- Handle massive amounts of email.
- Mix email from different sources: mbox files (even across different
- machines), Maildir directories, IMAP folders, POP accounts, and
- GMail accounts.
+ machines), Maildir directories, IMAP folders, and GMail accounts.
-- Instantaneously search over your entire email collection. Search
- over body text, or use a query language to combine search
- predicates in any way.
+- Instantaneously search over your entire email collection. Search over
+ body text, or use a query language to combine search predicates in any
+ way.
- Handle multiple accounts. Replying to email sent to a particular
- account will use the correct SMTP server, signature, and from
- address.
+ account will use the correct SMTP server, signature, and from address.
-- Add custom code to handle certain types of messages or to handle
- certain types of text within messages.
+- Add custom code to customize Sup to whatever particular and bizarre
+ needs you may have.
-- Organize email with user-defined labels, automatically track
- recent contacts, and much more!
+- Organize email with user-defined labels, automatically track recent
+ contacts, and much more!
The goal of Sup is to become the email client of choice for nerds
everywhere.
message level. Entire threads are manipulated and viewed (with
redundancies removed) at a time.
-- Labels instead of folders. Drop that tired old metaphor and you'll
- see how much easier it is to organize email.
+- Labels instead of folders. Drop that tired old metaphor and you'll see
+ how much easier it is to organize email.
-- GMail-style thread management (but better!). Archive a thread, and
- it will disappear from your inbox until someone replies. Kill a
- thread, and it will never come back to your inbox (but will still
- show up in searches.) Mark a thread as spam and you'll never again
- see it unless explicitly searching for spam.
+- GMail-style thread management. Archive a thread, and it will disappear
+ from your inbox until someone replies. Kill a thread, and it will
+ never come back to your inbox (but will still show up in searches.)
+ Mark a thread as spam and you'll never again see it unless explicitly
+ searching for spam.
- Console based interface. No mouse clicking required!
-- Programmability. It's in Ruby. The code is good. It's easy to
- extend.
+- Programmability. It's in Ruby. The code is good. It has an extensive
+ hook system that makes it easy to extend and customize.
-- Multiple buffer support. Why be limited to viewing one thread at a
+- Multiple buffer support. Why be limited to viewing one thing at a
time?
-- Tons of other little features, like automatic context-sensitive
- help, multi-message operations, MIME attachment viewing, recent
- contact list generation, etc.
+- Tons of other little features, like automatic context-sensitive help,
+ multi-message operations, MIME attachment viewing, recent contact list
+ generation, etc.
Current limitations which will be fixed:
-- Support for mbox, remote mbox, and IMAP only at this point. No
- support for POP, mh, or GMail mailstores.
+- Sup doesn't play nicely with other mail clients. If you alter a mail
+ source (read, move, delete, etc) with another client Sup will punish
+ you with a lengthy reindexing process.
-- No internationalization support. No wide characters, no subject
- demangling.
+- Support for mbox, Maildir, and IMAP only at this point. No support for
+ POP or mh.
-- Unix-centrism in MIME attachment handling and in sendmail
- invocation.
+- IMAP support is very slow due mostly to Ruby's IMAP library. You may
+ consider something like offlineimap to mirror your IMAP folders with
+ local Maildir ones.
-- Several obvious missing features, like filters / saved
- searches, message annotations, etc.
+- Unix-centrism in MIME attachment handling and in sendmail invocation.
== SYNOPSYS:
Note that Sup never changes the contents of any mailboxes; it only
indexes in to them. So it shouldn't ever corrupt your mail. The flip
- side is that if you change a mailbox (e.g. delete messages, or, in
- the case of mbox files, read an unread message) then Sup will be
- unable to load messages from that source and will ask you to run
- sup-sync --changed.
+ side is that if you change a mailbox (e.g. delete messages, or, in the
+ case of mbox files, read an unread message) then Sup will be unable to
+ load messages from that source and will ask you to run sup-sync
+ --changed.
