[lug] Mutt Questions and Tips/Tricks

[rotering at animalcules.com]

On Wed, Oct 31, 2001 at 04:17:04PM -0700, David Morris wrote:

[Mutt tips or tricks?]

First off, the muttrc man page is pretty good.  Much of the info I
quote below is from the man page.

> - I receive a lot of email from, and need to sort it to mailboxes to
>   make reading it manageable.  How do I specify an arbitrary list of
>   folders that Mutt can easily search through for new mail?

In your .muttrc, use the "mailboxes" command.  I use qmail's Maildir
format, so all my folders are beneath ~/Maildir.

Ex:

set folder=~/Maildir

mailboxes ~/Maildir
mailboxes +lug
mailboxes +nclug
mailboxes +dmr
mailboxes +kibo

('+foo' means look for folder 'foo' under the directory specified by
the folder optionn)

Now, in mutt, when I hit 'c' to change folders, the space bar will
cycle through all these mailboxes (if they've got new mail).


> - How do I keep Mutt from asking to move read messages to a saved
>   messages folder?  Those that I sort to my primary inbox
>   (/var/mail/username) I darn well want to stay there.

set move=no

You'll have to experiment with this one.  I'm not sure if it simply
stops moving the mail or if it merely doesn't ask.  I'm pretty sure
it's the former, though.

> - How do I expunge (get rid of) messages I have marked for deletion
>   without quitting Mutt or switching to a different folder?

$  (sync mailbox) - hit '?' to see the key bindings for the current mode


> - Is there a way to hide message headers that are non informative to a
>   human reader when reading my mail?

ignore X-QMScan-Version
ignore List-Unsubscribe
ignore List-Subscribe
         .
         .

You can use patterns, but be careful.  Asterisks on the outside of the
pattern are greedy.


> - How does one change the color choices?  Dark blue for subject lines
>   just does NOT work when a black background is used.

This is something that's best read in the muttrc man page.  A few
examples:

(color thingy foreground backgroud)

color hdrdefault cyan black
color quoted green black
color signature red black
color header green black ^From:
color header green black ^Subject:
          .
          .


> - I use several email addresses for different purposes (junkmail,
>   work, personal, lists, etc.).  Is there an easy way to setup rules
>   to use a certain email address in the "From" and "Reply-To" fields
>   based on values of headers I specify?

Don't know about this one.  I have a sneaking suspicion it's "set
envelope-from=yes" but I'm not sure.