notmuch-mode snippet: auto-select "inbox" widget when launching

notmuch-mode snippet: auto-select "inbox" widget when launching

[Christian Tietze]

Hey folks!

I'm enjoying notmuch-mode for the better part of 2020 and really got going with emacs thanks to this.

In my day-to-day work, I noticed that when I leave the notmuch-hello buffer open, the point position remains like I left it, which is good. But sometimes I apparently hit `q` and on entering notmuch-hello the next time, I find that my point is in the upper-left corner where the logo is and I have to TAB to inbox.

My idea for a remedy: when `notmuch-hello` is executed and creates the buffer, move point to the inbox tag.

The existing hooks are kinda wonky for this, though. `notmuch-hello-mode-hook` is executed too early, before widgets are available to move the point to, for example. And adding an advice around notmuch-hello doesn't help because that's executed for every refresh, it seems.

My hacky solution is to flick a temp variable on in the mode hook and use this to distinguish the first advice execution from all the others. Code is at the end.

Maybe someone can make use of this, too.

I don't really like the way I do it :)

Do you have any suggestions? I don't want to propose a patch that changes when the hook is executed because I don't know why the hook runs before the widgets are available.

Thanks for any pointers, and enjoy!

Cheers,
Christian

-----
;; When enabling the mode for the first time in a buffer, set a temp variable to `t` ...
(defvar ct/notmuch-hello-mode-activated nil)

(defun ct/notmuch-hello-prepare-advice-hook ()
  (setq ct/notmuch-hello-mode-activated t))
(add-hook 'notmuch-hello-mode-hook #'ct/notmuch-hello-prepare-advice-hook)

(defun ct/notmuch-hello-post-launch-advice (&rest args)
  ;; ... search for the "inbox" widget in the buffer recursively.
  (defun go-to-inbox-widget ()
    (let ((widget (widget-at (point))))
      (if (and widget (string= "inbox" (widget-value widget)))
          nil
        (widget-forward 1)
        (go-to-inbox-widget))))
  ;; ... but only once (!) ...
  (unless (not ct/notmuch-hello-mode-activated)
    ;; ... so turn off the temp variable.
    (setq ct/notmuch-hello-mode-activated nil)
    (go-to-inbox-widget)))
(advice-add #'notmuch-hello :after #'ct/notmuch-hello-post-launch-advice)
-----

Re: notmuch-mode snippet: auto-select "inbox" widget when launching

[David Bremner]

Christian Tietze <me@christiantietze.de> writes:

>
> The existing hooks are kinda wonky for this,
> though. `notmuch-hello-mode-hook` is executed too early, before
> widgets are available to move the point to, for example. And adding an
> advice around notmuch-hello doesn't help because that's executed for
> every refresh, it seems.

Did you try notmuch-hello-refresh-hook? Maybe set a varible in
notmuch-hello-mode-hook to say "new invocation" and do the jump in
notmuch-refresh-hook?

> Do you have any suggestions? I don't want to propose a patch that
> changes when the hook is executed because I don't know why the hook
> runs before the widgets are available.

Some "not really solution" ideas:

- you can remove notmuch-hello-insert-header from
  notmuch-hello-sections, which means less tabbing

- by default there are key-sequences starting with j that jump to each
  configured saved-search