Configuring mutt to handle the same attachment differently in auto_view than in an attachment view

Question

I'd like to view text/html attachments inline with auto_view. That's easy enough, with a w3m -dump invocation in the .mailcap, and auto_view text/html in the .muttrc.

The tricky part is that i'd still like to invoke a browser session when i view the attachment explicitly. As though i had no -dump argument to my w3m mailcap entry.

I've tried to get this effect with two mailcap entries with different flags, but haven't had any luck.

Answer 1

Some fiddling and some help from another source got me the answer to this question.

In the mailcap file, you can set up two entries:

text/html; w3m -I %{charset} -T text/html; needsterminal;
text/html; w3m -I %{charset} -dump -T text/html; copiousoutput;

There are two important parts here. First, the copiousoutput flag indicates that entry is a useful candidate for auto_view. Second, the fact that there is another entry above it means that non-auto_view uses (e.g. viewing it as an attachment) will try that first.

So attachment views will use the first one, auto_view will use the second one. Which is what i wanted.

Source : http://www.mutt.org/doc/manual/manual-5.html#auto_view (See search order section)