcc # ask for CC:
- set fcc_attach # save attachments with the body
- unset mime_forward # forward attachments as part of body
- set forward_format = "Fwd: %s" # format of subject when forwarding
- set forward_decode # decode when forwarding
- set attribution = "On %d, %n wrote:" # format of quoting header
- set reply_to # reply to Reply to: field
- set reverse_name # reply as whomever it was to
- set include # include message in replies
- set forward_quote # include message in forwards
-
- # Headers
- ignore * # ignore all headers
- unignore from: to: cc: date: subject: # show only these
- hdr_order from: to: cc: date: subject: # and in this order
-
- # steve@stevelosh.com {{{
-
- # Default inbox.
- set spoolfile = "+steve-stevelosh.com/INBOX"
-
- # Alternate email addresses.
- alternates sjl@pculture.org still\.?life@gmail.com steve@ladyluckblues.com steve@pculture.org
-
- # Mailboxes to show in the sidebar.
- mailboxes +steve-stevelosh.com/INBOX \
- +steve-stevelosh.com/vim \
- +steve-stevelosh.com/clojure \
- +steve-stevelosh.com/python \
- +steve-stevelosh.com/mercurial \
- +steve-stevelosh.com/archive \
- +steve-stevelosh.com/sent \
- +steve-stevelosh.com/drafts \
-
- # Other special folders.
- set mbox = "+steve-stevelosh.com/archive"
- set postponed = "+steve-stevelosh.com/drafts"
-
- # Sending email.
- set from = "steve@stevelosh.com"
- set sendmail = "/usr/local/bin/msmtp -a stevelosh"
- set sendmail_wait = 0 # no please don't silently fail, email is important
- unset record
-
- # }}}
- # Account Hooks {{{
-
- # folder-hook steve-stevelosh.com/* source ~/.mutt/steve-stevelosh.com.muttrc
-
- # }}}
- # Key Bindings {{{
-
- # Unbind Stupid Keys {{{
-
- bind index,pager \# noop
- bind index i noop
- bind index w noop
-
- # }}}
- # Pager {{{
-
- bind pager i exit
- bind pager / search
- bind pager k previous-line
- bind pager j next-line
- bind pager gg top
- bind pager G bottom
- bind pager R group-reply
-
- macro pager \Cu "|urlview<enter>" "call urlview to open links"
- macro pager s "<pipe-message>cat > ~/Desktop/" "save message as"
-
- # }}}
- # Index {{{
-
- bind index R group-reply
- bind index <tab> sync-mailbox
- bind index k previous-entry
- bind index j next-entry
- bind index gg first-entry
- bind index G last-entry
- bind index p recall-message
- bind index <space> collapse-thread
- macro index s "<pipe-message>cat > ~/Desktop/" "save message as"
-
- # Mark all as read
- macro index \Cr "T~U<enter><tag-prefix><clear-flag>N<untag-pattern>.<enter>" "mark all messages as read"
-
- # Quickly change date formats
- macro index <esc>f ":set date_format = \"%m/%d\"<enter>" "short date format"
- macro index <esc>F ":set date_format = \"%m/%d at %I:%M %P\"<enter>" "long date format"
-
- # Sync email
- macro index O "<shell-escape>offlineimap -q<enter>" "run offlineimap to sync mail in the foreground"
- macro index o "<shell-escape>offlineimap -q >/dev/null 2>&1 &<enter>" "run offlineimap to sync mail in the background"
-
- # Saner copy/move dialogs
- macro index C "<copy-message>?<toggle-mailboxes>" "copy a message to a mailbox"
- macro index M "<save-message>?<toggle-mailboxes>" "move a message to a mailbox"
-
- # Quickly change mailboxes
- macro index \' "<change-folder>+steve-stevelosh.com/INBOX<enter>" "go to stevelosh/INBOX"
- macro index \" "<change-folder>+steve-stevelosh.com/archive<enter>" "go to stevelosh/archive"
-
- # Just use notmuch for everything
- macro index / "<enter-command>unset wait_key<enter><shell-escape>read -p 'notmuch query: ' x; echo \$x >~/.cache/mutt_terms<enter><limit>~i \"\`notmuch search --output=messages \$(cat ~/.cache/mutt_terms) | head -n 600 | tr '+' '.' | perl -le '@a=<>;chomp@a;s/\^id:// for@a;$,=\"|\";print@a'\`\"<enter>" "show only messages matching a notmuch pattern"
-
- # Unlimit aka show [a]ll
- macro index a "<limit>all\n" "show all messages (undo limit)"
-
- # }}}
- # Compose {{{
-
- bind compose p postpone-message
-
- # }}}
- # Attachment {{{
-
- # View, god dammit!
