Re: vim client

[Ben Gamari <bgamari@gmail.com>]

Excerpts from Arian Kuschki's message of Fri Feb 19 11:49:25 -0500 2010:
> Hi all
> thank you for notmuch, it is a great project. I have been watching 
> progress for a while but then I could no longer restrain myself and 
> started using notmuch's vim client even though it is still a bit rough 
> around the edges. Unfortunately there are some quirks that 
> prevent me from switching over completely. 
> questions:
> 
> 1. will there be a usable  ncurses or mutt version that supports notmuch 
> anytime soon?

Not that I know of. I've thought of starting something before. I really
want to start using notmuch full-time myself, but I agree, the vim
client is far from usable.

> 2. is anybody working on the vim client? I have a small patch and might 
> have couple more as time passes. Is this mailing list the right place to 
> discuss this? From what I can gather the discussion seems to be centred 
> mainly on the emacs client.

I don't believe there is anyone working actively on the vim frontend at
the moment. I looked at it not so long ago and the code is pretty good.
The real problem is all notmuch calls are synchronous. Vim unfortunately
lacks the excellent asynchronous subprocess interface that emacs has.
Therefore, I'm afraid the vim client is going to be just as unuable
until someone has implemented asynchronous subprocess support.

I have a tree starting this sitting around somewhere, but it still has a
ways to go and I won't have time to finish until midterms are over at
the earliest. If someone else wants to take a stab at it, the code is
available git://goldnerlab.physics.umass.edu/vim7.git (the async-process
branch). I'd love to know if anyone makes any progress and I'll keep you
all in the loop if I find any time to invest in it.

I have considered starting work on an ncurses frontend, but I think
ultimately that time would be better used in working on the async vim
code. Vim gives us a whole lot of functionality for free that would take
time to get working on a new ncurses client (e.g. windowing) and I would
far prefer to use notmuch from within vim than from another specialized
application.

Cheers,

- Ben