(let ((date (org-read-date nil nil "-mon")))
    (concat
     (my/org-list-from-rss "http://planet.emacsen.org/atom.xml" date) "\n"
     (shell-command-to-string (concat "~/bin/list-reddit-links.coffee emacs " date)) "\n"
     (shell-command-to-string (concat "~/bin/list-reddit-links.coffee org-mode " date)) "\n"
     "- New packages:\n"
     (my/list-new-packages) 
     "\n"))

Handy little things!

——

I've been publishing these weekly summaries of Emacs-related links on my blog and to the emacs-tangents mailing list / newsgroup. I started by posting plain text from Org Mode's ASCII export, and people asked for Org Mode and HTML formats. So here's some code that prepares things for pasting into a Gnus message buffer.

It turns out that order matters for multipart/alternative – start with plain text, then include richer alternatives. First time around, I put the HTML version first, so people didn't end up seeing it. Anyway, here's something that shows up properly now: text/plain, then text/html, with text/x-org attached. The heavy lifting is done with org-export-string-as, which exports into different formats.

  (defun my/share-emacs-news ()
    "Prepare current subtree for yanking into post."
    (interactive)
    ;; Draft Gnus article
    (save-restriction
      (org-narrow-to-subtree)
      (let ((org-export-html-preamble nil)
            (org-html-toplevel-hlevel 3)
            output)
        (setq output
              (apply
               'format
               "<#multipart type=alternative>
<#part type=\"text/plain\" disposition=inline>
%s
<#/part>
<#part type=\"text/html\" disposition=inline>
%s
<#/part>
<#/multipart>
<#part type=\"text/x-org\" disposition=attachment name=\"emacs-news.org\">
%s
<#/part>
"
               (mapcar
                (lambda (format)
                  (org-export-string-as (buffer-substring (point-min) (point-max)) format t))
                '(ascii html org))))
        (kill-new output))))

Howard Abrams showed me something like this in June 2015's Emacs Hangout (~1:18:26) using org-mime-org-buffer-htmlize, which probably does the job in a much cooler way. =) I thought he had a blog post about it, but I can't seem to find it. Anyway, there's my little hack above!

You can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

Since this is my first time to venture into the world of teaching people online, I wanted to see how far I could push actually doing all the mails myself, instead of just signing up for an Aweber account and handing everyone off to an impersonal autoresponder. I dusted off Gnus, offlineimap, and org-contacts, and started figuring out my workflow. I'll share how that workflow's evolving so that you can get a sense of how someone might write little bits of Emacs Lisp to make something repetitive easier.

For the first little while, I got by with using C-x r s (copy-to-register) and C-x r i (insert-register) to store the text that I needed.
Sometimes I needed to paste in the welcome message and checklist, and sometimes I needed to paste in the first lesson. By using registers, I could insert whatever I wanted instead of going through the kill ring. I also had another bit of templated code in yet another register so that I could easily create an org-contacts entry for the person whose mail I was replying to. In the beginning, I used tasks under each person's heading to indicate that I had sent them the checklist or that I had sent them the first lesson. Eventually, I changed my org-contacts notes so that the TODO state of each person showed which lesson I was going to send them next, or CHECKLIST if I was waiting for their reply to the checklist. I also set up Org so that it would automatically log when the TODO state was changed.

#+TODO: TODO | DONE
#+TODO: CHECKLIST(c!) BEGINNER1(1!) BEGINNER2(2!) BEGINNER3(3!) BEGINNER4(4!) FULL(f!) | FINISHED(x!)
#+TODO: | CANCELLED

* Who
** CHECKLIST Jane Smith ...
** BEGINNER1 John Smith
   SCHEDULED: <2014-05-28 Wed>
   :PROPERTIES:
   :EMAIL: john@example.com
   :END:
(notes from the messages, etc.)

I wrote some code to make it easier to send someone a checklist and create a note for them in my org-contacts file. I bound it to C-c e c for convenience.
(The bind-key function is defined by a package.)

