Identifying multiple imap accounts with new mail in sidebar

[Andy Spiegl]

Hi Neubienaut,

> I would like to view my various imap accounts in the sidebar with count
> of new messages so I don't have to reopen each account in mutt (with mutt
> -f 'imap config file') to check for new mail.

I'm trying something similar but there are a few problems with the sidebar.

Please see my mail (Dec 22 and Jan 23) to the mutt list:
 "sidebar inconsistencies or misunderstandings"
Unfortunately nobody replied to my request which either means
that I'm asking for too much or that noone knows a solution.
Or I'm completely misunderstanding some concepts - I hope not.

> Now, what I would like to do is setup a system so that I can determine which
> email accounts have new mail and open them in mutt
For that to work mutt needs open connections to the other accounts.
I haven't figured out yet how to do that right at the start of mutt.
So I'm using this trick: I defined a folder-hook for every account like this:

folder-hook "imaps://USER1@SERVER1/INBOX" push '1^mC^uimaps://USER2@SERVER2/INBOX.mutt-trash-pls-ignore^mC^uimaps://USER3@SERVER3/mutt-trash-pls-ignore^mG''

Now when I start mutt for USER1 at SERVER1 it jumps to the first message
(which is an empty dummy message I leave in the INBOX) and "saves" it to a
dummy folder on the other accounts.  This makes mutt open imap connections
to the other accounts.  Every once in a while I have to empty the dummy folders.

One advantage of this trick is that mutt can announce new messages in all accounts.
Either through the browse-mailboxes command or in the sidebar.
And TAB completion for folders in the other accounts works right from the start of mutt.

If anyone knows a better solution I'd be VERY HAPPY to know about it.

Andy

-- 
 Efficiency is intelligent laziness.