[NCLUG] MUA

[Michael Dwyer]

William Dan Terry wrote:
> Today's question: What are people using for MUAs?
> 
> I've been using pine for ~9 (?) years now (elm before that, mail before
> that, except when I had a NeXT slab on my desk too), except for a
> flirtation with netscape until I heard of web bugs. I actually really

I started with Elm, and have been pretty dedicated to Netscape since
then. Since I actually use Opera or IE as my browser (my actual work
machine is a Win98 box with a VNC client open to a /real/ OS.  So this
may be a little Win-centric) I have my Netscape adjusted as dumb as
possible.  It is instructed to not load images, and to ignore any and
all java and javascript.  So, it is actually a reasonably secure
platform for mail.  The only thing that has troubled me, now, is spam
that includes a META REFRESH tag...

> liked the GUI for netscape, but I don't want an MUA that does HTML, or at
> least one where I can't turn off all HTML usage. Netscape lets you turn it
> off for composing/sending, but you're stuck with it on reading (or at
> least were). Plus I wouldn't mind something less bloated than netscape if
> I were to go back to an X app.

See, I'm kind of stuck with Netscape.... I went over to the world of
IMAP, where all my folders reside on the server.  So no matter where I
check my mail from, my folders will always be in the right places.  The
problem is that the number of MUAs that actually support IMAP is pretty
slim...  The Outlook Express support is scary.  Opera mail doesn't
support it yet.  Eudora has turned into a UI nightmare (in my humble
opinion).
Also, Netscape being multi-platform really helps, too.  So it doesn't
matter where I am, the mail still works the way I expect it to.

I've heard very good things about Mutt, or The Bat! on the Windows
side.  But Mutt doesn't run on Windows, and The Bat! annoyed me. :)

Frankly, I think the best MUA I've found is "telnet mail 110".  :)