the future of notmuch-vim?

the future of notmuch-vim?

[David Bremner]

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So now that we've (finally) released, we can turn our minds back to
being distruptive.

I'm not sure what, if anything to do about the vim frontend.

Looking at 

        http://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=notmuch

There is apparently still some people that use it (although notice the
"Vote" column is 0).

On the other hand

- The vim frontend is afaik the last thing depending on the legacy text
  output format.

- The plugin seems to be only semi-functional at the moment; in a quick
  test I found a message that didn't display it's content, and one that
  displayed the content, along with "junk" from the internal
  representation.

- There are now several alternatives for people whose only motivation to
  use the vim frontend was dislike of emacs (alot and notmuch-mutt).

There are several alternative vim frontends floating around in (at
least) ruby and python. I don't if they are better or worse
functionality wise. 

I'm considering stopping building debian packages for notmuch-vim, since
I don't see any current prospects for the package improving.  I'm not
sure what the equivalent thing to do upstream would be, perhaps moving
it to contrib. Or, deprecating it and then removing it.

What do people think?

d



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Re: the future of notmuch-vim?

[David Bremner]

David Bremner <david@tethera.net> writes:

> I'm not sure what, if anything to do about the vim frontend.
>

So, nobody has jumped to the defence of the vim plugin.  Unless some
better idea emerges in the next week or so, I plan to move it to the
contrib/ directory and mark it as deprecated in NEWS.

d

Re: the future of notmuch-vim?

[David Bremner]

David Bremner <david@tethera.net> writes:

> So, nobody has jumped to the defence of the vim plugin.  Unless some
> better idea emerges in the next week or so, I plan to move it to the
> contrib/ directory and mark it as deprecated in NEWS.

Done. Also updated the Debian packaging to stop building the package
notmuch-vim.

d
 

RE: the future of notmuch-vim?

[Felipe Contreras]

Hi,

Sorry for the late reply, I wasn't following the ml.

David Bremner wrote:

> There is apparently still some people that use it (although notice the
> "Vote" column is 0).
> 
> On the other hand
> 
> - The vim frontend is afaik the last thing depending on the legacy text
>   output format.
> 
> - The plugin seems to be only semi-functional at the moment; in a quick
>   test I found a message that didn't display it's content, and one that
>   displayed the content, along with "junk" from the internal
>   representation.

Indeed, I'd say the code is very poor at best.

> - There are now several alternatives for people whose only motivation to
>   use the vim frontend was dislike of emacs (alot and notmuch-mutt).

I did try the emacs frontend, and it was not working properly for me at the
time, and I believe I documented my issues. It was not just my dislike of emacs
that motivated me to write notmuch-vim-ruby.

> There are several alternative vim frontends floating around in (at
> least) ruby and python. I don't if they are better or worse
> functionality wise. 

I'd say notmuch-vim-ruby is the best one, but of course I'm biased :)

> I'm considering stopping building debian packages for notmuch-vim, since
> I don't see any current prospects for the package improving.  I'm not
> sure what the equivalent thing to do upstream would be, perhaps moving
> it to contrib. Or, deprecating it and then removing it.
> 
> What do people think?

Personally I think notmuch-vim should be replaced with notmuch-vim-ruby. I did
try the python version, and remember discussing options with the guy developing
it, but nothing happened out of it, and I think the ruby version is superior.

I'd be open to discuss the options here, but I think notmuch-vim-ruby is the
only real option.

Cheers.

-- 
Felipe Contreras

RE: the future of notmuch-vim?

[David Bremner]

Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com> writes:
>
> I did try the emacs frontend, and it was not working properly for me at the
> time, and I believe I documented my issues. It was not just my dislike of emacs
> that motivated me to write notmuch-vim-ruby.

I could only find a comment about the (admittedly imperfect) handling of
HTML messages in emacs. Was there some other issues you remember?  If
you can point me to message-ids, I'd appreciate it.  I've been trying to
get

     http://nmbug.tethera.net/status/#Bugs

up to date by tagging unresolved bugs reported to the mailing list.

d

PS: for what it's worth (and mainly for the benefit of others reading
this thread), I find the combination of toggling visibility of mime
parts and the shr renderer in emacs24 has noticably improved my
experience with HTML email. YMMV, of course.

Re: the future of notmuch-vim?

