Better Gmail handling by not using Notmuch tags

[Rainer M Krug]

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On 14/09/12 18:27, Mark Anderson wrote:
> On Fri, 14 Sep 2012 09:50:01 +0200, Rainer M Krug
> <R.M.Krug at gmail.com> wrote: On 13/09/12 17:15, Damien Cassou
> wrote:
>>>> On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 5:13 PM, Jeremy Nickurak 
>>>> <not-much at trk.nickurak.ca> wrote:
>>>>> Gmail doesn't have folders, of course, it has labels, which are approximately
>>>>> equivalent to notmuch tags. The key difference being that a message can only be in one
>>>>> folder, but it can have multiple tags/labels.
>>>> 
>>>> Gmail exports its labels as IMAP folders: an email with multiple labels will be
>>>> duplicated in multiple folders (one per label). That's why I'm asking if it would be
>>>> possible to manupale folders from Notmuch instead of tags.
>>>> 
> 
> I don't think there is an easy solution. notmuch uses a maildir and tags. Gmail needs to be
> synced to this local maildir earlier, and this is where I think the problem comes in: I am not
> aware of any sync tool which maintains the gmail labels, as they are in in the imap context 
> folders.
> 
> I think the only real solution woud be:
> 
> Download from gmail -> local: 1) download only the "All Mail" folder 2) implement a tagging
> tool which syncs the gmail labels to notmuch tags
> 
>> Gmail's IMAP protocol does expose a folder hierarchy which you can use to reverse engineer
>> the tag cloud of each email.
> 

<<SNIP a lot>>

Wow - I learned a lot about notmuch and how things can be done - thanks for this explanation.

>> Of course this is terrible on performance, as you will have lots of

I guess this will be the problem: a typical gmail user, keeps the emails - one has 10GB as
storage, so why delete potentially important mails?

So I guess this would be a case for e.g. offlineimap.

>> copies of mails when you have lots of tags on your mail, but here's a summary of the actions
>> you need to coordinate to keep them in sync.

<SNIP>>

>> The benefit of using the mail sync is it uses a widely distributed mail synchronization
>> model, but it really tags expensive to synchronize.  It gets better if you use the Gmail imap
>> extensions that can list the tags without your client requesting a copy of the entire email
>> for each tag the mail has.  However, Even when you have that, you don't have bulletproof
>> mail, because the actions need to be guaranteed to complete before synchronization and after
>> synchronization, and any user changes need to be held off, as they _will_ be interpreted
>> incorrectly if they take place during the pre-sync, sync, post-sync window.

It would then definitely be useful to include this in offlineimap - effectively have a "tagging"
sync model, where only the "All Mail" folder is synched, and for the tags, a database is kept,
which contains the tags for each message-id. This could then be used from notmuch (or other
clients) to set the tags of the email.

For the moment I guess I will stick with my only-"All Mails"-sync-and-ignore-tags approach.

Thanks,

Rainer


> 
>> You can simplify this if you make guarantees in your usage model.  That you will never do
>> tagging operations during a pre-, sync, post- cycle, or that you only do synchronization one
>> way or the other, instead of full bidirectional sync.
> 
>> It's a difficult problem, I look forward to seeing other solutions proposed.
> 
>> Thanks, -Mark Anderson
> 
> upload local -> gmail 1) upload "All Mail folder 2) assign on gmail the labels corresponding to
> the notmuch tags.
> 
> The step 1 could be done by any sync tool available for this (offlineimap, ...)
> 
> step 2 needs to be developed - no idea how, but it surely would be really usefull, because
> then notmuch would even become a perfect tool for gmail backup as well.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Rainer
>> 
>> _______________________________________________ notmuch mailing list 
>> notmuch at notmuchmail.org 
>> http://notmuchmail.org/mailman/listinfo/notmuch
>> 
> 

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