Better Gmail handling by not using Notmuch tags

[Rainer M Krug]

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Just to let you know, on the offlineimap there is also a discussion going on about gmail labels /
folders / sync and it looks as if something is happening on that side:

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.mail.imap.offlineimap.general/5915

Would be nice, if this could work together nicely with notmuch.

Cheers,

Rainer



On 17/09/12 16:23, Rainer M Krug wrote:
> 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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