== REQUIREMENTS:
-* ferret >= 0.10.13
-* ncurses
-* rmail
-* highline
-* net-ssh
-* trollop >= 1.7
-* lockfile
-* mime-types
+ - ferret >= 0.11.6
+ - ncurses >= 0.9.1
+ - rmail >= 0.17
+ - highline
+ - net-ssh
+ - trollop >= 1.12
+ - lockfile
+ - mime-types
+ - gettext
+ - fastthread
== INSTALL:
-------
Q: What is Sup?
-A: Sup is a console-based email client for people with a lot of email.
- It supports tagging, very fast full-text search, automatic contact-
- list management, custom code insertion via a hook system, and more.
- If you're the type of person who treats email as an extension of your
- long-term memory, Sup is for you.
+A: A console-based email client for people with a lot of email.
Q: What does Sup stand for?
A: "What's up?"
Q: Sup looks like a text-based Gmail.
-A: I stole their ideas. And improved them!
+A: First I stole their ideas. Then I improved them.
Q: Why not just use Gmail?
-A: I wrote Sup because I hate ads, I hate using a mouse, and I hate
- non-programmability and non-extensibility.
+A: I hate ads, I hate using a mouse, and I hate non-programmability and
+ non-extensibility.
Also, Gmail doesn't let you use a monospace font, which is just
lame.
Q: How does Sup deal with spam?
A: You can manually mark messages as spam, which prevents them from
- showing up in future searches, but that's as far as Sup goes. Spam
- filtering should be done by a dedicated tool like SpamAssassin.
+ showing up in future searches. Later, you can run a batch process to
+ remove such messages from your sources. That's as far as Sup goes.
+ Spam filtering should be done by a dedicated tool like SpamAssassin.
Q: How do I delete a message?
A: Why delete? Unless it's spam, you might as well just archive it.
Q: What are all these "Redwood" references I see in the code?
A: That was Sup's original name. (Think pine, elm. Although I was a
- Mutt user, I couldn't think of a good progression there.) But it
- was taken by another project on RubyForge, and wasn't that
- original, and was too long to type anyways.
-
- Maybe one day I'll do a huge search-and-replace on the code, but it
- doesn't seem that important at this point.
+ Mutt user, I couldn't think of a good progression there.) But it was
+ taken by another project on RubyForge, and wasn't that original, and
+ was too long to type anyways.
Common Problems
---------------
-P: I see this message from Ferret:
- Error occured in index.c:825 - sis_find_segments_file
-S: Yikes! You've upgraded Ferret and the index format changed beneath
- you. Follow the index rebuild instructions above.
-
P: I get some error message from Rubymail about frozen strings when
importing messages with attachments.
S: The current solution is to directly modify RubyMail. Change line 159 of
anyways.
If you want to play around a little at this point, you can press 'b'
-to cycle between buffers and 'x' to kill a buffer. There's probably
-not too much interesting there, but there's a log buffer with some
-cryptic messages. You can also press '?' at any point to get a list of
-keyboard commands, but in the absence of any email, these will be
-mostly useless. When you get bored, press 'q' to quit.
+to cycle between buffers, ';' to get a list of the open buffers, and
+'x' to kill a buffer. There's probably not too much interesting there,
+but there's a log buffer with some cryptic messages. You can also
+press '?' at any point to get a list of keyboard commands, but in the
+absence of any email, these will be mostly useless. When you get
+bored, press 'q' to quit.
To use Sup for email, we need to load messages into the index. The
index is where Sup stores all message state (e.g. read or unread, any
We can add messages to the index by telling Sup about the "source"
where the messages reside. Sources are things like IMAP folders, mbox
-folders, maildir directories, and Gmail accounts (in the future). Sup
-doesn't duplicate the actual message content in the index; it only
-stores whatever information is necessary for searching, threading and
-labelling. So when you search for messages or view your inbox, Sup
-talks only to the index (stored locally on disk). When you view a
-thread, Sup requests the full content of all the messages from the
-source.
+folders, and maildir directories. Sup doesn't duplicate the actual
+message content in the index; it only stores whatever information is
+necessary for searching, threading and labelling. So when you search
+for messages or view your inbox, Sup talks only to the index (stored
+locally on disk). When you view a thread, Sup requests the full
+content of all the messages from the source.
