Defining session for emacs as mutt editor

Defining session for emacs as mutt editor

[Haines Brown]

I want to have mutt (which is started from terminal) use emacs as its
editor with its own initialization file. So in .muttrc I put:

  set editor="emacs -q -l ~/.emacsMutt"

This defines an emacs session located on right half of my screen. My
objective is to have the editor displayed to right of screen and the
mutt messages remain displayed to its left.

However, when the emacsMutt window starts, the mutt messages window is
replaced by an empty emacs window, and as the result I no longer see the
mutt messages. An -nw option only makes the emacsMutt session full
screen.

Haines Brown

Re: Defining session for emacs as mutt editor

[Bob Proulx]

Haines Brown wrote:
> I want to have mutt (which is started from terminal) use emacs as its
> editor with its own initialization file. So in .muttrc I put:
> 
>   set editor="emacs -q -l ~/.emacsMutt"

Seems reasonable.  Alternatively you might consider setting
emacsserver and running emacsclient to connect to the running emacs.

> This defines an emacs session located on right half of my screen. My
> objective is to have the editor displayed to right of screen and the
> mutt messages remain displayed to its left.

I do not think that is possible.  Because mutt is going to invoke
emacs and then wait for it to exit before continuing.  Effectively
the editor process is stacked on top of mutt and mutt will only become
active again once the emacs process is popped off the stack.

> However, when the emacsMutt window starts, the mutt messages window is
> replaced by an empty emacs window, and as the result I no longer see the
> mutt messages. An -nw option only makes the emacsMutt session full
> screen.

What do you mean by an empty emacs window?  I think it should be an
empty mutt window.  Mutt cleared the display in preparation for
running the editor.  Then mutt is waiting for the editor to exit so
that it can continue.  In this case you told emacs in your .emacsMutt
file to open a graphics window and so the original terminal is empty
and waiting.

The issues are mutt specific.  I would take up the discussion on the
mutt-users mailing list.  Over here on the emacs side of things I
expect the suggesions will be to use vm or gnus where this is already
possible.  FWIW the ability to fork off an edit task asynchronously
from the mutt index is something I have also wanted.  But I don't
think anyone has written a way in mutt to do this yet.

Bob

Re: Defining session for emacs as mutt editor

[XeCycle]

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Haines Brown <haines@histomat.net> writes:

> I want to have mutt (which is started from terminal) use emacs as its
> editor with its own initialization file. So in .muttrc I put:
>
>   set editor="emacs -q -l ~/.emacsMutt"
>
> This defines an emacs session located on right half of my screen. My
> objective is to have the editor displayed to right of screen and the
> mutt messages remain displayed to its left.
>
> However, when the emacsMutt window starts, the mutt messages window is
> replaced by an empty emacs window, and as the result I no longer see the
> mutt messages. An -nw option only makes the emacsMutt session full
> screen.

Exactly why I switched to Gnus.  Mutt won't show other messages
while editing, by design.

A way to workaround is to start another Mutt read-only, IIRC -R.
Yet you still need to navigate to the specific mail again.

-- 
Carl Lei (XeCycle)
Department of Physics, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
OpenPGP public key: 7795E591
Fingerprint: 1FB6 7F1F D45D F681 C845 27F7 8D71 8EC4 7795 E591

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 489 bytes --]

Re: Defining session for emacs as mutt editor

[Suvayu Ali]

On Sat, Mar 23, 2013 at 05:43:35PM +0800, XeCycle wrote:
> Haines Brown <haines@histomat.net> writes:
> 
> > However, when the emacsMutt window starts, the mutt messages window is
> > replaced by an empty emacs window, and as the result I no longer see the
> > mutt messages. An -nw option only makes the emacsMutt session full
> > screen.
> 
> Exactly why I switched to Gnus.  Mutt won't show other messages
> while editing, by design.
> 
> A way to workaround is to start another Mutt read-only, IIRC -R.
> Yet you still need to navigate to the specific mail again.

I do it by using notmuch to index my emails and access them with the
Emacs interface for notmuch.  Works great, I can even link to emails
from my Org mode files!

-- 
Suvayu

Open source is the future. It sets us free.

Re: Defining session for emacs as mutt editor

[Haines Brown]

Suvayu, thank you for the suggestion. I was unaware of notmuch and it
looks promising. I can't at this point try it out because I use mbox
rather than Maildir format. I suspect there's a lot more to converting
mail format than just running mb2md and so I have to be very cautious.

