[SOLVED] [Mutt] is it impossible to use GVim as editor?

Michael Uplawski · 04-03-2018, 04:01 AM

Good morning, again.

My editor for the Mutt mail-client is set to vim:

Code:

set editor="vim '+set spell spelllang=fr,en'"

I appear to be unable to replace vim by GVim. Not that it mattered much, but there appears to be no logical explanation: No matter how I set the editor to GVim and even though a mail can be composed in GVim by hitting 'm' from Mutt, both programs do not understand each other and no mail is created.

Currently, a statement like “It is not you, this is just impossible” could suffice to have me mark this as solved...

But I doubt it.

MensaWater · 04-03-2018, 07:48 AM

mutt is a CLI based mail tool. vim is a CLI editor that would work with mutt. Gvim is a GUI version of vim. While you can launch Gvim and use it to read text files there would be no reason to have mutt itself launch a GUI editor. The session you start mutt in is CLI so it wouldn't know you meant to do a GUI.

If you want a GUI mail tool use something like Evolution and launch it from your GUI window.

P.S. I did a search for graphic mutt and found a thread where they basically lambasted the person who asked. My favorite response the question, is there a grahic editor for mutt, was "Yes. Its called Netscape".

pan64 · 04-03-2018, 08:03 AM

gvim will return immediately, mutt will not wait until you close the editor. You might want to try the -f flag:
set editor="vim -f -g '+set spell spelllang=fr,en'"

Michael Uplawski · 04-03-2018, 11:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pan64

You might want to try the -f flag:

... I might.

Quote:

-f Foreground. For the GUI version, Vim will not fork and detach from the shell it was started in. On the Amiga, Vim is not
restarted to open a new window. This option should be used when Vim is executed by a program that will wait for the edit ses‐
sion to finish (e.g. mail). On the Amiga the ":sh" and ":!" commands will not work