Guide for new users?

Guide for new users?

[Jjgod Jiang]

Hi,

I think it will be nice if we can have a guide/tutorial like
documentation for new users. For myself, I have the following
questions (I am an alpine user previously, so some of the
questions are not related to notmuch directly):

1. What's the most efficient way to sync mails from my gmail
account to a local Maildir? I've tried offlineimap but it
keeps crashing python (!) on my system (python 2.6, Mac OS X
10.6.2).

2. How to add notmuch.el into my .emacsrc?

I know notmuch feels like a tool for geeks, but it will probably
lower the barrier if someone can provide such a guide in a
straightforward, step-by-step way.

- Jiang

Re: Guide for new users?

[Brett Viren]

On Sat, Nov 21, 2009 at 11:44 PM, Jjgod Jiang <gzjjgod@gmail.com> wrote:

> 1. What's the most efficient way to sync mails from my gmail
> account to a local Maildir? I've tried offlineimap but it
> keeps crashing python (!) on my system (python 2.6, Mac OS X
> 10.6.2).

OfflineIMAP would have been my suggestion.

> 2. How to add notmuch.el into my .emacsrc?
>
> I know notmuch feels like a tool for geeks, but it will probably
> lower the barrier if someone can provide such a guide in a
> straightforward, step-by-step way.

I put notmuch.el in an ~/.emacs.d/ directory.  Then add this to your
.emacs file:

(add-to-list 'load-path (expand-file-name "~/.emacs.d"))
(require 'notmuch)

In the session type "M-x notmuch".

-Brett.

Re: Guide for new users?

[Jed Brown]

On Sun, 22 Nov 2009 09:41:16 -0500, Brett Viren <brett.viren@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 21, 2009 at 11:44 PM, Jjgod Jiang <gzjjgod@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > 1. What's the most efficient way to sync mails from my gmail
> > account to a local Maildir? I've tried offlineimap but it
> > keeps crashing python (!) on my system (python 2.6, Mac OS X
> > 10.6.2).
> 
> OfflineIMAP would have been my suggestion.

Yes, however it will change flags which changes file names and currently
confuses notmuch.  I synced [Gmail].All Mail with OfflineIMAP and am now
using Getmail to pull via POP.  In the Gmail settings, activate POP
starting at the current time.  I'll switch back to OfflineIMAP when
notmuch is happy with changing file names.

The following should save notmuch + Gmail users some time.


~/.getmail/gmail:

[retriever]
# Getmail can also do IMAP
# type = SimpleIMAPSSLRetriever
# server = imap.gmail.com
type = SimplePOP3SSLRetriever
server = pop.gmail.com
username = yourname@gmail.com
password = Pa55W0rd
# Use this with IMAP to only download one copy of each message
# mailboxes = ('[Gmail]/All Mail',)

[destination]
type = Maildir
path = ~/.mail-archive/gmail/pop/

[options]
# print messages about each action (verbose = 2)
# Other options:
# 0 prints only warnings and errors
# 1 prints messages about retrieving and deleting messages only
verbose = 2
message_log = ~/.getmail/gmail.log


With getmail, put something like this in your crontab (checks every 2
minutes)

# MIN HOUR DAY MONTH DAYOFWEEK   COMMAND
*/2 * * * * getmail -r gmail && notmuch new




~/.offlineimaprc:

[general]
accounts = GMail
maxsyncaccounts = 1
ui = Noninteractive.Basic

[Account GMail]
localrepository = Local
remoterepository = Remote
autorefresh = 1
quick = 10
postsynchook = notmuch new

[Repository Local]
type = Maildir
localfolders = /home/jed/.mail-archive/gmail/imap

[Repository Remote]
type = Gmail
folderfilter = lambda foldername: foldername in ['[Gmail]/All Mail']
remotehost = imap.gmail.com
remoteuser = yourname@gmail.com
remotepass = Pa55W0rd
ssl = yes
maxconnections = 2

#Setting realdelete = yes will Really Delete email from the server.
#Otherwise "deleting" a message will just remove any labels and
#retain the message in the All Mail folder.
realdelete = no




Note that with IMAP, your messages in '[Gmail]/All Mail' will be
delivered to a path with spaces which notmuch handles fine, but you will
need a patch

  <1258771074-25997-1-git-send-email-jed@59A2.org>

for start-process-shell-command, e.g. to apply patches from within emacs via

  | git am



* Sending messages

To send messages from Emacs via Gmail, put something like this in your ~/.emacs

(setq smtpmail-starttls-credentials '(("smtp.gmail.com" 587 nil nil)) ; Must be set BEFORE loading smtpmail
      smtpmail-auth-credentials (expand-file-name "~/.authinfo")
      smtpmail-default-smtp-server "smtp.gmail.com"
      smtpmail-smtp-server "smtp.gmail.com"
      smtpmail-smtp-service 587
      smtpmail-debug-info t ; change to nil once it works
      smtpmail-debug-verb t)
(require 'smtpmail)
(setq message-send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it)
(require 'starttls)


you can inline authentication, but especially if you keep ~/.emacs under
version control, you should put it separately (chmod 600).

