--- /dev/null
+Notmuch - thread-based email index, search and tagging.
+
+Notmuch is a system for indexing, searching, reading, and tagging
+large collections of email messages. It uses the Xapian library to
+provide fast, full-text search of very large collection of email with
+a very convenient search syntas.
+
+Notmuch is free software, released under the GNU General Public
+License version 3 (or later).
+
+Building notmuch
+----------------
+See the INSTALL file for notes on compiling and installing notmuch.
+
+Contacting users and developers
+-------------------------------
+The website for Notmuch is:
+
+ http://notmuchmail.org
+
+We will soon be creating a mailing list for users and developers of
+notmuch. Details will appear on the website. Until then, please feel
+free to email Carl with any questions you have:
+
+ Carl Worth <cworth@cworth.org>
+
+There is also an IRC channel dedicated to talk about using and
+developing notmuch:
+
+ IRC server: irc.freenode.net
+ Channel: #notmuch
+
+Interface options
+-----------------
+Notmuch includes a "notmuch" command-line interface to the system.
+This is not a very convenient interface and it is not expected that
+users will find it satisfying. Instead, there are two option for
+obtaining a more sophisticated interface:
+
+ 1. Build on top of the "notmuch" command-line interface.
+
+ This might be a reasonable option for a very text-oriented
+ client environment. For example, an emacs-based interface for
+ notmuch is already under development and is available in the
+ notmuch.el file in this distribution.
+
+ If someone were to write a curses-based interface, or similar,
+ it might also be reasonable to buil on the "notmuch"
+ command-line interface.
+
+ 2. Build on top of the notmuch library interface.
+
+ This is a better choice for developing an interface that has
+ full control of the presentation of email threads and
+ messages. It is expected that anyone integrating Notmuch into
+ an existing, graphical email program use the notmuch library
+ interface.
+
+ The public interface to the notmuch library is contained in
+ the notmuch.h header file. The "notmuch" command-line program
+ in notmuch.c can be used as good example code, since it is a
+ simple program that is written on top of the library
+ interface.
+
+As can be seen, alternate interfaces to the Notmuch mail system are
+still in development. We would appreciate any contributions to these
+efforts.
+
+
+
\ No newline at end of file