X-Git-Url: https://git.notmuchmail.org/git?a=blobdiff_plain;ds=sidebyside;f=howto.mdwn;h=d6ce893acc2ca4f63590f046373bd40ff72437f9;hb=24a2a33de9ec901e55ca455448f59a2d76e178c0;hp=8706f5d4e837b506cca3948627776b8fb45913d3;hpb=12db4f1ce86503bf1a81d40b938e5b55893bb01a;p=notmuch-wiki
diff --git a/howto.mdwn b/howto.mdwn
index 8706f5d..d6ce893 100644
--- a/howto.mdwn
+++ b/howto.mdwn
@@ -1,5 +1,4 @@
-[[!img notmuch-logo.png alt="Notmuch logo" class="left"]]
-#How to...
+# How to...
Some tips about how to do some useful things with notmuch, and the
various "third party" notmuch utilities.
@@ -8,11 +7,17 @@ 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:
+Notmuch does not fetch mail for you. For that, you need to use an
+external mail syncing utility. Some recommended utilities are listed
+below.
+
+Notmuch requires that every individual message be in it's own file.
+The well-supported [maildir](http://cr.yp.to/proto/maildir.html) or
+"mh"-style storage formats are compatible with notmuch. Basically any
+setup in which each mail is in a file of its own will work. The older
+mbox mail store formats is not supported, but fortunately it is very
+easy to [[convert mbox to maildir|howto/#mbox]] . The following
+utilities support these formats:
* [offlineimap](https://github.com/nicolas33/offlineimap/) -
quite useful and widely tested, it also offers a handy hook that
@@ -28,13 +33,32 @@ well-regarded mail retrieval tools:
* [fetchmail](http://fetchmail.berlios.de/)
-See the [[initial_tagging]] page for more info on initial tagging of messages.
+See the [[initial_tagging]] page for more info on initial tagging of
+messages.
+
+## **Sync notmuch tags and maildir flags**
+
+notmuch has (since version 0.5) the ability to sync IMAP maildir flags
+and respective tags in both directions. This feature is not enabled
+by default, but it is simple to enable it with the 'notmuch config'
+command:
+
+ $ notmuch config set maildir.synchronize_flags true
+
+
+For more information on maildir flags see the
+[maildir page](http://cr.yp.to/proto/maildir.html).
+
+For safety reasons, and because
+[[notmuch does not support delete operations|deleting]], notmuch does
+not sync the "trashed" flag. For discussion on this topic please
+refer to the mailing list.
## **Use notmuch from python**
-Notmuch includes python bindings to the notmuch shared
-library. Extensive API documentation [is
-available](http://notmuch.readthedocs.org/).
+Notmuch includes python bindings to the notmuch shared library. Please
+refer to the nice and extensive
+[notmuch python API documentation](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
@@ -48,35 +72,6 @@ expression:
>>> 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*
@@ -115,10 +110,10 @@ There are two principal possibilities, each with its own ups and downs:
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;$,=\"|\";print@a'\`\"" "show only messages matching a notmuch pattern"
- # 'a' shows all messages again (supersedes default binding)
- macro index a "all\n" "show all messages (undo limit)"
+ # 'L' performs a notmuch query, showing only the results
+ macro index L "unset wait_keyread -p 'notmuch query: ' x; echo \$x >~/.cache/mutt_terms~i \"\`notmuch search --output=messages \$(cat ~/.cache/mutt_terms) | head -n 600 | perl -le '@a=<>;chomp@a;s/\^id:// for@a;$,=\"|\";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
@@ -135,23 +130,23 @@ 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
+ $ 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**
+## **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
+ $ 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.