A console email client

2010-01-02 – obnoxiously complicated and hacker-centric

2010-02-17 – (version not recorded), on Unity Linux 64bit-beta2, updated 2010-02-15.
2010-02-17 – (version not recorded) on Unity Linux 64bit-beta2
2009-04-23 – 0.7 on PCLinuxOS

Table of Contents [hide]

1 2010-02-17 – (version not recorded)
2 2010-02-17 – 0.10.2
- 2.1 importing Claws Mail’s mh format mail into Maildir for sup
- 2.2 notes
3 2009-04-23 – 0.7

2010-02-17 – (version not recorded) ∞

Installing from source ∞

# I needed to install Gems.
\wget  --continue  rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/60718/rubygems-1.3.5.tgz
\tar  xvvzf rubygems-1.3.5.tgz
\cd  rubygems-1.3.5
\su
\ruby  setup.rb

# Wait a long time for it to complete
\gem install rubygems-update
\update_rubygems

# Dependencies
\smart-root install gcc-c++ lib64uuid-devel ruby-devel lib64ncurses-devel lib64ncursesw-devel

# I think maybe a fresh user would need to `install rake`.
\gem install rake

The usual download and un-tar. A simple make builds it, no ./configure is required.

make install did some stuff and I thought it worked but it apparently didn’t, so I did:

\cp  safecat  /usr/local/bin
\cp  maildir  /usr/local/bin

Configuring and running:

\sup-config
\sup

Usage Notes ∞

; to view all your open buffers
x to exit out of viewing a thread and not leave it laying around in a buffer
When viewing a thread, E will expand/collapse all messages. I would prefer +
o to expand hidden chunks. I would prefer control-+

Thoughts and Questions ∞

mbox, Maildir and IMAP
- Cannot handle “mh” format mail. I was concerned about this because was using Claws Mail which uses mh.
  — See Converting mh mailboxes to maildir
- Cannot do pop. I assume this means POP3. That sucks. It’s not sup’s fault though.. it’s the various Ruby libraries which are lacking this.
Deals with resized terminals perfectly.
tab for the next unread message. I would prefer N.
Too much information is sent to the editor, like the From/To/etc. That’s just stupid.
How are hotkeys redefined?

Threaded Views ∞

How do I edit/delete or otherwise process multiple messages? For example, I want to edit the labels of multiple messages. It would be nice to have an midnight commander-type ins and * command to select messages.
Editing a label with l doesn’t support control-backspace.
Who the fuck can read black text with a dark blue background? I can barely tell the difference between each message in a thread.
- On that note, I would only very sparingly use bold colours, but sup has such brightness all over the place.
When one message is expanded, and I collapse it, my view is shoved down.
I view a thread and it’s red, green and blue striped.. and has an unreceived message very badly scattered through the red lines. Was this a bad mh-to-Maildir conversion (see converting mh mailboxes to maildir), or is this an issue with sup?
The striping does not need to be so “loud”. It can be every three or perhaps every four lines, like so:

colour1
colour2
colour2
colour2
colour1
colour2
colour2
colour2
colour1

A collapsed thread isn’t displayed the way I expect.

 - 1 one collapsed message
 -- 2 another collapsed message
 --- 3 third message
 --- 3a expanded message
 --- 3b expanded message
 --- 3c expanded message

becomes:

 --- 3 third message

However, I am expecting:

 - 1 one collapsed message
 -- 2 another collapsed message
 --- 3 third message

… and my cursor should remain on the third message.

Editing a Message ∞

? should only give help for the current context.
sup does not gracefully deal with the user’s editor choice not existing. It must be hand-hacked from ~/.sup/config.yaml I assume. I ended up doing a symbolic link because I was too lazy to look into this.
how is the editor selected without going through sup-config again? Hack a config file? =/
s to edit the subject. wth.
P to save as draft. I would prefer s to save as draft
I would prefer S or control-enter to send.

Final Thoughts ∞

I’ve only been working with sup for a short while now, and I hope to discover ways to configure or hack my preferences. I went through most of the new user guide but I have not looked at the sup wiki yet. Bearing this in mind, I do have some first impressions..

The general philosophies are pointed in the right direction, but the implementation is done in the classic misguided UNIX console way. Hotkeys are unintuitive and the interface is clumsy. The right elements are coloured, but with the wrong colours. There are some general oddities like viewing the list of threads and scrolling to the right is only done one character at a time so you must lean on your keyboard for a while to view more.

