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

[James Vasile]

On Fri, 12 Mar 2010 08:49:35 +0100, Michal Sojka <sojkam1 at fel.cvut.cz> wrote:
> 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.

I disagree as to how much time notmuch currently takes.  To get a
workable setup, you need to answer a few questions, setup offlineimap,
write a tagging script, setup up folders, apply a bunch of patches,
etc.  

I've been telling people to wait 6 months instead of trying notmuch.
That's based on how much work it is to setup, incomplete MUA, bugs, etc.

> 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.

That's a fair point.  I hope notmuch gets easier over time, and one of
the things I'd like to implement is sane defaults.  As notmuch gets more
user friendly, I'd like to make the pieces I write less onerous to
configure.

For example, I have some stub code for a default profile that pulls
values from ~/.notmuch.  Then if the user doesn't do the setup, things
should be not much different than they are now.

-J