Haines 

Re: Defining session for emacs as mutt editor

[W. Greenhouse]

Haines Brown <haines-JpvJoGQWskfk1uMJSBkQmQ@public.gmane.org> writes:

> I want to have mutt (which is started from terminal) use emacs as its
> editor with its own initialization file. So in .muttrc I put:
>
>   set editor="emacs -q -l ~/.emacsMutt"
>
> This defines an emacs session located on right half of my screen. My
> objective is to have the editor displayed to right of screen and the
> mutt messages remain displayed to its left.
>
> However, when the emacsMutt window starts, the mutt messages window is
> replaced by an empty emacs window, and as the result I no longer see the
> mutt messages. An -nw option only makes the emacsMutt session full
> screen.
>
> Haines Brown

Have you tried this with an existing GUI Emacs frame and mutt's editor
as "emacsclient"?  This should cause the emacsclient buffer to pop up
inside the extant GUI frame, and maybe your mutt messages wouldn't get
buried.  (Untested, not a mutt user, just an idea.)

Best,
Will

-- 
BOFH excuse #349:

Stray Alpha Particles from memory packaging caused Hard Memory Error on
Server.

Re: Defining session for emacs as mutt editor

[Mark Skilbeck]

Unfortunately Mutt "blacks-out" its display until the editor process
terminates.

- mgsk

On Mon, Apr 01, 2013 at 06:28:29PM +0000, W. Greenhouse wrote:
> Haines Brown <haines@histomat.net> writes:
> 
> > I want to have mutt (which is started from terminal) use emacs as its
> > editor with its own initialization file. So in .muttrc I put:
> >
> >   set editor="emacs -q -l ~/.emacsMutt"
> >
> > This defines an emacs session located on right half of my screen. My
> > objective is to have the editor displayed to right of screen and the
> > mutt messages remain displayed to its left.
> >
> > However, when the emacsMutt window starts, the mutt messages window is
> > replaced by an empty emacs window, and as the result I no longer see the
> > mutt messages. An -nw option only makes the emacsMutt session full
> > screen.
> >
> > Haines Brown
> 
> Have you tried this with an existing GUI Emacs frame and mutt's editor
> as "emacsclient"?  This should cause the emacsclient buffer to pop up
> inside the extant GUI frame, and maybe your mutt messages wouldn't get
> buried.  (Untested, not a mutt user, just an idea.)
> 
> Best,
> Will
> 
> -- 
> BOFH excuse #349:
> 
> Stray Alpha Particles from memory packaging caused Hard Memory Error on
> Server.
> 

Re: Defining session for emacs as mutt editor

[W. Greenhouse]

Mark Skilbeck <m@iammark.us> writes:

> Unfortunately Mutt "blacks-out" its display until the editor process
> terminates.
>
> - mgsk

Hum.  Perhaps emacsclient -n, then, as that exits immediately without waiting
for the user to kill the server buffer.

-- 
BOFH excuse #240:

Too many little pins on CPU confusing it, bend back and forth until
10-20% are neatly removed. Do _not_ leave metal bits visible!

Re: Defining session for emacs as mutt editor

[Suvayu Ali]

Hi Haines,

On Mon, Apr 01, 2013 at 07:58:01AM -0400, Haines Brown wrote:
> Suvayu, thank you for the suggestion. I was unaware of notmuch and it
> looks promising. I can't at this point try it out because I use mbox
> rather than Maildir format. I suspect there's a lot more to converting
> mail format than just running mb2md and so I have to be very cautious.

In the interest of easing your pain if you decide to experiment, here is
a rather detailed description of my setup.

<http://mid.gmane.org/20130110134717.GA12363@kuru.dyndns-at-home.com>

It is a bit outdated; I no longer need to fiddle with date +%s for date
based queries since notmuch now supports absolute and relative date
queries.  If you have more questions, feel free to ask ;).

GL

-- 
Suvayu

Open source is the future. It sets us free.

Re: Defining session for emacs as mutt editor

[Haines Brown]

Suvayu Ali <fatkasuvayu+linux@gmail.com> writes:

> Hi Haines,

> In the interest of easing your pain if you decide to experiment, here is
> a rather detailed description of my setup.
>
> <http://mid.gmane.org/20130110134717.GA12363@kuru.dyndns-at-home.com>

Thanks, but this is a strange URL. In any case, it did not work.

Haines

Re: Defining session for emacs as mutt editor

[Bob Proulx]

Haines Brown wrote:
> Suvayu Ali writes:
> > In the interest of easing your pain if you decide to experiment, here is
> > a rather detailed description of my setup.
> >
> > <http://mid.gmane.org/20130110134717.GA12363@kuru.dyndns-at-home.com>
> 
> Thanks, but this is a strange URL. In any case, it did not work.

The URL works for me here.  Is your browser rejecting the redirect?
It identifies the message at Gmane which then redirects appropriately
to this page:

  http://article.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/64492

Bob

Re: Defining session for emacs as mutt editor

[Haines Brown]

I works this time. Not sure what happened before.

Haines