Random signatures with Mutt
Introduction
Ever since the start of the Internet, electronic mail has been a mainstay for communication. Even as new social networking phenomena such as online-friend connection databases and microblogging are taking communication on the Web by storm, e-mail still remains a preferred means of communication for both personal and official purposes, and is unlikely to fade away soon.
One aspect of e-mail that we often observe is the sender's signature - the tiny blurb that appears on the bottom. If it's an official e-mail, then you're most likely constrained to keep it something sober that talks about your position at work, or similar details. However, if you are mailing friends, or a mailing list, then wouldn't it be nice to have a signature that is customized and/or chosen from a random set of signatures? Several Web-based e-mail services offer this already; a cursory Web search reveals that services such as GMail offer this feature. However, the customizability is limited, and you are restricted in several ways. However, if you use a customizable mail client like Mutt, several fun things can be done with e-mail signatures, using more specific details that are within your control.
In this article, I describe one of the possible ways of having random signatures in your e-mail in the Mutt mail client, and switching signature themes and styles based on certain characteristics, such your inbox or recipient. I will, therefore, assume that you have a working configuration for Mutt ready, though the concept I describe applies equally well to other mail clients which support this, such as Pine. I'll make use of the BSD/Unix fortune program (available in almost all GNU/Linux and *BSD distributions) in this article, though any solution that chooses random quotes would do.
Preparation: collect your signatures for fortune
The Unix fortune program is a simple program that uses a database of strings (called "fortunes") to randomly choose a string and display it onto the screen. The program is named appropriately, since it uses a collection of files on various subjects to display messages, much like those on fortune cookies.
It is usually easy to install the program on most GNU/Linux distributions. For example, on Debian/Ubuntu-like systems, the following command will fetch the fortune program and several databases of strings:
apt-get install fortune-mod fortunes
Similarly, yum install fortune-mod should help on Red Hat/Fedora-like systems. It shouldn't be too hard to figure out how to install it on your GNU/Linux or BSD distribution.
Once installed, you can test out the existing files. For example, on my Debian machine, the following command lists a random signature from one of the /usr/share/games/fortunes/linux or /usr/share/games/fortunes/linuxcookie files:
fortune linux linuxcookie
If you now open one of the files in /usr/share/games/fortunes/, such as linux, you'll observe that they consist of strings which are separated by the "%" sign, resembling the format of this file:
An apple a day keeps the doctor away. % A stitch in time saves nine. % Haste makes waste
Also, associated with each file, such as linux, is a .dat file, e.g. linux.dat. The way fortune works is that it looks for the file specified at the command line, (absent such a command line option, choosing a random file among those in the path searched by default), and looks for a corresponding .dat file, which has a table of file offsets for locating strings in that file. If it doesn't find the dat file corresponding to a text file with signatures, it ignores that file.
While you can use the signatures present already, if you want to create and use your own signatures, get them from wherever you want, and place them in a file, separated by % signs as discussed above. For example, I'll put the above file in a location called $HOME/Signatures. Let me call my file $HOME/Signatures/adages. To use it with fortune, I use the strfile program to generate the table of offsets:
[~/Signatures] strfile adages "adages.dat" created There were 3 strings Longest string: 38 bytes Shortest string: 18 bytes
Now, running fortune with the full path of the file causes a random string to be displayed from the above file. (Note that the full path must be provided, if the file is outside the default fortunes directory.)
$ fortune $HOME/Signatures/adages Haste makes waste
The fortune program is versatile, and has several options. Be sure to read its manual page for more details.
Tailoring fortune output for signatures
The fortune output is a random string, and often, these strings are too long for use as good signatures in your e-mail. To avoid such situations, we make use of the -s option so fortune will display only short strings. The default definition of a short string is up to 160 characters, but you can override it with the -n option. For example:
fortune -n 200 -s <files>could be a suitable candidate as a signature file.
Configuring Mutt
Now, you're ready to use your neat fortunes in Mutt. If you have no custom signature, and want to uniformly use a random signature from your newly created signature file, as well as the default linuxcookie file, then add the following to your .muttrc:
set signature="fortune -n 200 -s linux $HOME/Signatures/adages|"
If this is what you wanted, you're done. However, if you want to customize the signatures based on other parameters such as recipient, or current folder, read on.
Customizing your signature based on different criteria
Let me describe my setup here. I use the procmail program to filter my mail, and let's say that I've got the following folders of interest:
- inbox: where all my personal e-mail arrives.
- linux-list: which consists of my local Linux user group mail.
- work-mail: where I read all my work mail.
Now, I want to have the following configuration:
- When I reply to or compose mail in the work mail folder, I want a fixed signature.
- When I send to linux-list, I want a signature from the linux fortunes database.
- Finally, in all other situations, I want a signature from my adages list.
There are simple steps to achieve this using the hooks in Mutt. Note that I have interspersed it with some other configurations for demonstration.
# Set the default options folder-hook . 'set record=+sent; set from=me@my-personal-email; set signature="fortune $HOME/Signatures/adages|"' # Set the custom hooks send-hook [email protected] 'set signature="fortune -n 200 -s linux|"' folder-hook work-mail 'set record=+sent-work; set from=me@my-work-email; set signature="$HOME/.signature-work"'
What the above snippet does is to set, amongst other things, the default signature to be my adages set, and automatically switch the signature to a fixed file, $HOME/.signature-work, when I move to the work-mail folder. Finally, if I send mail to the [email protected] mailing address, the signature is altered to display a fortune from the linux fortunes file. Simple enough, and the possibilities are infinite!
Getting good fortunes
You can scout the Internet to get nice quotations and interesting messages to add to your signatures collection; all you need to do is to put each in the right format, use strfile to enable fortune to use it, and plug it into your Mutt configuration. I often like to hunt for quotations on Wikiquote, amongst other Web sites. While I am sure most of us don't mean any harm while using other people's sentences in our signatures, ensure that you stay on the right side of the law while doing so.
I wish to make a mention of the Linux One Stanza Tip project, which provides a very nice set of signatures with GNU/Linux tips, and more, in their distribution. They also provide templates for you to generate your own signatures with designs and customizations. Sadly, the project doesn't seem to be that active now, but the tips and software provided are very apt and usable even today.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I hope I've managed to show you that with Mutt, you can customize the way you handle signatures in a neat manner. Should you have comments or suggestions to suggestions to enhance or improve this workflow, or just want to say that you liked this article, I'd love to hear from you!
Talkback: Discuss this article with The Answer Gang
Kumar Appaiah is a graduate student of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, USA. Having used GNU/Linux since 2003, he has settled with Debian GNU/Linux, and strongly believes that Free Software has helped him get work done quickly, neatly and efficiently.
Among the other things he loves are good food, classical music (Indian and Western), bicycling and his home town, Chennai, India.
