Better Gmail handling by not using Notmuch tags

[Rainer M Krug]

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On 17/09/12 09:55, Rainer M Krug wrote:
> 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.

Thinking about it again - wouldn't it be possible, that notmuch automatically is doing the "folder
- --> tag" step (when a corresponding option is set), and automatically adds all the folders to the
message tags when the same message-id is encountered in different folders?

Rainer

> 
>>> 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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