pombredanne / alot

commandline MUA using notmuch and urwid

Alot is an experimental terminal MUA based on notmuch mail. It is written in python using the urwid toolkit.

Have a look at the user manual for installation notes, advanced usage, customization and hacking guides.

Do comment on the code or file issues! You can talk to me in #notmuch@freenode.

Current features include:

• modular and command prompt driven interface
• multiple accounts for sending mails via sendmail
• spawn terminals for asynchronous editing of mails
• tab completion and usage help for all commands
• contacts completion using customizable lookups commands
• user configurable keyboard maps
• theming, optionally in 2, 16 or 256 colours
• tag specific theming and tag string translation
• (python) hooks to react on events and do custom formatting
• python shell for introspection
• forward/reply/group-reply of emails
• printing/piping of mails and threads
• notification popups with priorities
• database manager that manages a write queue to the notmuch index
• configurable status bar
• full support for PGP/MIME encryption and signing

Soonish to be addressed non-features:

See here, most notably:

• async. calls to mimeparts renderer, parsing of VT colour escape sequences. see #272. Milestone 0.4
• live search results while you're typing (POC in postponed-livesearch). Milestone 0.6
• search for message (POC in postponed-messagesmode). Milestone 0.6
• search for strings in displayed buffer. MS 0.7
• undo for commands. Milestone 0.7

Basic Usage

The arrow keys, page-up/down, j, k and Space can be used to move the focus. Escape cancels prompts and Enter selects. Hit : at any time and type in commands to the prompt.

The interface shows one buffer at a time, you can use Tab and Shift-Tab to switch between them, close the current buffer with d and list them all with ;.

The buffer type or mode (displayed at the bottom left) determines which prompt commands are available. Usage information on any command can be listed by typing help YOURCOMMAND to the prompt; The key bindings for the current mode are listed upon pressing ?. See the manual for more usage info.