[notmuch] [PATCH] Change From and Bcc when creating reply draft buffer

[Michal Sojka]

On Thu, 11 Mar 2010, James Vasile wrote:
> On Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:22:41 +0100, Michal Sojka <sojkam1 at fel.cvut.cz> wrote:
> > thanks for clarification. It all sounds reasonable. The only problem I
> > can see now is that if I create a new account on my machine and run
> > emacs there, then the value of user-mail-address is <login>@<hostname>
> > which doesn't refer to existing mailbox. I think that the header should
> > only be rewritten if these variables are known to have valid values. Do
> > you know how to do this?
> > 
> 
> I explicitly set these in my .emacs file, so I don't do any detection.
> If you could define "valid" I suppose you could test for such things.
> 
> Something like the following works for me.  I run mail-profile-foo with
> M-x or run it automatically with profile-guessing/setting routines.
> When I get the system ironed out, I'll emit patches and a wiki entry.
> 
> (defun message-mode-set-profile ()
>   (save-excursion
>     (when (string= "message-mode" major-mode)
>       (goto-char (point-min))
>       (when (re-search-forward "^From: " nil t)
> 	(kill-line)
> 	(insert (format "%s <%s>" user-full-name user-mail-address)))
> 
>       (goto-char (point-min))
>       (when (re-search-forward "^Bcc: " nil t)
> 	(kill-line)
> 	(insert (format "%s <%s>" user-full-name user-mail-address))))))
> 
> (defun mail-profile-hv ()
>   (interactive)
>   (setq mail-host-address "hackervisions.org"
>       user-full-name "James Vasile"
>       message-sendmail-extra-arguments '("-a" "hv")
>       user-mail-address "james at hackervisions.org")
>   (message-mode-set-profile)
>   user-mail-address)
> (mail-profile-hv)
> 
> <other mail-profile-foo functions>

Hmm, I understand. My worry about this approach is the following: Now it
is very straightforward to start using notmuch. You only answer a few
questions when you run notmuch for the first time and then it works. If
we apply your patch, some additional configuration is needed and a
novice might not know how to do it.

So at least notmuch should tell the user what and where needs to be
configured. Or better, provide some sane default which can be overridden
in a way you want it.

That's only my opinion. I personally would have no problem with
additional configuration, but on the other side I like programs which do
not steel my time if it is not necessary.

Bye
-Michal