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Mutt
 

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Mutt is a Mail User Agent (MUA) for Unix operating systems. It is used to read mails. Not to send, fetch, or filter mails, nor to write mails. To complete your mail system you might want to use: sendmail to send and receive mails; fetchmail to fetch mails from external POP or IMAP accounts; procmail to process and filter incomming mails; abook to store, edit, and search your address book; and, of course, your favourite editor to write the mails.

Mutt was originally written by Michael Elkins, but is now developed and maintained by a group of volunteers gathered around the Mutt-Developers' mailing list, mutt-dev@mutt.org. The official homepage is located at http://www.mutt.org.

A very good description of what Mutt is and isn't, what Mutt can and can't, and what utilities can be used together with Mutt is the text "My first Mutt", by Bruno Postle.

These pages are intended to be an aid in letting you install and run Mutt as a native MS-Windows (32 bit) application. Pointers to replacements for the applications that usually run in cooperation with Mutt to form a full mail system will also be given, together with brief instructions on how to set them up.

Contributions are gratefully accepted!

/Ulf

Warning:
These patches and the binary release of Mutt for Windows 95 / NT are all unofficial! The official Mutt homepage gives you the original source code (which you then have to compile yourself).

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. (Copyright, GPL)

Download:
The latest stable version of Mutt is 1.4.1, released on 2003-03-19. You can download the source from http://www.mutt.org/download.html.
Binaries for Windows (32bit) of stable versions include:
OS version date comments
Windows (32bit) 1.4i 2002-06-05 Requires libiconv and openssl DLLs.
Cygwin 1.4.1 2003-10-13 Click on "install cygwin now"
The latest unstable (developers') version of Mutt can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.mutt.org/pub/mutt/devel/ or via CVS with CVS root: :pserver:anonymous@cvs.mutt.org:/home/roessler/cvs, password anonymous.

Mailing lists:
General questions about Mutt, its usage, set up, and trouble-shooting, should be sent to the Mutt-Users' mailing list. Before sending in your questions you are asked to subscribe (or your mail is sent to the moderator who will forward it to the list eventually). To subscribe to mutt-users send a message to mutt-users-request@mutt.org with subscribe in the body of the e-mail. To unsubscribe you again send a message to mutt-users-request, this time with unsubscribe in the body of the e-mail. But even before writing your question do read "How to Ask Questions The Smart Way."

Questions about why things are not working as expected in an unstable version shall be sent to the Mutt-Developers' mailing list, since each unstable version is likely to have its own set of bugs. If you suspect that you have found a bug in an unstable version, make sure you use the very latest version before reporting it. Perhaps the problem has already been solved in the latest snapshot or the CVS version. Also take a look at the list with current reported bugs to not report what is already known. And read "How to Report Bugs Effectively" before you start writing your bug report.

When using Mutt to pose or answer questions at mailing lists you should make sure to let Mutt know that the address is a mailing list. In case you have subscribed for mutt-users, add subscribe mutt-users to your personal .muttrc. In case you are not subscribed but still ask questions occasionally, add lists mutt-users instead. This way Mutt can set an appropriate Mail-Follup-To: header which will tell others whether you are likely to want a personal copy of the reply or not. By using the list-reply function (default bound to 'L') correct headers are inserted automaticly during the discussion.

Newsgroup:
There is also a special newsgroup, news:comp.mail.mutt, dedicated for discussions of the Mutt e-mail client. Note that "No binary posting is allowed" and "No spamming or off topic posting is allowed". Answers to general questions, about setup and usuage, does not depend all that much on what version of Mutt you are running. But when reporting that things are not working as expected, remember to state early what version you are using and also tell whether it is a patched or unpatched version. (The output of "mutt -v" should tell you all you need to know.)

Be aware that if you announce a bug over the newsgroup you are asked to use a valid e-mail address as the technical followup, with exchange of details and possibly also binaries and patches, are often carried out through e-mail. (It is an e-mail client after all;) Of course, the final answer goes back to the newsgroup.

Links:

 
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Created on March 10, 2001.
Last modified on June 1, 2002.
ulferikson+mutt@fastmail.fm