notmuch/README
Carl Worth 5e2a479e69 README: Add a simple file explaining notmuch and pointing out resources.
This is part of getting notmuch ready for a more public announcement.
2009-11-02 07:18:49 -08:00

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Notmuch - thread-based email index, search and tagging.
Notmuch is a system for indexing, searching, reading, and tagging
large collections of email messages. It uses the Xapian library to
provide fast, full-text search of very large collection of email with
a very convenient search syntas.
Notmuch is free software, released under the GNU General Public
License version 3 (or later).
Building notmuch
----------------
See the INSTALL file for notes on compiling and installing notmuch.
Contacting users and developers
-------------------------------
The website for Notmuch is:
http://notmuchmail.org
We will soon be creating a mailing list for users and developers of
notmuch. Details will appear on the website. Until then, please feel
free to email Carl with any questions you have:
Carl Worth <cworth@cworth.org>
There is also an IRC channel dedicated to talk about using and
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 buil 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.