- bind attach <return> view-mailcap
-
- # }}}
- # "Open in Vim" {{{
-
- macro index,pager V "|vim -c 'setlocal ft=mail' -c 'setlocal buftype=nofile' -<enter>" "open in vim"
- macro index,pager M "|mvim -c 'setlocal ft=mail' -c 'setlocal buftype=nofile' - >/dev/null<enter>" "open in macvim"
-
- # }}}
-
- # }}}
-### Running
-
-Now that you've got Mutt configured you can run it:
-
- mutt
-
-I like to always be in my `~/Desktop` folder when in Mutt, so that when I save
-emails or attachments they go there by default. I have a little shell function
-set up that cd's there for be before running Mutt.
-
-If you run the [new fish shell][fish], this is going to cause problems later
-(long story, but it's related to the `read` builtin). Do yourself a favor and
-head those confusing issues off at the pass with a fish function:
-
- :::text
- function mutt
- bash -c 'cd ~/Desktop; /usr/local/bin/mutt' $argv;
- end
-
-[fish]: http://ridiculousfish.com/shell/
-
-Reading Email
--------------
-
-Reading email is pretty straightforward in Mutt. You select a message in the
-index and pretty return, and Mutt will display the "pager" with the contents of
-the email:
-
-Let's add a few settings to our `~/.muttrc` to make reading email a bit
-smoother.
-
- set pager_index_lines = 10
-
-This sets the number of lines of the index (the top "pane") to show while
-reading email. I like to have 10 so I can tell where I'm at in the list of
-email.
-
- set pager_context = 3
-
-This tells Mutt how far it should scroll when you "page down" in the pager with
-space. I have it set to three, so when I press space Mutt scrolls down far
-enough that the last three lines on the screen become the first three lines.
-It's there to help you avoid losing your place when reading.
-
- set pager_stop
-
-Prevents Mutt from automatically going to the next message when you page down
-when already at the end of a message. I'll move to the next message when I'm
-good and ready, thank you.
-
- set tilde
-
-Shows tildes at the end of the message, like Vim does after the end of the file.
-This is personal preference, but as a Vim user I like it.
-
- unset markers
-
-By default, when Mutt wraps long lines of text in the pager it will display
-a `+` and the beginning of the wrapped lines. That's kind of ugly, so this
-setting turns it off.
-
- set quote_regexp = "^( {0,4}[>|:#%]| {0,4}[a-z0-9]+[>|]+)+"
-
-This defines how Mutt finds "quoted text" in emails. Mutt will highlight quoted
-text differently:
-
-
-
-This regex will tell Mutt to look for lines prefixed with `>` characters as
-quoted text. Each `>` is one level of quoting. This is pretty standard.
-
-Writing Email
--------------
-
-Sending Email
--------------
-
-Mutt does have (some) built-in SMTP support, but we're going to use a separate
-program to do our sending for a few reasons.
-
-First, Mutt's SMTP support was considered "experimental" the last time
-I checked. Sending email is kind of important, so we'll stick with something
-tried and true.
-
-Second, we want a method that won't require our password in a plaintext config
-file.
-
-Go ahead and install the `msmtp` program through Homebrew:
-
- brew install msmtp
-
-Next we're going to need to create a `~/.msmtprc` file with the following
-contents:
-
- account stevelosh
- host smtp.gmail.com
- port 587
- protocol smtp
- auth on
- from steve@stevelosh.com
- user steve@stevelosh.com
- tls on
- tls_trust_file ~/.mutt/Equifax_Secure_CA.cert
-
- account default : stevelosh
-
-`msmtp` will look in your keychain for your SMTP password, which we added
-earlier. No plaintext passwords!
-
-The other "interesting" bit here is the `tls_trust_file`. We're going to be
-connecting to Gmail's SMTP server over SSL, and `msmtp` needs to know if it can
-trust the certificate that the server on the other end is sending back.