(setq sacha/elisp-course-checklist-body "... really long text here...")
(defun sacha/elisp-course-checklist ()
  "Copy this message and put it at the end as a checklist item. 
Start a message with the checklist."
  (interactive)
  (gnus-summary-scroll-up 1)
  (with-current-buffer gnus-article-buffer
    (let ((message (buffer-substring-no-properties (point-min) (point-max)))
          (email (cadr (org-contacts-gnus-get-name-email))))
      (with-current-buffer "elisp-course.org"
        (save-excursion
          (goto-char (point-max))
          (save-excursion
            (insert "\n** " message)
            (org-set-property "EMAIL" email)
            (org-todo "CHECKLIST"))))))
  (gnus-summary-followup-with-original nil)
  (goto-char (point-max))
  (insert sacha/elisp-course-checklist-body))
(bind-key "C-c e c" 'sacha/elisp-course-checklist)

This made it easier for me to read the starred messages from my inbox and use C-c e c to get a head start on processing people's introductory messages.
Yay! I used the register trick to help me reply to people who were ready for the first lesson. After the first few replies, I noticed that the attachment code was fine even if I put that in the register too, so I added it as well.

Things got more complicated when I started processing lesson 2. I didn't want to have to set up and remember lots of different registers, and I didn't want to manually update the TODO states either. So I started defining functions that I could call with keyboard shortcuts:

(defun sacha/elisp-course-1 ()
  (interactive)
  (let ((marker (org-contacts-gnus-article-from-get-marker)))
    (if marker
        (org-with-point-at marker
          (org-todo "BEGINNER2"))))
  ;; Find the person's contact record
  (gnus-summary-scroll-up 1)
  (gnus-summary-followup-with-original nil)
  (message-goto-subject)
  (message-delete-line)
  (insert (concat "Subject: " sacha/elisp-course-1-subject "\n"))
  (goto-char (point-max))
  (insert sacha/elisp-course-1-body))
(bind-key "C-c e 1" 'sacha/elisp-course-1)
(defun sacha/elisp-course-2 ()
  (interactive)
  (let ((marker (org-contacts-gnus-article-from-get-marker)))
    (if marker
        (org-with-point-at marker
          (org-todo "BEGINNER3"))))
  ;; Find the person's contact record
  (gnus-summary-scroll-up)
  (gnus-summary-followup-with-original nil)
  (goto-char (point-max))
  (insert sacha/elisp-course-2-body))
(bind-key "C-c e 2" 'sacha/elisp-course-2)

Really, though, it doesn't make sense to have a lot of duplicated code. So I wrote some code that would use the person's TODO keyword to look up the message to send them, and then move them to the next keyword. Now I don't need sacha/elisp-course-1 or sacha/elisp-course-2 any more.

(setq sacha/elisp-course-info
      `(("CHECKLIST" nil ,sacha/elisp-course-checklist-body)
        ("BEGINNER1" ,sacha/elisp-course-1-subject ,sacha/elisp-course-1-body)
        ("BEGINNER2" ,sacha/elisp-course-2-subject ,sacha/elisp-course-2-body)))

(defun sacha/elisp-course-process (subject body &optional state)
  "Process this course entry."
  (if (derived-mode-p 'org-mode)
      (progn
        ;; Move this node to the next state and compose a message
        (if state (org-todo state))
        (org-todo 'right)
        (message-mail (org-entry-get (point) "EMAIL") subject)
        (goto-char (point-max))
        (insert body))
    ;; Doing this from Gnus; find the person's info
    (let ((marker (org-contacts-gnus-article-from-get-marker)))
      (if marker (org-with-point-at marker
                   (if state (org-todo state))
                   (org-todo 'right)))
      ;; Compose a reply
      (gnus-summary-scroll-up 1)
      (gnus-summary-followup-with-original nil)
      (message-goto-subject)
      (message-delete-line)
      (insert (concat "Subject: " subject "\n"))
      (goto-char (point-max))
      (insert body))))

