What's so great about notmuch?

What's so great about notmuch?

[Carl Worth]

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It seems clear that I'll have some opportunities to present notmuch to
various audiences at varying levels of formality. Since notmuch is
already a bigger project than me, I'd love to get some ideas from others
about what you think are the "big ideas" in notmuch.

So here are a few different phrasings of what's basically the same
question. And I'd love to hear some brief opinions on any one of these,
(or similar topics):

   What's your favorite thing about notmuch?

   What about notmuch makes it distinctive compared to other email
   programs?

   If someone were to implement a new email system from scratch, but
   capturing the "ideas" of notmuch, what would it have to have?

I'll put some of my own answers together in a reply as well.

And obviously, we should probably put a wiki page together to give a
good exposition on the "philosphy of notmuch" (once we can figure out
what that is).

-Carl

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Re: What's so great about notmuch?

[James Westby]

On Fri, 26 Feb 2010 12:08:49 -0800, Carl Worth <cworth@cworth.org> wrote:
> It seems clear that I'll have some opportunities to present notmuch to
> various audiences at varying levels of formality. Since notmuch is
> already a bigger project than me, I'd love to get some ideas from others
> about what you think are the "big ideas" in notmuch.
> 
> So here are a few different phrasings of what's basically the same
> question. And I'd love to hear some brief opinions on any one of these,
> (or similar topics):
> 
>    What's your favorite thing about notmuch?

That it takes as long to download my mail from my server as it does to
then process my inbox down to zero. (Though it doesn't yet allow me to
complete all the tasks within in that time unfortunately.)

>    What about notmuch makes it distinctive compared to other email
>    programs?

That the sucky things about it are bugs that will be fixed soon enough,
rather than architectual problems that will never get fixed (with
possibly one exception noted below.)

>    If someone were to implement a new email system from scratch, but
>    capturing the "ideas" of notmuch, what would it have to have?

  * Thread based

  * Tagging

  * Pervasive search

  * Speed

  * An amusing name


The biggest un-good thing about notmuch right now for me is that it is
effectively single-machine (though not hostile about it like sup). I
want local mail for offline use (like right now,) but have more than one
machine. It would be perfect if doing this didn't require notmuch on
every client for it to work, with graceful degredation for those without
it, though I would be perfectly happy with an android port.

Thanks,

James

Re: What's so great about notmuch?

[martin f krafft]

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also sprach Carl Worth <cworth@cworth.org> [2010.02.26.2108 +0100]:
>    What's your favorite thing about notmuch?

a. that it's an important step forward towards a completely
   tag-based e-mail setup

b. that it is implemented with a library, a UI, and clients on top,
   rather than directly as a GUI. ;)

>    What about notmuch makes it distinctive compared to other email
>    programs?

the prospect of tags and fast search, accessible in a way to make
integration with other programs possible.

>    If someone were to implement a new email system from scratch, but
>    capturing the "ideas" of notmuch, what would it have to have?

simplicity and search. Ideally, however, it would be implemented
such that synchronising between different machines were a core
feature.

-- 
martin | http://madduck.net/ | http://two.sentenc.es/
 
if you see an onion ring -- answer it!
 
spamtraps: madduck.bogus@madduck.net

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Re: What's so great about notmuch?

[racin]

>    What's your favorite thing about notmuch?

The simple, functional emacs interface (rmail is too simple and Gnus too complex). Especially, I like the
idea that many commands create new bufferes, that get deleted with "q", so that access to buffers is
done like in a stack.

>    What about notmuch makes it distinctive compared to other email
>    programs?

The idea of not having to sort mails manually, but rather be able to find them later thanks to fast searching.

>    If someone were to implement a new email system from scratch, but
>    capturing the "ideas" of notmuch, what would it have to have?

I would encourage him to contribute to notmuch instead! I think notmuch only need some
minor improvement of the UI interface. Maybe interaction with org-mode/calendar would also be nice.

But if I were to reimplement notmuch, I would definitely have an emacs interface coupled with a command-line tool.

Matthieu

Re: What's so great about notmuch?

[Arvid Picciani]

On Fri, 26 Feb 2010 12:08:49 -0800, Carl Worth <cworth@cworth.org> wrote:

>    What's your favorite thing about notmuch?

It's the only email index that respects unix ideas, and hence the only
usable to me. It doesn't do _everything_ but limits itself to indexing,
while doing a great job at that. That's how software is supposed to work.
Of course you could argue notmuch comes with notmuch.el, but i'd argue
this is a seperate project.

>    What about notmuch makes it distinctive compared to other email
>    programs?

See above. All other email indexers are built into large complex gui
crap that doesnt make any sense to me. I'm just not a Microsoft Windows fan.
Probably that would make me a "geek".

>    If someone were to implement a new email system from scratch, but
>    capturing the "ideas" of notmuch, what would it have to have?

The same design. It would probably only differ in technical details like language.

Re: What's so great about notmuch?

[Michal Sojka]

On Fri, 26 Feb 2010 12:08:49 -0800, Carl Worth <cworth@cworth.org> wrote:
>    What's your favorite thing about notmuch?

I can process my inbox in a linear fassion (by pressing space). During
that, I'm not distracted by various GUI elements, which remind me how
many other emails I have to read. I can fully concentrate on one topic
and it makes my email processing faster.

> 
>    What about notmuch makes it distinctive compared to other email
>    programs?

Fast searching. Easy to use Emacs GUI (I use Emacs a lot, but I was
never able to configure Gnus to suit me).

>    If someone were to implement a new email system from scratch, but
>    capturing the "ideas" of notmuch, what would it have to have?

Synchronziation of mail and tags on multiple computers.

Michal

Re: What's so great about notmuch?

[Sebastian Spaeth]

On Fri, 26 Feb 2010 12:08:49 -0800, Carl Worth <cworth@cworth.org> wrote:
>    What's your favorite thing about notmuch?

It is simple and fast. It lets me use emacs as MUA which I tried
before. But I always gave up on GNUS.

>    What about notmuch makes it distinctive compared to other email
>    programs?

Did I mention fast? Also it brings me the convenience of "spotlight"
searching all your mails in OS X to Linux.

>    If someone were to implement a new email system from scratch, but
>    capturing the "ideas" of notmuch, what would it have to have?

- "virtual folders" aka tags
- a library that can be used by 3rd party UIs
- a huge backlog of uncommited submissions ;) (SCNR)
- I think thunderbird is actually getting closer to notmuch in version 3.

Sebastian