From 8a0c93ba0e920ee36c19f81d4e35d8dc0f5dcb5a Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Jani Nikula Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 08:55:53 +0200 Subject: [PATCH] howto: convert from bullets to headlines $ sed -ie 's/^\*/##/g' howto.mdwn $ sed -ie 's/^ //g' howto.mdwn --- howto.mdwn | 334 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++--------------------------- 1 file changed, 167 insertions(+), 167 deletions(-) diff --git a/howto.mdwn b/howto.mdwn index 77ce9b6..877f506 100644 --- a/howto.mdwn +++ b/howto.mdwn @@ -4,170 +4,170 @@ Some tips about how to do some useful things with notmuch, and the various "third party" notmuch utilities. -* **Receive mail** - - Notmuch requires either [maildir - flag](http://cr.yp.to/proto/maildir.html) or a "mh"-style - maildirectory to operate on. Basically any setup in which each mail - is in a file of its own will work. Here are some generally - well-regarded mail retrieval tools: - - * [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 - whenever you sync. Point _postsynchook_ to a script that gets run - on every sync and that will do the automatic updating and tagging - of your notmuch database. - - * [mbsync](http://isync.sourceforge.net/) - - * [getmail](http://pyropus.ca/software/getmail/) - - * [fetchmail](http://fetchmail.berlios.de/) - - See the [[initial_tagging]] page for more info on initial tagging of messages. - -* **Use notmuch from python** - - 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), - this snippet will produce a list of mails matching the given - expression: - - >>> import notmuch - >>> db = notmuch.Database() - >>> query = db.create_query('tag:inbox AND NOT tag:killed') - >>> list(query.search_messages()) # doctest:+ELLIPSIS - [...] - -* **Sync notmuch tags and maildir flags** - - notmuch **since version 0.5** syncs maildir flags and respective - tags in both directions. This part applies only to notmuch prior to - version 0.5 (but please consider updating to a more recent version - of notmuch; in addition to maildir tag syncing, it contains many - useful new features, and several important bug fixes): - - Some IMAP users rely on maildir flags that convey the status "seen", - "replied", "trashed", in order to synchronize the status of their - mail across mail clients (a [maildir - flag](http://cr.yp.to/proto/maildir.html) is simply a defined part - of their filename). Notmuch will by default happily ignore those - flags and will never modify them either, as there is no built-in - support for synchronizing your notmuch tags with your imap maildir - flags (seen, replied, trashed, etc). However there are currently 2 - ways in which you can achieve synchronization. - - [notmuchsync](http://spaetz.github.com/notmuchsync/) is a utility - (based on the cnotmuch python bindings) that allows synchronization - in either direction, as well as pruning of deleted files. - - The second solution allows for fast maildir flag to notmuch tag - synchronization (and only in that direction) requires patching the - notmuch source code. The patch has been posted in this mail - *id:1267450136-31749-1-git-send-email-Sebastian@SSpaeth.de* and can - be viewed as a [source diff in this git - repository](http://github.com/spaetz/notmuch-all-feature/commit/df3b087cefb85e9d16fd17540e348bcb854dd7ee). - -* **Using notmuch with Mutt** - - Notmuch is a great mail indexing tool that can also be used *in conjunction* - with existing Mail User Agents (MUA) instead of replacing them. The advantage - of such mixed solutions is that users can benefit from notmuch features (such - as full-text search and thread reconstruction) without *having to* change - MUA. - - A popular geek MUA is [the Mutt e-mail client](http://www.mutt.org); - integrating notmuch with Mutt is not seamless, but fairly straightforward. - There are two principal possibilities, each with its own ups and downs: - - * Using mutt-notmuch, which will create a "virtual" maildir folder with - search results whenever a search is made. The upside is that you can - search all your folders simultanously; the downside is that your - modifications in the results listing do not carry over, also having - to switch folders comes with some more annoyances. - - An - [**how to use Notmuch with Mutt**](http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2011/01/how_to_use_Notmuch_with_Mutt/) - has been written by Stefano Zacchiroli. Check out the - [howto](http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2011/01/how_to_use_Notmuch_with_Mutt/) - for more information. - - (Note by the howto author: I've linked the howto from this wiki rather - than splicing it in, in order to avoid duplication of information. If you - think it would be better to have it here, feel free to copy the text - here. The howto is - [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.) - - * Using a simple macro that will emulate the "limit" mutt functionality - using notmuch. - - See the [**alternative notmuch integration**](http://log.or.cz/?p=228) - blog post for instructions and details, - or simply put these two macros to your muttrc: - - # 'L' performs a notmuch query, showing only the results - macro index L "unset wait_keyread -p 'notmuch query: ' x; echo \$x >~/.cache/mutt_terms~i \"\`notmuch search --output=messages \$(cat ~/.cache/mutt_terms) | head -n 600 | perl -le '@a=<>;chomp@a;s/\^id:// for@a;$,=\"|\";print@a'\`\"" "show only messages matching a notmuch pattern" - # 'a' shows all messages again (supersedes default binding) - macro index a "all\n" "show all messages (undo limit)" - - The upside (if you are used to working in the context of a single folder) - is that this really does use the limit functionality of mutt - and you are still in your original folder. - The downside is that this approach has scaling problems - and works well only for reasonably specific