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+From: Paul R <paul.r.ml@gmail.com>\r
+To: notmuch <public-notmuch-gxuj+Tv9EO5zyzON3hdc1g@plane.gmane.org>\r
+Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2010 15:16:07 +0100\r
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+X-Mailman-Approved-At: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 16:40:03 -0800\r
+Subject: [notmuch] Some thoughts about notmuch sync with other agents\r
+X-BeenThere: notmuch@notmuchmail.org\r
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+\r
+\r
+\r
+Hi,\r
+\r
+before going into details, I'd like to tell you how much I like the\r
+notmuch workflow, thank you for producing this nice piece of software !\r
+\r
+Like most potential users, I can not really fully jump into notmuch\r
+because of the current synchronisation issues with others MUA. One may\r
+or may not like IMAP for good reasons, the fact is that it is here and\r
+has allowed users to read mails from various places and terminals,\r
+keeping important information synced. So I think that notmuch will have\r
+to live with that, and provide what is required to integrate smoothly\r
+into this environment. Redefining a new mail retrieval protocol and\r
+a mail storing format are both really exciting projects, but they are\r
+projects on their own that could only distract notmuch from its most\r
+beautiful goal : giving *today* users the power to process mail in an\r
+efficient way.\r
+\r
+As you see, I advocate a NotMuch <-> IMAP synchronisation ASAP :)\r
+\r
+At the moment, notmuch input are mail-as-file + user-defined tags.\r
+OfflineIMAP allows to do the IMAP <-> mail-as-file transition, in both\r
+directions, mail-as-file being namely MailDir. So we can simply aim at\r
+a NotMuch <-> MailDir synchronisation, offlineimap will take care of\r
+IMAP itself.\r
+\r
+Of course, my proposal does not require to implement any MailDir\r
+specific logic inside NotMuch, but rather describes how should notmuch\r
+evolve to allow easy third-party-tool jobs.\r
+\r
+\r
+Preliminary thoughts :\r
+----------------------\r
+\r
+First of all, processing mail with MUA involves some simple logic that\r
+is shared by most MUA. This is about receiving *new* mails, *reading*\r
+mail, *replying* to mail and so on... IMHO, this really belongs to the\r
+mail processing logic and not to the user logic. Hence my first\r
+request :\r
+\r
+ 1: Don't use user tags space to store MUA flags.\r
+\r
+ That means no more "seen", "unread", "replied" as tags. These are\r
+ MUA processing *flags*, that must belong to an established set.\r
+ Tags, on the other hand, are user-land information. So no more\r
+ [seen, replied, grandma, important] tag sets :)\r
+\r
+Once this is done, notmuch will know, in a robust a predictable way,\r
+what happened to a mail. Simply put, NotMuch will store and expose MUA\r
+flags (Passed, Replied, Seen, Trashed, Draft, and Flagged [1]). For each\r
+<flag>, notmuch should associate a <flag>_synced flag. When changing\r
+<flag> from notmuch, it should set the <flag>_synced bit to 0. These are\r
+MUA mail flags.\r
+\r
+Additionally, in a third =C2=AB space =C2=BB, notmuch should store its =C2=\r
+=AB new =C2=BB\r
+bit, as well as a =C2=AB missing =C2=BB bit probably. Again, this is neithe=\r
+r MUA\r
+logic or user logic, so this should not interfer with user\r
+classification facility provided by tags, nor with MUA flags. It,\r
+really, is something else, let's name it "status". Once this is done,\r
+the 'notmuch new' command should find new mails and set the 'new' bit\r
+for them, and find the missing mails and set the 'missing' bit for them.\r
+This will allow for robust external processing.\r
+\r
+Finally, notmuch should provide a switch to output a list of filenames\r
+to stdout and to process a list of filenames from stdin.\r
+\r
+\r
+NotMuch <-> MailDir synchronisation :\r
+-------------------------------------\r
+\r
+Provided the behaviour described above, notmuch <-> MailDir\r
+synchronisation could be done fully externally, by a 'notmuch-maildir'\r
+adapter.\r
+\r
+Here is some pseudo code, that could be wrapped into a single\r
+'notmuch-sync' command. The | are unix stream pipes, and everything\r
+should be on a single line.\r
+\r
+# 1/ Sync from NotMuch to MailDir\r
+\r
+ notmuch list flags:(seen and not seen_synced)=20\r
+ | notmuch-maildir --mark-mail seen\r
+ | notmuch move --stdin\r
+ | notmuch set flags:+seen_synced --stdin\r
+\r
+The output of the first command would be a list of filenames for mails\r
+'seen' since last sync. The second one, an external notmuch--maildir\r
+helper, would propagate this logic to the MailDir store (easy, this is\r
+simply a rename), and output the list of (old-name ! new-name). Then\r
+notmuch would use this information, via a generic 'move' switch, to know\r
+that mail has been moved, and would output the list of the new places.\r
+Finaly, notmuch would set the seen_synced flag.\r
+\r
+Same would apply for the Replied, Trashed, Flagged and Passed flags.\r
+\r
+# 2/ Then lets do the MailDir <-> IMAP sync\r
+\r
+ offlineimap\r
+\r
+... done ! that was easy :)\r
+\r
+# 3/ notmuch new\r
+\r
+ notmuch new\r
+\r
+At this point, notmuch should set the 'new' or the 'missing' status bit\r
+to the mails. Let's forget how to deal with the missing bit, that should\r
+be easy to do.\r
+\r
+# 4/ Sync from MailDir to NotMuch\r
+\r
+ notmuch list status:new=20\r
+ | notmuch-maildir --filter seen\r
+ | notmuch set flags:+seen+seen_synced --stdin\r
+\r
+First command outputs newly discovered mail. Second one reads stdin and\r
+output only files that are already seen (again, this is as easy as\r
+a filter based on a regular expression). Third one reads stdin and\r
+applies the seen and seen_synced flags.\r
+\r
+Same applies for the Replied, Trashed, Flagged and Passed flags.\r
+\r
+\r
+Conclusion:\r
+-----------\r
+\r
+As we have seen, this would allow most IMAP <-> MailDir <-> NotMuch\r
+synchronisation, without having to implement any kind of\r
+MailDir-specific logic inside notmuch. In fact, this notmuch-maildir\r
+helper would be a simple script, and we could imagine doing similar\r
+script for other stores, without having to touch the core of notmuch.\r
+\r
+\r
+That was a long mail indeed, thank you for reading ! I'm waiting for\r
+your comments.\r
+\r
+\r
+\r
+Footnotes:=20\r
+[1] http://cr.yp.to/proto/maildir.html\r
+\r
+--=20\r
+ Paul\r
+\r
projects / notmuch-archives.git / commitdiff