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I use notmuch on Emacs (yes, found it after seeing sup). For those who don't want to use Emacs, notmuch has other clients: https://notmuchmail.org/frontends/ h

I use notmuch on Emacs (yes, found it after seeing sup). For those who don't want to use Emacs, notmuch has other clients: https://notmuchmail.org/frontends/ https://notmuchmail.org/frontends/ alot was one of the early ones and last I checked (years ago) was quite featureful. For people who want something other than mutt, I strongly recommend something based on notmuch. It also comes with Python bindings so it's easy to write complex rules to filter incoming email.

SoftTalker 4y ago
I also use notmuch and emacs. I have always preferred text email clients. The first one I used was elm, then pine, then I was using gnus for a while but treating mail as news wasn't quite right. Switched to mutt, then back to emacs w/notmuch (using w3m to render HTML emails) and that has been the best for me for a number of years.
cycomanic 4y ago
I use notmuch as well (with astroid as frontend), but I definitely think there are 2 big issues: 1. All clients except for the Emacs one are quite unfinished and development slowed down for quite a few of them. 2. Using it with multiple computers is not working well. I use two computers and am travelling often (so need offline access to my mail so can't just ssh into one machine). I have been using muchsync with an additional server (as the other computers are not always connected). The server syncs to the work exchange server using mbsync. That sort of works, but is brittle and sometimes things get out of sync (I had to search the the muchsync sqlite database recently to delete an entry) or break. I tried other solutions (e.g. sync the notmuch db using syncthing) but broke even more often. It gets even worse if you also use your phone for email like I do (you essentially have no search on the phone). I think it is quite obvious that notmuch was designed by developers who use a single computer and don't travel much and don't see much value in mail on multiple devices. I really wish jmap would have better adoption because a jmap server with some local cache for offline work (similar to how e.g. mutt handles IMAP) would be the best solution IMO.
- em-bee 4y ago
  when i travel i access mail from a laptop tethered through the phone. one big advantage of a terminal client is that this works even through a slow connection. especially in combination with mosh
  - cycomanic 4y ago
    But that means you have to have access to a server that runs constantly (I currently i do that as well for my work mail with muchsync) and you're just one step away from running a Mailserver. I'd like to move away from that solution because it feels hackish and overkill (sync from email server to "server", ssh into server for reading email) Also I frequently need to search my when e.g. on a plane so the ssh solution doesnt work.
    - em-bee 4y ago
      yes, true, i have that server, but i also have a small laptop that i can carry around everywhere. if i needed offline access to mails frequently, i would move email handling to that laptop. and even if i work on another device, i am able to run the laptop on the side and access it through ssh/mosh. in fact i do that for everything else. would that work for you?
      - cycomanic 4y ago
        Somewhat, but hackish. When I'm at home I use my desktop and if I follow your suggestion I would then have to turn on my laptop first to access my email. I appreciate the suggestions, but I think multi-device offline access is really not a well supported usecase with notmuch unfortunately. I'm sort of hacking around this with different sync options, but it sort of rubs me the wrong way that there is a mail server already, but I essentially have to set up another server (always on machine) to access the email. In the good old days ssh'ing into the mailserver and reading emails directly on the servers maildir made sense (although this still excludes offline work) and changes would also propagate to the server for access via imap. Unfortunately, having ssh access to the emailserver is incredibly rare these days.
nine_k 4y ago
Can notmuch or sup somehow store the tags on the IMAP server? If I were to ever leave GMail (and there may be reasons to do so), it would be pretty painful for me to stop using tags. Folders don't cut it; many of my incoming emails have 2-3 tags. To have tags on my laptop but not on my phone (even in a rudimentary way) would be painful, too. I can imagine that tags could be stored in some hidden / special folders, and a conforming client could be able to at least read them and synchronize with the local mail DB.
- em-bee 4y ago
  IMAP spec appears to support custom keywords (labels): https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3632102/imap-custom-keywords https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3632102/imap-custom-keyw... but not every IMAP server implements those. it might also be difficult to synchronize those. (how would you get a list of all keyword changes since last time?) tracking keyword changes locally and then submitting a hidden message with the changes seems like a hack (and how would you deal with conflicts?) likewise tracking tags for all messages in a hidden location. (how much space would that take?) i sympathize with the problem, but it looks like a non-trivial challenge to me. it's probably easier to solve the local sync issues.
  - em-bee 4y ago
    IMAP does have a way to update flags for seen messages: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10689062/synchronize-replicate-imap-messages https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10689062/synchronize-rep... and supposedly it is efficient, so this would work after all.
- argulane 4y ago
  For Gmail you can use lieer. It uses Gmail API's to sync mail and labels between notmuch and Gmail. https://github.com/gauteh/lieer https://github.com/gauteh/lieer
  - nine_k 4y ago
    Many thanks!

