email snoozing in notmuch

email snoozing in notmuch

[Sebastian Fischmeister]

Hi,

I'm thinking of how to realize the mail snoozing feature with notmuch,
so that certain emails won't become visible (in the search) until a
certain day/time (e.g., 10 days from now).

Using the tag as an absolute date when the mail should become visible
again, tags should be searchable and interpretable as dates. The search
would then be something like: notmuch search tag-as-date < now and
tag:inbox

Using the receive date as base and encoding the delay as relative time
from that, would still need the ability to interpret tag values as
numbers:

notmuch search date:01012011..15days and tag-as-number < 10 and tag:inbox

Any ideas how the snoozing feature can be implemented with what is
already present in notmuch?

Thanks,
  Sebastian

RE: email snoozing in notmuch

[Franz Fellner]

Hi,

Sebastian Fischmeister wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm thinking of how to realize the mail snoozing feature with notmuch,
> so that certain emails won't become visible (in the search) until a
> certain day/time (e.g., 10 days from now).
> 
> Using the tag as an absolute date when the mail should become visible
> again, tags should be searchable and interpretable as dates. The search
> would then be something like: notmuch search tag-as-date < now and
> tag:inbox

It is not neccessary to make notmuch interpret tags as date - just interpret them yourself ;)
You can easily run your own scripts and modify tags/mails. So a simple solution might be:
* Add "snoozed" to your notmuch exclude_tags (see config file)
* To snooze a mail run in your mail client "tag +snoozed +snoozeby-10-days"
  or "tag +snoozed +snoozeuntil-2015-01-09"
* Your script (e.g. run as cronjob or after notmuch new) now 
  - queries for "tag:snoozed"
  - looks for snoozeuntil-* tag and parses the tag into a date. If date < now remove snooze-tags.
  - looks for (relative) snoozeby tag and transform it into (absolute) snoozeuntil tag.
(should be not too hard using e.g. the python or ruby bindings)

Of course you can use an own email header to store the snoozeuntil value.
With such a header it should be possible to use afew [1] for automated snooze-tag-management
instead of a hand-crafted script.

Regards
Franz

[1] https://github.com/teythoon/afew

> 
> Using the receive date as base and encoding the delay as relative time
> from that, would still need the ability to interpret tag values as
> numbers:
> 
> notmuch search date:01012011..15days and tag-as-number < 10 and tag:inbox
> 
> Any ideas how the snoozing feature can be implemented with what is
> already present in notmuch?
> 
> Thanks,
>   Sebastian
> _______________________________________________
> notmuch mailing list
> notmuch@notmuchmail.org
> http://notmuchmail.org/mailman/listinfo/notmuch

Re: email snoozing in notmuch

[Richard Lawrence]

Franz Fellner <alpine.art.de@gmail.com>
writes:

> Sebastian Fischmeister wrote:
 
>> I'm thinking of how to realize the mail snoozing feature with notmuch,
>> so that certain emails won't become visible (in the search) until a
>> certain day/time (e.g., 10 days from now).
>> 
>> Using the tag as an absolute date when the mail should become visible
>> again, tags should be searchable and interpretable as dates. The search
>> would then be something like: notmuch search tag-as-date < now and
>> tag:inbox
>
> It is not neccessary to make notmuch interpret tags as date - just interpret them yourself ;)
> You can easily run your own scripts and modify tags/mails. So a simple solution might be:
> * Add "snoozed" to your notmuch exclude_tags (see config file)
> * To snooze a mail run in your mail client "tag +snoozed +snoozeby-10-days"
>   or "tag +snoozed +snoozeuntil-2015-01-09"
> * Your script (e.g. run as cronjob or after notmuch new) now 
>   - queries for "tag:snoozed"
>   - looks for snoozeuntil-* tag and parses the tag into a date. If date < now remove snooze-tags.
>   - looks for (relative) snoozeby tag and transform it into (absolute) snoozeuntil tag.
> (should be not too hard using e.g. the python or ruby bindings)

I actually do something like this.  It's not everything Sebastian was
looking for, but it's very simple, and works great for me.

I use a combination of a "pending" tag and a "byYYYYMMDD" tag.

