notmuch-insert Fcc handling w/spaces in dir name

[Mark Walters]

On Mon, 10 Oct 2016, Keith Amidon <camalot at picnicpark.org> wrote:
> I just upgraded to 0.23 and tried out the Fcc handling using notmuch-
> insert.  I think this is a significant improvement and I'm excited to
> use it.   I have it working successfully for my use case now, but it
> did require one workaround that I didn't expect and that seems somewhat
> fragile.
>
> The issue is that I'm synchronizing with Gmail and I'd like my sent
> mail to be synchronized too.  Therefore I have to insert into the
> directory Gmail expects, which is "[Gmail]/Sent Mail".  Notice the
> space in the directory name.
>
> I was able to make this work by setting notmuch-fcc-dirs to:
>
>    "\"[Gmail]/Sent Mail\" +sent -inbox -unread"

That is correct and this should probably be documented.

> This works because the Fcc handling constructs a shell command to run
> by just appending the notmuch-fcc-dirs value to (in the simple case)
> "notmuch-insert --folder=", so the extra double quotes in my notmuch-
> fcc-dirs value quote things appropriately at the shell level.

I don't think this is correct. I think the fcc line gets split using
split-string-and-unquote and passes the arguments to notmuch insert
using call-process; I don't think it goes via shell.

> While this works, depending on passing through shell quoting seems very
> fragile.  Changes in the implementation could break this solution
> without it being obvious why.  It seems like it would be better if the
> notmuch-fcc-dirs value could be something like:
>
>     ("[Gmail]/Sent Mail" "+sent" "-inbox" "-unread")

This is possible. However, in the current form it is possible for the
user to edit the fcc header before sending, and that has to be a
string.

Now, we could do as you suggest, and use combine-and-quote-strings to
make the fcc header.

Note, it is going to make things pretty complex if we still want to
allow the folder to specified based on the from address.

> Then the code could generate the shell command with appropriate
> quoting.  I took a quick look at implementing this but it looked more
> complicated then I had time to invested right now.  I thought it would
> be good to get the issue out for discussion ASAP since this new
> functionality was just released.

Thanks: yes if we want to do the above it should be soon.

Best wishes

Mark