Neomutt

Markdown to HTML rendering

To write more normie-friendly emails, non-plain-text emails are probably better. For this, a conversion from Markdown to HTML with Mathjax support seems best. It supports all the bells and whistles of markdown (images, links, code, italics, bold) as well as mathemtical formulas in LaTex notation using Mathjax.

Configuration

The conversion is done via pandoc using templates. Ensure pandoc is installed. (which pandoc || sudo pacman -S pandoc)

Add to your muttrc (either in ~/.mutt/muttrc or ~/.config/mutt/muttrc. From now on assuming ~/.config/mutt as config folder)

macro compose m \
"<enter-command>set pipe_decode<enter>\
<pipe-message>pandoc -f gfm -t plain -o /tmp/msg.txt<enter>\
<pipe-message>pandoc -s --self-contained -o /tmp/msg.html --resource-path ~/.config/mutt/templates/ --template email<enter>\
<enter-command>unset pipe_decode<enter>\
<attach-file>/tmp/msg.txt<enter>\
<attach-file>/tmp/msg.html<enter>\
<tag-entry><previous-entry><tag-entry><group-alternatives>" \
"Convert markdown to HTML5 and plaintext alternative content types"

Create a folder called templates: mkdir -p ~/.config/mutt/templates and create a file called email.html in this folder with the following content:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="$lang$" xml:lang="$lang$"$if(dir)$ dir="$dir$"$endif$>
<head>
  <meta charset="utf-8" />
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes" />
  <script src="https://polyfill.io/v3/polyfill.min.js?features=es6"></script>
  <script type="text/javascript" id="MathJax-script" async
    src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/mathjax@3/es5/tex-chtml.js">
  </script>
  <style>
    $styles.html()$
  </style>
$for(css)$
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="$css$" />
$endfor$
  <!--[if lt IE 9]>
    <script src="//cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/html5shiv/3.7.3/html5shiv-printshiv.min.js"></script>
  <![endif]-->
$for(header-includes)$
  $header-includes$
$endfor$
</head>
<body>
  $body$
  $for(include-after)$
  $include-after$
  $endfor$
</body>
</html>

Usage

To use this, write your email as usual and afterwards, press m on the created file in neomutt. This will generate a combined file for plaintext fallback in case of unsupported HTML rendering.

For now, also delete the still present plaintext file with D. Your email should now be ready to be sent.

For writing formulas, just use latex syntax in the normal $ delimiters. Be careful on inline formulas, here a whitespace between the leading $ and the formula breaks the rendering!

File Size

Since Mathjax is creating a binary for the rendering of the math syntax which is embedded in the html, the file sizes are usually around 1 MB. This is not necessary when no LaTeX syntax is used. Create a second macro for which you use a different template, that excludes the mathjax script. This way you can create smaller emails with pure markdown syntax and when necessary can send mathematical formulas, resulting in larger mails.

For this add the following to the muttrc:

macro compose l \
"<enter-command>set pipe_decode<enter>\
<pipe-message>pandoc -f gfm -t plain -o /tmp/msg.txt<enter>\
<pipe-message>pandoc -s --self-contained -o /tmp/msg.html --resource-path ~/.config/mutt/templates/ --template email_pure<enter>\
<enter-command>unset pipe_decode<enter>\
<attach-file>/tmp/msg.txt<enter>\
<attach-file>/tmp/msg.html<enter>\
<tag-entry><previous-entry><tag-entry><group-alternatives>" \
"Convert markdown to HTML5 and plaintext alternative content types"

Further create a new file called email_pure.html in mutt/templates with the following content:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="$lang$" xml:lang="$lang$"$if(dir)$ dir="$dir$"$endif$>
<head>
  <meta charset="utf-8" />
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes" />
  <style>
    $styles.html()$
  </style>
$for(css)$
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="$css$" />
$endfor$
  <!--[if lt IE 9]>
    <script src="//cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/html5shiv/3.7.3/html5shiv-printshiv.min.js"></script>
  <![endif]-->
$for(header-includes)$
  $header-includes$
$endfor$
</head>
<body>
  $body$
  $for(include-after)$
  $include-after$
  $endfor$
</body>
</html>

Usage with abook

Add the following to the muttrc. The first line set the default query to use abook, while the second line allows us to quickly add the sender of a mail that we currently read to the adress book using A.

set query_command= "abook --mutt-query '%s'"
macro index,pager  A "<pipe-message>abook --add-email-quiet<return>" "Add this sender to Abook"
bind editor        <Tab> complete-query

To use abook for composing messages, we can just start a new mail, using m. Now press Ctrl + t. This pulls up a list of abook, which we now can navigate using the arrow keys. If you have found the recipient of choice, press enter. Sending a mail to more recipients, you can tag them using t in that list. Having selected all, press ;m to save them and press enter.

You can also search the query from abook. Having pressed Ctrl+t, press / to search.

Signature and GPG

To sign and/or encrypt your mails via GPG, set the following in the muttrc:

set crypt_use_gpgme=yes
set postpone_encrypt = yes
set pgp_self_encrypt = yes
set crypt_use_pka = no
set crypt_autosign = no
set crypt_autoencrypt = no
set crypt_autopgp = yes
set pgp_sign_as=0x12345678

The last line is the key id of the key you want to use for signing - which can be extracted from gpg --keyid-format 0xlong -K --fingerprint.

To send an encrypted message, import the public key of the recipient using gpg --import <keyfile> or gpg --auto-key-locate keyserver --locate-keys user@example.net To bring up the pgp menu in mutt, press p before sending the mail. Then select encryption, and select the recipient from the list.

TODO: delete plaintext attachment after HTML creation TODO: remove tmp files after sending

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