newbie questions

[albin stjerna]

On Fri, 3 Feb 2012 12:59:34 +0100, Tamas Papp <tkpapp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,

Hi Tamas, and (I suppose) welcome to the Notmuch mailing list!

> I just started using notmuch. It is fascinating, but I still need to
> figure out a few things:
> 
> 1. How can I restrict searches (eg of my inbox) to the last few
> messages (eg 50-100) or some date (eg last 2 weeks)? I am using the
> Emacs interface.

Well, the query syntax is <start unix timestamp>..<end unix timestamp>. I
know there's been talk on the list about some way to use it more easily
in the queries, and it wouldn't be hard to write a function that
generated a query using a more human-friendly notation of time. So far I
don't know about anyone actually having written such a function though,
but I wouldn't be surprised if someone has.

> 2. Could someone point me to some guides on workflow with notmuch in
> Emacs? So far I have been using mutt, and I guess I need to rethink a
> few things.

Possibly. I've only used mutt briefly and a very long time ago, so I
don't really remember, but as you've probably already seen notmuch
relies very heavily on tags, as opposed to just about any other email
client out there (except Gmail, which I've found to be very similar). So
»inbox«, »archived«, »read« and so on isn't really »boxes« the way one
is used to, rather than separate labels you can set (and unset) on each
thread.

My workflow is something like this: first I fetch mail from IMAP using
offlineimap, then I run a script that tags incoming mail as personal,
list, notmuch, rss and so on (notmuch is also my RSS reader). I've set
the saved searches in Emacs to show fairly standard »tag:<tag title> AND
tag:inbox« searches for most of my tags. Then each morning, I begin by
processing »personal« from the top to the bottom, because the »personal«
tag is the one most likely to contain important and/or time-critical
mail (in effect it is the catch-all tag for all mail that isn't directed
to a mailing list or otherwise filtered out as probably uninteresting).

If you're interested, I can send you my mail tagging script.

When I'm done with each mail I archive it (using the standard keybinding
»a«). Most mails are handled more or less immediately, but some (in
particular posts from RSS) take longer time to read. Those I tag with
»read/review« using a custom keybinding »T«. I can then process those
when I have the time.

> 3. If I have multiple accounts, how can I change my e-mail address
> (From:) when I am writing messages (within emacs, using the m key).

I'm mostly changing this by just typing my other email address (and
tab-completing it of course). I actually haven't thought about there
being any other way, but now that you mention it there probably is. :)

Hope this helps! Albin