(defun sacha/elisp-course-guess-and-process (&optional state)
  (interactive (list (if current-prefix-arg (read-string "State: "))))
  (let ((current-state
         (or state (elt
                    (if (derived-mode-p 'org-mode)
                        (org-heading-components) 
                      (let ((marker (org-contacts-gnus-article-from-get-marker)))
                        (if marker (org-with-point-at marker (org-heading-components)))))
                    2))))
    (sacha/elisp-course-process
     (elt (assoc current-state sacha/elisp-course-info) 1)
     (elt (assoc current-state sacha/elisp-course-info) 2)
     state)))
(bind-key "C-c e e" 'sacha/elisp-course-guess-and-process)

Come to think of it, I should totally have it schedule the next update for the next Wednesday, too. ;) That's just (org-schedule "+wed"). Neat, huh?
And I'm sure there are all sorts of ways the code can be simpler, but it works for me at the moment, so hooray!

I really like this approach. It lets me pull in standard information while also letting me customize the messages and how it fits into my task tracking. I can't get that with Gmail (even with canned responses), and I'm not sure any CRM is going to be quite as awesome as this. I can't wait to see how else we'll tweak this as we go through more conversations. I'd like to get better at:

• having a consistent place where I can process all the messages and make sure nothing falls through the cracks; I currently star messages to make sure I process them, since the Gmail label folder in IMAP seems to be missing some messages
• seeing all Gnus conversations related to an org-contacts entry
• reaching out to people proactively with the next lesson, even if they haven't e-mailed me (or maybe I should wait for them?)

Anyway, that's an example of writing a little bit of Emacs Lisp in order to connect different packages. Gnus handles mail, Org handles notes, org-contacts links the two together, and with a little bit of custom code, I can make the combination fit what I want to do. I read the source code of org-contacts to find out how I could look up the appropriate note, and I looked at org-shiftright to find out how to move things to the next TODO state. If you know something that works roughly like what you want it to work, you can find out how it does things and then copy that.

As for the course itself: I've been sending people links to the HTML output, attached .txt files (with -*- mode: org -*-) so they can open it in Emacs if they want, and inline text so that they can skim it briefly in their e-mail client if they want to. I'm not perfectly happy with the plain-text formats, but it seems to be a reasonable compromise, and so far people have been able to deal with it. I've been improving pieces of it based on feedback on clarity, suggestions for good examples, and so on. I didn't take all the feedback; after thinking about some of the suggestions, I still preferred it my way. It's shaping up quite nicely, though!

If you're curious about the beginner's course on reading Emacs Lisp, e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com and we'll see how this works out. I'm certainly learning a lot. =)

You can view 3 comments or e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

You can move mail manually by selecting them in the summary buffer and
typing B m (gnus-summary-move-article). Then type the name of the
group to which you would like to move the message. The group will be
created if it doesn’t exist.

To move multiple messages, mark them with #
(gnus-summary-mark-as-processable) and then type B m
(gnus-summary-move-article). To unmark a message, type M-#
(gnus-summary-unmark-as-processable). To unmark all messages, type M P
U (gnus-summary-unmark-all-processable).

Automatically filing mail

Moving messages by hand is tedious and time-consuming. One way to deal
with this is to set up rules that automatically file mail into
different groups (or folders, as they’re called in other mail
clients). Gnus calls this “splitting” mail, and you can split mail on
IMAP servers as well as mail downloaded from POP3 servers to your
computer.

For example, if you’re using Gnus to read mail from an IMAP server,
you can split your messages by adding this to your ~/.gnus:

 (setq nnimap-split-inbox "INBOX") ;; (1)
 (setq nnimap-split-predicate "UNDELETED") ;; (2)
 (setq nnimap-split-rule
       '(
         ("INBOX.emacs" "^Subject:.*emacs")
         ("INBOX.work" "^To:.*you@work.example.com")    
         ("INBOX.personal" "^To:.*you@personal.example.com")    
         ("INBOX.errors" "^From:.*\\(mailer.daemon\\|postmaster\\)")   
        )) 

If you use a different inbox, change the value of
nnimap-split-inbox(1). Any messages in the inbox will be split
according to nnimap-split-rule(2), which is a list where each element
is a list containing the group’s name and a regular expression
matching the header of messages that should be filed in the group. In
this example, Gnus will move mail with subjects containing the word
“emacs” to INBOX.emacs, mail directed to you@work.example.com to the
INBOX.work group, mail directed to you@personal.example.com to the
INBOX.personal group, and mail error messages to INBOX.errors. All
other messages will be stored in INBOX.