~/.authinfo:

machine smtp.gmail.com login yourname@gmail.com password Pa55W0rd port 587


* Git
Git + Gmail users can use git send-email by putting this in your
.gitconfig

[sendemail]
        smtpserver = smtp.gmail.com
        smtpserverport = 587
        smtpencryption = tls
        smtpuser = yourname@gmail.com
        smtppass = Pa55W0rd



I hope this helps.

Jed

Re: Guide for new users?

[Carl Worth]

On Sun, 22 Nov 2009 18:02:36 +0100, Jed Brown <jed@59A2.org> wrote:
> Yes, however it will change flags which changes file names and currently
> confuses notmuch.  I synced [Gmail].All Mail with OfflineIMAP and am now
> using Getmail to pull via POP.  In the Gmail settings, activate POP
> starting at the current time.  I'll switch back to OfflineIMAP when
> notmuch is happy with changing file names.

Coming soon! I've been told the patch has been sent to the list already.

> The following should save notmuch + Gmail users some time.

Hey, that's a great document. We really need a nice wiki for
notmuchmail.org already. (And when I say "wiki" I think I really mean
something with email-based submission of some sort.)

I suppose that with ikiwiki I could easily write a script to accept an
email on stdin and make a git commit out of it. So then I could just
pipe useful messages straight from my inbox to the wiki. I think that's
what I'll do. (For now, I'll tag that message as notmuch-wiki so I will
be able to easily find it later.)

Another thing I'd really like would be a notmuch-based interface to our
mailing list archives. Then I would tag the previous message as "howto",
"gmail", "getmail", and "offlineimap".

Anyway, thanks for sharing this!

-Carl

Re: Guide for new users?

[Carl Worth]

On Sun, 22 Nov 2009 12:44:17 +0800, Jjgod Jiang <gzjjgod@gmail.com> wrote:
> I think it will be nice if we can have a guide/tutorial like
> documentation for new users. For myself, I have the following
> questions (I am an alpine user previously, so some of the
> questions are not related to notmuch directly):

Hi Jiang, welcome to notmuch!

There's definitely a lot more documentation we could use. I think one of
the things I'd like to know is, where did you look when you wanted
answers to these questions? That can help us know where the best places
are to put some answers.

As for getting started with notmuch itself, I've tried to make it fairly
self-guided. (That is, if you just run "notmuch"[*] it should keep
telling you what to do next.) I'd be very interested in getting feedback
from people on how well this works. Did you run it that way? Were its
suggestions helpful?

[*] The assumption being that people will try to run the program before
reading any documentation.

> 1. What's the most efficient way to sync mails from my gmail
> account to a local Maildir? I've tried offlineimap but it
> keeps crashing python (!) on my system (python 2.6, Mac OS X
> 10.6.2).

One of the big tricks with switching to notmuch is that there's so much
that notmuch doesn't do. If one is coming from a monolithic email
program (such as evolution) or webmail (such as gmail) then notmuch only
replaces a tiny piece of the mail program, (search and tagging).

But the user also needs replacements for all of the other pieces of the
mail program. Such as:

  * Receiving mail

  * Composing mail (with a nice address book)

  * Sending mail

And likely other stuff I'm not thinking of right now. So those things
can involve lots of different programs. For receiving it might be
offlineimap, getmail, fetchmail, procmail, maildrop or some
combination. For composing it could be emacs, vim, etc. And sending mail
might involve msmtp, postfix, or exim4, etc.

That's a long list of packages, and likely an overwhelming set of
possibilities as well as a ton to learn for setting these up and
configuring them.

So I think you're right that we're going to want some guide suggesting
best practicing for setting things like this up.

> 2. How to add notmuch.el into my .emacsrc?

We've at least added this much to INSTALL now. First do:

	sudo make install-emacs

Then in your .emacs add:

	(require 'notmuch)

And then you can run "M-x notmuch".     

> I know notmuch feels like a tool for geeks, but it will probably
> lower the barrier if someone can provide such a guide in a
> straightforward, step-by-step way.

A "tool for geeks" means that it works well and efficiently, (without
"fluff" or mis-features). It doesn't mean that it needs to be hard to
learn, or require specialized knowledge in advance before using it.

So yes, I totally agree that we need to document things like this
better, and make it as easy to start using notmuch as possible.

-Carl