Vmail

Vmail is a Vim interface to Gmail.

Why Vmail? Because some people are 1000 times more productive and happy in Vim than in any web browser or GUI program.

Prerequisites

To install Ruby 1.9.2, I recommend using the RVM Version Manager.

The current version of Vmail assumes a Unix environment.

Your Gmail account should be IMAP-enabled.

If you want to use elinks to display HTML parts, here are instructions.

Installation

gem install vmail

Test your installation by typing vmail -h. You should see Vmail's help.

On some systems you may run into a PATH issue, where the system can't find the vmail command after installation. Please report this if you encounter this problem, and mention what system you're using. You might want to try

sudo gem install vmail

to see if that puts vmail on your PATH. (If you're using rbenv, running rbenv rehash should do the trick.)

Vmail is evolving rapidly. To update to the latest version, simply run the installation command again.

gem install vmail

If you ever want to uninstall Vmail from your system, just execute this command:

gem uninstall vmail

... and all traces of Vmail will removed, except the few files it creates during execution (see below).

Configuration file

To run Vmail, create a yaml file called .vmailrc and save it either in ~/.vmail/default/ or in your home directory. If you do the latter, Vmail will move the file to ~/.vmail/default/ when it starts up.

The .vmailrc file should look something like this. Substitute your own values.

username: software@danielchoi.com
password: password
name: Daniel Choi
signature: |
  -- 
  Sent from Vmail. http://danielchoi.com/software/vmail.html

This file should be formatted in YAML syntax. If you have any unsual characters in a string value, try putting quotes around that value.

You can omit the password key-value pair if you'd rather not have the password saved in the file. In that case, you'll prompted for the password each time you start Vmail.

You can also add an always_cc: key-value pair. This will pre-insert whatever email address you specify in the cc: line of any email you start composing in Vmail. You can also add an always_bcc: option that works in the same way.

If you want to use a shell script to print the signature, use the signature_script: option instead; e.g.,

username: software@danielchoi.com
password: password
name: Daniel Choi
signature_script: /home/choi/bin/vmail_signature.sh

You can add a vim_opts: key-value pair to run arbitrary Vim commands when Vmail starts up. For example, to turn on the cursorline, add this to .vmailrc:

vim_opts: set cursorline

If you want to configure Vmail with multiple Gmail accounts, here's how.

If you are behind a firewall that blocks IMAP, see these additional configuration options that you can use.

Another optional parameter is date_format, which controls the appearance of the dates in the message list. Here you can use a strptime-compatible date format string. Make sure you enclose these in quotes:

date_format: '%b %d %I:%M%P'
date_format_previous_years: '%b %d %Y'

Contacts autocompletion

Vmail uses Vim autocompletion to help you auto-complete email addresses. To use this feature, generate a vmail-contacts.txt file. This is a simple list of your email contacts. Invoking Vmail with the -g option generates this file for you by collecting all the recipients and cc's from your last 500 sent emails. You can adjust this number by using -g with a number argument.

After Vmail generates this file for you, you can edit it however and whenever you want, as long as there is one address per line.

Starting Vmail

Once you've created the configuration file and (optionally) the contacts file, you can start Vmail with

vmail

This opens the Vmail/Vim interface and shows you the last 100 messages in your Gmail inbox.

You can have Vmail show messages from any other mailbox (a.k.a. label) on startup by passing in the mailbox name as an argument:

vmail starred

You can also pass in search parameters after specifying the mailbox:

vmail important from barackobama@whitehouse.gov

Viewing messages

The first screen Vmail shows you is a list of messages. You can view a message by moving the cursor line to it and pressing ENTER. This will split the screen and show the message content in the bottom pane. Pressing ENTER will also move the cursor to the message window. If you want to look at a message but keep the cursor in the list window, type l (as in look) instead of ENTER.

To full-screen the message, press SPACE when the cursor is in the message window. You can also use the standard Vim key sequence C-w C-o. To go back to the split view, press SPACE or ENTER. (ENTER moves the cursor to the list window.)

You can full-screen the list window by pressing SPACE while the cursor is in it. You can also use the standard Vim key sequence C-w C-o. To go back to the split view, press SPACE or ENTER. (ENTER opens a message and moves the cursor to the message window.)

In the split view, you can jump between the two panes by just pressing ENTER from either window. You can also use the standard Vim key sequence C-w C-w.

You can use <C-j> or ,j from either split window to show the next message. You can use <C-k> or ,k to show the previous message.

Vmail loads a certain number messages at a time, starting with the most recent. If there are more messages that Vmail hasn't loaded, you'll see a line at the bottom of the list that looks something like this:

> Load 100 more messages. 156 remaining.

Put the cursor on this line and press ENTER to load more of these messages.

Tip: To go straight to the bottom line and load more messages, type G<ENTER>.

Unread messages are marked with a + symbol.

To view the raw RFC822 version of a message, type ,R while viewing the message.

Starring, deleting, archiving, marking spam, marking read/unread

To star a message, put the cursor on it and type ,*. (Note that the comma before the * is part of the key sequence.) Starring a message copies it to the starred mailbox. Starred messages are marked with a * symbol and color-highlighted.

