muttdown(1)

💖 muttdown — the manual page, bestie edition 💖

okay so. muttdown lives in section 1 of the manual (General Commands Manual), and honestly? she's an icon. she's a sendmail replacement that compiles markdown into HTML. no cap. let's get into it 💅

---

✨ NAME ✨

muttdown — a sendmail replacement that compiles markdown into HTML. that's the whole vibe. 🎀

---

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

muttdown [-c config_file] [-p] -f from_address [-s] to_address ...
muttdown [-h]

---

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so muttdown is a sendmail-replacement built specifically to vibe with the mutt email client, and what she does is transparently compile annotated text/plain mail into text/html using the Markdown standard. like you write in plain text, she serves it in HTML. main character behavior fr fr.

she expects a RFC-822 formatted mail on STDIN. yes, STDIN. she's not gonna go looking for it, you bring it to her. 💁

then she will recursively walk the MIME tree and compile any text/plain or text/markdown part that begins with the sigil "!m" into Markdown, and she'll insert that compiled version alongside the original inside a multipart/alternative container. so both versions are there. she's thoughtful like that 🫶

she's also smart enough not to break multipart/signed. we love a girl who respects cryptography.

for example, the following tree before parsing:

       - multipart/mixed
        |
        -- multipart/signed
        |
        ---- text/markdown
        |
        ---- application/pgp-signature
        |
        -- image/png

will get compiled into:

       - multipart/mixed
        |
        -- multipart/alternative
        |
        ---- text/html
        |
        ---- multipart/signed
        |
        ------ text/markdown
        |
        ------ application/pgp-signature
        |
        -- image/png

look at her go. the glow up is real. ✨

---

👑 OPTIONS 👑

• -c CONFIG_FILE, --config_file CONFIG_FILE — path to the YAML config file (default ~/.muttdown.yaml). tell her where your settings live 💖
• -p, --print-message — print the translated message to stdout instead of sending it. she's just gonna show you, not ship it. lowkey useful for vibe checking 👀
• -f from_address, --envelope-from from_address — the from address for the email. who's it from, bestie?
• -s, --sendmail-passthru — pass mail through to sendmail for delivery. handing it off to the OG 💅
• to_address — the to address where the email is being sent. where's it going? 🦋

---

🎀 CONFIGURATION 🎀

Muttdown's configuration file is written using YAML. Example:

smtp_host: smtp.gmail.com
smtp_port: 587
smtp_ssl: false
smtp_username: foo@bar.com
smtp_password: foo
css_file: ~/.muttdown.css
assume_markdown: false

if you prefer not to put your password in plaintext in a configuration file (and honestly? valid), you can instead specify the smtp_password_command parameter to invoke a shell command to look up your password. the command should output your password, followed by a newline, and no other text. like, none. don't be extra.

on OS X, the following invocation will extract a generic "Password" entry with the application set to mutt and the title set to foo@bar.com:

smtp_password_command: security find-generic-password -w -s mutt
-a foo@bar.com

NOTE: if smtp_ssl is set to False, muttdown will do a non-SSL session and then invoke STARTTLS. if smtp_ssl is set to True, muttdown will do an SSL session from the get-go. there is no option to send mail in plaintext. nope. not a thing. don't ask. 🚫

the css_file should be regular CSS styling blocks; we use pynliner to inline all CSS rules for maximum client compatibility. slay.

muttdown can also send its mail using the native sendmail if you have that set up (instead of doing SMTP herself). to do so, just:

1. leave the smtp options in the config file blank
2. set the sendmail option to the fully-qualified path</b> to your sendmail binary
3. run muttdown with the -s flag

periodt. 💅

if assume_markdown is true, then all input is assumed to be Markdown by default and the !m sigil does nothing. she's like "okay everything's markdown, we don't need the little signal anymore." iconic.

---

💜 AUTHORS 💜

muttdown was written by James Brown <Roguelazer@gmail.com>. 👑

this man page was adapted from muttdown's README by Stephen Gelman <ssgelm@gmail.com> for the Debian project and may be used by others. 🫶

---

and that's the whole page, bestie!! this one's from the Debian project, dated August 2018, and it's page muttdown(1) of the General Commands Manual. go forth and compile some markdown into HTML, you absolute legend 🌈⭐💖