Mutt Hack

The following is a hack by Harry Heller. I think it is a good hack to share around.

There's a certain part of my brain that's tickled by perverting software into doing things it wasn't designed to do.

Quote from the Mutt discussion about note-taking.

I'm using Mutt (wiki) for memos, as a notebook, diary etc..

Basically it means you are sending mails to yourself, but the mail never leaves your machine.

It works beautifully because you get threading, you can setup different mail boxes for different things - one for a diary, a box for each project you're working on etc.

It has nothing to do with the normal email functioning - you set up a different configuration file with separate folders etc.

The idea came out of a discussion on the Mutt users list back in 2010 and I set it up back then, but forgot about it. I've rediscovered it and discovered it rocks:) I've got it set up so it runs with a hot key - it js pops up so that I can scribble some thoughts nicely organised into its proper thread and mail box.

Basically you send mail to a non-existant mail program i.e. a program or script that does nothing but exit positively. It's the copy of your mail that you use. :)

"my.memo.muttrc"

folder-hook /myhome//MEMO/.* 'set
sendmail="/myhome/local/bin/mynop"'
folder-hook /myhome/MEMO/.* my_hdr From: "MEMO"
folder-hook /myhome/MEMO/.* my_hdr To:
folder-hook /myhome/MEMO/.* my_hdr Fcc: ^


"mynop"

#!/bin/bash
cat > /dev/null
exit 0