[Vimperator] How about a VimBird?

[Martin Stubenschrott]

So, first of all thanks calmar for providing most of my main points why
mutt still sucks badly.

On Wed, Nov 21, 2007 at 09:59:11AM +0100, Giorgio Lando wrote:
> Some replies from a mutt's lover.

Some answers from a mutt user who would like to change to something
better...

> > 1. you can't have multiple email-window's open on mutt. you have
> >    to leave and postpone the message and open a new one (or open
> >    multiple mutt instances). With thunderbird you can have
> >    probably as many seperate window's (for each single email) as
> >    you wish. (e.g. you want to copy/paste text from one to another
> >    etc)
> 
> But running multiple mutt instances is probably less resource intensive and
> faster than running a single thunderbird instance.

I don't see it why it's faster to open multiple mutt sessions, apart
from that new mutt sessions just don't use the settings like
filter/current mailbox etc. from the first session.

> > 2. the incremential searching (you type strings, and 'on-time' you
> >    get a list of matches - you don't have in mutt.
> 
> Yes. In this sense a vim-style mutt would be fine, but I really think
> that email should work in a terminal, it does not need graphics.

I don't agree with that. I use mostly text-apps as well, also for
icq/irc/mp3/rss etc. but not because i think TEXT is superior to a good
minimal graphical UI, but because usually _all_ GUI programs suck deeply when
usineng only with keyboard. Also I am a heavy shell user, but still
don't think that it's the best way to go. I think the way of interacting
with your file system etc. is great, but often integrated graphic
capabilities would be fine. I see no advantage of _only_ limiting to
text output, e.g. a: ls -t could just show my files as thumbnails to
preview images. Therefore i'm very happy to see things like QuickSilver
or Enzo which try to make a Graphical command interface, where
interaction is still keyboard only, but advanced graphics features are
used to help the user. Also things like Alt-key handling is terribly broken
at least for unix terminals (Why should Alt send Esc?), while not
supporting any other advanced keys on the keyboard either without some
magic xmodmap handling.

> > 4. the way how to open links, it not really to his liking. (Ctrl-B
> >    etc)
> 
> Right. However, I think that links should not be managed by
> the mail reader but from the terminal emulator where mutt runs. And this
> can work absolutely fine: e.g., the link catcher perl extension of
> rxvt-unicode manages urls wonderfully. 

Wonderfully? I also use rxvt-unicode, but i don't seem to be be able to
open long links which span more than one line with that. So it's
definitly not wonderfully, and sure not as good as Hints imho.

> > 5. thunderbird etc, can store all mail-addresses you write To:, into the
> >    address-book automatically.
> 
> Oh yes. The best would be not the address-book, but some form of address
> autocompletion, as in gmail web-interface. I have seen around a patch
> for mutt which does this, but I do not find it right now.

That's the next problem, mutt just sucks in that regard, there was a
patch to add a sidebar. Why wasn't it added to the default distribution?
Maybe default=off even, but should be there.

> Finally, the main strength of mutt from the point of view of a vim lover is that
> mutt lets you use vim as an editor! I do not think that this can be done
> in thunderbird: obviously vimbird could include a vim-like mail editor,
> but it would be a great waste of efforts (vim is already there).

That's definitly a valid point, and i am not sure about thunderbird
although i am sure there is an extension, and if there ever was a
Muttator, it would use vim by default for an editor, sure. Also KMail
can use external editors.

In addition to these 5 very valid points, there are many more, why i
dislike mutt so much:

6.) No Esc key to cancel prompts, you have to use ctrl-g

7.) Painful to watch many images which are sent as attachments. At least
kmail shows them all inline, instead of the need to open all one by one
with mutt. That's again one more point, why i think text-only would be
better as graphical programs with the same keybindings as terminal
programs.

8.) Mailboxes are too much seperated. If i create folders i want my
"Tab" key to cycle them, if only in a hidden mailbox is a new message.
In KMail i just download all mails and press n and p to cycle between
ALL new mails, no matter in which folder they are. That's why i even
have just one big inbox now, where even mailing list messages come in.
Also i can't search all mailboxes at once without some external too like
mairix. That's just braindead.

9.) It blocks my whole mutt while downloading messages with getmail,
etc. Sometimes, you just want to check the mail manually and not wait for cron to
update the mails for you.

10.) No proper notification for new mails apart from a beep. If all your
terminal apps beep on attention, you don't know for sure, it's comming
from your mail client.

11.) No proper folding. Why can i only TOGGLE fold state of threads? I
want a key like zM and zR in vim, to close/open all folds, not toggle
them.

12.) That one might be debateable, and in contrast to some UNIX
philosophy, but i think RSS/Newsgroups are so closely related to mails,
that the same interface makes sense, instead of having another program
for Feeds, which just behaves different again.

13.) I don't know too much about mutt, so there is sure a way, but it's
just not as easy as :map gi :open inbox<cr> like one would do in vim.
But even in KMail i could just set such shortcuts on each folder to
quickly navigate between them.

Well, i think that are the most important annoyances of mutt, it
of course also lacks other features which would be nice (like instead of
just showing "r" that there is a replied mail, it should provide a way
to jump there).

--
Martin

PS: I am sure i have forgotten many other small annoyances