Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Using mutt instead of kmail

[Frank Steinmetzger]

On Sun, Jan 08, 2012 at 06:32:07PM +0000, Mick wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> There are a few mutt users here so I thought of asking here first.
> I've tried setting up mutt to use as a mail client instead of kmail.

I actually did the change from KMail to Mutt after my KDEPIM kicked the bucket
with 4.7.3.

> […] GPG questions […]

Though I myself have set up a simple GPG key, ther is currently only one person
in my list of contacts who does, too. So I don’t have any relevant experience
concerning mutt+gpg besides signing my own messages, except for when I’m in
certain folders, which can be achieved with:

folder-hook .             set pgp_autosign
folder-hook +some_folder  unset pgp_autosign

> Finally, kmail has an auto-completion feature for the recipient address and it
> suggests as I type the person to send to.  Down arrow and enter is all that I
> need to press.
> […]
> Mutt also does not seem to auto-complete any addresses.  It uses aliases, but
> that implies that I must set up such aliases and use these every time I want
> to enter a particular address.  This creates the problem of having to remember
> each and every alias, rather than typing "fre" and getting a list of Freds,
> Freddies,  Frederics, etc. or part of the Surname, or part of the email
> address itself.

Mutt has a completion feature; when you enter an address, you can press ^t to
trigger autocompletion. Now the trick is to get mutt to use your contacts. For
that you need to install lbdb, which is a contacts management thingy, featuring
a number of storage backends (almost like what akonadi was originally intended
to do, lol). I simply set lbdb up to use KAddressBook’s std.vcf file and then I
can query it using lbdbq.

Like so:
--------- file: ~/.lbdbrc -----------
METHODS="m_inmail m_vcf m_abook m_muttalias"
MUTT_DIRECTORY="$HOME/.mutt"
MUTTALIAS_FILES="aliases"
VCF_FILES="$HOME/.kde4/share/apps/kabc/std.vcf"

Now, using lbdbq, I can query the VCF file, my mutt aliases and some other
stuff (inmail is an lbdb-internal database to which you can feed addresses from
incoming mail, IIRC, and abook is a textbased address book I tried).

In order to use lbdbq for autocompletion in mutt, add the following to muttrc:
set query_command="lbdbq '%s'"

> The other difficulty is the key shortcuts in mutt do not behave as I would like
> them to, but this is that something I could recode so less of a problem.

Keyboard shortcuts are always a question of personal preference and of what
tutorials/howtos/introductions to mutt you found, read and consider useful. For
example, since I converted to vi last year, I added some shortcuts to use m and
, (which are below j and k, respectively, to move the pager content up and
down, whereas j and k switch messages).

-- 
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I forbid any use of my email addresses with Facebook services.

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