Configuration is classically UNIX, with stuff stuck in text files. The ~/.sup/config.yaml is plain enough to edit but it would I wonder if there are default configuration options which are left out of there. It’s not documented at all within itself, but perhaps the wiki has good notes. There is no user-useful in-program configuration that I can see.

To be honest, I hold up an email/newsreader/whatever client to basic DOS programs. In this case, I would compare sup to Blue Wave which was brilliantly intuitive and had proper drop-down menus and in-program configuration.

In general, sup has one thumb pointed sideways. I doubt it could make me happy without major revisions, but it does deserve a significant amount more research and testing before I can give it the go ahead or give it the finger.

Notes ∞

If you have the chronic gem installed, you can do date queries like “before:today”, “on:today”, “after:yesterday”, “after:(2 days ago)” (parentheses required for multi-word descriptions).

the new user guide Says “you can press ‘b’ to cycle between buffers”. No I can’t.

Q: But I want to delete it for real, not just add a ‘deleted’ flag in the index. I want it gone from disk!
- A: Currently, for mbox sources, there is a batch deletion tool that will strip out all messages marked as spam or deleted.
Q: How do I back up my index?
- A: Since the contents of the messages are recoverable from their sources using sup-sync, all you need to back up is the message state. To do this, simply run:
  sup-dump > <dumpfile>
  – This will save all message state in a big text file, which you should probably compress.
Q: Ferret crashed and I can’t read my index. Luckily I made a state dump. What should I do?
Q: How do I rebuild the index completely?
- A: Run:
  rm -rf ~/.sup/ferret # omg wtf
  sup-sync --all-sources --all --restore <dumpfile>
  – Voila! A brand new index.

2010-02-17 – 0.10.2 ∞

I needed to install RubyGems.

smart install gcc-c++ lib64uuid-devel ruby-devel lib64ncurses-devel lib64ncursesw-devel
# I think maybe a fresh user would need to install rake.
gem install rake sup

importing Claws Mail’s mh format mail into Maildir for sup ∞

Install safecat from source:

… a simple make builds it.

make install did some stuff and I thought it worked but it apparently didn’t. At that point I just manually copied it over:

cp safecat /usr/local/bin
cp maildir /usr/local/bin

A conversion script

Thanks to mh-to-maildir for letting me not think about this step.

mh-to-maildir.sh

#!/bin/sh
# Convert an mh folder into a maildir.
# Adam Sampson <ats@offog.org>
# The "maildir" command is part of safecat:
if [ $# != 2 ] ; then
  echo "Usage: mh-to-maildir mhdir maildir"
  exit 1
fi
mhdir="$1"
maildir="$2"
mkdir -p "$maildir/new" "$maildir/cur" "$maildir/tmp" || exit 1
ls "$mhdir" | egrep '^[0-9]+$' | sort -n | while read n ; do
  maildir "$maildir" <"$mhdir/$n" || exit 1
done

./mh-to-maildir.sh ~/Mail ~/Maildir-test

I had various accounts in claws-mail, so I did stuff like this:

./mh-to-maildir ~/Mail/subfolder1 ~/Maildir-test

From sup-config, I chose that Maildir directory and sup read the mail just fine.

notes ∞

Can do mbox, Maildir and IMAP
- Cannot handle Claws Mail’s mh format mail
- Cannot do pop. I assume this means POP3. That sucks. It’s not sup’s fault though.. it’s the various Ruby libraries which are lacking this.

First run sup-config and walk through the simple setup steps. So far I’ve only bothered with a local folder which is not updated. I did not enter in any server information or try actually fetching mail from anywhere, primarily because I’ve done POP3 and I don’t want to deal with either using some other program to fetch mail (e.g. mutt) or using IMAP.. and then some other program to move it all locally (e.g. mutt).

After the configuration, starting the email client is: sup

Good

deals with resized terminals perfectly

Issues

How are hotkeys redefined?

