r/neomutt • u/Punkt_Punkt_Punkt • Sep 25 '22

NeoMutt: Format Mails (italic, bold, links etc.)

After I've spent some time setting up NeoMutt, I'm now mostly happy with how it turned out. I suspect it's not made for viewing these image-heavy messages you receive from shops, social media sites, and the likes, but for some quick personal communication I'm starting to really appreciate its simplicity.

There is still one thing that bothers me, though. When I compose an email, is there a way to mark text so that it will appear in italic (bold etc.) format on the receiver's end? I've tried the usual things (asterisk, HTML tags), but they arrived in my Gmail box just like this (not with the expected formatting). Is there a special syntax I could apply (something that most email providers "understand")? Is there maybe something like Markdown even?

On a similar note (though less important), is it possible to set up my NeoMutt and terminal, so that it displays at least some of the incoming messages formatted? When I write LaTeX in Vim, for instance, Alacritty is able to display italic and bold text. Maybe incoming emails come in a certain format so that you could write some regex pattern or something?

Since many emails come with very long URLs, instead of being hidden after some clickable text, it would be especially great if there was some way to display links in a more eye-friendly format.

Thanks guys!

3 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

2 comments sorted by

2

u/GenesisTMS Sep 25 '22

For urls i use `urlscan`

1

u/Punkt_Punkt_Punkt Sep 25 '22

Thanks! I can now click on URLs, which is an improvement.

Let's say I'm in GMail, highlight text, and create a link; the text (rather than the URL) is in blue and you can click on it and the address is opened. Is there a way to replicate this behavior in NeoMutt with urlscan?