[NTLUG:Discuss] Mail Clent Recommendations

[Kendall Clark]

>>>>> "Richard" == Richard Cobbe <cobbe at directlink.net> writes:

[Richard's excellent VM feature summary snipped]

    Richard> * Filtering: can't find this in VM, no.  But then, I use
    Richard> fetchmail/procmail.

Virtual folders provide something similar; I use them pretty
extensively actually; very neat. They give you a 'view' onto a
physical mailbox w/out modifying the underlying file. The views are
constructed by specifying (either interactively or in your ~/.vm or
~/.emacs file) some criteria to match against.

    Richard> * Address book.  I think you can get the same
    Richard> functionality, but it's a bit of a headache.  You can set
    Richard> VM up, with the included software, to use .mailcap; it'll
    Richard> expand nicknames to names in headers and so forth.  For
    Richard> addresses and phone numbers and so forth, you might want
    Richard> to check out BBDB, from Jamie Zawinski --
    Richard> http://www.jwz.org/bbdb/.

BBDB works for email addresses as well. I couldn't function without
BBDB. It automagically notices email addresses and names it hasn't
seen before, silently building an email address book for you in the
background. This is very cool.

[kclark at monkeyfist.com kclark]$ ls -la .bbdb
-rw-rw-r--   1 kclark   kclark    1664613 Jan 14 11:48 .bbdb

That's my BBDB database, about 13000 email addresses. To send someone
mail, I just start typing their name in the To: line and hitting the
auto-complete key, and BBDB finds the address and fills it in. Since
I'm not much of an elisp programmer, but the BBDB database is just a
plaintext file, I've written some Python code to manage and manipulate 
it outside of VM. 

    Richard> * I haven't found a convenient way to save draft messages
    Richard> so I can come back, finish them up, and send them later.
    Richard> It may well be available, however, and you can always
    Richard> save the message to a normal text file and load it into a
    Richard> composition buffer later.

Yeah, I think that's the preferred way VM wants you to do this. I do
this quite a lot actually and don't have problems with it.

    Richard> * The ability to deal with HTML-formatted messages.

But these are an abomination anyway! :>

    Richard> Why do I use VM?  Two major reasons: emacs keybindings
    Richard> and the ability to edit received messages.  Emacs has
    Richard> been my primary editor for N years now, and I don't like
    Richard> being surprised by other applications which *approximate*
    Richard> the emacs keybindings, but redefine certain keys that I
    Richard> use frequently.  For example, Pine binds ^K to
    Richard> delete-entire-line, rather than delete-to-end-of-line.
    Richard> The really annoying one, though, is Netscape.  I'm used
    Richard> to alt-Q being rejustify-current-paragraph -- under
    Richard> Netscape, this quits!

Plus, since your such a Schemer, elisp should be like mother's milk!

    Richard> VM is, as advertized, largely for emacs-lovers.  If you'd
    Richard> rather die than touch emacs, then this is probably not
    Richard> for you.

I [heart] VM. It's the only way I'm able to handle getting as many
email messages a day as I get (uh, like in 700 to 800 per day range
now).

The next best thing to VM, imo, is mutt. See
    
    http://www.mutt.org/.

Best,
<Kendall/>
--
When all you have is capitalism, everyone looks like a wage slave.

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