1 New command-line features
2 -------------------------
3 notmuch show --format=mbox <search-specification>
5 This new option allows for the messages matching a search
6 specification to be presented as an mbox. Specifically the "mboxrd"
7 format is used which allows for reversible quoting of lines
8 beginning with "From ". A reader should remove a single '>' from the
9 beginning of all lines beginning with one or more '>' characters
10 followed by the 5 characters "From ".
14 Add a new, optional hook for detecting inline patches
16 This hook is disabled by default but can be enabled with a checkbox
17 under ""Notmuch Show Insert Text/Plain Hook" in the notmuch
18 customize interface. It allows for inline patches to be detected and
19 treated as if they were attachments, (with context-sensitive
22 Automatically tag messages as "replied" when sending a reply
24 This feature adds a "replied" tag by default, but can easily be
25 customized to add or remove other tags as well. For example, a user
26 might use a tag of "needs-reply" and can configure this feature to
27 automatically remove that tag when replying. See "Notmuch Message
28 Mark Replied" in the notmuch customize interface.
30 Emacs mail improvements
31 -----------------------
32 Easier way to define a fcc directory
34 In the common case that a user only has one FCC (save outgoing mail
35 in the Mail directory, it is now possible to simply configure a
36 string such as "Sent" in the notmuch-fcc-dirs variable. More complex
37 options, depending on a users email address, are possible and
38 described in the variable customization help text.
40 Notmuch 0.3.1 (2010-04-27)
41 ==========================
44 Fix an infinite loop in "notmuch reply"
46 This bug could be triggered by replying to a message where the
47 user's primary email address did not appear in the To: header and
48 the user had not configured any secondary email addresses. The bug
49 was a simple re-use of the same iterator variable in nested loops.
51 Fix a potential SEGV in "notmuch search"
53 This bug could be triggered by an author name ending in a ','.
54 Admittedly - that's almost certainly a spam email, but we never
55 want notmuch to crash.
59 Fix calculations for line wrapping in the primary "notmuch" view.
61 Fix Fcc support to prompt to create a directory if the specified Fcc
62 directory does not exist.
66 Fix build on OpenSolaris (at least) due to missing 'extern "C"' block.
68 Without this, the C++ sources could not find strcasestr and the
69 final linking of notmuch would fail.
71 Notmuch 0.3 (2010-04-27)
72 ========================
73 New command-line features
74 -------------------------
75 User-configurable tags for new messages
77 A new "new.tags" option is available in the configuration file to
78 determine which tags are applied to new messages. Run "notmuch
79 setup" to generate new documentation within ~/.notmuch-config on how
80 to specify this value.
82 Threads search results named based on subjects that match search
84 This means that when new mails arrived to a thread you've previously
85 read, and the new mails have a new subject, you will see that
86 subject in the search results rather than the old subject.
88 Faster operation of "notmuch tag" (avoid unneeded sorting)
90 Since the user just wants to tag all matching messages, we can make
91 things perform a bit faster by avoiding the sort.
93 Even Better guessing of From: header for "notmuch reply"
95 Notmuch now looks at a number of headers when trying to figure out
96 the best From: header to use in a reply. This is helpful if you have
97 several configured email addresses, and you also subscribe to various
98 mailing lists with different addresses, (so that mails you are
99 replying to won't always include your subscribed address in the To:
102 Indication of author names that match a search
104 When notmuch displays threads as the result of a search, it now
105 lists the authors that match the search before listing the other
106 authors in the thread. It inserts a pipe '|' symbol between the last
107 matching and first non-matching author. This is especially useful in
108 a search that includes tag:unread. Now the authors of the unread
109 messages in the thread are listed first.
113 Sebastian Spaeth has contributed his python bindings for the notmuch
114 library to the central repository. These bindings were previously
115 known as "cnotmuch" within python but have now been renamed to be
116 accessible with a simple, and more official-looking "import notmuch".
118 The bindings have already proven very useful as people proficient in
119 python have been able to easily develop programs to do notmuch-based
120 searches for email-address completion, maildir-flag synchronization,
123 These bindings are available within the bindings/python directory, but
124 are not yet integrated into the top-level Makefiles, nor the top-level
125 package-building scripts. Improvements are welcome.
127 Emacs interface improvements
128 ----------------------------
129 An entirely new initial view for notmuch, (friendly yet powerful)
131 Some of us call the new view "notmuch hello" but you can get at it
132 by simply calling "emacs -f notmuch". The new view provides a search
133 bar where new searches can be performed. It also displays a list of
134 recent searches, along with a button to save any of these, giving it
135 a new name as a "saved search". Many people find these "saved
136 searches" one of the most convenient ways of organizing their mail,
137 (providing all of the features of "folders" in other mail clients,
138 but without any of the disadvantages).
