add link to special tags

[notmuch-wiki] / howto.mdwn

diff --git a/howto.mdwn b/howto.mdwn
index 0c2bd093483bc6f631538c6eee89c5654fccfe41..12bd725e558ae5e87c5fc115c3806c7844f2ca21 100644 (file)
--- a/howto.mdwn
+++ b/howto.mdwn
@@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ various "third party" notmuch utilities.
   is in a file of its own will work.  Here are some generally
   well-regarded mail retrieval tools:
 
   is in a file of its own will work.  Here are some generally
   well-regarded mail retrieval tools:
 

-  * [offlineimap](https://github.com/jgoerzen/offlineimap/wiki/) -
+  * [offlineimap](https://github.com/nicolas33/offlineimap/) -

     quite useful and widely tested, it also offers a handy hook that
     will come in useful a bit later in our setup.  Also supports
     "presynchook" and "postsynchook" command that will get run
     quite useful and widely tested, it also offers a handy hook that
     will come in useful a bit later in our setup.  Also supports
     "presynchook" and "postsynchook" command that will get run


@@ -26,26 +26,25 @@ various "third party" notmuch utilities.
 
   * [fetchmail](http://fetchmail.berlios.de/)
 
 
   * [fetchmail](http://fetchmail.berlios.de/)
 

-  See the [[initial_tagging]] page for more info on intial tagging of messages.
+  See the [[initial_tagging]] page for more info on initial tagging of messages.

 
 

-* <span id="print_filenames">**Print only filenames of a search (python bindings)**</span>
+* <span id="python">**Use notmuch from python**</span>

 
 

-  Notmuch includes [python bindings](http://pypi.python.org/pypi/notmuch)
-  to the notmuch shared library. Extensive API documentation
-  [is available](http://packages.python.org/notmuch).
+  Notmuch includes python bindings to the notmuch shared
+  library. Extensive API documentation [is
+  available](http://notmuch.readthedocs.org/).

 
   The bindings are very simple to use.  As an example, given you have
   the python bindings installed (or simply set your PYTHONPATH
   environment variable to point to the .../bindings/python directory),
 
   The bindings are very simple to use.  As an example, given you have
   the python bindings installed (or simply set your PYTHONPATH
   environment variable to point to the .../bindings/python directory),

-  this script will print the filenames of a matching search:
+  this snippet will produce a list of mails matching the given
+  expression:

 
 

-                             #!/usr/bin/env python
-                             import sys
-                             import notmuch
-                             search = " ".join(sys.argv[1:])
-                             q = notmuch.Database().create_query(search)
-                             for m in q.search_messages():
-                                 print m.get_filename()
+          >>> import notmuch
+          >>> db = notmuch.Database()
+          >>> query = db.create_query('tag:inbox AND NOT tag:killed')
+          >>> list(query.search_messages()) # doctest:+ELLIPSIS
+          [...]

 
 * <span id="sync_maildir_flags">**Sync notmuch tags and maildir flags**</span>
 
 
 * <span id="sync_maildir_flags">**Sync notmuch tags and maildir flags**</span>
 


@@ -97,3 +96,49 @@ various "third party" notmuch utilities.
   [available](http://git.upsilon.cc/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=zack-homepage.git;a=history;f=blog/posts/2011/01/how_to_use_Notmuch_with_Mutt.mdwn)
   in markdown syntax from the Git repository of my homepage.)</small>
 
   [available](http://git.upsilon.cc/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=zack-homepage.git;a=history;f=blog/posts/2011/01/how_to_use_Notmuch_with_Mutt.mdwn)
   in markdown syntax from the Git repository of my homepage.)</small>
 

+* <span id="reapply_auto">**Automatically retagging the database (e.g., when upgrading versions)**</span>
+
+  Certain versions of notmuch include new automatic tags (for example, between
+  0.3 and 0.10, automatic tagging of signed and encrypted messages was added).
+  However, for users running with databases created in older versions of
+  notmuch, these tags are missing in pre-existing messages and need to be
+  added.  One way to do this is as follows:
+
+                           $ notmuch dump ~/out.nm
+                           $ mv ~/Mail/.notmuch ~/.notmuch.bak
+                           $ notmuch new
+                           $ notmuch tag -inbox -unread '*'
+                           $ notmuch restore --accumulate ~/out.nm
+
+  At this point, one should run a sanity check on the tags, and if everything
+  has merged correctly, the ~/.notmuch.bak directory is expendable, as is
+  ~/out.nm.
+
+* <span id="nbox">**Dealing with mbox and other formats**</span>
+
+  notmuch by itself is unable to handle non-maildir mail archives.  One tool
+  to solve this is called mb2md.  Assuming an mbox in ~/test.mbox and ones
+  mail archives to be in ~/Mail, an invocation would look like
+
+                           $ mb2md -s ~/test.mbox -d ~/Mail/mynewmaildirname
+
+  Note that specifying the paths for -s and -d is necessary.  This will create
+  a new maildir in ~/Mail/mynewmaildirname from the mbox at ~/test.mbox.
+
+  Often the formats are more convoluted, however.  Many lists provide an
+  almost-but-not-quite-mbox format that mailman produces, as can be seen, for
+  example, [here](http://lists.xapian.org/pipermail/xapian-devel/).  These
+  files can be converted with some degree of success to mbox using the script
+  found
+  [here](http://www.hermann-uwe.de/blog/converting-mailman-gzipd-text-archive-files-to-proper-mbox-files),
+  and from mbox to maildir as above.
+
+  However, many of these lists also have a gmane version, which, where it
+  exists, achieves far better results than dealing with the messy mailman
+  output.  Using the instructions from [Gmane's
+  site](http://gmane.org/export.php), we can download an mbox file, which we
+  can then convert to maildir using mb2md or other utility.
+
+* <span id="special_tags">**Take advantage of tags that are special to notmuch**</span>
+
+  See [[tags special to notmuch|special-tags]].