The mail client. From mutt to alpine and back to mutt.

I'm a long time Mutt user and sometimes, well, it just don't feel right.
Especially when using IMAP, GPG, HTML messages, ..., the unsane defaults
lead to hours of fiddling the rc files.

Alpine has been around for a while (well, it's a pine clone) and has a
large fan base promoting its "simplicity" over Mutt. "Just as good,
fatless, sane defaults", huh, yummy.

My mail setup looks like that :
- IMAP accounts to Maildir folders on a Debian box, thanks to
"offlineimap"
- direct Maildir access from mutt over ssh in screen (classic win)
- indirect Maildir access through a local IMAP server on the debian box
This setup allows me a decent sync/backup, offline access,
- I use many external apps with mutt like : html/pdf/xls/doc/odt to
text, lbdb as an external PIM, mairix for virtual folders, gpg,
muttprint for pretty printing, ...

Alpine features an address book, an integrated setup utility, good IMAP
and GPG setup ... but :
- in Debian, it doesn't support Maildir :/ (See #405762, early 2007)
- the setup utility is just insane
- I just can't use this non-vi-like UI : pressing "/" doesn't trigger
the search function
- nano for editor ... No joke.

Well, the whole non-vi-like thing just calls "apt-get remove --purge
alpine".

Mutt: http://mutt.org
Alpine: http://www.washington.edu/alpine/
Offlineimap:
http://software.complete.org/software/projects/show/offlineimap
--
Jérôme