[guyzmo]

Hi

On Tue, Apr 02, 2013 at 01:55:13PM -0600, Felipe Contreras wrote:
> Sorry for the late reply, I wasn't following the ml.

same here

> David Bremner wrote:
> > - There are now several alternatives for people whose only motivation to
> >   use the vim frontend was dislike of emacs (alot and notmuch-mutt).
> I did try the emacs frontend, and it was not working properly for me at the
> time, and I believe I documented my issues. It was not just my dislike of emacs
> that motivated me to write notmuch-vim-ruby.

    I'd say not liking emacs is not a good reason  for  using  vim  as a
MUA. Vim is just a text editor, and nothing else.

> > There are several alternative vim frontends floating around in (at
> > least) ruby and python. I don't if they are better or worse
> > functionality wise. 
> I'd say notmuch-vim-ruby is the best one, but of course I'm biased :)

    It may be nice and/or fun to use that kind  of  things  in  vim, but
really, it's opposite to the philosophy of vim. I  personnally  prefer a
thousand times to use mutt-kz, alot as MUA,  and  vim  only  for writing
mails.

    And by the way, to make vim better at writing emails, I  had  a hard
time finding how to implement a way to lookup  addresses  fields' values
fastly using the python API. The method I  found  (based  on  the python
addressbook lookup script) takes about 20s for about 10000 mails.  Is it
the python binding  that's  flawed?  Or  the  way  addresses  fields are
stored? Maybe something could be done.

> > it to contrib. Or, deprecating it and then removing it.
> > What do people think?
> Personally I think notmuch-vim should be replaced with notmuch-vim-ruby. I did
> try the python version, and remember discussing options with the guy developing
> it, but nothing happened out of it, and I think the ruby version is superior.
> I'd be open to discuss the options here, but I think notmuch-vim-ruby is the
> only real option.

    Whereas you seem to have done a really good  job  integrating  it to
vim,  I  personally  think  that  anything  that  makes  vim  an  IDE, a
coffeemaker, or an Operating System is not worth the pain. So my opinion
is to just drop vim-as-MUA script support.

HTH,

-- 
Guyzmo

Re: the future of notmuch-vim?

[Patrick Totzke]

Quoting guyzmo (2013-04-03 07:01:58)
> ...
>     It may be nice and/or fun to use that kind  of  things  in  vim, but
> really, it's opposite to the philosophy of vim.
> ...
>     Whereas you seem to have done a really good  job  integrating  it to
> vim,  I  personally  think  that  anything  that  makes  vim  an  IDE, a
> coffeemaker, or an Operating System is not worth the pain. So my opinion
> is to just drop vim-as-MUA script support.

Fullack! Thanks for spelling out my thoughts in great detail :D
I'm definitely for dropping support for all notmuch-vim scripts officially.
These scripts can live in their own repositories on github or alike
and we can link those in the wiki for completeness sake.
/p

Re: the future of notmuch-vim?

[Felipe Contreras]

guyzmo wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 02, 2013 at 01:55:13PM -0600, Felipe Contreras wrote:
> > Sorry for the late reply, I wasn't following the ml.
> 
> same here
> 
> > David Bremner wrote:
> > > - There are now several alternatives for people whose only motivation to
> > >   use the vim frontend was dislike of emacs (alot and notmuch-mutt).
> > I did try the emacs frontend, and it was not working properly for me at the
> > time, and I believe I documented my issues. It was not just my dislike of emacs
> > that motivated me to write notmuch-vim-ruby.
> 
>     I'd say not liking emacs is not a good reason  for  using  vim  as a
> MUA. Vim is just a text editor, and nothing else.

Vim is a pretty extensible text editor that works prectly fine as a MUA, in
fact, much better than any other MUA I've ever used. That is a good reason.

> > > There are several alternative vim frontends floating around in (at
> > > least) ruby and python. I don't if they are better or worse
> > > functionality wise. 
> > I'd say notmuch-vim-ruby is the best one, but of course I'm biased :)
> 
>     It may be nice and/or fun to use that kind  of  things  in  vim, but
> really, it's opposite to the philosophy of vim.

The philosophy of vim is irrelevant, what is relevant is what you can do with
it, and you can use it as a perfectly good MUA.

> I  personnally  prefer a thousand times to use mutt-kz, alot as MUA,  and
> vim  only  for writing mails.

What you prefer is irrelevant; it's relevant only for you, that's why it's
called a *preference*, the rest of us prefer different things.

I've tried mutt-kz and alot, and I was utterly dissapointed by both.

