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<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html lang=en>
<head>
<title>(Sender) Profiles with Mutt</title>
<link rev="made" href="mailto:martti.rahkila@iki.fi">
<meta name="Location" content="http://www.iki.fi/martti.rahkila/mutt/profiles.html">
<meta name="Author" content="Martti Rahkila">
<meta name="Date" content="2000-05-15" scheme="yyyy-mm-dd">
<meta name="Keywords" content="mutt, muttrc, profiles">
<meta name="Description" content="Creating and using (sender) profiles with Mutt email client">
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<p>
<div align="center">
<font face="Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">
<h1>(Sender) Profiles with Mutt</h1>
</div>
<p>
This document discusses the idea of grouping parameters into profiles and using
them with the <a href="http://www.mutt.org">Mutt</a> email client.
<h2>What is a profile?</h2>
<p>
The <b>profile</b> concept is a form of customizing software to meet the user's
preferences. Simply, a profile is a group of parameters or user settings.
<p>
Even though this document focuses on sender profiles, profiles
in general are not restricted to sending email or even the Mutt email client.
As a matter of fact the profile concept can be applied to customizing any desired
desired property/ies provided that the particular software includes a mechanism
for profiles to be used.
<p>
An example of the profile concept is the Netscape WWW-browser and its "User Profiles"
that allow several users to use the same browser software in a same computer.
However, whereas Netscape's User Profiles are predefined, profiles with Mutt
are not restricted in any way. In fact, a profile with Mutt is only a way to
think of groups of parameters in muttrc, not a builtin feature or mechanism.
Profile examples could be different color-schemes or sender profiles, described
next.
<h2>What is a sender profile?</h2>
<p>
A sender profile is a collection of sender-oriented parameters. A simple example would
be the address to send replies to or perhaps the signature containing your contact information etc.
An advanced sender profile could contain the PGP signing key to be used when sending emails,
the filename for writing a copy of the sent message, a specialized header to be used for
automatically filtering incoming email or even the address where the message is sent from.
<p>
So what. Are they any useful for me? you may ask.
The sender profiles are useful for anyone who needs or wants to send email
with different sender charateristics. If you have multiple jobs or positions like
IT administrator, webmaster etc. the benefits are obvious. But sender profiles
can be useful for others too: For instance, do you think it is really necessary
to have a company signature in an email addressed to your girlfriend ;-)
<h2>Creating a profile</h2>
<p>
First of all, you need to have Mutt working and configured properly.
If you are using PGP, make sure it is working as well.
<p>
Secondly, you need to define which parameters you want to include in
your profile. Consult the Mutt <a href="http://www.mutt.org/doc/manual/">manual</a>
if/when needed... Save these settings in a separate file and remove/
comment out from the muttrc file. (Note! the status_format was wrapped
for convenience. It's all one big line)
<p>
A simple <a href="http://www.acoustics.hut.fi/~mara/mutt/profile.default">example</a>:
<table bgcolor="#ccccff">
<tr>
<td><pre>
# Mutt sender profile: default
# Signature file
set signature='~/.signature'
# Customized headers
unmy_hdr * # remove all extra headers first.
my_hdr From: Your Name <your.name@some.domain>
my_hdr Reply-To: Your Name <your.name@some.domain>
# Include the profile name in the status line
set status_format="-%r-Mutt: %f [Msgs:%?M?%M/?%m%?n? New:%n?%?o? Old:%o?%?d? Del:%d?%?F?
Flag:%F?%?t? Tag:%t?%?p? Post:%p?%?b? Inc:%b? %?l? %l?]---(%s/%S)-default-%>-(%P)---"
</pre>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>
<a href="http://www.acoustics.hut.fi/~mara/mutt/profile.personal">Another profile</a> to be used together with the previous one:
<table bgcolor="#ccccff">
<tr>
<td><pre>
# Mutt sender profile: personal
# Signature file
set signature='~/.signature-personal'
# Customized headers
unmy_hdr * # remove all extra headers first.
my_hdr From: Your Name <your.name@some.other.domain>
my_hdr Reply-To: Your Name <your.name@some.other.domain>
# Include the profile name in the status line
set status_format="-%r-Mutt: %f [Msgs:%?M?%M/?%m%?n? New:%n?%?o? Old:%o?%?d? Del:%d?%?F?
Flag:%F?%?t? Tag:%t?%?p? Post:%p?%?b? Inc:%b? %?l? %l?]---(%s/%S)-personal-%>-(%P)---"
</pre>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>
A more <a href="http://www.acoustics.hut.fi/~mara/mutt/profile.complex">complex example</a>:
<table bgcolor="#ccccff">
<tr>
<td><pre>
# Mutt sender profile: default
# From, Reply-To, Fcc, Pgp sign-key, attribution, signature etc.
#
# The following definitions are used by muttprofile
# NAME: name for your profile
# DESC: description for you profile, optional
set locale="" # system default locale ("C")
set signature='~/.signature' # signature file
set indent_string="> " # Quoting mails with this string.
set attribution='On %{%a, %d %b %Y}, %n wrote:\n'
set post_indent_string="" # Footer (after quotes, before signature).
set status_format="-%r-Mutt: %f [Msgs:%?M?%M/?%m%?n? New:%n?%?o? Old:%o?%?d? Del:%d?%?F?
