Improve email readability with t-prot

Neat Trimmer

Article from Issue 299/2025
Author(s):

T-prot trims – or removes – long quotes and signatures to neatly simplify emails.

Emails can be difficult to read due to full quotes or long signatures. If you use a text-based mail client and want to process messages in a more efficient way, you are in luck: This article looks at the t-prot tool [1], which helps you focus on the essentials in emails.

T-prot stands for "TOFU Protection." TOFU [2] refers to the citation style used in emails where the newly written text appears at the beginning of an email, and the rest of the email, including all the signatures, is sent as a quote: text at the top, full quote at the bottom. This type of message structure often results in excessively long and difficult-to-understand emails. T-prot's goal is to automatically filter this kind of content and improve the readability of text emails. Originally developed for Unix-style systems, the tool, which was written in Perl, is often used in combination with text-based mail clients such as NeoMutt [3].

What t-prot Does

One of t-prot's main features is to reduce, hide, or completely remove superfluous quotes, text repetitions, and other text elements that disrupt the flow of a message. This makes the actual message far clearer, especially in long email exchanges. You can define the extent to which the tool changes the content of an email yourself using a variety of configuration options.

[...]

Use Express-Checkout link below to read the full article (PDF).

Buy this article as PDF

Express-Checkout as PDF
Price $2.95
(incl. VAT)

Buy Linux Magazine

SINGLE ISSUES
 
SUBSCRIPTIONS
 
TABLET & SMARTPHONE APPS
Get it on Google Play

US / Canada

Get it on Google Play

UK / Australia

Related content

  • Kernel News

    Chronicler Zack Brown reports on the latest news, views, dilemmas, and developments within the Linux kernel community.

  • Virus Checkers

    So you want a virus checker? We’ll show you what we found when we toured some of the top scanners for the Linux environment.

  • Mutt for Beginners

    Mutt, a command-line email client, can do anything a desktop client can with less overhead and a smaller attack surface. Here's how to get started.

  • Fail2ban

    Fail2ban is a quick to deploy, easy to set up, and free to use intrusion prevention service that protects your systems from brute force and dictionary attacks.

  • strace

    Get started with strace by examining a pair of "Hello World" programs. Next month, in the second part of this two-part series, I'll take a deeper look at strace output.

comments powered by Disqus
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters

Support Our Work

Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

Learn More

News