-
-Copy the following and paste it into the path `tls_trust_file` is set to:
-
- :::text
- -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
- MIIDIDCCAomgAwIBAgIENd70zzANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQUFADBOMQswCQYDVQQGEwJVUzEQMA4GA1UE
- ChMHRXF1aWZheDEtMCsGA1UECxMkRXF1aWZheCBTZWN1cmUgQ2VydGlmaWNhdGUgQXV0aG9yaXR5
- MB4XDTk4MDgyMjE2NDE1MVoXDTE4MDgyMjE2NDE1MVowTjELMAkGA1UEBhMCVVMxEDAOBgNVBAoT
- B0VxdWlmYXgxLTArBgNVBAsTJEVxdWlmYXggU2VjdXJlIENlcnRpZmljYXRlIEF1dGhvcml0eTCB
- nzANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQEFAAOBjQAwgYkCgYEAwV2xWGcIYu6gmi0fCG2RFGiYCh7+2gRvE4RiIcPR
- fM6fBeC4AfBONOziipUEZKzxa1NfBbPLZ4C/QgKO/t0BCezhABRP/PvwDN1Dulsr4R+AcJkVV5MW
- 8Q+XarfCaCMczE1ZMKxRHjuvK9buY0V7xdlfUNLjUA86iOe/FP3gx7kCAwEAAaOCAQkwggEFMHAG
- A1UdHwRpMGcwZaBjoGGkXzBdMQswCQYDVQQGEwJVUzEQMA4GA1UEChMHRXF1aWZheDEtMCsGA1UE
- CxMkRXF1aWZheCBTZWN1cmUgQ2VydGlmaWNhdGUgQXV0aG9yaXR5MQ0wCwYDVQQDEwRDUkwxMBoG
- A1UdEAQTMBGBDzIwMTgwODIyMTY0MTUxWjALBgNVHQ8EBAMCAQYwHwYDVR0jBBgwFoAUSOZo+SvS
- spXXR9gjIBBPM5iQn9QwHQYDVR0OBBYEFEjmaPkr0rKV10fYIyAQTzOYkJ/UMAwGA1UdEwQFMAMB
- Af8wGgYJKoZIhvZ9B0EABA0wCxsFVjMuMGMDAgbAMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBBQUAA4GBAFjOKer89961
- zgK5F7WF0bnj4JXMJTENAKaSbn+2kmOeUJXRmm/kEd5jhW6Y7qj/WsjTVbJmcVfewCHrPSqnI0kB
- BIZCe/zuf6IWUrVnZ9NA2zsmWLIodz2uFHdh1voqZiegDfqnc1zqcPGUIWVEX/r87yloqaKHee95
- 70+sB3c4
- -----END CERTIFICATE-----
-
-If you're paranoid and don't trust that I'm giving you the right cert (or that
-someone has hacked my site and changed it), you can generate it yourself. I'll
-leave that as an exercise for the reader.
-
-Now we need to tell Mutt to use msmtp. Add the following to your `~/.muttrc`
-file:
-
- set from = "steve@stevelosh.com"
- set sendmail = "/usr/local/bin/msmtp -a stevelosh"
- set sendmail_wait = 0
- unset record
-
-The `-a stevelosh` will need to change to whatever you named your account in the
-msmtp config.
-
-The `unset record` line tells Mutt to not append a copy of every email you send
-to a file on your hard drive. Gmail will save the emails you send in the sent
-folder, so you'll get the the next time you sync with offlineimap anyway.
-
-The `sendmail_wait` line tells Mutt to wait for the msmtp program to finish
-sending the mail before returning control, instead of running it in the
-background. This makes it obvious if there's a problem sending a message, which
-I prefer to silent, backgrounded failures.
-
-Now you can send email! Awesome!
-
-Once you've composed a test email and saved it you'll be presented with a screen
-like this:
-
-
-
-The keys you need are listed along the top. Pressing `y` now will invoke msmtp
-and send your email!
-
-You'll see "Sending message..." at the bottom of the screen while msmtp is
-working. If there's a problem, Mutt will tell you the error. Figure it out
-before moving on.
-
-Contacts
---------
-
-Next we'll want to get Mutt to autocomplete our contacts from the OS X address
-book. Unfortunately I've got some bad news for you:
-
-You're going to need to install XCode.
-
-No, not the command-line developer tools. The full XCode. I'm sorry, but trust
-me when I say it's going to save you a lot of pain, so just grumble to yourself
-a bit and do it.
-
-Okay, now that you've got XCode you can install the `contacts` program through
-Homebrew:
-
- brew install contacts
-
-`contacts` is a command-line program that you can use to query your address
-book. To tell Mutt how to use it add the following lines to your
-`~/.mutt/muttrc`:
-
- set query_command = "contacts -Sf '%eTOKEN%n' '%s' | sed -e 's/TOKEN/\t/g'"
- bind editor <Tab> complete-query
- bind editor ^T complete
-
-Now when you're filling out an email address field you can type a few characters
-and hit Tab to get a screen like this:
-
-
-
-You can use `j` and `k` to select an item, press return to complete it. Press
-`q` if you've changed your mind and want to cancel the completion. Look at the
-top of the screen for more handy little keys you can use here.
-
-If there's only one item in the list Mutt won't bother showing you this screen
-and will just complete it right away.
-
-This completion searches more than just the email address. It'll also search
-the names and possibly other fields from the address book entries as well.
-
-Searching Email
----------------
-
-notmuch
-muttrc
-
-
-
-{% endblock article %}