Flag:%F?%?t? Tag:%t?%?p? Post:%p?%?b? Inc:%b? %?l? %l?]---(%s/%S)-default-%>-(%P)---"
# Pretty Good Privacy (PGP):
set pgp_sign_as="0x00000000" # UserID/KeyID for signing
# Customized headers
unmy_hdr * # remove all extra headers first.
my_hdr From: Your Name <your.name@some.domain>
my_hdr Reply-To: Your Name <your.name@some.domain>
#my_hdr Bcc: username@domain.com
#my_hdr Organization: org
set nopgp_autoencrypt # Default (no enc)
set nopgp_autosign # Default (sign)
fcc-hook . "=sent" # the file to copy sent messages
</pre>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<h3>Important!</h3>
<p>
All sender profiles should contain the same parameters or commands, even if their
values would be the same! This is to avoid problems when switching between
profiles. If you load a profile, and after that, another one with only partially
same parameters, the values for the parameters that were not included in the new
profile, would not be affected. For instance in the examples above, the unmy_hdr
command is given to ensure customized headers are reseted for the new profile.
BTW: the same can be true for send-hooks as well.
<p>
Once you are ready, save the profiles in separate files. The filename doesn't
matter, but a logical place would be under the mutt directory (~/.mutt).
<h2>Using profiles</h2>
<p>
In order to use your new profiles, you need to load one right before you
start a new message. This can be done easily with some Mutt macros.
<h3>Macros</h3>
<p>
The macro definitions go to your muttrc file. First you need to load
a default profile.
<table bgcolor="#ccccff">
<tr>
<td><pre>
# default
source ~/.mutt/profile.default
# macros to invoke a profile
macro index <F10> ":source ~/.mutt/profile.default\n" "Load default profile"
macro index <F11> ":source ~/.mutt/profile.personal\n" "Load profile: personal"
</pre>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>
These settings will allow you to load the default profile by pressing <F10>-key
and personal profile with <F11>. If you set the status_format parameter in the
profile, you can get the name of the active profile in the status line.
<p>
You can also make macros like this:
<table bgcolor="#ccccff">
<tr>
<td><pre>
macro index <F10> ":source ~/.mutt/profile.default\nm" "New message with default profile"
macro index <F11> ":source ~/.mutt/profile.default\n^fm" "New message with default profile (forget-passphrase)"
</pre>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>
These settings allow you to load a profile, (forget PGP passphrase) and start a new message all in one key.
<h3>Using muttprofile</h3>
<p>
Muttprofile is a small utility to help choosing the profile. Once set up,
you can assing only one macro to call muttprofile, load the chosen profile
and start a new message.
<table bgcolor="#ccccff">
<tr>
<td><pre>
# default
source ~/.mutt/profile.default
# macro to invoke muttprofile, load the chosen profile and start a new message
macro index <F10> "!muttprofile\n:source ~/.mutt/profile.active\nm" "New message with profile"
</pre>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
Please see the <a href="muttprofile.html">muttprofile</a> page for more examples, details
of operation and download.
<h3>Profiles and send-hooks</h3>
<p>
Send-hooks are one of the very powerful features of Mutt. With send-hooks
you can make settings that will be applied when a message is sent to
certain address/es.
<p>
Sender profiles can also be used with send-hooks. Adding something like this
in your muttrc makes sure the profile "personal" is loaded every time
you are sending a message to your girlfriend.
<table bgcolor="#ccccff">
<tr>
<td><pre>
send-hook (my.girlfriend@some.domain)$ \
"source ~/.mutt/profile.personal\n"
</pre>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>
This is very handy with mailing lists:
<table bgcolor="#ccccff">
<tr>
<td><pre>
# mutt-users mailing list
send-hook (mutt-users)$ \
"source ~/.mutt/profile.mutt\n"
</pre>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<h3>PGP passphrase</h3>
<p>
Mutt has a feature that it remembers the passphrase for the PGP signing
key for a certain period of time (pgp_timeout) after it has been used once. If you load
another profile with another signing key, you will get a "bad passphrase"
error when trying to send a message. In order to avoid that, you need
to "forget" the passphrase before sending a message. The easiest way to
do this is by first pressing "^f" (defaul keybinding for the mutt command
forget-passphrase) and then trying again.
<p>
At least when writing this, there is no (easy) way to automatically determine
when it would be necessary to forget the passphrase. However, I have noticed
that in practice this is not such a big problem. Pressing "^f" and trying
again works really fine. Note also that automatic passphrase forgetting is
not necessarily a blessing: if you frequently switch between profiles,
you might not want to type passphrase every time you send a signed message.
<h2>Notes</h2>
<p>
The settings described in this document, have been tested only with
Mutt versions 1.0i, 1.1.11i and 1.2i on Linux 2.2.x (RedHat 6.x).
<h2>Acknowledgments</h2>
<p>
The people in the mutt-users mailing list gave me valuable help
with the profiles and mutt configuration.
Special thanks to Charles Curley and Matti Airas for encouragement.
<p>
<a href="http://www.acoustics.hut.fi/~mara/mutt/index.html">Martti Rahkila's Mutt Resources</a>
<hr>
URL: http://www.iki.fi/martti.rahkila/mutt/profiles.html<br>
Last update: 2000-05-15<br>
Author: Martti Rahkila <br>
</body>
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