[HN Gopher] Aerc - a pretty good (terminal) email client
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Aerc - a pretty good (terminal) email client
Author : davegauer
Score : 117 points
Date : 2022-10-11 17:22 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (aerc-mail.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (aerc-mail.org)
| jpe90 wrote:
| I swapped over to aerc from mu4e, it's very pleasant to use. I
| would easily recommend it.
| imachine1980_ wrote:
| Why this over regular client ?
| aussiesnack wrote:
| I use mutt but will give this a try.
|
| But another perspective on why use a cli over a regular
| client. Though there's a bit of a vogue for terminal apps in
| dev circles, I don't favour them in general. I like GUIs. I
| want my computer to use 21st century tech for UIs.
|
| But unfortunately (on Linux at least) all the GUI IMAP
| clients I've tried are terrible. Not because they are GUIs
| but because they're all either buggy or have awful 1990s
| corporate interface design or lack even essential keyboard
| shortcuts, or are just infeasably slow.
|
| So mutt it is, which at least seems to be well-crafted, is
| quick, and can be configured to be pretty usable. I'd replace
| it with an excellent GUI app if there were such a thing.
| jpe90 wrote:
| For me, checking and replying to emails is quicker with a CLI
| client than with a traditional mail client. It's easier to
| jump around and pick apart email threads from my text editor
| than a GUI app. And Aerc's piping is nice, it makes it easy
| to apply patches from mailing lists to local repositories.
| mro_name wrote:
| how would I use aerc and not maintain a go toolchain?
| ddevault wrote:
| Install it from your local package manager:
|
| https://repology.org/project/aerc/versions
| rickstanley wrote:
| I tried to sign-in into my work Outlook account with aerc a while
| ago, from WSL2, unfortunately it didn't work with an app
| password[0], and OAuth2 won't cut it, because I'll have to ask
| the company's services administrator to grant me access.
|
| Nevertheless, a great piece of software. Using it for personal
| e-mail.
|
| [0]: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/account-
| billing/manage-a...
| kanisae wrote:
| I use aerc with o365 via davmail and mbsync. Using imap
| directly was to slow, but pulling mail to a maildir works well.
| Davmail handles all the o365 interaction and supports mfa
| directly.
| mpalczewski wrote:
| I love it, answers the question. "What would vim be like as a web
| client" I use it regularly.
| nominusllc wrote:
| I like it. It's somewhat reminiscent of this one we used to use
| called Pine :) I think sourcehut guy made this, right?
|
| edit: yep sourcehut guy. they also made this cool guide here:
| https://git-send-email.io/
| AdamGibbins wrote:
| Drew (sourcehut guy) wrote the original from the look of it,
| but that's now unmaintained and this is a fork:
| https://git.sr.ht/~rjarry/aerc
| ddevault wrote:
| rjarry is doing a good job of maintaining it now. I will
| eventually write a new mail client with the benefit of
| hindsight.
| heliostatic wrote:
| As a user and (rarely) contributor to aerc from pre and
| post transfer, I'm very curious to see what you'd build now
| having learned from aerc (and, perhaps, alps on the web
| site?).
| mburee wrote:
| Also sway, but hacker news doesn't always hold him in that high
| of an opinion, probably mostly of his Rust criticisms...
|
| But I use many of his tools, all top notch!
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| HN is not one voice. Lots of people here admire his work.
| mrcus wrote:
| Why do you feel the need to bring this up?
| mrzool wrote:
| For what it's worth, I'm an HN user and hold Drew and his
| work in very high regard.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| He has over 25k karma on here. The data doesn't fit your
| assertion.
| capableweb wrote:
| I'm not worthy of high opinion yet I also have ~25k karma.
| Karma matters less than you think.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| Well, I'm not suggesting HN karma is some kind of
| indicator of merit, only that it's the best indicator we
| have of whether someone's held in a high opinion on HN,
| which is what GGP was talking about.
| danobi wrote:
| Was threading support ever added? I recall there being a few
| attempts. I tried aerc out for quite a bit but ultimately had to
| give it up for neomutt b/c mailing list discussions were
| impossible to follow without threading support.
