[solved] a simple mail viewer?

Message

avx · Post by **avx** » Mon Jun 06, 2011 3:31 pm

Either I'm missing some functionality in mutt or it just doesn't exist, anyway, I'm looking for a simple way to read a given file out of some maildir in a pleasant format.

Ie, all my mails are stored as single files in maildirs and I can read them via less/most/etc, but they aren't nicely formatted as mutt/claws or any other mailclient would show them.

So, for example, `less somefile` gives (redacted)

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Date: Sat, 6 mon yyyy hh:mm:ss +0200 (CEST)
From: some person <some@person.com>
To: bla@blub.com
Message-ID: <xxxx@foo.bar.baz>
Subject: dumdidum
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed;
        boundary="----=_Part_foo_bla_blub"

------=_Part_enough
Content-Type: multipart/related;
        boundary="----=_Part_ohcomon"

------=_Part_reallyreally
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

MESSAGE CONTENT HERE

But it should just be shown as

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date: yyyy-mm-dd
from: someone <bla@blub.com>
to: blub@bla.com

MESSAGE HERE

(flags: replied, ...)

Reason for something like that is, if `tracker-search` returns mail, I'd like to easily view it directly without searching for it in mutt/something.

So, something already in existance which I missed?

grimm26 · Post by **grimm26** » Mon Jun 06, 2011 6:56 pm

I know with (al)pine you can point it at a local maildir instead of going through IMAP/POP and read it as a mail spool/folder.

Dr.Willy · Post by **Dr.Willy** » Mon Jun 06, 2011 9:25 pm

Hey avx - no, I don't know a good mailviewer, I just found it funny that you always seem to run into the same problems as I do ^^
It should be relatively trivial to write a simple mailviewer though…

avx · Post by **avx** » Tue Jun 07, 2011 3:23 am

Dr.Willy wrote:I just found it funny that you always seem to run into the same problems as I do ^^

Och mensch, ich werd mich bemühen, in Zukunft weniger triviale Probleme zu haben. Oder soll ich vielleicht in Twitter einsteigen, dann kannst du ja follow'n

It should be relatively trivial to write a simple mailviewer though…

My toughts exactly, that's why I find it strange that I couldn't find anything, yet. Given the fact that `less` can even render .html (and even some .pdf) properly, I don't see why something like this isn't available (to my eyes).

amk · Post by **amk** » Tue Jun 07, 2011 2:15 pm

Create a script to see yourfile like this:

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echo From asdf `date` >/tmp/asdf
cat yourfile >>/tmp/asdf
mutt -f /tmp/asdf
rm /tmp/asdf

avx · Post by **avx** » Tue Jun 07, 2011 5:06 pm

amk wrote:Create a script to see yourfile like this:
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echo From asdf `date` >/tmp/asdf
cat yourfile >>/tmp/asdf
mutt -f /tmp/asdf
rm /tmp/asdf

Mh, doesn't work for me, all I get is a blank mutt-window?!

Anyway, what I have so far is this (yeah, ugly):

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#!/usr/bin/env python
#LIC: BSD-2C
#avx@phorcix.org

from sys import argv, exit
from email.parser import Parser as p
from email.header import decode_header as d_h
from email.Iterators import typed_subpart_iterator as t_s_i

if not len(argv) == 2: exit(1)
mail = p().parse(open(argv[1], 'r'))

def dchdr(txt):
     return u"".join(unicode(text, chr or "utf-8") for text, chr in d_h(txt))

def chrst(m, n="utf-8"):
    if m.get_content_charset(): return m.get_content_charset()
    return n

def bdy(m):
    if m.is_multipart():
         body = []
         for t in [k for k in t_s_i(m, 'text', 'plain')]:
             chr = chrst(t, chrst(m))
             body.append(unicode(t.get_payload(decode=True), chr, "replace"))
         return u"\n".join(body).strip()
    else:
        return unicode(m.get_payload(decode=True), chrst(m), "replace").strip()

layout = "From: %s\nTo: %s\nDate: %s\n\nSubject: %s\n\nMessage:\n%s"

print layout % (mail['from'],mail['to'], mail['date'],
                dchdr(mail['subject']), bdy(mail))

This mostly works the way I would expect it to work, but it sometimes breaks on some charsets. Maybe I'll find the problem, maybe not, we'll see.

amk · Post by **amk** » Tue Jun 07, 2011 10:54 pm

Mh, doesn't work for me, all I get is a blank mutt-window?!

The difference between file in maildir and a mbox is basically the first From line.
I do not need to open the files into all details (and extract attachments) that often
and this approach of manually adding the From line works for me. Perhaps your
output of 'date' was not liked by mutt?

Your python could be possibly added to /usr/bin/lesspipe or ~/.lessfilter, file seems
to recognize the message file as smtp mail text so could invoke it in lesspipe_file.

avx · Post by **avx** » Wed Jun 08, 2011 9:13 pm

Problem solved, at least for me.

I added notmuch (ebuild available via sunrise) to the system and now using the following, I get the mail's body (working on adding date, from/to, ...)

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notmuch show "WHAT TO SHOW HERE" |  awk '/part}/{p=0};p;/text\/plain/{p=1}'