Mutt (e-mail client)

Infobox Software
name = Mutt


caption = Mutt in action
developer = Brendan Cully
latest_release_version = Stable 1.4.2.3; Unstable 1.5.18
latest_release_date = Stable June 9, 2007, Unstable May 17, 2008
operating_system = Unix, Linux, Windows, DOS
genre = E-mail client
license = GPL
website = [http://www.mutt.org/ www.mutt.org]

Mutt is a text-based e-mail client for Unix-like systems. It was originally written by Michael Elkins in 1995 and released under the GNU General Public License. Initially it resembled elm. Now the program most similar to it may be the newsreader slrn.

Operation

Mutt supports most mail formats (notably both mbox and Maildir) and protocols (POP3, IMAP, etc). It also includes MIME support, notably full PGP/GPG and S/MIME integration.

Mutt is a pure Mail User Agent (MUA) and cannot send e-mail in isolation. To do this, it needs to communicate with a Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) using, for example, the common Unix sendmail interface. More recently, SMTP support has been added. It also relies on external tools for composing and filtering messages. Also in latest Mutt versions you can use smtp_url config vars to send your mail directly from Mutt.

It is rather configurable: it has hundreds of configuration directives and commands. It allows for changing all the key bindings and making keyboard macros for complex actions, as well as the colors and the layout of most of the interface. Through variants of a concept known as "hooks", many of its settings can be changed based on criteria such as current mailbox or outgoing message recipients. There are also many patches and extensions available that add functionality, such as NNTP support or a sidebar similar to those often found in graphical mail clients.

Mutt is fully controlled with the keyboard, and has support for mail threading, meaning one can easily move around long discussions such as in mailing lists. New messages are composed with an external text editor by default, unlike pine which embeds its own editor known as pico (though you can configure pine to shell out to an external editor).

logan

The mutt slogan is "All mail clients suck. This one just sucks less" [citation |url=http://www.mutt.org/ |title=The Mutt E-Mail Client |accessdate=2008-06-08 |first1=Michael R. |last1=Elkins |first2=Jeremy |last2=Blosser |date=2008-06-08 ] .

ee also

* Comparison of e-mail clients
* Worse is better

References

External links

* [http://www.linux.ie/articles/tutorials/mutt.php Mutt Primer]
* [http://files.zeth.net/mutt.pdf Printable Keybindings Reference] [http://files.zeth.net/mutt.txt Plain text]
* [http://gufo.dontexist.org/mutt.php Mutt on Mac OS X]
* [news:comp.mail.mutt comp.mail.mutt Usenet newsgroup]
* [http://mutt-ng.berlios.de/ mutt next generation (mutt-ng)] A fork of the well-known email client mutt.