[neomutt-users] *-hook settings. I'm confused

[Andrew Sullivan]

Hi,

It's getting a little strange that there's so much discussion about a
currently non-existent code base unrelated to mutt.  I'd like to
express my appreciation of the efforts of the neomutt developer (and
prospective ones).  But in the meantime, there are a couple little
things below (I don't respond to everything):

On Wed, Aug 07, 2019 at 10:56:18PM +0000, GTC at riseup.net wrote:

> For example, mutt imap is very slow, use lots of memory and very inefficient compared with iSync or mbsync. It seems mutt is originally designed for pop and imap is later added.
> 

It seems to me that the neomutt pages are pretty clear that code is
welcome and that there is a pretty significant backlog (this is
explicitly acknowledged at
https://neomutt.org/dev/newbie-tutorial#coding-).

> The configration of PGP settings even for single accounts requires much more work than other mail clients. 
> 

Really?  My experience is that reliable and secure PGP handling is
actually extremely difficult in basically every environment.

> That hook thing is so complicated ...

I dont find it so.  This may be a matter of taste.

> Its syntax eg  ^username at something$ does not look like bash, where a variable is $Variable. In bash, echo does not even need ^ or ' or `.
> 
> The bash syntax is infinitely cleaner and nicer than mutt, in my personal opinion.
>

The syntax you mention is actually a regular expression, and it is
most certainlt acessible from bash.  Since you are fond of bash, you
likely have recourse to a command line, where man regex might be
useful to you.  In the meantime, you should know that "^" and "$" are
metacharacters in regexes and they mean (for these purposes) "the
anchor at the beginning of the line" and "the anchor at the end of the
line".

> Even fixing it, these need to be changed too. So probably same amount of work.

None of these need to be changed.  On the contrary, if they were
changed, it would be quite hard to argue that this was "neomutt".  It
would be "otherprogram" in that case.

> Furthermore, many mutt features are probably no longer needed in modern times, eg ask To: and Subject. We can remove them and let user deal with it in editor.

But you can already do that, of course.

> Maybe fixing mutt is as much work as, or probably even more work than re-writting it.

I look forward to your new MUA release.  I'm not sure I'll have the
time to learn a brand new configuration system or to learn completely
new ways of working, but I wish you all success with your coding
project.  I do hope, however, you set up a new mailing list for it.

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at anvilwalrusden.com