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Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2012 09:49:37 -0700
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 <CAMoJFUvo6CZjeNSqeoR_HViKgxz-WS9Tx8qfOgaVgYbmmBWHiw@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v5.2 7/7] emacs: Use the new JSON reply format and
	message-cite-original
From: Adam Wolfe Gordon <awg+notmuch@xvx.ca>
To: Austin Clements <amdragon@mit.edu>
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On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 22:59, Austin Clements <amdragon@mit.edu> wrote:
> I've been thinking about this more. =A0message-mode's default citation
> line is really unfortunate and quite possibly insane ("writes" isn't
> even the right tense and what's up with that extra line break?). =A0The
> option to change this is also well hidden (as an experiment, I tried
> navigating to it through customize and couldn't figure out where it
> was, even though I knew what I was looking for). =A0In general, I'm a
> fan of inheriting as many options from Emacs as possible, but people
> *are* going to ask how to change this and the default setting *is*
> going to turn people off of notmuch ("What mail client do you use that
> generates those quirky citation lines?" =A0"I use notmuch!" =A0"Is that,
> like, from the 80's?").

Agreed. It's a really unfortunate default.

> So, what about adding a notmuch customize option for selecting the
> citation line format? =A0It could offer a few const choices, including a
> default, sane format, plus the option to enter your own or to fall
> back to whatever message-mode is configured to do. =A0If we do this,
> it's probably best done in a follow-up series, but this seemed like an
> appropriate place to bring it up.

I think there are two options, which have been discussed a bit before [1]:

1) Wrap the citation format with a notmuch customization variable,
notmuch-citation-line-format or somesuch. Then set the
message-citation-line-format before calling message-cite-original.

2) Have notmuch load a user config file (~/.notmuch.el or something)
on startup, and provide a default file that sets nice defaults for
things like message-citation-line-format. The default file could even
be constructed on first run, such that if the user has already
customized some things (like message-citation-line-format) we can keep
their settings.

Option 2 is obviously more work, but I think it's the right way to go,
at least in the long run. In addition to giving a place to provide
nice defaults for non-notmuch variables, it gives the user a nice
place to specify notmuch-specific config. For example, I use
completely separate init files for notmuch and other emacs usage, and
having a notmuch config file would let me get away from this slightly
kludgey setup.

In either case, this can probably come as a separate patch series, but
it is good to start discussing it here.

[1] id:"m2mx9i3onw.fsf@wal122.wireless-pennnet.upenn.edu"