queries switching from MH-E to notmuch

queries switching from MH-E to notmuch

[Stephen Eglen]

I'm considering switch emacs mailers, from MH-E to notmuch, as I would
like to find an emacs mailer with decent IMAP support.  Compared to
gnus, notmuch seems much quicker, and I like the sound of tags + fast
searching.  Can anyone help with the following points:

1. Deleting emails 

I've seen the suggestions on the emacstips for  keybindings to bind 'd'
to adding deleted tags.  But how do you then delete the mails from
the local Maildir (and then for offlineimap to propagate back the
deletions to the remote imap server)?  Do you run cron jobs to do this?

2. viewing both the search results and current thread

I'm used to the MH-E (and VM) idea that when browsing a folder (or, here,
search results) the top window shows the subject lines, and the bottom,
larger, window shows the current message.  e.g. see the top screenshot
at: http://mh-e.sourceforge.net/screenshots/.  As you scroll through the
folder contents at the top, the bottom window shows the corresponding message.

By contrast, in notmuch it seems that you either see just the search
results, or one thread, but not both.  Would it be feasible to get
something more like the behaviour of VM and MH-E?  I can write elisp
fluently, but before I look into it, I thought I'd check to see whether
this is feasible.  (I've just seen that this is the bottom item on Keith
P's wish list: http://keithp.com/notmuch/)

Thanks,
Stephen

queries switching from MH-E to notmuch

[Stephen Eglen]

[Apologies if this has gone through more than once, I've been having
problems subscribing.]

I'd like to switching emacs mailers, from MH-E to notmuch, as I need a
mailer with decent IMAP support.  Compared to gnus, notmuch (with
offlineimap) seems much quicker, and I like the sound of tags + fast
searching.  Can anyone help with the following points:

1. Deleting emails 

I've seen the suggestions on the emacstips for  keybindings to bind 'd'
to adding deleted tags.  But how do you then delete the mails from
the local Maildir (and then for offlineimap to propagate back the
deletions to the remote imap server)?  Do you run cron jobs to do this?

2. viewing both the search results and current thread

I'm used to the MH-E (and VM) idea that when browsing a folder (or, here,
search results) the top window shows the subject lines, and the bottom,
larger, window shows the current message.  e.g. see the top screenshot
at: http://mh-e.sourceforge.net/screenshots/.  As you scroll through the
folder contents at the top, the bottom window shows the corresponding message.

By contrast, in notmuch it seems that you either see just the search
results, or one thread, but not both.  Would it be feasible to get
something more like the behaviour of VM and MH-E?  I can write elisp
fluently, but before I look into it, I thought I'd check to see whether
this is feasible.  (I've just seen that this is the bottom item on Keith
P's wish list: http://keithp.com/notmuch/)

Thanks,
Stephen

Re: queries switching from MH-E to notmuch

[Jameson Graef Rollins]

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On Thu, 18 Aug 2011 09:52:09 +0100, Stephen Eglen <S.J.Eglen@damtp.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
> 1. Deleting emails 
> 
> I've seen the suggestions on the emacstips for  keybindings to bind 'd'
> to adding deleted tags.  But how do you then delete the mails from
> the local Maildir (and then for offlineimap to propagate back the
> deletions to the remote imap server)?  Do you run cron jobs to do this?

Hey, Stephen.  I purge deleted mails from the command line, with
something like xargs:

notmuch search --output=files tag:delete | xargs -l rm

> 2. viewing both the search results and current thread
...
> By contrast, in notmuch it seems that you either see just the search
> results, or one thread, but not both.  Would it be feasible to get
> something more like the behaviour of VM and MH-E?  I can write elisp
> fluently, but before I look into it, I thought I'd check to see whether
> this is feasible.  (I've just seen that this is the bottom item on Keith
> P's wish list: http://keithp.com/notmuch/)

I don't know of anyone who has worked on this, but it sounds like it
could be interesting (and that others might be interested), so go for
it!

jamie.

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Re: queries switching from MH-E to notmuch

[Austin Clements]

On Thu, Aug 18, 2011 at 4:52 AM, Stephen Eglen
<S.J.Eglen@damtp.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
> 2. viewing both the search results and current thread
>
> I'm used to the MH-E (and VM) idea that when browsing a folder (or, here,
> search results) the top window shows the subject lines, and the bottom,
> larger, window shows the current message.  e.g. see the top screenshot
> at: http://mh-e.sourceforge.net/screenshots/.  As you scroll through the
> folder contents at the top, the bottom window shows the corresponding message.
>
> By contrast, in notmuch it seems that you either see just the search
> results, or one thread, but not both.  Would it be feasible to get
> something more like the behaviour of VM and MH-E?  I can write elisp
> fluently, but before I look into it, I thought I'd check to see whether
> this is feasible.  (I've just seen that this is the bottom item on Keith
> P's wish list: http://keithp.com/notmuch/)

I would love to have something along these lines, especially with
quick navigation in both the top and bottom panes.  One idea I'd been
toying with (but have no implementation for) was to integrate Daniel
Schoepe's two-pane thread outlining with two-pane search results: in
the top pane, show the usual thread search results but replace the
currently open thread in the search results with its thread outline.
Navigating in the top pane would naturally correspond to moving
between messages in the current thread until you reached the end (or
beginning) of the thread, at which point it would move to the next (or
previous) thread.  This may or may not work in practice, but it's
something to consider.

Re: queries switching from MH-E to notmuch

[Jameson Graef Rollins]

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On Sun, 21 Aug 2011 11:55:29 -0400, Austin Clements <amdragon@mit.edu> wrote:
> I would love to have something along these lines, especially with
> quick navigation in both the top and bottom panes.  One idea I'd been
> toying with (but have no implementation for) was to integrate Daniel
> Schoepe's two-pane thread outlining with two-pane search results: in
> the top pane, show the usual thread search results but replace the
> currently open thread in the search results with its thread outline.
> Navigating in the top pane would naturally correspond to moving
> between messages in the current thread until you reached the end (or
> beginning) of the thread, at which point it would move to the next (or
> previous) thread.  This may or may not work in practice, but it's
> something to consider.

This is exactly the interface that I would like to see as well, Austin.
That would be very sweet.  I've started working on bits of this, but
haven't gotten very far.

jamie.

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