[plug] IMAP Joys & MUTT

[Cameron Patrick]

Timothy White wrote:

> [...snip praise of mutt...]

> 1) How can I make it 'select' which IMAP folder to use without having to 
> reconnect to the server each time (by pressing c and typing imap://...) 
> and with out changing it to use IMAP by default (as for now I still need 
> to read local mail occasionally on that box)

What James said.  You can also bind keys to macros which change
between the normal and the IMAP account, e.g. (untested):

    macro \ei ":set spoolfile=\"imap://cameron@euclid.home/INBOX\"\n:set folder=\"imap://cameron@euclid.home/\""
    macro \eo ":set spoolfile=\"~/Mail/inbox\"\n:set folder=\"~/Mail\""

That'll make Alt-I (or <Esc>I) switch to IMAP and Alt-O switch to
~/Mail.  You might also want to fiddle with the 'record' and 'postponed'
settings when switching accounts too.

> 2) How can I make it show just threads that have been tagged or have 
> unread mail in them. Under Thunderbird All PLUG goes into 1 box and I 
> have it set to only show threads with unread, then about once a month I 
> clean it out. It means that (in mutt) I have to scroll through pages of 
> subjects (collapse the threads first) to find current ones.

What James said.  But if you really want this behaviour, you can try
using -

    set collapse_unread=yes

> 3) Anybody got some nice MUTT tips?

Limits are a handy feature.  Press "l" and then type a search string
and only the messages matching the limit will be shown.  e.g. "l Tim"
to show messages from Tim or with Tim in the subject, "l ~N" to show
unread messages only, "l ~t plug" to show messages with plug in the
To field.

You can get mutt to check for new mail in multiple folders by using
the mailboxes command.  (It took me a long time to discover this!)  e.g.

    mailboxes "!" \
      "+lists/ucc" "+lists/unisfa" \
      "+lists/plug-ctte" "+lists/plug" "+lists/plug-ot" "+lists/plug-if" \
    [...]

It doesn't work very well with Dovecot though.  (Dovecot bug I believe.)

You can make mutt prettier by colouring messages according to search
patterns; e.g.
    color index      brightblue     black   ~p
to show messages addressed to me directly in bright blue.  (You'll
probably need to use the 'alternates' command to tell mutt which
e-mail addresses belong to you before this particular example will do
much though.)

Header caching makes IMAP and Maildir folders a lot faster, at the
cost of using extra disc space.  You can switch it on with lines in
your muttrc like -

    set header_cache="~/.mutt-headers"
    unset maildir_header_cache_verify

Cameron.