The easiest way to set up all your sources is to run `sup-config`.
This will interactively walk you through some basic configuration,
prompt you for all the sources you need, and optionally import
-messages from them. Sup-config uses two other tools, sup-add and
+messages from them. Sup-config uses two other tools, sup-add and
sup-sync, to load messages into the index. In the future you may make
use of these tools directly (see below).
definition, the set of all messages that aren't archived. This means
that your inbox is nothing more than the result of the search for all
messages with the label "inbox". (It's actually slightly more
-complicated---we omit messages marked as killed, deleted or spam.)
+complicated---we also omit messages marked as killed, deleted or
+spam.)
You could replicate the folder paradigm easily under this scheme, by
giving each message exactly one label and only viewing the results of
The idea is that a labeling system that allows arbitrary, user-defined
labels, supplemented by a quick and easy-to-access search mechanism
provides all the functionality that folders does, plus much more, at a
-far lower cost to the user. (The Sup philosophical treatise has a
-little more on this.)
+far lower cost to the user.
Now let's take a look at your inbox. You'll see that Sup groups
messages together into threads: each line in the inbox is a thread,
messages. You'll also notice that Sup hides quoted text and
signatures. If you highlight a particular hidden chunk, you can press
enter to expand it, or you can press 'o' to toggle every hidden chunk
-in a particular message. (Remember, you can hit '?' to see the full
-list of keyboard commands at any point.)
+in a particular message.
-A few other useful commands while viewing a thread. Press 'd' to
-toggle a detailed header for a message. If you've scrolled too far to
-the right, press '[' to jump all the way to the left. Finally, you can
-press 'n' and 'p' to jump forward and backward between open messages,
-aligning the display as necessary.
+Other useful keyboard commands when viewing a thread are: 'n' and 'p'
+to jump to the next and previous open messages, 'h' to toggle the
+detailed headers for the current message, and enter to expand or
+collapse the current message (when it's on a text region). Enter and
+'n' in combination are useful for scanning through a thread---press
+enter to close the current message and jump to the next open one, and
+'n' to keep it open and jump. If the buffer is misaligned with a
+message, you can press 'z' to highlight it.
+
+This is a lot to remember, but you can always hit '?' to see the full
+list of keyboard commands at any point. There's a lot of useful stuff
+in there---once you learn some, try out some of the others!
Now press 'x' to kill the thread view buffer. You should see the inbox
-again. If you don't, you can cycle through the buffers by pressing 'b'
-and 'B' (forwards and backwards, respectively), or you can press ';' to
-see a list of all buffers and simply select the inbox.
+again. If you don't, you can cycle through the buffers by pressing
+'b', or you can press ';' to see a list of all buffers and simply
+select the inbox.
There are many operations you can perform on threads beyond viewing
them. To archive a thread, press 'a'. The thread will disappear from
replies an archived thread, it will reappear in your inbox. To kill a
thread, press '&'. Killed threads will never come back to your inbox,
even if people reply, but will still be searchable. (This is useful
-for those interminable threads that you really have no interest in,
-but which seem to pop up on every mailing list.)
+for those interminable threads that you really have no immediate
+interest in, but which seem to pop up on every mailing list.)
If a thread is spam, press 'S'. It will disappear and won't come back.
It won't even appear in search results, unless you explicitly search
input, press Ctrl-G.
Many of these operations can be applied to a group of threads. Press
-'t' to tag a thread. Tag a couple, then press '+' to apply the next
-command to the set of threads. '+t', of course, will untag all tagged
+'t' to tag a thread. Tag a couple, then press '=' to apply the next
+command to the set of threads. '=t', of course, will untag all tagged
messages.
Ok, let's try using labels and search. Press 'L' to do a quick label
complication you will almost certainly run in to if you use both Sup
and another MUA on the same source, so it's good to be aware of it.
-Have fun, and let me know if you have any problems!
+Have fun, and email sup-talk@rubyforge.org if you have any problems!