queries. - - -* **Automatically retagging the database (e.g., when upgrading versions)** - - 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. - -* **Dealing with mbox and other formats** - - 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. - -* **Take advantage of tags that are special to notmuch** - - See [[tags special to notmuch|special-tags]]. +## **Receive mail** + +Notmuch requires either [maildir +flag](http://cr.yp.to/proto/maildir.html) or a "mh"-style +maildirectory to operate on. Basically any setup in which each mail +is in a file of its own will work. Here are some generally +well-regarded mail retrieval tools: + +* [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 + whenever you sync. Point _postsynchook_ to a script that gets run + on every sync and that will do the automatic updating and tagging + of your notmuch database. + +* [mbsync](http://isync.sourceforge.net/) + +* [getmail](http://pyropus.ca/software/getmail/) + +* [fetchmail](http://fetchmail.berlios.de/) + +See the [[initial_tagging]] page for more info on initial tagging of messages. + +## **Use notmuch from python** + +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), +this snippet will produce a list of mails matching the given +expression: + + >>> import notmuch + >>> db = notmuch.Database() + >>> query = db.create_query('tag:inbox AND NOT tag:killed') + >>> list(query.search_messages()) # doctest:+ELLIPSIS + [...] + +## **Sync notmuch tags and maildir flags** + +notmuch **since version 0.5** syncs maildir flags and respective +tags in both directions. This part applies only to notmuch prior to +version 0.5 (but please consider updating to a more recent version +of notmuch; in addition to maildir tag syncing, it contains many +useful new features, and several important bug fixes): + +Some IMAP users rely on maildir flags that convey the status "seen", +"replied", "trashed", in order to synchronize the status of their +mail across mail clients (a [maildir +flag](http://cr.yp.to/proto/maildir.html) is simply a defined part +of their filename). Notmuch will by default happily ignore those +flags and will never modify them either, as there is no built-in +support for synchronizing your notmuch tags with your imap maildir +flags (seen, replied, trashed, etc). However there are currently 2 +ways in which you can achieve synchronization. + +[notmuchsync](http://spaetz.github.com/notmuchsync/) is a utility +(based on the cnotmuch python bindings) that allows synchronization +in either direction, as well as pruning of deleted files. + +The second solution allows for fast maildir flag to notmuch tag +synchronization (and only in that direction) requires patching the +notmuch source code. The patch has been posted in this mail +*id:1267450136-31749-1-git-send-email-Sebastian@SSpaeth.de* and can +be viewed as a [source diff in this git +repository](http://github.com/spaetz/notmuch-all-feature/commit/df3b087cefb85e9d16fd17540e348bcb854dd7ee). + +## **Using notmuch with Mutt** + +Notmuch is a great mail indexing tool that can also be used *in conjunction* +with existing Mail User Agents (MUA) instead of replacing them. The advantage +of such mixed solutions is that users can benefit from notmuch features (such +as full-text search and thread reconstruction) without *having to* change +MUA. + +A popular geek MUA is [the Mutt e-mail client](http://www.mutt.org); +integrating notmuch with Mutt is not seamless, but fairly straightforward. +There are two principal possibilities, each with its own ups and downs: + +* Using mutt-notmuch, which will create a "virtual" maildir folder with + search results whenever a search is made. The upside is that you can + search all your folders simultanously; the downside is that your + modifications in the results listing do not carry over, also having + to switch folders comes with some more annoyances. + + An + [**how to use Notmuch with Mutt**](http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2011/01/how_to_use_Notmuch_with_Mutt/) + has been written by Stefano Zacchiroli. Check out the + [howto](http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2011/01/how_to_use_Notmuch_with_Mutt/) + for more information. + + (Note by the howto author: I've linked the howto from this wiki rather + than splicing it in, in order to avoid duplication of information. If you + think it would be better to have it here, feel free to copy the text + here. The howto is + [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.) + +* Using a simple macro that will emulate the "limit" mutt functionality + using notmuch. + + See the [**alternative notmuch integration**](http://log.or.cz/?p=228) + blog post for instructions and details, + or simply put these two macros to your muttrc: + + # 'L' performs a notmuch query, showing only the results + macro index L "unset wait_keyread -p 'notmuch query: ' x; echo \$x >~/.cache/mutt_terms~i \"\`notmuch search --output=messages \$(cat ~/.cache/mutt_terms) | head -n 600 | perl -le '@a=<>;chomp@a;s/\^id:// for@a;$,=\"|\";print@a'\`\"" "show only messages matching a notmuch pattern" + # 'a' shows all messages again (supersedes default binding) + macro index a "all\n" "show all messages (undo limit)" + + The upside (if you are used to working in the context of a single folder) + is that this really does use the limit functionality of mutt + and you are still in your original folder. + The downside is that this approach has scaling problems + and works well only for reasonably specific queries. + + +## **Automatically retagging the database (e.g., when upgrading versions)** + +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. + +## **Dealing with mbox and other formats** + +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. + +## **Take advantage of tags that are special to notmuch** + +See [[tags special to notmuch|special-tags]]. -- 2.43.0