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Re: [Nmh-workers] Front-end census

2014-02-14 09:24:04
otahler(_at_)gmx(_dot_)ca wrote:
First of all, thanks to all of you guys on this mailing list. I am 
learning a lot.
I hope you will excuse my many questions.

I was happy to find out, from Ken's last email, that there is yet 
another front-end for nmh whose existence I did not know of: MH-V by 
Steve Rader. I have just downloaded it.

This new discovery raises the question: how many front-ends are there?

The ones I came across so far (though I have not ried them yet) are:
1) xmh (obsolete, I assume)
2) MH-E
3) exmh
4) MH-V

Any other?
Could you please give a brief assesment of each, based on your experience?
Which one would be the best bet for a newbie?
(I gather that most people nowadays use either MH-E or exmh.)

Please share your views. Every bit of info will help, as I also have to 
decide whether to (partially) use Claws Mail or to go nmh/mailutils all 
the way, with the help of a front-end.

i think that at some point, you're just going to have to bite the
bullet and choose one to live with for a while.  and if that one
doesn't work out, choose another.  but i applaud your attempt at
short-circuiting the process!

my 2 cents:  personally i have no real problem with dealing with
individual messages from the command line -- i have one- or two-letter
wrappers for the most common cases ('d' for deletion, 'p' for show,
'P' for "show -noshowproc", 'r' for reply, 'f' for forw, etc).  some,
like 'p', do nothing extra.  others, like 'd', do slightly more -- i
archive deleted mail from some folders, and prevent deletion entirely
from others.  'r' will adjust my From:  header and .sig lines
depending on what folder i'm in.

but the biggest issue for me with "stock" mh is dealing with reading
or skimming large volumes of incoming mail from mailing lists, most of
which i'll delete right after viewing.  the solution i use most often
is a script that takes the unseen sequence, sorts it into thread
order, then runs all the messages through "less" with enough blank
lines between them that i can't see two at once.  with the search
string pre-loaded with "^Message", i can hit 'n' repeatedly to see the
headers and first page of text of each message.  when finished, the
script re-marks all the messages as unseen. do after dealing with
whichever messages need replying or forwarding (usually none), i
simply "d unseen".  oh -- my script also colorizes the Subject:  and
From:  headers, so they're easy to find quickly while scanning.

my other foray into wrapper-land is an extension of the above, called
"ml".  it's nowhere nearly as sophisticated as the other front-ends
you're looking at, but i sometimes find it useful.  (you'll find it in
the nmh docs/contrib directory.)  it's useful when i'm less likely to
want to discard most of the messages after skimming -- it allows for
inline replying or forwarding, marking as spam, deletion, etc.  of
course it uses native nmh to accomplish all this, so there are no
locking or corruption issues to deal with.

paul
----------------------
 paul fox, pgf(_at_)foxharp(_dot_)boston(_dot_)ma(_dot_)us (arlington, ma, 
where it's 24.1 degrees)

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