Appendix A: sup-add and sup-sync
---------------------------------
index. Depending on the size of the source, this may take a while.
Don't panic! It's a one-time process.
-Appendix B: Handling high-volume mailing lists
-----------------------------------------------
-
-Here's what I recommend:
-1. Use procmail to filter messages from the list into a distinct source.
-2. Add that source to Sup as a usual source with auto-archive turned
- on, and with a label corresponding to the mailing list name.
- (E.g.: sup-add mbox:/home/me/Mail/ruby-talk -a -l ruby-talk)
-3. Voila! Sup will load new messages into the index but not into the
- inbox, and you can browse the mailing list traffic at any point by
- searching for that label.
+Appendix B: Automatically labeling incoming email
+-------------------------------------------------
+
+One option is to filter incoming email into different sources with
+something like procmail, and have each of these sources auto-apply
+labels by using sup-add --labels.
+
+But the better option is to learn Ruby and write a before-add hook.
+This will allow you to apply labels based on whatever crazy logic you
+can come up with. See http://sup.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl?Hooks for
+examples.
Appendix C: Reading blogs with Sup
----------------------------------
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
<title>Sup</title>
- <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
+ <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<link rel="stylesheet" href="main.css" type="text/css" />
</head>
<p>
Sup is brought to you by <a href="http://cs.stanford.edu/~ruby/">William Morgan</a> and the following honorable contributors:
<ul>
-<li>Nicolas Pouillard <nicolas.pouillard at the gmail dot coms></li>
-<li>Mike Stipicevic <stipim at the rpi dot edus></li>
-<li>Marcus Williams <marcus-sup at the bar-coded dot nets></li>
-<li>Lionel Ott <white.magic at the gmx dot des></li>
-<li>Ingmar Vanhassel <ingmar at the exherbo dot orgs></li>
-<li>Mark Alexander <marka at the pobox dot coms></li>
-<li>Christopher Warrington <chrisw at the rice dot edus></li>
-<li>Richard Brown <rbrown at the exherbo dot orgs></li>
-<li>Ben Walton <bwalton at the artsci.utoronto dot cas></li>
-<li>Marc Hartstein <marc.hartstein at the alum.vassar dot edus></li>
-<li>Grant Hollingworth <grant at the antiflux dot orgs></li>
-<li>Steve Goldman <sgoldman at the tower-research dot coms></li>
-<li>Decklin Foster <decklin at the red-bean dot coms></li>
-<li>Ismo Puustinen <ismo at the iki dot fis></li>
-<li>Jeff Balogh <its.jeff.balogh at the gmail dot coms></li>
-<li>Alex Vandiver <alexmv at the mit dot edus></li>
-<li>Giorgio Lando <patroclo7 at the gmail dot coms></li>
-<li>Israel Herraiz <israel.herraiz at the gmail dot coms></li>
-<li>Ian Taylor <ian at the lorf dot orgs></li>
-<li>Stefan Lundström <lundst at the snabb.(none)></li>
-<li>Rich Lane <rlane at the club.cc.cmu dot edus></li>
-<li>Kirill Smelkov <kirr at the landau.phys.spbu dot rus></li>
+<li>Nicolas Pouillard </li>
+<li>Mike Stipicevic </li>
+<li>Marcus Williams </li>
+<li>Lionel Ott </li>
+<li>Ingmar Vanhassel </li>
+<li>Mark Alexander </li>
+<li>Christopher Warrington </li>
+<li>Richard Brown </li>
+<li>Ben Walton </li>
+<li>Marc Hartstein </li>
+<li>Grant Hollingworth </li>
+<li>Steve Goldman </li>
+<li>Decklin Foster </li>
+<li>Ismo Puustinen </li>
+<li>Jeff Balogh </li>
+<li>Alex Vandiver </li>
+<li>Giorgio Lando </li>
+<li>Israel Herraiz </li>
+<li>Ian Taylor </li>
+<li>Stefan Lundström </li>
+<li>Rich Lane </li>
+<li>Kirill Smelkov </li>
</ul>
</p>
projects / sup / commitdiff