1. Open tt

This step opens tt with made-up accounts and messages, so you can try every key without a mail account.

Before you start

You need tt installed. On Debian and Ubuntu, follow Install on Debian and Ubuntu. To use your own accounts later, First run writes a real config.toml. This tutorial does not need one yet.

Make an empty configuration

tt stops when it finds no config.toml. An empty file is enough:

mkdir -p ~/.config/tilde

touch ~/.config/tilde/config.toml

If the file already exists, touch leaves its text as it is.

Open tt

tt --demo

--demo shows made-up accounts and messages instead of the accounts of config.toml. They are the same on every run. The first start also writes init.lua and keybind.lua in ~/.config/tilde/scripts. keybind.lua holds every key that this tutorial uses.

Checkpoint

You should see one screen with three parts:

Tilde
▾ Personal         │N  Ada Lovelace        Subject 0: weekly report
    INBOX        12│   Grace Hopper        Subject 1: lunch on Friday
    Sent           │   Alan Turing         Subject 2: the build is green
    Archive        │N  Margaret Hamilton   Subject 3: invoice
▸ Work             │   Linus Torvalds      Subject 4: a question about the release
  Chat             │   Barbara Liskov      Subject 5: photos from the trip
Personal │ message 1 of 200 │ 95.4 MB         j/k move  l open  c compose  r reply  / search  ? help

• On the left, the tree of the accounts. Personal is open and shows its folders. INBOX 12 means twelve unread messages.
• On the right, the list of messages, newest first, with the date at the end of each row. N marks an unread message and * a flagged one.
• At the bottom, the bar says where you are: the account, message 1 of 200, the memory that Tilde uses, and the keys that work here. It is made by a script you can change, see Bars.

If you see There is no configuration file at ... instead, the file of the step above is missing. Make it and run tt --demo again.

Leave tt open. Next: 2. Move in the list.