Alpine
Using Emacs with Spell Checking
Invoke the external editor as:
emacs -nw --no-init-file --no-splash --load ~/.emacs-mail
And use this:
; Tell (Al)pine generated mail files to go into text-mode
(add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\/tmp\/pico.[0-9]+$" . text-mode))
; Turn on spell checking and auto fill
(dolist (hook '(text-mode-hook))
(add-hook hook (lambda () (flyspell-mode 1)))
(add-hook hook (lambda () (turn-on-auto-fill))))
(setq flyspell-issue-message-flag nil)
; Show date/time in status bar, and use 24 hour time
(setq display-time-day-and-date t display-time-24hr-format t)
(display-time)
; Show line and column numbers
(line-number-mode t)
(column-number-mode t)
; No more than 78 characters per line
(setq-default fill-column 78)
(menu-bar-mode 0)