To delete a message, put the cursor on it and type ,#. Deleting a message puts it in the trash mailbox. Deleting a message from the trash mailbox deletes it permanently.

To archive a message, put the cursor on it and type ,e. Archiving a message moves it to the all mailbox.

To mark a message spam, put the cursor on it and type ,!. This moves the message to to the spam mailbox.

To mark a message as unread, put the cursor on it and type U.

To mark a message as read, put the curson on it and type I.

You can use visual selections in the message list when you star, delete, mark as spam, mark as read, mark as unread or archive. Use v to start marking a range of lines (the horizontal position of the cursor doesn't matter). Then type any of the above commands to perform an action on all the messages you selected.

To save you keystrokes, Vmail provides alternative key mappings for ,*, ,#, and ,!:

These save you from having to press the SHIFT key in each case.

Checking for new messages, INBOX polling

To check for new messages in the current mailbox, press u in normal mode if you're in the message list window or ,u if you are in the message window. Watch the status line.

If you have notify-send (Linux) or growlnotify (OS X) installed on your system, Vmail can also poll your INBOX every 30 seconds for new messages. If it detects a new message, it will alert you through your notification program. NOTE: This is an alert mechanism only; you will still have to manually check for new messages in the Vmail interface to force the new messages to display.

To enable automatic inbox polling put the line polling: true in your .vmailrc.

Switching mailboxes, moving messages, copying messages to another mailbox

To switch mailboxes, type ,m. You'll see an autocomplete window appear at the top. The standard Vim autocomplete keystrokes apply:

Tip: start typing the first 1-3 characters of the mailbox name, then press C-n, C-u or C-p until you highlight the right match, and finally press ENTER to select.

To move a message to another mailbox, put the cursor on the message in the message list, and type ,b. You'll be prompted to select the target mailbox.

To copy a message to another mailbox, put the cursor on the message in the message list, and type ,B. You'll be prompted to select the target mailbox.

If you type in the name of a target mailbox that doesn't exist yet, Vmail will create it for you before performing a move or copy.

Composing messages

To start writing a new a email message, type ,c. That's a comma followed by the character 'c'.

To reply to a message, type ,r.

To reply-all to a message, type ,a.

To forward a message, type ,f.

All these commands open a message composition window. At the top, you will see mail headers like this:

from: Daniel Choi <software@danielchoi.com>
to:
subject:

The from: field will be pre-filled from your .vmailrc configuration. You're responsible for filling in the to: and the subject: fields. You can add a cc: and bcc: field if you want.

When you fill in the recipient addresses, you can use Vim autocompletion if you generated a vmail-contacts.txt file. Start typing a name or email address, then press C-x C-u to invoke autocompletion. Select a matching email address with C-n, C-p, or C-u and then press SPACE or any other character (such as a ,) to continue typing.

Make sure your email addresses are separated by commas and that they all ultimately appear on the same, unbroken line for each field. Rejoin the lines if breaks get inserted.

After you fill in the headers, write your message. Make sure there is a blank line between the headers and the body of your message.

When you're done writing, send the message by typing ,vs in normal mode.

While you're composing a message in the composition window, you can save a draft to a local file with the standard Vim :w command:

:w my_draft_filename.txt

Make sure you append *.txt to the filename, or else Vmail won't recognize it as a potential email when you reload it.

Make sure you don't use :wq unless you mean to quit Vmail immediately. After you save the draft to a file, you can go back to the message list by typing ,q in normal mode.

To resume writing the draft later, just type :e my_draft_filename.txt to load the draft email into a buffer. (Use :e! if you're already in the message composition window. You can also use :sp if you want to open the draft email file in a split window, etc.) Resume editing. Send by typing ,vs.

At any point, you can quit the composition window by typing ,q in normal mode.

You can also use vmailsend from the command line to send a message that you've composed with correct headers and saved to a file, like so:

vmailsend < my_message.txt

vmailsend uses your .vmailrc configuration and assumes that you saved your password in it.

Attachments

The current version of Vmail can handle attachments to a certain extent.

When you're viewing a message with attachments, you'll see something like this at the top of the message window:

<4vlj45.29529.zoe2@instantwatcher.com> 1kb Seen
- image/png; name=canada.png
- image/gif; name=arrow_right.gif
---------------------------------------
from: Daniel Choi <software@danielchoi.com>
date: Sun, Dec 12 08:39 AM -05:00 2010
to: Daniel Choi <software@danielchoi.com>
subject: attachment test

Hi Dan, please see attached

To download these attachments to a local directory, type ,A. You'll be prompted for a directory path. Then Vmail will save all the attachments in the message to this directory, creating the directory if necessary.

To send attachments, add something like this to your new message in the message composition window:

from: Daniel Choi <software@danielchoi.com>
to: barackobama@whitehouse.gov
subject: look at this!

attach: images/middle-east-map.png
attach: images/policypaper.pdf
attach: docs/

I think you'll find this stuff interesting.