SoftTalker 4y ago

I also use notmuch and emacs. I have always preferred text email clients. The first one I used was elm, then pine, then I was using gnus for a while but treating mail as news wasn't quite right. Switched to mutt, then back to emacs w/notmuch (using w3m to render HTML emails) and that has been the best for me for a number of years.

cycomanic 4y ago

I use notmuch as well (with astroid as frontend), but I definitely think there are 2 big issues: 1. All clients except for the Emacs one are quite unfinished and development slowed down for quite a few of them. 2. Using it with multiple computers is not working well. I use two computers and am travelling often (so need offline access to my mail so can't just ssh into one machine). I have been using muchsync with an additional server (as the other computers are not always connected). The server syncs to the work exchange server using mbsync. That sort of works, but is brittle and sometimes things get out of sync (I had to search the the muchsync sqlite database recently to delete an entry) or break. I tried other solutions (e.g. sync the notmuch db using syncthing) but broke even more often. It gets even worse if you also use your phone for email like I do (you essentially have no search on the phone). I think it is quite obvious that notmuch was designed by developers who use a single computer and don't travel much and don't see much value in mail on multiple devices. I really wish jmap would have better adoption because a jmap server with some local cache for offline work (similar to how e.g. mutt handles IMAP) would be the best solution IMO.

em-bee 4y ago
when i travel i access mail from a laptop tethered through the phone. one big advantage of a terminal client is that this works even through a slow connection. especially in combination with mosh
- cycomanic 4y ago
  But that means you have to have access to a server that runs constantly (I currently i do that as well for my work mail with muchsync) and you're just one step away from running a Mailserver. I'd like to move away from that solution because it feels hackish and overkill (sync from email server to "server", ssh into server for reading email) Also I frequently need to search my when e.g. on a plane so the ssh solution doesnt work.
  - em-bee 4y ago
    yes, true, i have that server, but i also have a small laptop that i can carry around everywhere. if i needed offline access to mails frequently, i would move email handling to that laptop. and even if i work on another device, i am able to run the laptop on the side and access it through ssh/mosh. in fact i do that for everything else. would that work for you?
    - cycomanic 4y ago
      Somewhat, but hackish. When I'm at home I use my desktop and if I follow your suggestion I would then have to turn on my laptop first to access my email. I appreciate the suggestions, but I think multi-device offline access is really not a well supported usecase with notmuch unfortunately. I'm sort of hacking around this with different sync options, but it sort of rubs me the wrong way that there is a mail server already, but I essentially have to set up another server (always on machine) to access the email. In the good old days ssh'ing into the mailserver and reading emails directly on the servers maildir made sense (although this still excludes offline work) and changes would also propagate to the server for access via imap. Unfortunately, having ssh access to the emailserver is incredibly rare these days.

nine_k 4y ago

Can notmuch or sup somehow store the tags on the IMAP server? If I were to ever leave GMail (and there may be reasons to do so), it would be pretty painful for me to stop using tags. Folders don't cut it; many of my incoming emails have 2-3 tags. To have tags on my laptop but not on my phone (even in a rudimentary way) would be painful, too. I can imagine that tags could be stored in some hidden / special folders, and a conforming client could be able to at least read them and synchronize with the local mail DB.

em-bee 4y ago
IMAP spec appears to support custom keywords (labels): https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3632102/imap-custom-keywords https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3632102/imap-custom-keyw... but not every IMAP server implements those. it might also be difficult to synchronize those. (how would you get a list of all keyword changes since last time?) tracking keyword changes locally and then submitting a hidden message with the changes seems like a hack (and how would you deal with conflicts?) likewise tracking tags for all messages in a hidden location. (how much space would that take?) i sympathize with the problem, but it looks like a non-trivial challenge to me. it's probably easier to solve the local sync issues.
- em-bee 4y ago
  IMAP does have a way to update flags for seen messages: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10689062/synchronize-replicate-imap-messages https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10689062/synchronize-rep... and supposedly it is efficient, so this would work after all.
argulane 4y ago
For Gmail you can use lieer. It uses Gmail API's to sync mail and labels between notmuch and Gmail. https://github.com/gauteh/lieer https://github.com/gauteh/lieer
- nine_k 4y ago
  Many thanks!