This method lets you use one keystroke to edit a mail in gvim and when you close gvim, it’s put back into the Outlook compose mail window.

You will need:

• AutoHotkey, a keystroke mapping/scripting application
• My script (below)
• gvim for Windows

Method:

1. Install AutoHotKey
2. Install gvim
3. Install my script into AutoHotKey (it appears at the end of this post). Note that my script has the gvim path hard-coded in and you may well need to change it.
4. Configure your Outlook to use plain text for composing mail.
5. Press Win-V with an Outlook compose window open and when the cursor is in the message pane

Serving suggestion:

• Goes really well with Outlook QuoteFix
• gvim will be opened with the contents of the message window
• Edit your mail in gvim and when done, save and quit
• Your edited message is put back into the Outlook message window.

Additional notes:

• At the moment, this only works with one mail at a time, as the file for the mail is statically named. If you try Win-V in a mail while you have another already opened, Bad Things will Happen.
• You may want to adjust your vimrc file so that it uses the “mail” filetype for editing; I also have a mail.vim file with macros and things in it which I tell it to load for this. I pinched it off the web, I’m sure you can find it. The required vimrc lines are below.
• If the cursor isn’t in the message pane of the Outlook compose window when you press Win-V (or if it moves there before you close the gvim window), things will probably go wrong.
• I’ve tested this with Outlook 2003, gvim 7.2 and AutoHotkey 1.0.47.06.

Here’s the optional vimrc line:

autocmd BufRead */outlook.txt :source $HOME/vimfiles/mail.vim

Here’s the script itself:

#v::
SetTitleMatchMode, 2
IfWinActive, Message (Plain Text)
{
	WinGet, ActiveWindow, ID
	SendInput ^a
	Send ^c
 
	clipboard = %clipboard%
 
	FileDelete, %TEMP%\outlook.txt
	FileAppend, %Clipboard%, %TEMP%\outlook.txt
 
	RunWait, C:\Program Files\vim\vim72a\gvim.exe %TEMP%\outlook.txt
 
	FileRead, Clipboard, %TEMP%\outlook.txt
 
	WinActivate, ActiveWindow
	Send ^a^v^{HOME}
}

I tracked this down to it sending Expect: 100-continue in the headers of the request it sent to its server. However, it was going via our web proxy at work, which is Squid. Recently I upgraded Squid to 2.7, and this seems to be the cause of the problems. Squid 2.7 is less forgiving about that particular header (which is apparently an RFC violation on the part of the client).

It’s easily fixed by adding ignore_expect_100 on to your Squid configuration.

tail somefile | ccze -A -o noscroll | grep ...

-A makes ccze output ASCII sequences, and -o noscroll turns off the scroll option - whatever that is exactly. The man page says it’s a good idea to turn it off if you’re redirecting the output. Omitting it seems to make the output appear in lumps :)

For example, keep an eye on squid logs omitting all MSN crap:

tail -F access.log | ccze -A -C -o noscroll | grep -v gateway.dll

More details and download: WPM script.

You’ll need Stylish and then stick this in a userscript for it. You may need to adjust the domain (2nd line) if you don’t use news.bbc.co.uk to access the site.

@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);
 
@-moz-document domain("news.bbc.co.uk") {
 
#blq-displayoptions, #blq-accessibility-help, #blq-mast { 
  display: none !important;
}
 
.newsbanner {
  display: none !important;
}
}

The first block (#blq-displayoptions et al) is for the grey banner; the second block is for the red BBC News one.

This goes in your zshrc:

  vman() {
    if [ $# -eq 0 ]; then
      /usr/bin/man
    else
      if man -w $* >/dev/null 2>/dev/null
      then
        /usr/bin/man $* | col -b | vim -c 'set ft=man nomod' -
      else
        echo No man page for $*
      fi
    fi
  }
  alias man='vman'

And this goes in your vimrc (in a suitable augroup):

  autocmd FileType man setlocal ro nonumber nolist fdm=indent fdn=2 sw=4 foldlevel=2 | nmap q :quit<CR>

Now you’ll get nicely highlighted man pages with folded sections, and you can hit q to quit just like less.

The only problem I encountered was getting it set up to work with multiple networks in irssi. Configuring ZNC itself to put me on many networks was easy enough, and when I connected irssi to it for each network using /connect it worked fine. Using /server add to set up irssi’s server list didn’t work out so well.

Every time I tried to add another server (for connecting to another network), irssi would remove the first one. This is because irssi only considers a server’s hostname and port when trying to work out if it’s unique. When I added another server which differed from the first only by password and associated network, irssi assumed I was updating the existing one and changed it. Putting the required entries in irssi’s config by hand also didn’t work.

The solution was easy enough; one ZNC instance can listen on multiple ports, so I got it to listen on a selection of ports using multiple Listen directives in its config file, and then added each network’s server to irssi using a different port number.

Now I can take advantage of cool things like buffer replay and detaching from channels. Sorry, irssi-proxy - you don’t quite cut it now :)

[@         Time] nt, do you have a job?
[@      NoTopic] but of "course"
[@         Time] nt, what is your job?
[@      NoTopic] I can't tell you that!
*      JamesOff . o O ( mi5 )
[@         Time] i was thinking six :(
[@         Time] nt, do you work for a secret government organisation?
[@      NoTopic] i do
[@      NoTopic] despite having no mouth
[@         Time] :--o
[@         Time] nt, mi5 or mi6?
[@     JamesOff] it's so secret they took away his mouth
*       NoTopic thinks
[@      NoTopic] Time: mi6.
[@         Time] rut roh
[@         Time] nt, are any of us under suspicion?
[@      NoTopic] i am not at liberty to discuss that
[@         Time] :-x
[@         Time] he's too clever for me

(The page for the script incorrectly said that it kickbanned already, but that was an error due to me writing the script about a thousand years ago.)

Hope it’s of some use :)