[notmuch] tag dir proposal [was: Re: Git as notmuch object store]

[Servilio Afre Puentes]

2010/1/28 martin f krafft <madduck at madduck.net>:
> also sprach Jameson Rollins <jrollins at finestructure.net> [2010.01.26.1046 +1300]:
>> > For example, I might have:
>> >
>> > ~/.notmuch-config:
>> >
>> >     [database]
>> >     path=/home/pioto/mail
>> >     ...
>> >     [tags]
>> >     pioto at pioto.org/INBOX.ListMail.notmuch = notmuch
>> >
>> > So, a 'tags' section, where each key is the folder name, relative to the
>> > db path, and the value is one or more tag names
>>
>> I think this idea is a really good one and I would like to pursue it as
>> a tangent thread here.  I was going to propose something very similar to
>> this.  I think it's a very flexible idea that would help in a lot of
>> ways.
>
> I think we need to carefully distinguish here. The above seems to
> suggest a mapping from folder to tag, but we don't actually need
> tags for folder locations because those can (and should) be implicitly
> determined from the database

I think that the usefulness of this functionality is that we can have
a mapping from physical organization of the mail to a tagging scheme
of our choosing, and we can be relieved from having to remember the
location of the mail (that can be different in different from
different mail clients).

But even right now I can't find a documented way of searching by
location, so AFAIK the implementation of this proposal would allow
something that is not possible at the moment.

>> [tags]
>> inbox = +inbox,+unread
>> sent = +sent
>> drafts = +draft
>> archive = -inbox
>
> This proposal, on the other hand, is an interesting one, but when is
> it supposed to happen? It just feels wrong to make this happen as
> part of 'notmuch new'.

Why so?

> What I would like to see is a notmuch-aware MDA, e.g. a programme
> which reads an incoming mail on stdin and can do all this kind of
> stuff, e.g. assign tags based on such rules (or take tags as
> arguments, so that I could trivially set tags from procmail too),
> write the message to the message store, and update the database.

Such an MDA wouldn't need to use "notmuch new", and thus won't be
affected by this

> This would allow us to get rid of 'notmuch new' altogether, at least
> conceptually. We'd still need it if mail is being delivered
> independently, e.g. with offlineimap.

Then we'd still need it, why not make it better?

Regards,

Servilio