
Show HN: Console based email client with Lua scripting - stevekemp
https://lumail.org/
======
aijony
Since we are on the topics of email clients. I just started migrating out of
the gmail web client, and I think this is a very interesting project.

However, I just started using
[https://notmuchmail.org/](https://notmuchmail.org/) . It has a C library (and
shell, python, haskell etc. bindings) with loads of clients (emacs, vim, web,
etc.).

~~~
shakna
> In order to use Notmuch, you will need to have your email messages stored in
> your local filesystem, one message per file.

One message per file? That's frustrating.

Doesn't really matter for ext4 drives, but I still have some ext3 ones, and
past 10,000 files in a directory, performance really starts to suck.

~~~
microcolonel
What kernel are you running? The last kernel to use the ext3 driver to mount
ext3 volumes by default is no longer maintained, as far as I'm aware. The ext3
driver was completely removed for 4.3. All kernels since 2.6.28 can mount ext2
with the ext4 driver, and I think all kernels with ext4 support can mount ext3
with the ext4 driver.

If you're using the ext4 driver, you can enable the dir_index feature (which I
think is what you're looking for) with tune2fs.

You can do a proper conversion in a relatively short time, if it's a problem
with the on-disk format. Pretty sure that ext4 is mainly just ext3 with
journaling and a generally much better implementation.

~~~
shakna
A change to ext4 would be quite painless, but I'm not allowed to manage the
drives on my work machine, which is unfortunate.

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stevekemp
Posting this here because it has been mentioned in some of the recent mutt-
related stories, and I just made a new release.

The recent release doesn't have too many changes, primarily because it is
pretty stable & reliable. But a new release is always time for a minor
celebration.

~~~
WalterGR
_recent mutt-related stories_

In the past month, I find only this one:

Switching to the Mutt Email Client

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14567074](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14567074)

263 points by ingve 23 days ago | 241 comments

Am I missing others?

~~~
jasonkostempski
I remember there being a few over the past few months because, after a few
years mulling over it, I finally made the leap to mutt based on them. Also
remember lumail being mentioned, but I didn't try it.

~~~
WalterGR
Hmm... If you remember which submissions, I'd be interested in knowing what
they are. I need to find something other than Thunderbird.

~~~
jasonkostempski
The posts didn't convince me to switch, they just reminded me it existed. I'm
using mutt specifically because I want far less functionality in my email
client, probably not for everyone. No contact/calendar integration, moving
things is a pain, searching is a pain. I'm sure there are good solution for
these issues but I just want to get emails in an inbox and send them out an
outbox. If I need more, I move the useful information from the email to a tool
better suited for the job (e.g. file system, database, version control).

------
fiatjaf
How are scripts used in this thing? I'm just curious. Do you use scripts to
set auto-responders? Manual spam filtering? What?

~~~
stevekemp
The core application is a little C++ shell for reading messages, Maildirs,
etc, and drawing the screen. Everything else is built upon that.

So Lua is used for pretty much everything:

* Drawing the UI.

* Responding to key-presses.

* Responding to events.

You can write scripts to do many things, such as training messages as spam,
deleting all messages from "Bob" which are unread.

I have a bunch of servers that get backed up every day, I have a script which
deletes all but the most recent 100 messages in the folder "Automated.Backups"
whenever I open it, for example.

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mileycyrusXOXO
I love everything Lua. Going to have to try this out tonight.

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bch
> With the exception of GNU Emacs none of the console clients I examined had
> any built in support for scripting with a real language.

"mh"[0] might be interesting to some.

[0]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MH_Message_Handling_System](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MH_Message_Handling_System)

------
xupybd
Wow so many errors. I'm guessing this is still early in it's development?

~~~
stevekemp
The domain was registered back in 2013, so it has been around a while. The CI
shows it working just fine:

[https://travis-ci.org/lumail/lumail](https://travis-ci.org/lumail/lumail)

If you're seeing errors please do file a bug report with all the details.

