bumbler
September 10th, 2004, 11:45
Infamous it is that most CLI e-mail clients work with only one account, usually tied into the internal mail server. GUI e-mail clients do it all themselves, and can accommodate multiple accounts. Does anyone know of a decent CLI client that duplicates the multi-account feat?

Bumbler

elmore
September 10th, 2004, 11:51
huh? I've never seen a cli client that doesn't work with multiple accounts. Most are based on the login of the user. I.E. user joe reads joe's e-mail user frank reads frank's e-mail.

Unless of course you mean multiple accounts for Joe on different systems. I'm sure pine or mutt can handle that though I;ve never tried. Personally for a cli based client I like elm though I doubt many others here would concur with that statement. Krusty actually turned me onto elm a long time ago but the pkg-descr says it all " A once popular e-mail client"

bmw
September 10th, 2004, 14:27
Personally for a cli based client I like elm though I doubt many others here would concur with that statement. Krusty actually turned me onto elm a long time ago
I still like it too. And I suspect that I'm to blame for infecting Krusty with it a long time ago ...

but the pkg-descr says it all " A once popular e-mail client"
I think that's just mean-spirited bias from some ports maintainer. We should start calling Windows "a once-popular OS" and see what effect that has. :-)

Thing is, elm is still maintained, on two streams. I prefer the elm+ME branch because of the (IMHO) better integration of MIME and i18n handling.

I have to admit that I don't use it much anymore since IMAP servers are so ubiquitous, but I usually install it on any server I build.

bumbler
September 10th, 2004, 18:23
Let me try again: I have four email accounts each on widely different servers that I want to track from my one and only user account on my FreeBSD 5.3Beta3 box. Sure, Mozilla and company do it fine. If a GUI client is the best choice, fine. With Pine, you have to invoke it with one of several different profiles, but each using the same mail folders. That is really clumsy. I was just wondering if anyone had seen, or heard of, a CLI client that can track multiple accounts from the same user home.

I can deal with multiple fetchmail configs, because it's just a commandline operation to run it in the first place. Once Pine is open, I think it's a drag to have to close and restart with a switch to load a different profile, and get my messages mixed up, etc. I tried it, and ended up responding from the wrong profile, giving away a "secret" e-mail addy to casual correspondents.

Kmail seems to know which profile to grab for each message based on which of my accounts it was addressed to; ditto for Mozilla and others. I just wanted the same convenience and power from a CLI client.

oxtan
September 12th, 2004, 07:04
just joined this forum, great place btw. Bumbler, what I do (with mutt, but one can do it with whatever client) is use fetchmail to retrieve the mail from the different servers and read it only in one place. You can use the 'set alternates' config rule to specify with which address you send the email. Works like a charm.

bumbler
September 12th, 2004, 21:33
Thanks, oxtan, but I really suck at Mutt. I just can't get the oddball keystrokes, and... well, it just does too much, too powerful. I'm afraid I didn't see that 'set-alternates' option for Pine. There is a clumsy work-around, if I remember to do it, which is change the "From:" address. But then I still have to change the SMTP account, because with all the new spam stopper techniques, I can't send from one server claiming to send from another. Such messages often get dropped.

I was skeptical from the start that I would get my wish, but hoped it was simplyl a matter of my ignorance of clients.

Bumbler

oxtan
September 14th, 2004, 07:34
well, you could take a look here:
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=1085

it's quite a comprehensive mutt tutorial, and easy to follow as well.

oxtan
September 20th, 2004, 04:00
A bit late, maybe. I just came accross this link for pine, maybe it helps you, bumbler:

http://www.zrox.net/Mail/Pine/read.html#multiple

bumbler
September 20th, 2004, 11:32
That brings Pine halfway there. I never looked at that option because it had no meaning to me, as worded. Actually, I'm not worried about mixed incoming that much. Still, I really appreciate your effort on my behalf. For now, I'm going to chase other issues.

bumbler
September 20th, 2004, 15:41
*SMACK* [slaps self] Helps if I RTFM, eh? Turns out Pine has roles and can pair them with multiple SMTP servers. I owe an apology to everyone who felt obliged to do all that checking on my behalf.

Bumbler

KrUsTy!
September 20th, 2004, 17:20
Personally for a cli based client I like elm though I doubt many others here would concur with that statement. Krusty actually turned me onto elm a long time ago

I still like it too. And I suspect that I'm to blame for infecting Krusty with it a long time ago ...

I can confirm bmw as the source of that elm infection!

I actually install elm and mutt these days, mostly becuase if I'm putting in a mail server, I'm almost always using maildirs and courier-imap. But I always install both, cause I have a soft spot for the elm and can't yet bare just to install mutt on its own. :-)

{K}