less or the pipe probably didn't remove your coloring. It's possible the matt program is detecting where its output is connected to and when it's not a color terminal, it disables color formatting. You need to find the option that overrides this behavior. – billc.cnNov 22 '11 at 22:57
@billc.cn: Yes, that is my point, though I should have clarified it better. I'd like to know if there's a mutt option for output without disabling color ANSI sequences (before I hack through the source code to investigate). – Jeff BauerNov 25 '11 at 15:53
lessor the pipe probably didn't remove your coloring. It's possible the matt program is detecting where its output is connected to and when it's not a color terminal, it disables color formatting. You need to find the option that overrides this behavior. – billc.cn Nov 22 '11 at 22:57