Re: Idea for storing tags

[martin f krafft <madduck@madduck.net>]

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also sprach Carl Worth <cworth@cworth.org> [2010.01.14.1432 +1300]:
> Yes. This approach requires some external means of synchronizing the
> tags from one system to another.
> 
> I don't understand what it would mean to have the mailstore and the
> database out of synch here. This approach doesn't have the tags in the
> mailstore by definition, right?

You might have marked a message 'read' on one machine and if the two
get out of sync on another machine, you might have the same message
unread there.

> > How about using pseudo-mails stored in Maildir and synchronised by
> > IMAP? E.g. every folder could have a subfolder .TAGS and if we find
> > a way to smartly pair messages between parent and subfolder, we'd
> > have a tag store alongside the mailstore it refers to, but without
> > the danger of leakage, and without having to rewrite messages.
> ...
> > Anyway, the idea is out now. Thoughts?
> 
> There are a couple of problems that I don't see addressed at all with
> this approach. The first is that there's not a one-to-one mapping
> between messages and files in the mail store. (I'm CCed on a lot of list
> mail meaning that I have multiple files in my mail store for a single
> message.)

Shouldn't this just be solved? I've had formail+procmail delete my
duplicates for 10+ years, and while I don't like the fact that
I usually get the CC before the list mail, and thus cannot filter on
Delivered-To, I have never looked back.

> Second, the only reason I would be interested in synchronizing mail
> between two systems is so that I could manipulate the tag data in
> multiple places, (that is, remove the "unread" tag whether on my
> network-disconnected laptop or via web-mail when away from my
> laptop). Using imap for synchronizing a file of tags within the mail
> store gives you no mechanism for doing any sort of conflict resolution,
> right? (Which I think in almost all cases is going to be quite trivial
> if there's a chance for a program to resolve it.)

I have not thought about this, but you are right. IMAP does not
really allow for conflict resolution, which may well be *the* reason
why you cannot update existing messages.

> [*] Though, I think a plain-text file with tags managed with
> something like git (and perhaps a custom merger) could save a lot
> of work. Or perhaps a plain-text journal of tag manipulations on
> either end that could be replayed on the other.

Git is good at conflict resolution if run interactively, but [0]
still makes me question whether it can ever take the place of IMAP.
However, Asheesh Laroia, who has floated the idea of Git-for-mail at
DebConf8 already, has some ideas and hopefully will soon reply to my
mail [0], which I just bounced.

0. http://notmuchmail.org/pipermail/notmuch/2010/001114.html

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