Questions from a user new to notmuch

Questions from a user new to notmuch

[Kyle Sexton]

I've been playing with notmuch for a couple days and am impressed so
far.  The virtual folder concept is taking some getting accustomed to
but I see the inherent flexibility.  Now, some new user questions. :)

1. Using offlineimap to store mail into a Maildir, is it safe to move an
   already indexed message to a different folder from some other client?
2. I received a message that was addressed to a distribution group and
   tried to reply.  Because the TO: address is not my address, notmuch
   fails to guess the proper FROM: address to set.  Is there a way to
   handle this use case?  This is with the emacs notmuch client.
3. The emacs news Gnus client supports Gravatar images for contacts, is
   that something that can be done w/ the emacs notmuch reader?

Thanks in advance!


-- 
Kyle Sexton

Re: Questions from a user new to notmuch

[Austin Clements]

Quoth Kyle Sexton on Mar 21 at 10:21 pm:
> I've been playing with notmuch for a couple days and am impressed so
> far.  The virtual folder concept is taking some getting accustomed to
> but I see the inherent flexibility.  Now, some new user questions. :)

Glad you're enjoying it!

> 1. Using offlineimap to store mail into a Maildir, is it safe to move an
>    already indexed message to a different folder from some other client?

Yes, mostly.  You'll have to run notmuch new for notmuch to detect the
move, but it will detect it as a move.  I say "mostly" because until
you run notmuch new, notmuch won't find the message file, so it won't
be able to display the message and won't be able to synchronize any
tag changes to its maildir flags.

> 2. I received a message that was addressed to a distribution group and
>    tried to reply.  Because the TO: address is not my address, notmuch
>    fails to guess the proper FROM: address to set.  Is there a way to
>    handle this use case?  This is with the emacs notmuch client.

Not in general, since notmuch doesn't know where the mail was
addressed to.  I believe some people have solved problems like this
using Emacs hooks, but I don't know the details.

> 3. The emacs news Gnus client supports Gravatar images for contacts, is
>    that something that can be done w/ the emacs notmuch reader?

Not in mainline notmuch, but dme has some toy code for this.
  http://dme.org/data/images/2010-11-30-174357_1920x1200_scrot.png
I don't know if it still works (or if there's a text copy of the code
anywhere!), though at a glance it looks like it probably will.

> Thanks in advance!

Re: Questions from a user new to notmuch

[Patrick Totzke]

Quoting Austin Clements (2012-03-22 22:39:07)
>> 2. I received a message that was addressed to a distribution group and
>>    tried to reply.  Because the TO: address is not my address, notmuch
>>    fails to guess the proper FROM: address to set.  Is there a way to
>>    handle this use case?  This is with the emacs notmuch client.
>
>Not in general, since notmuch doesn't know where the mail was
>addressed to.  I believe some people have solved problems like this
>using Emacs hooks, but I don't know the details.

Does the notmuch CLI not use the 'Delivered-To' header for this?
/p

Re: Questions from a user new to notmuch

[Jani Nikula]

On Thu, 22 Mar 2012 18:39:07 -0400, Austin Clements <amdragon@MIT.EDU> wrote:
> Quoth Kyle Sexton on Mar 21 at 10:21 pm:
> > 1. Using offlineimap to store mail into a Maildir, is it safe to move an
> >    already indexed message to a different folder from some other client?
> 
> Yes, mostly.  You'll have to run notmuch new for notmuch to detect the
> move, but it will detect it as a move.  I say "mostly" because until
> you run notmuch new, notmuch won't find the message file, so it won't
> be able to display the message and won't be able to synchronize any
> tag changes to its maildir flags.

If maildir.synchronize_flags is enabled (it is by default) you should
take extra care to have the mail store and notmuch database in sync (by
running "notmuch new") before changing tags that are synced with maildir
flags. Otherwise, the following scenario is possible:

1) Rename file with id:message-id in another client. Note that maildir
   flag changes are also renames.

2) "notmuch tag -unread id:message-id" will remove unread tag from the
   message, but won't find the message file, and is thus unable to sync
   the tag change to the S maildir flag. The syncing just silently
   fails.

3) The next "notmuch new" syncs maildir flags to tags, adding unread tag
   back to id:message-id, losing your tag change.

This could be considered a bug in notmuch, but not an easy one to fix
race free. See http://notmuchmail.org/special-tags/ and your
.notmuch-config for details about maildir flag synchronization.


BR,
Jani.

Re: Questions from a user new to notmuch

[Jani Nikula]

On Sat, 24 Mar 2012 10:04:48 +0000, Patrick Totzke <patricktotzke@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Quoting Austin Clements (2012-03-22 22:39:07)
> >> 2. I received a message that was addressed to a distribution group and
> >>    tried to reply.  Because the TO: address is not my address, notmuch
> >>    fails to guess the proper FROM: address to set.  Is there a way to
> >>    handle this use case?  This is with the emacs notmuch client.
> >
> >Not in general, since notmuch doesn't know where the mail was
> >addressed to.  I believe some people have solved problems like this
> >using Emacs hooks, but I don't know the details.
> 
> Does the notmuch CLI not use the 'Delivered-To' header for this?

To decide which from address to use for replying, the CLI (and therefore
emacs ui) looks for primary and other email addresses in the
reply-to/from, to, cc, bcc, envelope-to, x-original-to, and finally
received headers, in this order, before falling back to just using
primary email.

If someone is interested (read: I'm too busy right now), and it's
desirable, it would be a one-liner to add delivered-to in the to_headers
array in guess_from_received_header() in notmuch-reply.c. Plus a few
dozen lines of test code. ;)

BR,
Jani.