[notmuch] My shiny new notmuch configuration

[Ben Gamari]

Hey all,

After standing on the sidelines for several months now, I've finally transitioned to
using notmuch exclusively. I had originally intended on waiting until the vim was
in a usable state, but it seems that the emacs client is usable enough for
basic mail reading for the time being. It took a bit of thinking to figure out
how thing should be implemented, but I think it turned out alright. There are
still a few sticky spots, but hopefully I'll be able to iron those out in time.

Regardless, I couldn't sacrifice my preference for vim for email composition and
therefore have been using a small wrapper script[10] to begin new drafts. I
also have a small python script[12] so that I can make use of my old sup address
book. Finally, I have a script for sending a draft and placing it in my sent
maildir. My tagging script[13] is very similar to those posted here before.

All-in-all, things seem very usable and I'm quite happy with how my notmuch
configuration has turned out. It will be very nice with a real vim interface, which I'll
hopefully have time to work on in May or so.

Unfortunately, both notmuch new and the initial tagging process are a bit slower
than I would like (with fairly warm caches notmuch new just took 20 seconds to
add 2 messages, which then took an additional 45 seconds to tag) but still
usable. I believe I should have the newest Xapian bits so I guess figuring out
the issue here could require some investigation. 

In the meantime, I've done a some hacking on the noneatall[1] web interface
that was posted here a little while ago, restructing the code a little and
adding a tag list. I intend doing more work on this in the future. At the
moment the latency really kills usability, but with some work I suspect a web
interface might be very usable.

I hope that someone finds this at least slightly useful.

Cheers,

- Ben


[1] 874okzdgh0.fsf at aw.hh.sledj.ne

[10] compose-mail
#!/bin/bash

cd ~/.mail/.drafts
TO=$(contacts $@)
gvim - +3 -c'set syntax=mail'  <<EOF
From: Ben Gamari <bgamari at gmail.com>
To: ${TO}
Subject: 


EOF


[11] contacts
#!/usr/bin/python

# Simple address book lookup:
# Usage: contacts.py [alias]
# Outputs: Full Name <Email at address>

import os
import sys

contacts_file = os.path.expanduser('~/.contacts')

def get():
        contacts = {}
        for l in open(contacts_file, 'r'):
                name,address = l.split(':')
                contacts[name.strip()] = address.strip()
        return contacts

if __name__ == '__main__':
        contacts = get()
        m = []
        m = [ contacts.get(name, name) for name in sys.argv[1:] ]
        print ", ".join(m)


[13] sort-mail
#!/usr/bin/python

dry_run = False


import subprocess
import time

def sf_list(name):
        return 'to:%s at lists.sourceforge.net or to:%s at lists.sf.net' % (name, name)
def kernel_list(name):
        return 'to:%s at vger.kernel.org' % name
def fdo_list(name):
        return 'to:%s at lists.freedesktop.org' % name

# These are bulk message sources which should be immediately archived
list_tags = {
        kernel_list('linux-kernel'): 'lkml',
        kernel_list('linux-omap') : 'linux-omap',
        kernel_list('linux-next'): 'linux-next',
        'to:linux-arm-kernel at lists.infradead.org': 'linux-arm',
        sf_list('oprofile-list'): 'oprofile',

        sf_list('ipw3945-devel'): 'ipw',
        'to:hostap at lists.shmoo.com': 'hostap',
        'to:ath9k-devel@': 'ath9k',
        'to:vim-dev at vim.org': 'vim',
        
        fdo_list('intel-gfx'): 'intel-gfx',
        fdo_list('xorg'): 'xorg',
        fdo_list('hal'): 'hal',
        fdo_list('compiz'): 'compiz',
        sf_list('dri-devel'): 'dri',
        sf_list('dri-users'): 'dri',
        sf_list('mesa3d-dev'): 'mesa',

        fdo_list('devkit-devel'): 'devkit',
        sf_list('matplotlib-users'): 'matplotlib',
        'to:notmuch at notmuchmail.org': 'notmuch',

        'to:openembedded-devel at lists.openembedded.org': 'openembedded',
        'to:beagleboard at googlegroups.com': 'beagleboard',
        'to:angstrom-distro-devel at linuxtogo.org': 'angstrom',
        'to:angstrom-distro-users at linuxtogo.org': 'angstrom',

        'to:mono-devel-list at lists.ximian.com': 'mono',
        'to:mono-list@': 'mono',
        'to:ubuntu-devel-discuss at lists.ubuntu.com': 'ubuntu-devel',
        'to:git at vger.kernel.org': 'git',
        'to:sup-talk at rubyforge.org': 'sup',

        'from:bugzilla': 'bugs',
        'to:gdh at gdhour.com': 'gdh',
        'from:Facebook': 'facebook',
}

# Tags that aren't for lists
generic_tags = {
        'from:goldner': 'lori',
        'to:goldnerlab': 'lori',
        'to:babaev1 at physics.umass.edu': 'stat-mech',
        'to:pgradon at physics.umass.edu': 'pgradon',
}

def notmuch(*args):
        cmd = ['notmuch']
        cmd.extend(args)
        print ' '.join(cmd)
        if dry_run: return

        while True:
                res = subprocess.call(cmd)
                if res == 0: break
                print "Call failed. Trying again in 1 second..."
                time.sleep(1)
        

# Tag things
for terms, tag in generic_tags.items():
        notmuch('tag', '+%s' % tag, 'tag:inbox', terms)

# Tag lists
for terms, tag in list_tags.items():
        notmuch('tag', '+list', '+%s' % tag, 'tag:inbox', terms)

# Remove inbox for lists
for terms, tag in list_tags.items():
        notmuch('tag', '-inbox', 'tag:inbox', terms)