

Vmail - A Gmail client in Vim - stevelosh
http://danielchoi.com/software/vmail.html

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st3fan
"Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which
cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can."

Jamie Zawinski, Jargon file entry

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revorad
It's funny but also explains Facebook's new move!

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stevefink
One awesome thing about this is a lot of the time when the web frontend to
Gmail is down, POP3/IMAP remain accessible - so vmail would be a great drop in
there. (As would a myriad of other MUAs). As a vim zealot myself, I salute you
for this commendable idea.

~~~
stevelosh
I just posted the link -- I didn't write the plugin. :)

On the topic of Gmail downtime: Vmail's method (use IMAP) isn't quite as
robust as, say, Mutt + offlineimap, but it's a hell of a lot easier to
configure.

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tlack
If anyone is wondering how it works: the vim script (vmail.vim) sets up a
series of buffers. It uses regular Unix shell commands to vmail_client to
populate them and interact with mail, such as flagging messages. vmail_client
is some Ruby code that communicates with the Ruby vmail server process using
DRb. The vmail server does the heavy lifting of interacting with gmail itself.

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obiterdictum
You've accidentally got emacs in my vim.

~~~
tyrmored
Exactly. Good thing it's a plugin. I've always loved how the vim core stays so
pared down into not-much-more than vi, which is 99% of the time all I need.

I have difficulty understanding why a text editor needs to be anything but a
text editor.

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beagledude
is this the hacker target the guy earlier in the week was talking about? put
in your gmail creds, they get swiped up and you lose your gmail account? This
would be the exact thing that would get lots of hacker news accts :)

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TheBurningOr
Don't you have this problem with any 3rd party email client that doesn't use
OAuth? With bigger projects it's going to be pretty improbable that a
malicious commit will get pushed to the trunk, but still, with small projects
and hacks like this it's always a possibility.

~~~
beagledude
I was more talking about someone posting a thread on HN earlier in the week
that said someone was going to post something to fuck with HN users to get
their personal info.

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chrstphrwrght
I'll switch when it can convert image attachments to ascii inline, I don't
want to open a separate program to look at all those adorable pictures of
kittens in my inbox.

~~~
stevelosh
If you use Mutt on OS X, you can.

Download Apple's ASCIIMoviePlayer[1] and put the binary from the zip file in
your path.

Add the following line to your .mailcap:

    
    
        image/jpeg; ASCIIMoviePlayer %s && read WAIT
    

Select an attachment in Mutt and hit return.

Enjoy kittens.

Of course, since it's ASCII __Movie __Player it will also play videos if you
add the appropriate lines to your .mailcap.

EDIT: Oh, and make sure your terminal is at least 180 characters wide. There
doesn't seem to be a way to make ASCIIMoviePlayer output a smaller size.

[1]:
[http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#samplecode/ASCIIMovi...](http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#samplecode/ASCIIMoviePlayerSample/Introduction/Intro.html)

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chuhnk
mutt + imap + gmail = awesome.

There is just something about a simple plain text email interface with the
power of an editor that makes life so much easier.

~~~
bostonvaulter2
Does that setup handle gmail's concept of labeling? Such as archiving
messages?

~~~
koenigdavidmj
<http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=77657> is a nifty little
chart showing how to accomplish Gmail actions from within the IMAP client of
your choice.

If you delete a message from the inbox, then it gets archived. If you move it
to [Gmail]/Spam or [Gmail]/Trash and _then_ delete it, then it will really
delete it.

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preek
I'm still a heavy mutt user. But I have to acknowledge, that being able to use
Google Search and Google Contacts is a nice to have.

Though I can live without search - mutt is awesome here, too. Having contacts
in sync, though - is really nice. I will take the high road and write a sync
script here, soon.

Anyone interested in collaborating in a soon to come github repo for it?

~~~
younata
I like mutt a lot. The keybindings are awesome. I like that it comes with
native gpg support.

That said, I like (and use) Apple Mail a lot. The gpg plugin is what makes
mail.app usable for me. I do not ever send non-pgp-signed email.

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ptn
Contacts autocompletion - cool. The lack of this feature is what kept me away
from text-only email clients.

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phwd
Has anyone figured out how to set the encoding and content-type for an
attachment? Or has it not implemented as yet?

I really do love it though. I wish I saw this a few days ago, just did my
first mutt setup (took me a few hours, I am very slow). The contact
autocompletion is nice. Is there a reason for one not being able to just to
generate the whole contact list ?

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vsagarv
Cool stuff :) Played with it briefly. Need to find a way to see only unread
mails in my priority inbox. gmail allows doing a "is:unread is:important" to
get there (apart from the straight route of clicking on the priority-inbox
link).

BTW, though vmail intro talks of Vim 7.3, I am not seeing any issue with
getting vmail on my Vim 7.2. Guess it is recent enough.

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anemitz
I can't express how awesome this is...I was literally thinking about how great
it would be to gmail in vim the other day. rad++

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crazydiamond
I have been trying this out. It's great.

Some key bindings do conflict such as C-p with Yankring. Also, need to be able
to configure to use with _links_ or elinks and not just _lynx_.

I hope the author keeps working on this.

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adestefan
jwz's prophecy comes true once again.

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p_nathan
I'm thinking, you know, there used to be complaints about vi being an
operating system with a lousy text editor.

Oh, wait, that was emacs, wasn't it. Hmmmm.

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badwetter
Meh One can do this already with mutt using IMAP directly with Gmail using vim
as the composer.

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coliveira
I just use pine+IMAP with vim as the external composer. Much easier and does
the job!

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marksoper
Don't use vim, but the stuff Dan Choi builds is high quality

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sigzero
I like Vim...do I like it _that_ much? Hmmmmmm

~~~
faboo
For quite some time while I was in college, I read mail through a Vim plugin
that I wrote for the purpose. I like Vim that much. However, I can't imagine
using Vim to access Gmail for daily use, because Gmail actually does email
_well_ (unlike just about every other email client I've used).

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msbmsb
I can't upvote this enough.

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timepilot
pure awesomeness! :)