Notes

; to view all your open buffers
x to exit out of viewing a thread and not leave it laying around in a buffer
tab for the next unread message (should be N)
When viewing a thread, E will expand/collapse all messages. I would prefer +
o to expand hidden chunks. I would prefer control +

THREADED VIEWS

How do I edit/delete or otherwise process multiple messages? For example, I want to edit the labels of multiple messages. It would be nice to have an midnight commander-type ins and * command to select messages.
Editing a label with l doesn’t support control-backspace
Who the fuck can read black text with a dark blue background? Oh that note, I would only very sparingly use bold colours, but sup has such brightness all over the place.
When one message is expanded, and I collapse it, my view is shoved down:
I view a thread and it’s red green and blue striped.. and has <an unreceived message> very badly scattered through the red lines. Was this a bad mh-to-Maildir conversion, or is this an issue with sup?
The coloured line striping does not need to be so “loud”. It can be every three or perhaps every four lines, like so:

colour1
  colour2
  colour2
colour1
  colour2
  colour2
colour1

or:

colour1
  colour2
  colour2
  colour2
colour1
  colour2
  colour2
  colour2
colour1

I don’t like how collapsing a message shifts my view. This:

- one collapsed message
-- another collapsed message
--- a third message
--- expanded message
--- expanded message
--- expanded message

… becomes:

--- a third message

After collapsing the third message, I am expecting:

- one collapsed message
-- another collapsed message
--- a third message

… and my cursor should remain on the third message.

EDITING A MESSAGE:

Too much information is sent to the editor, like the From/To/etc. That’s just stupid.
? should only give help for the current context..
sup does not gracefully deal with the user’s editor choice not existing.
How is the editor selected without going through sup-config again? Hack a config file? =/ I ended up doing a symbolic link because I was too lazy to look into this.
s to edit the subject and P to save as draft. wth. I would prefer s or control-shift-enter to save as draft, and S or control-enter to send.

NOTES

If you have the chronic gem installed, date queries like “before:today”, “on:today”, “after:yesterday”, “after:(2 days ago)” (parentheses required for multi-word descriptions).
Q: But I want to delete it for real, not just add a ‘deleted’ flag in the index. I want it gone from disk!
- A: Currently, for mbox sources, there is a batch deletion tool that will strip out all messages marked as spam or deleted.
Q: How do I back up my index?
- A: Since the contents of the messages are recoverable from their sources using sup-sync, all you need to back up is the message state. To do this, simply run sup-dump > <dumpfile> This will save all message state in a big text file, which you should probably compress.
Q: Ferret crashed and I can’t read my index. Luckily I made a state dump. What should I do? / Q: How do I rebuild the index completely?
- A: Run:

rm -rf ~/.sup/ferret    # omg wtf
sup-sync --all-sources --all --restore <dumpfile>

sup.rubyforge.org/NewUserGuide.txt says:

you can press ‘b’ to cycle between buffers

… no I can’t

2009-04-23 – 0.7 ∞

After hanging my system, requiring a SysRq reboot, I figured things out. Holy crap there are a lot of dependencies.

apt-get install ruby ruby-RubyGems ruby-devel libxslt-devel

nice -n 10 gem install sup -y

You will be prompted for some software. These are the choices I made.

2. nokogiri 1.2.3 (ruby)
2. rcov 0.8.1.2.0 (ruby)
1. gettext 2.0.1 (ruby)
1. fastthread 1.0.7 (ruby)

omfg, if I start a second instance, it can prompt the other instance to commit seppuku!

I see no way to add a pop3 account with sup-config.

Ok, so this basically fails. It requires multiple other programs to pre-process everything before it can actually do its job.

New user guide excerpt

https://web.archive.org/web/20120803233340/http://sup.rubyforge.org/NewUserGuide.txt

(rss2email)

Appendix B: Handling high-volume mailing lists
----------------------------------------------

Here's what I recommend:
1. Use procmail to filter messages from the list into a distinct source.
2. Add that source to Sup as a usual source with auto-archive turned
   on, and with a label corresponding to the mailing list name.
   (E.g.: sup-add mbox:/home/me/Mail/ruby-talk -a -l ruby-talk)
3. Voila! Sup will load new messages into the index but not into the
   inbox, and you can browse the mailing list traffic at any point by
   searching for that label.


Appendix C: Reading blogs with Sup
----------------------------------

Really, blog posts should be read like emails are read---you should be
able to mark them as unread, flag them, label them, etc. Use rss2email
to transform RSS feeds into emails, direct them all into a source, and
add that source to Sup. Voila!

Conclusion: So much potential, but it needs so much freaking hackery and other programs to actually make it work.

spiralofhope

sup