Quoting only last e-mail sent when replying with mutt

Question

When an e-mail thread lasts for a while, the habit of quoting all previous e-mails is making the size of the thread grow like the square of the number of messages. I.e., in a conversation where each answer is a 14-verse sonnet, after N exchanges, each message is 14N lines, and the mailbox hoding them is 7N(N+1) lines. What's more, we've got 14(N³/6-N/6) times the symbol ">" in the beginning of quoted lines.

Is there an a way to automatically reduce to one (or a few) the number of messages that are quoted when replying with mutt ?

Answer 1

I have a possible answer based on the external editor used for e-mail edition. In my case, vim

I define the external editor as set editor="vim -c ~/.vimrc-mutt"

At the end of the ~/.vimrc-mutt file, which contains other stuff, I issue the command

autocmd VimEnter * global/^>\([ ]>\)\{3\}/d

3 codes the maximum number of quoted messages minus 1.

This is executed once the pre-formatted mail is loaded in the vim buffer. If no such lines exist, the vim window is normal with the message "Pattern not found:...", else the cursor is at the end of the deleted zone with the message "## lines deleted". User can undo the deletion. The messages of course should be improved.