Reading · meli MUA · RSS Amplifier

A new alpha version is up for test/review. It's starting to look like a real client! Get it here

Some highlights are:

Support for async IO using the smol runtime. IMAP backend is now async.
imap: add server_password_command
add optional SMTP client. Instead of using an external command (I was using msmtp for example) meli can connect to an SMTP server by itself. See documentation for send_mail option.
Custom themes

Online demo

I managed to compile meli to WebAssembly, and made an online demo so that you can get a feel for it without having to download/build it first. It’s not perfect, but it works.

Themes

what

meli comes with two themes, dark (the default) and light.

Here's how a theme is defined:

[terminal.themes.watermelon]
"theme_default" = { fg = "#F50431", bg = "#FFD5FD", attrs = "Default" }
"widgets.list.header" = { fg = "#FFD5FD", bg = "#F50431", attrs = "Bold" }
"mail.listing.attachment_flag" = { fg = "LightSlateGrey", bg = "theme_default", attrs = "theme_default" }
"mail.listing.compact.even" = { fg = "White", bg = "#6CA94A", attrs = "Bold" }
"mail.listing.compact.highlighted" = { fg = "#157241", bg = "#f74b41", attrs = "theme_default" }
...

etc.

where

Custom themes can be defined as lists of key-values in the configuration files:

$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/meli/config.toml
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/meli/themes/*.toml

The application theme is then defined in the configuration as follows:

[terminal]
theme = "dark"

how

You can create a theme template with a command line flag:

meli --print-default-theme > ~/.config/meli/themes/new_theme.toml

Detailed documentation can be found in meli-themes(5) which is also available online sidenote: I couldn't get mandoc to generate large (i.e. longer than a page) tables. There is a GNU mdoc extension for this but it's not supported. Bummer

Other subcommands

Usability improvements

Set default filter globally or per-mailbox e.g. show only unseen e-mail (virtual mailboxes coming soon)

[listing]
filter = "not flags:seen" # show only unseen messages globally
# or
[accounts."personal account".mailboxes]
"INBOX" = { listing.filter = "not flags:seen" } # override global settings for this mailbox

Search in pagers, and the shortcut panel with a simple KMP implementation
Autoload mailbox option - don't load big mailboxes on startup till you request them
Create/delete mailbox, {un,}subscribe mailbox
Set default headers
Manual check for new mail (default key F5). IMAP checks server, maildir can be configured to run a command (setting refresh_command)
Primitive fs autocomplete for commands, till a proper parser with states is written
Custom date format strings
$NO_COLOR disable colors application-wide conforming to https://no-color.org
libnotmuch is now loaded dynamically. It's included in the default build configuration.
Display text/html attachments if the text/plain alternative is empty. (setting: auto_choose_multipart_alternative)

Distribution and building

Makefile has been improved:

/path/to/meli % make
For a quick start, build and install locally:
 PREFIX=~/.local make install
Available subcommands:
 - meli (builds meli with optimizations in $CARGO_TARGET_DIR)
 - install (installs binary in $BINDIR and documentation to $MANDIR)
 - uninstall
Secondary subcommands:
 - clean (cleans build artifacts)
 - check-deps (checks dependencies)
 - install-bin (installs binary to $BINDIR)
 - install-doc (installs manpages to $MANDIR)
 - help (prints this information)
 - dist (creates release tarball named meli-0.5.1.tar.gz in this directory)
 - deb-dist (builds debian package in the parent directory)
 - distclean (cleans distribution build artifacts)
ENVIRONMENT variables of interest:
* PREFIX = /usr/local
* MELI_FEATURES = unset
* BINDIR = /usr/local/bin
* MANDIR = /usr/local/share/man
* MANPATH = unset
* output of manpath(1) = /home/epilys/.local/share/man:/usr/share/man:/usr/local/man:/usr/local/share/man
* NO_MAN unset
* NO_COLOR unset

binaries and debian package

available in crates.io

https://crates.io/crates/meli

What’s next

async JMAP
NNTP, RSS backends
mail storage sync/conversion. The pieces are there, and must be assembled into a functionality.
Efficient IMAP offline caching. Right now all mail is fetched everytime you launch the client, which obviously is not desirable. There’s work being done on QRESYNC, CONDSTORE, and lazy fetch of messages when viewing a mailbox.
More GPG support. Signatures can be verified but that’s all that exists now. Encryption will be implemented along with WKD support.
Custom action macros, for example pipe attachments to a script which is already possible with commands.

Notes

there is managesieve REPL binary in the repository. I haven’t had the time to put managesieve functionality in the TUI yet.
I haven’t explored yet how to expose the API to users properly. I am thinking of using something like rhai along with general MessagePack IPC.
There is no API for UI widgets/graphics yet. I’m not sure how to design this right now.
There’s an old implementation demo for a mail backend in python using NNTP. It’s probably not working anymore.
There’s an old implementation demo for viewing images in ANSI in python using https://github.com/stefanhaustein/TerminalImageViewer. It might not work anymore.

Follow me on mastodon for updates. Join #meli on Freenode or with matrix’s IRC bridge. I am interested in how you’re using meli and fixing any problems you will probably encounter.

v0.6.0 alpha release