[notmuch] inbox/unread tags for new messages [was: Re: Thoughts on notmuch and Lua]

[Jameson Rollins]

On Fri, Jan 15, 2010 at 03:15:13PM -0800, Carl Worth wrote:
> We've talked about switching from default tags of "inbox" and "unread"
> to simply having new mail tagged with a "new" tag. So a "tagger" script
> could operate simply by doing a "notmuch search" for messages with the
> "new" tag and could iterate over the filenames to process actual
> messages. (We don't have support now for emitting just filenames from a
> "notmuch search", but we have patches for that, and I'll be applying one
> soon.)

Hey, Carl.  I would actually like to argue against replacing the
'inbox' and 'unread' tags with a single "new" tag.  Here's why:

At first I didn't think I liked the fact that new messages were doubly
tagged with 'inbox' and 'unread'.  But then I realized that what I was
really not liking was the way that the emacs UI was handling those
tags, and the more I thought about it I realized that those two tags
are very useful and we just need to streamline how they're handled.

I think that the 'unread' tag should be tightly synced to the maildir
'S' flags, which indicate the read status on the maildir message files
themselves.  This is useful for compatibility with other MUAs, and is
one of the few generally useful tags that can be synced through IMAP.

The 'unread' tag should also not be something that the user ever
consciously has to get rid of.  Notmuch MUAs should just get rid of it
automatically when the user actually views the message.  The notmuch
emacs UI is currently not handling this very well, but I think we can
tweak that fairly easily.

As for the 'inbox' tag, I think it should be kept because it has a
very particular, well understood, and useful semantic meaning for MUAs
that people already understand.  My mail inbox is actually what I'm
syncing via offlineimap and I would like the 'inbox' tag to correspond
directly to the messages that are in my actual maildir inbox.

This last point I think is very important because I think it
corresponds to the way that *most* people are or need to handle their
mail, and it's something that I think notmuch hasn't quite fully come
to grips with yet.

I'm going to follow up this message with another one that describes my
idea for a streamlined message flow in notmuch that would utilize
these tags better.

jamie.
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