What’s cool about mutt and pine

In the comments for my previous post about email on two computers, Jerry wrote: “Anything to avoid mutt and pine; they should be permanently retired along with POP accounts.”

I disagree about mutt and pine. In fact, I’m strongly considering switching to one of those two. (I’ve been a pine user in the past, but mutt interests me.)

Mutt and pine have a few of the most important features of my dream email client:

1. Navigating through the mailbox list can be done via keyboard—no mouse required.

2. Transferring a message to a mailbox can also be done with just the keyboard.

3. HTML and text styling is not respected at all.

For example: several times a week I have to copy and paste a styled email from Mail into BBEdit just to be able to read it, since the font size is too small. BBEdit makes it plain text, so it’s in a readable size (a size that I myself set). An email app that does plain text only in the first place would be better.

So... it’s all about spending less time managing email. Anything that can make it faster and easier is a good thing.