How to :set spell in Vim only for emails?

Question

Google is not being very helpful here. I'd like to compose emails with :set spell on, but for all other files, :set spell should be off. I am using mutt, and Vim as the editor for composing emails.

In fact, I'm curious, how does Vim know that it's an email I'm composing? Is there a command-line parameter of the type of file being edited? How does mutt know what to pass in?

Mush

Answer 1

You can use an autocmd in your ~/.vimrc that gets triggered by the detected file type:

autocmd FileType mail set spell

Bencher

How does Vim know that it's an email I am composing? – Mush

Vim knows mutts naming scheme for temporary files. If a file fits that pattern, vim treats it as a mail. (For details look into your filetype.vim that is probably located somewhere in /usr/share/vim) – Bencher

Exactly! I would prefer this method over the "set editor" line, since it allows you also to set the spelllang and other options, in a more readable manner... – Searchlight

Exactly, I use this setup to set things like textwidth, nonu, nocursor, etc. – Farrel

Answer 2

Try this in your .muttrc:

set editor = "/usr/bin/vim -c':set spell'"

You can find the correct path to vim with "which vim".

Euhemerize

Perfect thanks. It doesn't seem like mutt requires the full path to vim, which is great if I want to use the same muttrc file across platforms. – Mush

Answer 3

Shouldn't you be using a mutt configuration command? See the following links:

• Text Editing: http://mutt.blackfish.org.uk/editing/

Confirmatory

Answer 4

Add the following into your ~/.vimrc:

set spelllang=en_gb,fr
au BufRead,BufNewFile *mutt* set filetype=mail
autocmd FileType mail set spell

And it should work fine. You can (should?) change the spelllang to reflect any languages that your routinely use.

Augmentative