Text-Based Email Client

Short description: Email client that does not use graphics

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, Notmuch (emacs interface)^[6]
Lumail
mblaze
meli
Mutt
- NeoMutt
pine
- alpine
sup
vim (using a plugin^[7] for himalaya)

Email software for the command line that does not occupy the whole screen (cf. TUI) include e. g. Cleancode eMail, CURL,^[8] himalaya, mail (Unix), mailx, MH, procmail, sendmail, and many others.

References

↑ ^1.0 ^1.1 "Aerc – An email client that runs in the terminal". 2019-06-05. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20090950.
↑ Ravi Saive (2020-02-13). "7 Best Command-Line Email Clients for Linux in 2020". TecMint. https://www.tecmint.com/best-commandline-email-clients-for-linux/. "sometimes, users prefer to deal with email directly from the command-line"
↑ "Use plaintext email". 2021-03-19. https://useplaintext.email/. "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. https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/aerc/refs/0.1.0. Retrieved June 9, 2019.
↑ "Contributions to ~sircmpwn/aerc". https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/aerc/contributors.
↑ "Emacs Frontend for Notmuch". https://notmuchmail.org/doc/latest/notmuch-emacs.html.
↑ "Himalaya/Vim at master · soywod/Himalaya". https://github.com/soywod/himalaya/tree/master/vim.
↑ "Reading email - everything curl". https://everything.curl.dev/usingcurl/reademail.html.

0.00

(0 votes)

Original source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text-based email client. Read more

[aerc-ycombinator-1] 1.0 ^1.1 "Aerc – An email client that runs in the terminal". 2019-06-05. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20090950.

[tecmint2020-2] Ravi Saive (2020-02-13). "7 Best Command-Line Email Clients for Linux in 2020". TecMint. https://www.tecmint.com/best-commandline-email-clients-for-linux/. "sometimes, users prefer to deal with email directly from the command-line"

[useplaintext-3] "Use plaintext email". 2021-03-19. https://useplaintext.email/. "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-initial-4] "aerc 0.1.0". June 3, 2019. https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/aerc/refs/0.1.0. Retrieved June 9, 2019.

[aerc-contributors-5] "Contributions to ~sircmpwn/aerc". https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/aerc/contributors.

[6] "Emacs Frontend for Notmuch". https://notmuchmail.org/doc/latest/notmuch-emacs.html.

[7] "Himalaya/Vim at master · soywod/Himalaya". https://github.com/soywod/himalaya/tree/master/vim.

[8] "Reading email - everything curl". https://everything.curl.dev/usingcurl/reademail.html.

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

Text-Based Email Client

List of text-based email clients

See also

References