Holger's Blog

Looking for some nice modifications for my mutt in the web, I stumbled over mutt-ng (mutt next generation).

Well, that it what I was looking for all the time. These are the reasons why I favour mutt-ng over mutt…

• I do not have to patch my mutt anymore to get a nice sidebar showing all my folders. It highlights folders with new mail and I can see which folders still have unread (not new) mails in them.
• Another big advantage is the possibility to read nntp news and to treat them exactly like any other mails.
• Until now, everytime I reinstalled my system I had to configure my local postfix to sent my mails (with tls). Muttng finally supports the smtp protocol (with tls, of course). I agree that the separation of a MUA like mutt and an MTA like postfix is generally a good idea, but with the new integration of smtp, it makes my life a lot easier. I just have to store my configuration in my home directory and everytime I upgrade my system I just have to keep my home partition and I can send mails without any further adjustments. That's nice!
• According to the homepage and the two mailinglists, there's heavy (and happy ;-) development going on. So possible new features and patches will hopefully go in sooner as it has been with mutt until now.
• No problems and crashes so far

I also decided to package it for the SUSE distribution. So it should soon show up in the factory tree.

I have nicely separated my "old" mutt configuration from the new mutt-ng configuration so I can switch back easily if something unexpected might happen. I now have file ~/.muttngrc which sources my ~/.mutt/muttrc with the following content:

` source ~/.mutt/muttrc # sidebar settings set sidebar<sub>visible</sub>=yes set sidebar<sub>width</sub>=25 set sidebar<sub>shortenhierarchy</sub>=yes set sidebar<sub>numberformat</sub>=%n(%u) color sidebar<sub>new</sub> brightyellow default # keybindings for the sidebar bind index \CP sidebar-prev bind index \CN sidebar-next bind index \CO sidebar-open bind pager \CP sidebar-prev bind pager \CN sidebar-next bind pager \CO sidebar-open macro index \CT ':toggle sidebar<sub>visible</sub> macro pager \CT ':toggle sidebar<sub>visible</sub> # nntp configuration set nntp<sub>host</sub>="news.gmane.org" set nntp<sub>cachedir</sub>=~/.mutt/ # keybindings for nntp bind index \en change-newsgroup # smtp configuration set smtp<sub>host</sub>=<my relayhost> set smtp<sub>user</sub>=hmacht set smtp<sub>usetls</sub>=enabled `

Have fun, Holger