| ddevault wrote:
| Yes.
|
| https://l.sr.ht/Gj9l.png
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| It brings joy to my heart to still see these simple web 1.0
| pages.
|
| And the front page has almost all the information I care about as
| a terminal luddite: vim bindings, etc.
|
| One point of criticism: it says extensible, but it's not very
| clear how exactly it's extensible. What language is used for
| extensions? Go? Scripts + conf files with hooks? The front page
| makes no mention, nor does the source page, and I've yet to find
| it by clicking around the wiki.
| ddevault wrote:
| aerc is plugged into your surrounding Unix environment more
| deeply than most mail clients. It has a keybindings system
| which is like a more generalized version of Vim, plus an
| embedded terminal emulator and support for piping things
| through shell commands, and a templating system.
|
| Example: to apply git patches, I have this in
| ~/.config/aerc/binds.conf: ga =
| :flag<Enter>:pipe -mb git am -3<Enter>
|
| To reply to thank the contributor, I have this:
| rt = :unflag<Enter>:reply -a -Tthanks<Enter>
|
| The "thanks" template invoked by this shells out to git to
| include a summary of the git push and set a special mail header
| to update the mailing list on the status of the patch:
| X-Sourcehut-Patchset-Update: APPLIED Thanks!
| {{exec "{ git remote get-url --push origin; git reflog -2
| origin/master --pretty=format:%h | xargs printf '%s\n' | tac; }
| | xargs printf 'To %s\n %s..%s master -> master'" ""}}
|
| Hope that helps.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| That does help, thank you.
|
| I like this because I could do the script parts in whatever
| language I like.
|
| I've been trying to cobble together a linux dev system that's
| almost entirely configured in lisp.
|
| Getting pretty close now, in theory, with Guix for a
| distro(Guile initscripts and system def), Stumpwm(Common
| Lisp), Nyxt-browser(also CL), and of course Emacs with evil-
| mode for editing/org-mode.
|
| I realise I could Emacs all the things, but I have too much
| of a love-hate relationship with Emacs for that to be
| bearable...
| petemir wrote:
| I have been using it for the last weeks. It's nice, although I
| didn't have good luck with the documentation. I think some of the
| examples and capabilities are lacking, and the procedure for
| reporting/asking something seemed really convoluted with respect
| to something more plain like GitHub. Furthermore, another problem
| that I have is that sometimes I lose connection to the mail
| servers, and it's imposible to recover it without closing and
| reopening the app. I am missing something like reconnect/refresh.
| capableweb wrote:
| > Asynchronous IMAP support ensures the UI never gets locked up
| by a flaky network, as mutt often does
|
| Seems to have been made with flaky connections in mind, would
| be weird if there wasn't a way to recover.
|
| But on that note, isn't it local/offline-first? The first
| feature that comes in mind for a email client is "download all
| mail to store locally so I can browse/search them anytime", is
| that not how this client works?
| ddevault wrote:
| No, it does not store emails offline by default (though you
| can configure it to use maildir and use isync to pull emails
| down, this is what I do in my configuration). In my opinion
| this is the major design mis-step of aerc which will be
| corrected by a future mail client.
| tjoff wrote:
| It has improved lately but no, it does not handle flaky
| connections well. And it is online by default.
| jarbus wrote:
| I really am in need of a terminal email client that can handle
| multiple inboxes with vi keybinds out the box. This looks
| promising
| globular-toast wrote:
| I'd love to use a lightweight email client. I've tried several in
| the past. When conversing with others who know how to use email,
| like free software mailing lists, for example, they are a joy to
| use. But as soon as you have to interact with the Microsoft shite
| it just doesn't work. Things just start breaking in random ways
| and you're never really sure if you're getting the message you're
| supposed to be getting. Since I mostly use email for work, I've
| found Thunderbird to be the only good option.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I use an email client called bower, which is fairly light on
| features, but has one killer feature: it works with remote
| notmuch databases.
|
| So I get great search, but can easily open attachments locally,
| or even compose in a GUI editor.
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