[notmuch] What's so great about notmuch?

[James Westby]

On Fri, 26 Feb 2010 12:08:49 -0800, Carl Worth <cworth at cworth.org> wrote:
> It seems clear that I'll have some opportunities to present notmuch to
> various audiences at varying levels of formality. Since notmuch is
> already a bigger project than me, I'd love to get some ideas from others
> about what you think are the "big ideas" in notmuch.
> 
> So here are a few different phrasings of what's basically the same
> question. And I'd love to hear some brief opinions on any one of these,
> (or similar topics):
> 
>    What's your favorite thing about notmuch?

That it takes as long to download my mail from my server as it does to
then process my inbox down to zero. (Though it doesn't yet allow me to
complete all the tasks within in that time unfortunately.)

>    What about notmuch makes it distinctive compared to other email
>    programs?

That the sucky things about it are bugs that will be fixed soon enough,
rather than architectual problems that will never get fixed (with
possibly one exception noted below.)

>    If someone were to implement a new email system from scratch, but
>    capturing the "ideas" of notmuch, what would it have to have?

  * Thread based

  * Tagging

  * Pervasive search

  * Speed

  * An amusing name


The biggest un-good thing about notmuch right now for me is that it is
effectively single-machine (though not hostile about it like sup). I
want local mail for offline use (like right now,) but have more than one
machine. It would be perfect if doing this didn't require notmuch on
every client for it to work, with graceful degredation for those without
it, though I would be perfectly happy with an android port.

Thanks,

James