Mutt config: # of characters displayed

Question

I use mutt for my gmail (IMAP). I respond to a lot of messages that are TXT messages from cell phones. When I reply to them I would like to know how many characters I have typed so I can avoid sending multi-page SMS. An on-screen display of total characters (must include spaces) or a keyboard combination would be fine.

Answer 1

Mutt uses an external editor, so how you do this depends on the editor you've chosen. If you're using Vim, typing the two-character sequence g Ctrl-G will show you a line of buffer statistics at the bottom of the screen, including the total number of bytes.

Answer 2

What editor are you using in mutt? For example, I'm using nano (my /usr/bin/editor is symlinked to /etc/alternatives/editor which is symlinked to /bin/nano - a similar effect is obtained if $VISUAL or $EDITOR is set to /bin/nano).

If you start nano with -c (or --const) or have set const in your ~/.nanorc it will display the character count at the bottom of the screen as you type.