WanderLust

Wanderlust is a mail and news reader for Emacs. It was originally developed by Yuuichi Teranishi.

Features

Wanderlust has very good IMAP support; it leaves messages on the server & caches them. It integrates with BBDB, supports MIME, and can integrate with Mailcrypt. MIME and PGP/MIME is handled via Semi.

Installing Wanderlust

WanderLust is installable via MELPA or el-get. Note that for MELPA, Wanderlust is only available via MELPA, it is not available via the stable branch. E.g, use something like:

(require 'package)

(add-to-list 'package-archives '("melpa" . "https://melpa.org/packages/"))

(package-initialize)		; Needed to set up load-path for packages

and then use the usual package steps for installation.

Alternatively, you may be able to find ‘wanderlust’, ‘wl’, or ‘wl-beta’ from your system’s package manager.

Basic Usage

Wanderlust has four basic buffers: Folder buffer, Summary buffer, Message buffer/view, and Draft buffer.

Wanderlust starts in folder buffer, from which you can open a summary buffer (press “q” to close), which lists a summary of all messages in chosen folder. Navigate up/down with n/p, and N/P (only unread messages). Open a message for viewing with RET, and scroll up/down with SPC/BKSPC or RET/M-RET for line-scrolling. You can jump to the message with “j” for copying text, for instance, and press “q” to go back to summary buffer. Pressing “v” hides the message buffer, and “l” toggles the list of folders (folder buffer).

Pressing a/A opens the draft buffer for answering the message at point with/without citing the message. To write a new message press “w”. You can auto complete email addresses (form ~/.addresses), with TAB in the draft buffer.

There’s tons of more stuff you can do so reading the manual is a must. (M-x info RET >> C-s Wanderlust). The manual is also available at Github.

Configuration (Quickstart)

For the new user, configuration can be confusing. This guide aims to ease that pain.

To get started, add the following line to your InitFile: 

(autoload 'wl "wl" "Wanderlust" t)

As well as your init file, wl reads ~/.folders. See .wl and .folders for more tips.

We want to tell Wanderlust where our email account is. We can do this in ~/.folders:

# The .folders file: Specify our folders and accounts.

# Connect to an IMAP server with %
%INBOX:"myname@gmail.com"/clear@imap.gmail.com:993! "INBOX"

# Or from an MH folder with +
# +~/mail/inbox

# Or from a maildir folder with .
# .~/maildir/inbox

# Or from an NNTP server with -
# -some.group@some.nntp.server

Then from inside Emacs, you can use M-x wl to start Wanderlust. If you’re connecting directly to your IMAP server, you will be asked for a password. Afterwards, if you use M-x elmo-passwd-alist-save, your password will be stored in ~/.elmo/passwd

Wanderlust doesn’t automatically display your IMAP folders. You can do so by adding %/ to your .folders file. There are also other types, as per this example:

# Display all IMAP folders in reverse order.
# Use 'M s' to sort alphabetically.
%/

# Produce a tree of shimbun feeds, which you can browse:
@/

# Show newsgroups available on your default NNTP server:
-/

Setting up with Gmail

Check that you have enabled IMAP in your Gmail account settings, then put the following in your init file OR in .wl: 

;; For non ascii-characters in folder-names
(setq elmo-imap4-use-modified-utf7 t)

;; SMTP
(setq
  wl-smtp-connection-type   'starttls         ; Use TLS
  wl-smtp-posting-port      587               ; The SMTP port
  wl-smtp-authenticate-type "plain"           ; Authentication type
  wl-smtp-posting-user      "myname"          ; Username
  wl-smtp-posting-server    "smtp.gmail.com"  ; SMTP server
  wl-local-domain           "gmail.com"       ; The SMTP server again
  wl-message-id-domain      "smtp.gmail.com") ; And... Again?

(setq
  ;; All system folders (draft, trash, spam, etc) are placed in the
  ;; [Gmail]-folder, except inbox. "%" means it's an IMAP-folder
  wl-default-folder "%inbox"
  wl-draft-folder   "%[Gmail]/Drafts"
  wl-trash-folder   "%[Gmail]/Trash"

  ;; The below is not necessary when you send mail through Gmail's SMTP server,
  ;; see https://support.google.com/mail/answer/78892?hl=en&rd=1
  ;; wl-fcc            "%[Gmail]/Sent"

  wl-from "Me <myname@gmail.com>"  ; Our From: header field
  wl-fcc-force-as-read t           ; Mark sent mail (in the wl-fcc folder) as read
  wl-default-spec "%")             ; For auto-completion

See WlMultipleAccounts for a more detailed example.

Problems

Check the variable ‘wl-local-domain’ and ‘stmp-local-domain’. It should have a real domain, at least “localhost”. See the previous example.

If the appropriate elmo-imap4-default-* variables are set then this is no problem. For individual folder entry lines, quote the username@domain, e.g.: %/:’username@campus.someuniversity.edu’/clear@serverdomain.com:993!

Getting Help

The Manual has loads of info: C-h i m Wanderlust.

Mailing List

You can get help via the mailing list: wl-en@ml.gentei.org

To join the list, send an email to: wl-en-ctl@ml.gentei.org with "subscribe YOUR NAME" as the subject and body. To unsubscribe, email wl-ctl@ml.gentei.org with “unsubscribe” as the body.

IRC

You can chat on irc.freenode.net on the #wanderlust channel.

Related Pages

External Links

CategoryMail