See how snappy and fast notmuch-vim-ruby is[1], alot is much worst in these
respects.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGD7IbZmnIs

-- 
Felipe Contreras

Re: the future of notmuch-vim?

[Suvayu Ali]

On Wed, Apr 03, 2013 at 03:09:39AM -0600, Felipe Contreras wrote:
> guyzmo wrote:
> 
> > I  personnally  prefer a thousand times to use mutt-kz, alot as MUA,  and
> > vim  only  for writing mails.

[...]

> I've tried mutt-kz and alot, and I was utterly dissapointed by both.
> 
> See how snappy and fast notmuch-vim-ruby is[1], alot is much worst in these
> respects.
> 
> [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGD7IbZmnIs

I'm a mutt-kz user, and I am not a vim user.  That said, I agree with
you that both mutt-kz and alot can be slow to start.  Opening virtual
folders in mutt-kz is quite slow compared to regular maildirectories.
And there seems to be no solution yet.  For example you can see this
message from Karel:

<http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/mutt-kz/2013-April/000138.html>

-- 
Suvayu

Open source is the future. It sets us free.

Re: the future of notmuch-vim?

[Patrick Totzke]

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Quoting Felipe Contreras (2013-04-03 10:09:39)
> ...
> What you prefer is irrelevant; it's relevant only for you, that's why it's
> called a *preference*, the rest of us prefer different things.

Never mind preferences, I think originally, this thread was about dropping
*support* for the *original* vim plugin that lives in notmuch/contrib.
I think we can all agree that this is reasonable.

This should not keep you from hacking on your script, hosting
it whereever you like and support it.
For me, one of the charms of notmuch is exactly this extensibility.

> I've tried mutt-kz and alot, and I was utterly dissapointed by both.
> 
> See how snappy and fast notmuch-vim-ruby is[1], alot is much worst in these
> respects.

I always appreciate constructive feedback on alot..
regards,
/p

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Re: the future of notmuch-vim?

[Felipe Contreras]

On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 3:48 PM, Patrick Totzke <patricktotzke@gmail.com> wrote:
> Quoting Felipe Contreras (2013-04-03 10:09:39)
>> ...
>> What you prefer is irrelevant; it's relevant only for you, that's why it's
>> called a *preference*, the rest of us prefer different things.
>
> Never mind preferences, I think originally, this thread was about dropping
> *support* for the *original* vim plugin that lives in notmuch/contrib.
> I think we can all agree that this is reasonable.

The reasons for dropping the original vim script are exactly the same
reasons why it should be replaced with the ruby version.

> This should not keep you from hacking on your script, hosting
> it whereever you like and support it.
> For me, one of the charms of notmuch is exactly this extensibility.

Bpth are "my" scripts. I'm supposed to be the maintainer of the vim
script and I have commit access.

-- 
Felipe Contreras

Re: the future of notmuch-vim?

[Charlie Allom]

If Felipe is interested in maintaining the Vim plugin, I vote it should
be replaced with his Ruby version.

Please don't explain why you think emacs is better than vim.

  C.

On Wed, Apr 03, 2013 at 05:34:48PM -0600, Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 3:48 PM, Patrick Totzke <patricktotzke@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Quoting Felipe Contreras (2013-04-03 10:09:39)
> >> ...
> >> What you prefer is irrelevant; it's relevant only for you, that's why it's
> >> called a *preference*, the rest of us prefer different things.
> >
> > Never mind preferences, I think originally, this thread was about dropping
> > *support* for the *original* vim plugin that lives in notmuch/contrib.
> > I think we can all agree that this is reasonable.
>
> The reasons for dropping the original vim script are exactly the same
> reasons why it should be replaced with the ruby version.
>
> > This should not keep you from hacking on your script, hosting
> > it whereever you like and support it.
> > For me, one of the charms of notmuch is exactly this extensibility.
>
> Bpth are "my" scripts. I'm supposed to be the maintainer of the vim
> script and I have commit access.
>
> --
> Felipe Contreras
> _______________________________________________
> notmuch mailing list
> notmuch@notmuchmail.org
> http://notmuchmail.org/mailman/listinfo/notmuch

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Re: the future of notmuch-vim?

[Felipe Contreras]

On Fri, Apr 5, 2013 at 5:30 AM, Charlie Allom <charlie@mediasp.com> wrote:
> If Felipe is interested in maintaining the Vim plugin, I vote it should
> be replaced with his Ruby version.

I've pushed the new vim plugin to the 'master' branch.

Cheers.

-- 
Felipe Contreras