[OT] mutt configuration & philosophy (was Re: notmuch-mutt: Use of uninitialized value.)

[Michael Elkins <me@sigpipe.org>]

On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 03:13:22PM +0100, Profpatsch wrote:
>Plus it still takes about 10 steps to configure a new account with
>offlineimap, mutt and msmtp, there is nothing to automate this and
>every config is different. Whoa.

Mutt was designed with the UNIX philosophy in mind.  When users 
don't like the way something is implemented in Mutt, you can use 
an external tool to do the job instead.  We consider this to be a 
feature, not a deficiency.

>For example:
>Why does one have to spend two–four hours enabling pgp with the basic,
>pre-configured commands?
>Why is there no command that enables pgp with default sane gnupg values
>that I assume 99.9% of mutt users use?

set crypt_use_gpgme

>Why is the standard mailbox named “spooldir” and an easy explanation of
>that is nowhere to be found in the official docs?

We assume users are familiar with basic UNIX concepts like the 
mail spool.

>And the list goes on.

Documentation patches are highly welcome.