The items following the attach: directives are paths (either relative to the current directory or absolute) to the files you want to attach to your message. Note that you can also specify a directory, in which case Vmail attaches every file it finds in that directory. Make sure that you

You don't have to type the attach: directives manually. You can use the command :VMAttach [filename-or-path] to insert an attach: directive with the help of file auto-completion.

One thing Vmail doesn't do yet is let you forward a message with all its attachments intact. This feature will be implemented in the near future.

Printing messages to a file

,vp from the message list prints (appends) the text content of all the selected messages to a file.

Opening hyperlinks and HTML parts in your web browser

When you're reading a message, ,o opens the first hyperlink in the email message on or after the cursor in your web browser. ,O opens all the hyperlinks in the message (probably in multiple browser tabs, depending on how you set up your web browser). If you first select a range of text with hyperlinks in it, both ,o and ,O will open all the hyperlinks in those selected lines in your browser.

When you're reading a message with an html mail part, ,h saves that part to a local file (part.html) and opens it in your web browser.

By default, the Vmail uses the command open to launch your web browser. In OS X, this opens URLs and HTML files in the default web browser. You can change the browser Vmail invokes by setting the VMAIL_BROWSER environmental variable before you start Vmail, e.g.:

export VMAIL_BROWSER='elinks'

Also, if your Vim has netrw (:help netrw), you can open a hyperlink directly in same Vim window by putting the cursor at the beginning of a hyperlink and typing gf, or C-w f if you want to open the webpage in a split window.

Search queries

Vmail can generate a message list by performing an IMAP search on the current mailbox. From the message list window, type ,s. This will prompt you for a search query. The search query should be a valid IMAP search query.

Here are some example search queries.

# the default 
all  

# all messages from thematrix.com domain
from thematrix.com  

# all messages from this person
from barackobama@whitehouse.gov  

# you can also omit the host part of the email address
from barackobama

# you can also search by the full name, first name, or last name associated
# with an email; use double quotes to enclose multiple words 
cc "David Fisher"

# subject field search; use double quotes to enclose multiple words
subject "unix philosophy"  

# message body search; use double quotes to enclose multiple words
body "unix philosophy"  

# example of date range and multiple conditions
before 30-nov-2010 since 1-nov-2010 from prx.org  

# search for all messages since 1-nov-2010 larger than 10k
# (note that queries with size conditions seem to take longer to return)
since 1-nov-2010 larger 10000

Tip: When you're entering your search query, <C-u> clears the query line.

Power-Tip: When you're at the search query prompt, C-p and C-n let you navigate the search query history. <C-f> opens a mini-editor that contains the current query plus a history of previous Vmail search queries. You can edit any line in this mini-editor and press ENTER to perform the query on that line.

Command-line mode and batch processing

Note: These features have been deprecated and will be migrated to a separate tool.

Getting help

Typing ,? will open this webpage in a browser.

Using Vmail with MacVim or gvim

To use MacVim as your Vmail Vim engine, run export VMAIL_VIM=mvim or export VMAIL_VIM=gvim before starting Vmail. Or put this command in your ~/.bash_profile.

Note that when Vmail uses MacVim or gvim, the terminal window in which you invoke Vmail will show Vmail's logging output while MacVim is running. To quit Vmail, first quit the MacVim window running Vmail, and then press CTRL-c in the original terminal window to stop the Vmail process.

Alternate VMAIL_HOME working directories

Vmail generates a directory called ~/.vmail/defaults and uses this as the default VMAIL_HOME. Vmail places these files in it:

Finally, Vmail logs output to a vmail.log file which it creates in the current directory. You can tail this file in a separate terminal window to see what's going on behind the scenes as you use Vmail.

You can use up other working directories by setting the VMAIL_HOME environment variable before or when you launch Vmail. Make sure you place a .vmailrc configuration in that directory.

Is my Gmail password secure?

In short, yes. Vmail uses TLS (Transport Layer Security) to perform IMAP and SMTP authentication. So Vmail transmits your password securely over the network.

You can also be sure that the Vmail code doesn't do anything nefarious with your Gmail password because Vmail is open source. Anyone can inspect the source code of the copy of Vmail that runs on your computer and inspect the latest Vmail code at the github repository and at rubygems.org (where the vmail gem is downloaded from).

Quitting Vmail

Redrawing the screen

If you run commands in very fast succession, the screen may get a little messed up. In that case, just force a redraw of the Vim screen with C-l.

Customizing colors

By default, Vmail highlights starred messages in bold green against a black background. You can customize this setting by adding a line to your ~/.vimrc (not .vmailrc) file like so:

let g:vmail_flagged_color = "ctermfg=yellow ctermbg=black cterm=bold"

Type :help highlight-args in Vim for more details.

Bug reports, feature requests, user community

Please file bug reports and feature requests in the Vmail github issue tracker.

You can also vote up existing feature requests on the issue tracker.

Vmail is very young and in beta, so there are bound to be bugs and issues. But in a few weeks, with your help, Vmail will become stable.

You can also join and comment in the vmail-users Google Group.

If you have any tips or troubleshooting advice you want to share with other Vmail users, please add them to the vmail wiki.

Contributors

How to contact the main developer

You can email me at software@danielchoi.com.

current version

  • 2.8.6

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