WebApp Consulting

Mutt is a powerful text-based email client. It is used mainly by system administrators and/or those who work remotely in terminal sessions. I wanted to try mutt as an email client for my daily work. And after a week of use I don’t want to return back to Apple Mail.

I have two email accounts and a dozen of aliases. In my configuration together with mutt I use the following applications:

• fetchmail – to retrieve messages from different email accounts
• dropmail – to filter and to save received messages locally in maildir format
• msmtp – to send messages using smtp servers
• mairix – to index and search emails
• emacs – to edit new messages and replies
• aspell – to spell check messages
• lynx – to view html attachments

The result is a small, powerful, and flexible email client. I can name a few inconveniences though:

• It takes time for mutt to parse big maildir boxes (during startup and when changing boxes only).
• There is no simple way to view another email (in a separate window) while you reply to a message. As a workaround you can keep another instance of mutt running just to view emails.

In overall mutt fits very well in the way I manage my daily emails.

I bought TextMate license recently. I wasn’t able to evaluate it thoroughly, but when the trial period has expired I paid. Mainly because I’ve read a lot of good reviews, and I liked its simplicity, elegance, and extensibility. The projects I was going to work on in TextMate were in Ruby, PHP, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

However I like Emacs very much, and I have Aquamacs installed on my MacBook together with Ruby on Rails programming mode. This mode is designed very well and turns any work with Rails projects a pleasure. Unfortunately I noticed that the legacy of Emacs architecture makes extensibility of programming modes quite difficult. So here I come with features from Emacs that I would like to see in TextMate based on my Rails development experience. In hope that some day they will be implemented, as TextMate bundles are easy to modify.

1. Rails project navigation. Emacs has shortcuts to show a menu of available controllers, models, stylesheets, and helpers. In TextMate I have to use Project Drawer, or Find in Project form, or Go To Alternate file command. Use of shortcuts is faster and more convenient. I think it’s possible to create commands in TextMate that will expand and focus on corresponding folder in Project Drawer.

2. Open partial. Emacs can show a list of partials for current controller or view. It is very convenient especially when you work with AJAX views that depend mainly on partials.

3. Find files. In Emacs you can find files within particular project areas, while TextMate by default searches all files in a project. It is a popular request to make Command-T in TextMate to work with predefined folders and/or filters.

4. Incremental search. Although TextMate implements incremental search it doesn’t highlight found occurrences as Emacs and Vim do.

5. Snippets. Rails mode for Emacs comes with many well thought out snippets, while TextMate has fewer of them and not that convenient.

6. Tools support. I can start server or run a console right from Emacs. TextMate wraps rake commands and generator script nicely, but I have to open Terminal to run a console.

7. Contextual menus. TextMate has sophisticated scope selectors, but when it comes to menus it doesn’t use them. For example right click on a code brings the same menu for all modes. The status bar menu could also change depending on active bundle.