Why not tags inside messages?

Why not tags inside messages?

[David Belohrad]

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Dear all,

I'd love to use notmuch with offline imap  to work rather on local copy of messages, than using remote notmuch, which is slightly slower due to bandwidth limitation of my vdsl line. There is however fundamental problem of syncing flags between two instances of notmuch. So my question is, whether it would be possible, when tagging message, to store the tag as well in the message itself. Might this help to sync across multiple instances?

Another thing is, that I'd love to have native android app working over remote notmuch to work as my email agent. Is there anything like this? I guess not...

Thanks

D.




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Re: Why not tags inside messages?

[James Vasile]

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On Sat, 07 Apr 2012 18:46:03 +0200, David Belohrad <david@belohrad.ch> wrote:
> Dear all,
> 
> I'd love to use notmuch with offline imap  to work rather on local
> copy of messages, than using remote notmuch, which is slightly slower
> due to bandwidth limitation of my vdsl line. There is however
> fundamental problem of syncing flags between two instances of
> notmuch. So my question is, whether it would be possible, when tagging
> message, to store the tag as well in the message itself. Might this
> help to sync across multiple instances?

From my POV, there are two problems here.  

First is that storing tags in multiple places (one in db and once in
each message copy) leads to the question of which set of tags is
authoritative.  Syncing those tags is additional complexity.  And as a
mail moves to another system with a different notmuch db, what happens
to the tags?

Second is that your tags might then be public because
forwarding/replying to a message will, depending on your mail client,
also get included.

> 
> Another thing is, that I'd love to have native android app working
> over remote notmuch to work as my email agent. Is there anything like
> this? I guess not...

Not that I'm aware of, but if anybody is working on this, I'd love to
know and see if I can help.

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Re: Why not tags inside messages?

[Adam Wolfe Gordon]

Hi David,

On Sat, Apr 7, 2012 at 10:46, David Belohrad <david@belohrad.ch> wrote:
> I'd love to use notmuch with offline imap  to work rather on local copy of
> messages, than using remote notmuch, which is slightly slower due to
> bandwidth limitation of my vdsl line. There is however fundamental problem
> of syncing flags between two instances of notmuch. So my question is,
> whether it would be possible, when tagging message, to store the tag as well
> in the message itself. Might this help to sync across multiple instances?

One solution that various people have used (I've used it for backup)
is to make the .notmuch directory in the maildir into a git
repository, and sync it to various machines using git push/git pull.
You can do the push/pull manually or in a notmuch hook to keep things
synced. I'm not sure if this is any better for your purposes than
using remote notmuch, but it would keep things local most of the time.

> Another thing is, that I'd love to have native android app working over
> remote notmuch to work as my email agent. Is there anything like this? I
> guess not...

I started working on one once, using python to write a little notmuch
server that produced JSON for various things, and an Android app that
contacted the server and displayed things nicely. It only got as far
as being able to list tags and count messages. It's probably something
I'll pick up again at some point, and of course I'd be happy to share
code if people are willing to help.

I know another Android client has been mentioned on IRC, but I'm not
sure if it got any further than mine.

Re: Why not tags inside messages?

[Sebastian Spaeth]

>On Sat, Apr 7, 2012 at 10:46, David Belohrad <david@belohrad.ch> wrote:
>> I'd love to use notmuch with offline imap  to work rather on local
>copy of
>> messages, than using remote notmuch, which is slightly slower due to
>> bandwidth limitation of my vdsl line. There is however fundamental
>problem
>> of syncing flags between two instances of notmuch. So my question is,
>> whether it would be possible, when tagging message, to store the tag
>as well
>> in the message itself. Might this help to sync across multiple
>instances?

My long-term dream is still to enable offlinemap to sync all imap flags and sync notmuch flags via offlineimap/imap server. But don` t hold your breath :-) 

Sebastian

-- 
Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.