[[!img notmuch-logo.png alt="Notmuch logo" class="left"]]
#Tips and Tricks for using notmuch with Emacs
+[[!toc levels=2]]
+
The main Notmuch message reading client is **notmuch.el**, which is an
[emacs](http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/) major mode, and is
included in the notmuch package.
## Viewing HTML messages with an external viewer
-The emacs client can often display an HTML message inline, but it
-sometimes fails for one reason or another, (or is perhaps inadequate
-if you really need to see the graphical presentation of the HTML
-message).
+The emacs client can display an HTML message inline using either the
+`html2text` library or some text browser, like w3m or lynx. This is
+controlled by the `mm-text-html-renderer` variable.
+
+The first option is theorically better, because it can generate
+strings formatted for emacs and do whatever you want, e.g., substitute
+text inside <b> tags for bold text in the buffer. The library, however
+is still in a very early development phase and cannot yet process
+properly many elements, like tables and <style> directives, and even
+the generated text is often poorly formatted.
+
+Among the available browsers, w3m seems to do a better job converting
+the html, and if you have the w3m emacs package, you can use it,
+instead of the w3m-standalone, and thus preserve the text formatting.
-In this case, it can be useful to display the message in an external
+But if the rendering fails for one reason or another, (or is perhaps
+inadequate if you really need to see the graphical presentation of the
+HTML message), it can be useful to display the message in an external
viewer, such as a web browser. Here's a little script that Keith
Packard wrote, which he calls `view-html`:
projects / obsolete / notmuch-wiki / blobdiff