
Sup: The Hacker's Mail User Agent - k2enemy
http://supmua.org/
======
wulczer
I've been thinking about switching to sup a few times, but the inability to
sync changes back to the IMAP server is a deal breaker to me.

If I mark an email as read in sup, I don't want it to show up as unread on my
phone. If I delete an email on the phone, I don't want it to stay in sup.

I know there's been a branch of sup that synced IMAP flags from the local repo
to the server, solving at least the read status problem. But it seems the
version linked here does not include that branch.

~~~
secure
FWIW, I never considered that a serious limitation. On my phone, I don’t want
to read email. It’s a sub-par experience, especially if you’re used to
Sup/Gmail/Notmuch. You can’t just go back to “regular” email clients anymore
:).

As for using multiple computers: with sup I used to run it in screen and
attach that screen session whenever I needed it. With notmuch, I can just tell
it to run notmuch(1) on a remote machine and even use a local UI.

~~~
jedbrown
I do some email using my phone when on the go, and although I'd like a better
sync experience, it's not a showstopper. OfflineIMAP (buggy as hell, but
works) can sync unread and flagged/starred status, which is the most important
part. In a normal day where I mostly use notmuch, I just batch-archive the
day's messages. I don't like the latency of using a remote notmuch, especially
when going through a string of 5MB log files (remote debugging a user's mis-
configuration) on conference wireless or while tethering.

~~~
ChrisFrost
If you haven't already considered mbsync as an alternative to OfflineIMAP, I
suggest taking a look. I also found OfflineIMAP buggy (many years ago) and
mbsync has been syncing my mailboxes reliably since.
[http://isync.sourceforge.net/](http://isync.sourceforge.net/) I say this as
the author of a program that runs mailbox syncers like mbsync when there are
changes to sync (mswatch:
[http://mswatch.sourceforge.net/](http://mswatch.sourceforge.net/)).

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rdl
I've been a mutt user since around 1997, and elm and mail before that.

I now do something crazy with maildir sync via mbsync and then mutt. Works
pretty well. This lets me use push mail from an EAS (Kerio or Z-push) server
on the iPhone to get push email, as well as getting mail on a few computers,
all with full local archives. I just use the mail server for webmail in the
cases I need to use it, but kerio's webmail is pretty crap.

Unclear what benefit sup gives over mutt. Mutt's killer feature is folder
hooks, I think. I can't think of anything which can't be done with folder
hooks, other than maybe tags, which I just solve with full-text search.

~~~
tome
Could you say a little bit about what you do with folder hooks?

I've been using mutt for ages (not quite as long as you!) but I don't do
anything clever with folder hooks, so it would be interesting to see what you
do.

~~~
gyepi
I, too, have been using mutt for a while now. I get emails at lots of
different addresses and filter them into various folders. I use folder hooks
to set my email address, depending the current folder.

~~~
tome
Ah right. I typically use send hooks for that, based on the To: address but
folder hooks would help me out too. I'll have to look into that.

------
secure
Apparently, somebody else is continuing sup development.

It used to be that William Morgan was the BDFL, and he started working on
heliotrope/turnsole (a successor), which, AFAICT, never got anywhere serious.

I long since switched from sup to notmuch, which makes me much happier in
terms of performance, documentation and stability.

~~~
k2enemy
Do you mind detailing your notmuch setup a little? In particular, what
frontend? I used notmuch with mutt and the search was so slow that I went back
to Mail.app on the mac (and now back to sup).

~~~
secure
I use the canonical notmuch-emacs frontend, because all the others are not as
good as the emacs one (I was not an emacs user before that).

Search is as fast as it was with sup for me, which is not a surprise, given
that both use Xapian :).

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RexRollman
When I was using NetBSD in 2001 I actually liked the built-in "mail" command
to read email. It was very minimal. Sadly, I could never figure out how to
handle attachments with it.

~~~
padraigm
"mail" is actually a fantastic interface to an email box assuming you don't
receive very much mail. I still use it for things like sending myself an email
notification when a long-running job is finished.

Maybe this wasn't the case back then, but with the mailx the comes with modern
Linux distros you can attach files using the -a flag

~~~
RexRollman
That sounds like a great idea.

EDIT: NetBSD does support the -a flag (since version 1.23 of mail in 2006) but
OpenBSD and FreeBSD doesn't. Good to know.

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k2enemy
Looks like sup is under new leadership with some recent releases, a new
homepage, and new github repo: [https://github.com/sup-
heliotrope/sup](https://github.com/sup-heliotrope/sup)

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richardlblair
Awesome. I've been looking for something like this. I know of mut and pine,
but I've been looking for something new and shiny.

~~~
clesenne
How does this go beyond what you can do with mutt? Plus mutt handles IMAP out
of the box.

~~~
secure
It mimics the gmail look & feel, i.e. one line of text represents one thread
in your inbox, and when you open it, you get all the messages of the thread
(with read messages collapsed), instead of precisely one message.

Edit: also fast (!) full-text search thanks to Xapian, tags instead of folders

~~~
klission
> It mimics the gmail look & feel, i.e. one line of text represents one thread
> in your inbox

folder-hook . "exec collapse-all"

set sort=threads

set sort_aux=last-date-received

~~~
telemachos
Yup. I do this since I'm used to _za_ in Vim for toggling folds:

    
    
        # Collapse all threads by default, except if 
        # there's new mail in one.
        unset collapse_unread
        folder-hook . "exec collapse-all"
        # Toggle collapsed threads with za, like in vim.
        bind index za collapse-thread

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dllthomas
I like nmh, though it takes a lot of setup to get usable (which I've
admittedly not yet done since my last change of computers).

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snotrockets
Rubyists. Reinventing wheels since 1995.

