`aerc`

FOSDEM 2024, Brussels

Robin Jarry

Open source and Frank Zappa enthusiast

Former sound engineer

Now software engineer at Red Hat

aerc maintainer^* since 2021

^*created by Drew DeVault in 2019

How to pronounce `aerc`?

Who cares?

Drew DeVault	ARK (rhotic R)
French	ERK (hard R)
Hungarian	A-ER-TS (rolled R)

Got time to waste? Play around with this simulator.

What is `aerc`?

An email client that runs in your terminal

IMAP, JMAP, SMTP, Maildir, Notmuch, mbox

Multiple tabs and/or accounts

VIM-style commands and key bindings

Compose in $EDITOR, view emails in $PAGER

Cool features

Account configuration wizard

Email part/attachment filters

Control socket for external scripting

Embedded virtual terminal

Integrated patch management

Demo

Filters

User defined commands per MIME type

Colorize emails and patches

Reformat text, wrap long lines, ...

Decode non-plaintext parts

Message part > filter | pager > virtual terminal

Filters examples

# ~/.config/aerc/aerc.conf

[viewer]
pager = less -Rc -+S --wordwrap

[filters]
# hard wrap at 90 columns (except patches) and colorize
text/plain = wrap -w 90 | colorize
# convert html to human readable text and colorize
text/html = w3m -I UTF-8 -T text/html -cols 90 | colorize
# render images as ASCII art
image/* = catimg -w$(tput cols) -

aerc ships with a few custom filters: colorize, wrap, calendar

`0.17` is out

Come check it out!

~$ git clone https://git.sr.ht/~rjarry/aerc
~$ gmake -C aerc install -j PREFIX=~/.local
~$ aerc -v
aerc 0.17.0 +notmuch-5.6.0 (go1.21.6 amd64 linux 2024-02-01)

Full release notes: https://git.sr.ht/~rjarry/aerc/refs/0.17.0

Thank You

Questions?

#aerc on irc.libera.chat

Source code, mailing lists, bug tracker, wiki: https://aerc-mail.org

aerc