-Welcome to your new wiki.
+[[!img notmuch-logo.png alt="Notmuch logo" class="left"]]
+# Notmuch -- The mail indexer
-All wikis are supposed to have a [[SandBox]], so this one does too.
+## Why Notmuch?
-----
+* "Not much mail" is what Notmuch thinks about your email
+ collection. Even if you receive 12000 messages per month or have on
+ the order of millions of messages that you've been saving for
+ decades. Regardless, Notmuch will be able to quickly search all of
+ it. It's just plain not much mail.
-This wiki is powered by [[ikiwiki]].
+* "Not much mail" is also what you should have in your inbox at any
+ time. Notmuch gives you what you need, (tags and fast search), so
+ that you can keep your inbox tamed and focus on what really matters
+ in your life, (which is surely not email).
+
+* Notmuch is an answer to [Sup](http://sup.rubyforge.org/).
+ Sup is a very good email program written by William Morgan (and
+ others) and is the direct inspiration for Notmuch. Notmuch began as
+ an effort to rewrite performance-critical pieces of Sup in C rather
+ than ruby. From there, it grew into a separate project. One
+ significant contribution Notmuch makes compared to Sup is the
+ separation of the indexer/searcher from the user interface. (Notmuch
+ provides a library interface so that its indexing/searching/tagging
+ features can be integrated into any email program.)
+
+* Notmuch is not much of an email program. It doesn't receive messages
+ (no POP or IMAP suport). It doesn't send messages (no mail composer,
+ no network code at all). And for what it does do (email search) that
+ work is provided by an external library,
+ [Xapian](http://xapian.org). So if Notmuch provides no user
+ interface and Xapian does all the heavy lifting, then what's left
+ here? Not much.
+
+Notmuch is still in the early stages of development, but there are
+already two user interfaces available for it (one for emacs and one
+for vim). If you've been looking for a fast, global-search and
+tag-based email reader to use within your text editor or in a
+terminal, then Notmuch may be exactly what you've been looking for.
+
+Otherwise, if you're a developer of an existing email program and
+would love a good library interface for fast, global search with
+support for arbitrary tags, then Notmuch also may be exactly what
+you've been looking for.
+
+## Documentation
+
+So far, there is not much documentation. Eventually, the wiki will
+contain a reference for users. This is what we have so far:
+
+ * [[General how-tos|howto]]
+ * [[Initial_Tagging]]
+ * [[Tips for using notmuch within Emacs|emacstips]]
+ * [[Remote Usage|remoteusage]]
+ * [[Performance|performance]]
+
+Apart from the wiki, help is available via email. Join the mailing
+list. Read the archives. Ask questions.
+
+## Source code
+
+Either way, please feel free to jump in. All of the code for Notmuch
+is available as [free
+software](http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/free-sw.html) released
+under the GNU [GPL version
+3](http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl.html). The latest
+versions can be checked out via git with this command:
+
+ git clone git://notmuchmail.org/git/notmuch
+
+You can browse the [Notmuch code
+history](http://git.notmuchmail.org/git/notmuch) online. And finally,
+you can [subscribe to the `notmuch-commits`
+list](http://notmuchmail.org/mailman/listinfo/notmuch-commits) to watch
+every commit made to notmuch and the notmuchmail.org web site.
+
+Patches are most welcome and should be sent to notmuch@notmuchmail.org.
+Please try to follow the [patch submission guidelines of the Git
+project](http://repo.or.cz/w/git.git?a=blob;f=Documentation/SubmittingPatches;hb=HEAD)
+when submitting patches to notmuch. We are currently test-driving a [Patchwork
+instance](http://patchwork.notmuchmail.org/project/notmuch) to help us keep track
+of [the patches](http://patchwork.notmuchmail.org/project/notmuch/list).
+
+Source code of notmuch releases can be downloaded [here](http://notmuchmail.org/releases/).
+
+## Binary packages
+
+* [Debian](http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=notmuch), [Ubuntu](http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=notmuch)
+
+## Screenshots
+
+* [[Emacs UI screenshots|screenshots]]
+
+## Contact: Email & IRC
+
+Comments? Please feel free to email the notmuch mailing list:
+notmuch@notmuchmail.org (subscription is not required, but you can
+subscribe to the [notmuch
+list](http://notmuchmail.org/mailman/listinfo/notmuch) if you would
+like to). You can also browse the [online
+archives](http://notmuchmail.org/pipermail/notmuch/) of the mailing
+list, read them as a [web forum
+(nabble)](http://notmuch.198994.n3.nabble.com/), or download an
+[mbox file](http://notmuchmail.org/archives/notmuch.mbox) of the entire
+mailing-list.
+
+The `mb2md` utility can be used to convert the archives to maildir
+format which is convenient for reading the archives within notmuch
+itself.
+
+If you prefer real-time chat, there is often someone on the
+[#notmuch](irc://chat.freenode.net/#notmuch)@irc.freenode.net IRC
+channel.
+
+## Feature Ideas
+
+We have started a [[feature requests|feature-requests]] page on this
+wiki. No, things you add there won't automatically get implemented -
+but it's a nice way to collect ideas.
+
+### Website
+
+This wiki is maintained using
+[ikiwiki](http://ikiwiki.info). Instructions on how to edit it can be
+found [[here|wikiwriteaccess]].
projects / notmuch-wiki / blobdiff