140 Finally, this view can also optionally display all of the tags that
141 exist in the database, along with a count for each tag, and a custom
142 search of messages with that tag that's simply a click (or keypress)
145 Note: For users that liked the original mode of "emacs -f notmuch"
146 immediately displaying a particular search result, we
147 recommend instead running something like:
149 emacs --eval '(notmuch search "tag:inbox" t)'
151 The "t" means to sort the messages in an "oldest first" order,
152 (as notmuch would do previously by default). You can also
153 leave that off to have your search results in "newest first"
156 Full-featured "customize" support for configuring notmuch
158 Notmuch now plugs in well to the emacs "customize" mode to make it
159 much simpler to find things about the notmuch interface that can be
162 You can get to this mode by starting at the main "Customize" menu in
163 emacs, then browsing through "Applications", "Mail", and
164 "Notmuch". Or you can go straight to "M-x customize-group"
167 Once you're at the customize screen, you'll see a list of documented
168 options that can be manipulated along with checkboxes, drop-down
169 selectors, and text-entry boxes for configuring the various
172 Support for doing tab-completion of email addresses
174 This support currently relies on an external program,
175 (notmuch-addresses), that is not yet shipped with notmuch
176 itself. But multiple, suitable implementations of this program have
177 already been written that generate address completions by doing
178 notmuch searches of your email collection. For example, providing
179 first those addresses that you have composed messages to in the
182 One such program (implemented in python with the python bindings to
183 notmuch) is available via:
185 git clone http://jkr.acm.jhu.edu/git/notmuch_addresses.git
187 Install that program as notmuch-addresses on your PATH, and then
188 hitting TAB on a partial email address or name within the To: or Cc:
189 line of an email message will provide matching completions.
191 Support for file-based (Fcc) delivery of sent messages to mail store
193 This isn't yet enabled by default. To enable this, one will have to
194 set the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" setting within the notmuch customize
195 screen, (see its documentation there for details). We anticipate
196 making this automatic in a future release.
198 New 'G' key binding to trigger mail refresh (G == "Get new mail")
200 The 'G' key works wherever '=' works. Before refreshing the screen
201 it calls an external program that can be used to poll email servers,
202 run notmuch new and setup specific tags for the new emails. The
203 script to be called should be configured with the "Notmuch Poll
204 Script" setting in the customize interface. This script will
205 typically invoke "notmuch new" and then perhaps several "notmuch
208 Implement emacs message display with the JSON output from notmuch.
210 This is much more robust than the previous implementation, (where
211 some HTML mails and mail quoting the notmuch code with the delimiter
212 characters in it would cause the parser to fall over).
214 Better handling of HTML messages and MIME attachments (inline images!)
216 Allow for any MIME parts that emacs can display to be displayed
217 inline. This includes inline viewing of image attachments, (provided
218 the window is large enough to fit the image at its natural size).
220 Much more robust handling of HTML messages. Currently both text/plain
221 and text/html alternates will be rendered next to each other. In a
222 future release, users will be able to decide to see only one or the
223 other representation.
225 Each attachment now has its own button so that attachments can be
226 saved individually (the 'w' key is still available to save all
229 Customizable support for tidying of text/plain message content
231 Many new functions are available for tidying up message
232 content. These include options such as wrapping long lines,
233 compressing duplicate blank lines, etc.
235 Most of these are disabled by default, but can easily be enabled by
236 clicking the available check boxes under the "Notmuch Show Insert
237 Text/Plain Hook" within the notmuch customize screen.
239 New support for searchable citations (even when hidden)
241 When portions of overly-long citations are hidden, the contents of
242 these citations will still be available for emacs' standard
243 "incremental search" functions. When the search matches any portion
244 of a hidden citation, the citation will become visible temporarily
245 to display the search result.
247 More flexible handling of header visibility
249 As an answer to complaints from many users, the To, Cc, and Date
250 headers of messages are no longer hidden by default. For those users
251 that liked that these were hidden, a new "Notmuch Messages Headers
252 Visible" option in the customize interface can be set to nil. The
253 visibility of headers can still be toggled on a per-message basis
254 with the 'h' keybinding.
256 For users that don't want to see some subset of those headers, the
257 new "Notmuch Message Headers" variable can be customized to list
258 only those headers that should be present in the display of a message.
260 The Return key now toggles message visibility anywhere
262 Previously this worked only on the first summary-line of a message.
264 Customizable formatting of search results
266 The user can easily customize the order, width, and formatting of
267 the various fields in a "notmuch search" buffer. See the "Notmuch
268 Search Result Format" section of the customize interface.
270 Generate nicer names for search buffers when using a saved search.
272 Add a notmuch User-Agent header when sending mail from notmuch/emacs.
274 New keybinding (M-Ret) to open all collapsed messages in a thread.
278 Provide a new NOTMUCH_SORT_UNSORTED value for queries
280 This can be somewhat faster when sorting simply isn't desired. For
281 example when collecting a set of messages that will all be
282 manipulated identically, (adding a tag, removing a tag, deleting the
283 messages), then there's no advantage to sorting the messages by
288 Fix to compile against GMime 2.6
290 Previously notmuch insisted on being able to find GMime 2.4, (even
291 though GMime 2.6 would have worked all along).
293 Fix configure script to accept (and ignore) various standard options.
295 For example, those that the gentoo build scripts expect configure to
296 accept are now all accepted.