If you’re downloading your mail from a POP3 server and storing it in
nnml, add this to your ~/.gnus instead:

 (setq nnmail-split-methods
      '(
        ("mail.emacs" "^Subject:.*emacs")
        ("mail.work" "^To:.*you@work.example.com")    
        ("mail.personal" "^To:.*you@personal.example.com")    
        ("mail.errors" "^From:.*\\(mailer.daemon\\|postmaster\\)")   
       )) 

All other messages will be stored in mail.misc.

Start M-x gnus again, and your mail will be split into the different
groups.

Where are my groups?

If you don’t see your new groups in the group buffer displayed by M-x
gnus, type A A (gnus-group-list-active) to see all the groups. Go to
the group that you would like to add to the group buffer, then type u
(gnus-group-unsubscribe-current-group) to toggle its subscription. In
this example, INBOX.automated is not subscribed to, but INBOX is.

 U    13: INBOX.automated 
      76: INBOX 

When you type M-x gnus again, you’ll see your subscribed groups if
they have unread messages.

nnimap-split-rule and nnmail-split-methods allow you to filter
interesting or uninteresting mail into different groups based on their
headers. Gnus comes with an even more powerful mail splitting engine.
In fact, Gnus comes with “fancy mail splitting.”

Fancy mail splitting

With fancy mail splitting and some configuration, you can split mail
based on a combination of criteria. You can even manually file a
message and have Gnus automatically file incoming replies in the same
group.

To configure an IMAP connection to use fancy mail splitting, add the
following to your ~/.gnus:

 (setq nnimap-split-inbox "INBOX")
 (setq nnimap-split-predicate "UNDELETED")
 (setq nnmail-split-fancy ;; (1)
       '(|                                ;; (2)
         (: gnus-registry-split-fancy-with-parent) ;; (3)
         ;; splitting rules go here       ;; (4)
         "INBOX"                          ;; (5)
        ))
 (setq nnimap-split-rule 'nnmail-split-fancy)
 (setq nnmail-split-methods 'nnimap-split-fancy) ;; (6)
 (gnus-registry-initialize) ;; (7)

This configures IMAP to use the nnmail-split-fancy function to
determine the group for messages. Note that we’re setting the
nnmail-split-fancy variable here. If you want to process your IMAP
mail separately from your other mail, you can set the
nnimap-split-fancy variable instead. If so, also set nnimap-split-rule
to ‘nnimap-split-fancy. Using nnmail-split-fancy here makes the other
examples easier to understand, though.

The nnmail-split-fancy variable controls the splitting behavior(1). The
“|” symbol means that that the first matching rule is used(2). For
example, if the message being processed is a reply to a message that
Gnus knows about, then the gnus-registry-split-fancy-with-parent
function will return the name of the group, and nnmail-split-fancy
will file the message there(3). You can add other splitting rules as
well(4). If messages don’t match any of these rules, the last rule
specifies that the messages will be filed in INBOX(5). Set
nnmail-split-methods to nnimap-split-fancy as well in order to work
around some assumptions in other parts of the code(6). After that,
initialize the Gnus registry(7), which is responsible for tracking
moved and deleted messages. This allows you to automatically split
replies into the same folders as the original messages.