From cron, I run the following to refile pending mail back to the inbox
when it comes due:

#!/bin/bash
DATE_STR=$(date +'%Y%m%d')
notmuch tag +inbox -pending -by$DATE_STR -- tag:by$DATE_STR

and in Emacs, I use the following key binding to snooze mail (or in the Mutt
terminology I borrowed, `postpone' it, hence the key):

(define-key notmuch-search-mode-map "P"
  (lambda ()
    "postpone message (remove inbox tag, add pending tag and refile date)"
    (interactive)
    (let* ((date-string (format-time-string "%Y%m%d" (org-read-date nil t)))
	   (date-tag (concat "+by" date-string)))
      (notmuch-search-tag `("-inbox" "+pending" ,date-tag)))))
      
(The `org-read-date' function gives me a nice easy way to pick a date
from a calendar.  I bind "P" to the same function in
notmuch-show-mode-map, too.)

Hope that helps!

Best,
Richard

Re: email snoozing in notmuch

[Sebastian Fischmeister]

Hi Richard,

Thanks for the nice and simple solution. I prefer this one to a solution
like notmuch-snooze that stores the desnoozing in an external program
and thus complicates backups.

  Sebastian

Richard Lawrence <richard.lawrence@berkeley.edu> writes:

> Franz Fellner <alpine.art.de@gmail.com>
> writes:
>
>> Sebastian Fischmeister wrote:
>  
>>> I'm thinking of how to realize the mail snoozing feature with notmuch,
>>> so that certain emails won't become visible (in the search) until a
>>> certain day/time (e.g., 10 days from now).
>>> 
>>> Using the tag as an absolute date when the mail should become visible
>>> again, tags should be searchable and interpretable as dates. The search
>>> would then be something like: notmuch search tag-as-date < now and
>>> tag:inbox
>>
>> It is not neccessary to make notmuch interpret tags as date - just interpret them yourself ;)
>> You can easily run your own scripts and modify tags/mails. So a simple solution might be:
>> * Add "snoozed" to your notmuch exclude_tags (see config file)
>> * To snooze a mail run in your mail client "tag +snoozed +snoozeby-10-days"
>>   or "tag +snoozed +snoozeuntil-2015-01-09"
>> * Your script (e.g. run as cronjob or after notmuch new) now 
>>   - queries for "tag:snoozed"
>>   - looks for snoozeuntil-* tag and parses the tag into a date. If date < now remove snooze-tags.
>>   - looks for (relative) snoozeby tag and transform it into (absolute) snoozeuntil tag.
>> (should be not too hard using e.g. the python or ruby bindings)
>
> I actually do something like this.  It's not everything Sebastian was
> looking for, but it's very simple, and works great for me.
>
> I use a combination of a "pending" tag and a "byYYYYMMDD" tag.
>
> From cron, I run the following to refile pending mail back to the inbox
> when it comes due:
>
> #!/bin/bash
> DATE_STR=$(date +'%Y%m%d')
> notmuch tag +inbox -pending -by$DATE_STR -- tag:by$DATE_STR
>
> and in Emacs, I use the following key binding to snooze mail (or in the Mutt
> terminology I borrowed, `postpone' it, hence the key):
>
> (define-key notmuch-search-mode-map "P"
>   (lambda ()
>     "postpone message (remove inbox tag, add pending tag and refile date)"
>     (interactive)
>     (let* ((date-string (format-time-string "%Y%m%d" (org-read-date nil t)))
> 	   (date-tag (concat "+by" date-string)))
>       (notmuch-search-tag `("-inbox" "+pending" ,date-tag)))))
>       
> (The `org-read-date' function gives me a nice easy way to pick a date
> from a calendar.  I bind "P" to the same function in
> notmuch-show-mode-map, too.)
>
> Hope that helps!
>
> Best,
> Richard
>
> _______________________________________________
> notmuch mailing list
> notmuch@notmuchmail.org
> http://notmuchmail.org/mailman/listinfo/notmuch

Re: email snoozing in notmuch

[Trevor Jim]

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I've implemented this in elisp, here: https://github.com/tjim/nevermore/blob/master/nm.el#L745

Snooze has come up a repeatedly on this list. Maybe it would make sense to build it in to notmuch?

Of course, it can be built on top of notmuch so it's not necessary to bake it in. But there are other features in notmuch of which you could say the same, e.g., excluded tags.

The benefit of building it in would be a common interface/implementation that all UIs could use.



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