Mutt Email Client – How to Open HTML Attachments Externally

browserhtmllynxmutt

I recently managed to set up my mailcap so that mutt can show HTML e-mails in the message window:

# ~/.mailcap
text/html; lynx -dump '%s' | more; nametemplate=%s.html; copiousoutput;

which is automated by:

# ~/.muttrc
auto_view text/html

Although I think lynx does a decent job on converting the HTML to text, sometimes this doesn't cut it and I would like to be able to open the HTML attachment in my web browser (luakit).

Is there a way to transparently do this? A good workflow for me would look like:

  1. open mail (lynx converts it)
  2. see that it is too complicated for lynx
  3. press "v"
  4. navigate to HTML attachment
  5. press "enter" to open the mail in luakit.

Best Answer

You can do this with mutt's mime support.

In addition, you can use this with Autoview to denote two commands for viewing an attachment, one to be viewed automatically, the other to be viewed interactively from the attachment menu.

Essentially, you include two options in your mailcap file1.

text/html; luakit '%s' &; test=test -n "$DISPLAY"; needsterminal;
text/html; lynx -dump %s; nametemplate=%s.html; copiousoutput;

The first entry tests that Xis running, and if it is, it hands the file to luakit. The default, however, is determined by the copiousoutput tag, so it will be rendered in mutt by lynx.

You will need these options in your .muttrc:

auto_view text/html                                   # view html automatically
alternative_order text/plain text/enriched text/html  # save html for last

If you want to look at it in your browser, it is just a matter of hitting v to view the attached HTML and then m to send it to mailcap.

For convenience, I bind Enter to that function in muttrc:

bind attach <return>    view-mailcap


1. Note, I don't use lynx or luakit, so these options are indicative only.
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