[notmuch] New to the list

[Carl Worth]

On Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:57:18 +0100, Israel Herraiz <isra at herraiz.org> wrote:
> I have subscribed to the list. As suggested by the welcome message, I
> am introducing myself. My name is Israel Herraiz, and I have done a
> couple of contributions to Sup, the probably well-known here e-mail
> client.

Welcome, Israel!

I'm glad people read that little bit of text in the welcome email and
are introducing themselves. I like to think of our new notmuch community
as a very personable place.

> "Not much" sounds interesting, and I wonder whether it could be
> integrated with the views of Sup (inbox, threads, etc). So I have
> subscribed to the list to keep an eye on what's going on here.
> 
> I have just heard of "Not much". I have not even tried to download the
> code yet.

Yes, take a look. If you're already an emacs user, then you'll find the
interface of notmuch very comfortable, (looks a lot like sup, but lives
inside of emacs). Even outside of emacs, the command line interface of
notmuch gives view *fairly* similar to those of sup:

    notmuch search tag:inbox		# Very much like sup's inbox

    notmuch show thread:some-thread-id	# A lot like sup's thread -view

The command-line output right now isn't nearly as neat as sup's, (it
doesn't elide comments--it doesn't do the indenting of threads, etc.),
even though the command-line interface has all the information it needs
to do that. The reason for that is to let the emacs code own most of the
formatting, (so that it can be more flexible--such as making hidden
things visible, changing column widths, etc.).

But one thing I wonder is if there would be situations where it would
make sense to get the cleaner output directly out of the command-line
tool.

For example, for someone who isn't an emacs user, the command-line
interface might be their only introduction to what the "notmuch
experience" is like. So maybe "notmuch show" should give nice clean
output by default and then the emacs code could call "notmuch show
--format=emacs-friendly" or something to get the current output.

That's an idea anyway.

-Carl