300 A large number of new tests for the many new features.
302 Better display of output from failed tests.
304 Now shows failures with diff rather than forcing the user to gaze at
305 complete actual and expected output looking for deviation.
307 Notmuch 0.2 (2010-04-16)
308 ========================
309 This is the second release of the notmuch mail system, with actual
310 detailed release notes this time!
312 This release consists of a number of minor new features that make
313 notmuch more pleasant to use, and a few fairly major bug fixes.
315 We didn't quite hit our release target of "about a week" from the 0.1
316 release, (0.2 is happening 11 days after 0.1), but we hope to do
317 better for next week. Look forward to some major features coming to
318 notmuch in subsequent releases.
324 Better guessing of From: header.
326 Notmuch now tries harder to guess which configured address should be
327 used as the From: line in a "notmuch reply". It will examine the
328 Received: headers if it fails to find any configured address in To:
329 or Cc:. This allows it to often choose the correct address even when
330 replying to a message sent to a mailing list, and not directly to a
333 Make "notmuch count" with no arguments count all messages
335 Previously, it was hard to construct a search term that was
336 guaranteed to match all messages.
338 Provide a new special-case search term of "*" to match all messages.
340 This can be used in any command accepting a search term, such as
341 "notmuch search '*'". Note that you'll want to take care that the
342 shell doesn't expand * against the current files. And note that the
343 support for "*" is a special case. It's only meaningful as a single
344 search term and loses its special meaning when combined with any
347 Automatically detect thread connections even when a parent message is
350 Previously, if two or more message were received with a common
351 parent, but that parent was not received, then these messages would
352 not be recognized as belonging to the same thread. This is now fixed
353 so that such messages are properly connected in a thread.
357 Fix potential data loss in "notmuch new" with SIGINT
359 One code path in "notmuch new" was not properly handling
360 SIGINT. Previously, this could lead to messages being removed from
361 the database (and their tags being lost) if the user pressed
362 Control-C while "notmuch new" was working.
364 Fix segfault when a message includes a MIME part that is empty.
366 Fix handling of non-ASCII characters with --format=json
368 Previously, characters outside the range of 7-bit ASCII were
369 silently dropped from the JSON output. This led to corrupted display
370 of utf-8 content in the upcoming notmuch web-based frontends.
372 Fix headers to be properly decoded in "notmuch reply"
374 Previously, the user might see:
376 Subject: Re: =?iso-8859-2?q?Rozlu=E8ka?=
380 Subject: Re: Rozlučka
382 The former text is properly encoded to be RFC-compliant SMTP, will
383 be sent correctly, and will be properly decoded by the
384 recipient. But the user trying to edit the reply would likely be
385 unable to read or edit that field in its encoded form.
387 Emacs client features
388 ---------------------
389 Show the last few lines of citations as well as the first few lines.
391 It's often the case that the last sentence of a citation is what is
392 being replied to directly, so the last few lines are often much more
393 important. The number of lines shown at the beginning and end of any
394 citation can be configured, (notmuch-show-citation-lines-prefix and
395 notmuch-show-citation-lines-suffix).
397 The '+' and '-' commands in the search view can now add and remove
400 Selective bulk tagging is now possible by selecting a region of
401 threads and then using either the '+' or '-' keybindings. Bulk
402 tagging is still available for all threads matching the current
403 search with th '*' binding.
405 More meaningful buffer names for thread-view buffers.
407 Notmuch now uses the Subject of the thread as the buffer
408 name. Previously it was using the thread ID, which is a meaningless
411 Provide for customized colors of threads in search view based on tags.
413 See the documentation of notmuch-search-line-faces, (or us "M-x
414 customize" and browse to the "notmuch" group within "Applications"
415 and "Mail"), for details on how to configure this colorization.
417 Build-system features
418 ---------------------
419 Add support to properly build libnotmuch on Darwin systems (OS X).
421 Add support to configure for many standard options.
423 We include actual support for:
425 --includedir --mandir --sysconfdir
427 And accept and silently ignore several more:
429 --build --infodir --libexecdir --localstatedir
430 --disable-maintainer-mode --disable-dependency-tracking
432 Install emacs client in "make install" rather than requiring a
433 separate "make install-emacs".
435 Automatically compute versions numbers between releases.
437 This support uses the git-describe notation, so a version such as
438 0.1-144-g43cbbfc indicates a version that is 144 commits since the
439 0.1 release and is available as git commit "43cbbfc".
441 Add a new "make test" target to run the test suite and actually verify
444 Notmuch 0.1 (2010-04-05)
445 ========================
446 This is the first release of the notmuch mail system.
448 It includes the libnotmuch library, the notmuch command-line
449 interface, and an emacs-based interface to notmuch.
451 Note: Notmuch will work best with Xapian 1.0.18 (or later) or Xapian
452 1.1.4 (or later). Previous versions of Xapian (whether 1.0 or 1.1) had
453 a performance bug that made notmuch very slow when modifying
454 tags. This would cause distracting pauses when reading mail while
455 notmuch would wait for Xapian when removing the "inbox" and "unread"
456 tags from messages in a thread.