INSTALL/README: Clean up the description of how to run the emacs interface.

The INSTALL file still had old information about the "make
install-emacs" command which no longer exists. README was also giving
pointers on how to develop a real interface, (which is not the right
thing since README should be addressed to users, not coders).

So remove the stale and misplaced information, and instead add a new
"Running notmuch" section to the README describing how to run the
notmuch command-line interface and how to run the emacs interface.
This commit is contained in:
Carl Worth 2010-06-01 10:44:32 -07:00
parent bb1f03f0b9
commit ecfc8df476
2 changed files with 42 additions and 46 deletions

10
INSTALL
View file

@ -18,16 +18,6 @@ will call configure for you). See this command:
for detailed documentation of the things you can control at the
configure stage.
notmuch.el installation
-----------------------
Installing the notmuch.el emacs lisp function systemwide:
sudo make install-emacs
Each user needs to add (require 'notmuch) in his ~/.emacs to make it
available and then start emacs running notmuch with "emacs -f notmuch"
or start notmuch from within emacs with "M-x notmuch".
Dependencies
------------
Notmuch depends on three libraries: Xapian, GMime 2.4, and Talloc

78
README
View file

@ -12,6 +12,48 @@ Building notmuch
----------------
See the INSTALL file for notes on compiling and installing notmuch.
Running notmuch
---------------
After installing notmuch, start by running "notmuch setup" which will
interactively prompt for configuration information such as your name,
email address, and the directory which contains your mail archive to
be indexed. You can change any answers later by running "notmuch
setup" again or by editing the .notmuch-config file in your home
directory.
With notmuch configured you should next run "notmuch new" which will
index all of your existing mail. This can take a long time, (several
hours) if you have a lot of email, (hundreds of thousands of
files). When new mail is delivered to your mail archive in the future,
you will want to run "notmuch new" again. These runs will be much
faster as they will only index new messages.
Finally, you can prove to yourself that things are working by running
some command-line searches such as "notmuch search
from:someone@example.com" or "notmuch search subject:topic". See
"notmuch help search-terms" for more details on the available search
syntax.
The command-line search output is not expected to be particularly
friendly for day-to-day usage. Instead, it is expected that you will
use an email interface that builds on the notmuch command-line tool or
the libnotmuch library.
Notmuch installs a full-featured email interface for use within
emacs. To use this, first add the following line to your .emacs file:
(require 'notmuch)
Then, either run "emacs -f notmuch" or execute the command "M-x
notmuch" from within a running emacs.
If you're interested in a non-emacs-based interface to notmuch, then
please join the notmuch community. Various other interfaces are
already in progress, (an interface within vim, a curses interface,
graphical interfaces based on evolution, and various web-based
interfaces). The authors of these interfaces would love further
testing or contribution. See contact information below.
Contacting users and developers
-------------------------------
The website for Notmuch is:
@ -33,39 +75,3 @@ developing notmuch:
IRC server: irc.freenode.net
Channel: #notmuch
Interface options
-----------------
Notmuch includes a "notmuch" command-line interface to the system.
This is not a very convenient interface and it is not expected that
users will find it satisfying. Instead, there are two option for
obtaining a more sophisticated interface:
1. Build on top of the "notmuch" command-line interface.
This might be a reasonable option for a very text-oriented
client environment. For example, an emacs-based interface for
notmuch is already under development and is available in the
notmuch.el file in this distribution.
If someone were to write a curses-based interface, or similar,
it might also be reasonable to build on the "notmuch"
command-line interface.
2. Build on top of the notmuch library interface.
This is a better choice for developing an interface that has
full control of the presentation of email threads and
messages. It is expected that anyone integrating Notmuch into
an existing, graphical email program use the notmuch library
interface.
The public interface to the notmuch library is contained in
the notmuch.h header file. The "notmuch" command-line program
in notmuch.c can be used as good example code, since it is a
simple program that is written on top of the library
interface.
As can be seen, alternate interfaces to the Notmuch mail system are
still in development. We would appreciate any contributions to these
efforts.