> Out of curiosity, why to you still read the Yarn listserv, if you use Mutt?
> I've heard of Mutt -- I believe a gui product that runs only on Unix and/or
> Linux -- yes? For on-line news/mail I have a Unix shell account with my ISP.
> I therefore can run procmail, formail, tin, trn, mail, pine, elm, etc.
> I doubt that Mutt would give me more functionality.
Nostalgia, I guess, along with a fading hope that Chin will reconsider
and release the source.
Mutt is text based, runs on *nix, but there is an alpha (unusable)
Windows port. I generally run it in an X window, just as I usually run
Yarn in a DOS box (BTW, Yarn will run under Linux using DOSEMU). Mutt
would definitely give you more potential functionality than elm or
mail. It was originally written by one of the elm developers (Michael
Elkins) after he got frustrated with the lack of progress of elm, but
is now maintained by an active group. Mutt is extremely powerful and
configurable -- my .muttrc configuration file is a 14K text file.
Some of its features:
color support
message threading
MIME support (including RFC2047 support for encoded headers)
PGP/MIME (RFC2015)
various features to support mailing lists, including list-reply
active development community
POP3 support
IMAP support
full control of message headers when composing
support for multiple mailbox formats (mbox, MMDF, MH, maildir)
highly customizable, including keybindings and macros
change configuration automatically based on recipients, current folder, etc.
searches using regular expressions, including an internal pattern
matching language
Delivery Status Notification (DSN) support
postpone message composition indefinetly for later recall
easily include attachments when composing, even from the command line
ability to specify alternate addresses for recognition of mail
forwarded from other accounts, with ability to set the From: headers on
replies/etc. accordingly
multiple message tagging
reply to or forward multiple messages at once
.mailrc style configuration files
easy to install (uses GNU autoconf)
complies against either curses/ncurses or S-lang
small and efficient
It's free! (no cost and GPL'ed)
There are screenshots at
http://www.mutt.org/screenshots
the "index.gif" screenshot shows a nice configuration, though I
prefer black text on a pale yellow background.
> Its hard to undigest certain digests for Yarn (ddigest does not work very
> well).
> Readmail can read almost any type of digest either as a single
> message, or as an (undigested) set of messages. I think it is the
> only program with this feature.
> The Soup binary format and its cousen, Yarn's format, are very touchy and
> fragile: One little problem, or a few misplaced bytes and a whole inbox
> or folder becomes corrupt and must be rebuilt.
Then only time I've had trouble with either is when a buggy program
(sometimes one of mine) adds or removes bytes without correctly
adjusting the 32 bit length.
> Readmail can (in principle) read mail and news messages in any format
> that a user can define, including soup binary and yarn. In particular
> Readmail can directly read rnews and Unix mailbox formats -- These are
Yes, Readmail is very good -- the best I've seen -- at reading a wide
variety of message types.
> Yarn's summary list of news/mail messages does not include the date (!).
> Yarn only shows the Subject and From lines from a message header, in its
Mutt shows the date, message number, etc. The screenshots mentioned
above have an example.
> Readmail numbers messages (like Unix mail). You can move to a
> message by typing its number, or you can select it with a mouse.
Mutt allows moving by number also.
> Yarn has virtually no support for cutting and pasting text between messages,
> replies, new mail, saved files, etc.
> Readmail uses the TurboPascal multiple window interface, with (almost)
> full mouse support. You can open and edit files from within the mailer.
> You can include the text of several messages in one reply. You can
> work with several windows at once.
Have you tried running multiple Yarn sessions as the same user? Mutt
allows multiple sessions.
> Yarn provides limited control over the format of your outgoing messages, and
> no control over the packet format (it must be Soup binary).
> Readmail gives you complete control over what goes in your outgoing
> message headers, and supports virtually all packet formats (e.g.,
> one file per message, Unix text format, Soup, custom, etc.). As a
> result, you can use almost any software you want to send out messages
> and replies. For example, I configured readmail to add its replies to
> Yarn's replies.zip packet.
Yes, for list-owners that run moderated lists, not being able to fake
the "From:" line in Yarn is highly annoying. YARF is not adequate for
this task. I resorted to writing my own program that parses Yarn's
reply packet looking for a special X-header, and automatically changes
the "From:" line to the original sender when one is found. My program
is called by Yarn before Yarn calls pkzip, so it's transparent to the
user.
> Yarn has no way to tag or bookmark messages, and perform operations on
> the tagged messages.
> Readmail allows you to tag messages individually or by pattern, and
> perform operations of tagged messages such as save, delete, read.
Mutt has this also.
>
> Now that is a long list of nice features. On the other hand readmails
> bugs and bad behaviours will never be fixed. And it will never come
> on it, for instance, a 32 bit DJGPP port. Are there any products
> that offer comperable features?
Not that I'm aware of. Mutt has some of them (as well as many that
Readmail does not have), but I doubt there will ever be a functional
Windows port. IMO, Linux is the future for people who like programs
like Yarn. It's still too challenging for most users, but installation
and setup are rapidly getting easier. Red Hat's RPM format was
a big step forward for program installation and updates.
-rex
-- In plumbing, a straight flush beats a full house.