Text-based email client
A text-based email client is an email client with its user interface being text-based, occupying a whole terminal screen. Other kind of email clients are GUI-based (cf. email client) or Web-based, see Webmail.
Text-based email clients may be useful for users with visual impairment or partial blindness allowing speech synthesis or text-to-speech software to read content to users. Text-based email clients also allow to manage communication via simple remote sessions, e. g. per SSH, for instance when it is not possible to install a local GUI-client and/or access mail via Web interface. Also users may prefer text-based user interfaces in general.
Typical features include:[1]
- Editing various emails via tab support
- Configurable rendering of various MIME types, for instance OpenPGP encryption or HTML email
- Vim-style keybindings
- Support for multiple accounts and protocols, e. g. IMAP, Maildir, SMTP, and sendmail
- UTF-8 support
List of text-based email clients
Notable clients include:[2][3]
- aerc[4][5][1]
- cone
- Elm
- Emacs: Gnus, mu4e, rmail, Wanderlust
- Lumail
- mblaze
- meli
- Mutt
- NeoMutt
- pine
- sup
- vim (using a plugin[6] for himalaya)
Email software for the command line that does not occupy the whole screen (cf. TUI) include e. g. Cleancode eMail, CURL,[7] himalaya, mail (Unix), mailx, MH, procmail, sendmail, and many others.
References
- "Aerc – An email client that runs in the terminal". 2019-06-05.
- Ravi Saive (2020-02-13). "7 Best Command-Line Email Clients for Linux in 2020". TecMint.
sometimes, users prefer to deal with email directly from the command-line
- "Use plaintext email". 2021-03-19.
There are two main types of emails on the internet: plaintext and HTML. The former is strongly preferred, but often isn't set up by default. We'll get you set up right.
- "aerc 0.1.0". June 3, 2019. Retrieved June 9, 2019.
- "Contributions to ~sircmpwn/aerc".
- "Himalaya/Vim at master · soywod/Himalaya". GitHub.
- https://everything.curl.dev/usingcurl/reademail