To configure fancy mail splitting with an nnml backend (suggested
configuration for POP3), add the following to your ~/.gnus instead:

 (gnus-registry-initialize)
 (setq nnmail-split-fancy                 
       '(|                                
         (: gnus-registry-split-fancy-with-parent)
         ;; splitting rules go here       
         "mail.misc"                          ;; (1)
        ))
 (setq nnmail-split-methods 'nnmail-split-fancy)    

This code is similar to the IMAP example, except that the default
mailbox name for nnml is mail.misc(1).

Here’s how the previous rules in nnmail-split-methods would be
translated to nnmail-split-fancy rules for an IMAP configuration:

 (setq nnmail-split-fancy
      '(|
        (: gnus-registry-split-fancy-with-parent)
         ;; splitting rules go here       
        (from mail "INBOX.errors")   ;; (1)
        (any "you@work.example.com" "INBOX.work")   ;; (2)
        (any "you@personal.example.com" "INBOX.personal") ;; 
        ("subject" "emacs" "INBOX.emacs") ;; (3)
        "INBOX"    ;; or "mail.misc" for nnml/POP3
       )) 

The from keyword matches against the “From”, “Sender”, and
“Resent-From” fields, while the mail keyword matches common mail
system addresses(1). The corresponding to keyword matches against
the “To”, “Cc”, “Apparently-To”, “Resent-To” and “Resent-Cc” headers,
while any matches the fields checked by the from and to
keywords(2). You can also compare against the subject
and other headers(3).

You can use logic in splitting rules, too. For example, if you like
reading the jokes on joke-mailing-list@example.com, but you don’t like
the ones sent by vi-guy@example.com (he not only has a bad sense of
humor, but also likes picking on Emacs!), you can use a rule like
this in your nnmail-split-fancy:

         ;; ... other splitting rules go here...
         (any "joke-mailing-list@example.com"   ;; (1)
              (| (from "vi-guy@example.com" "INBOX.junk") ;; (2)
                 "INBOX.jokes")) ;; (3)
         ;; ... other splitting rules go here

The first rule matches all messages with
“joke-mailing-list@example.com” in from- or to-related headers.
Matching messages are processed with another split rule, which moves
messages from vi-guy@example.com to a separate group(2) and files the
other messages in INBOX.jokes(3). To learn more about creating complex
rules, read the Gnus Info manual for “Fancy Mail Splitting”.

You can view 1 comment or e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

Limits work on the messages that are currently displayed, so you can
apply multiple limits. If you make a mistake, use / w
(gnus-summary-pop-limit) to remove the previous limit. You can repeat
/ w (gnus-summary-pop-limit) until satisfied. To remove all the
limits, type C-u / w (gnus-summary-popl-limit).

If you specify a prefix, the limit’s meaning is reversed. For
example, C-u / a (gnus-summary-limit-to-author) will remove the
messages from the matching author or authors.

You can use Gnus to search the currently-displayed messages by using
M-s (gnus-summary-search-article-forward) and M-r
(gnus-summary-search-article-backward).

If you want to search a lot of mail, you’ll find NNIR handy. NNIR is a
front-end to mail search engines which can index your mail and return
search results quickly. If you want to use NNIR with a local or remote
IMAP server, you will need to use nnir.el and imap.el. If you download
your mail using fetchmail or connect to a POP3 server and use an nnml
backend, you can use NNIR with a search engine such as swish-e to
search your ~/Mail directory efficiently.

(add-to-list 'load-path "~/elisp")
(load-file "~/elisp/imap.el")
(require 'nnir)

mknmz --mailnews -O ~/.namazu-mail ~/Mail

(add-to-list 'load-path "~/elisp")
(require 'nnir)
(setq nnir-search-engine 'namazu)
(setq nnir-namazu-index-directory (expand-file-name "~/.namazu-mail"))
(setq nnir-namazu-remove-prefix (expand-file-name "~/Mail"))
(setq nnir-mail-backend gnus-select-method)

You can view 1 comment or e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

1. Make sure you’ve set up Postfix or some other mail server that can send mail.
2. Install dovecot (IMAP server) and offlineimap (IMAP synchronization). You can probably find binaries for your distribution.
3. Edit /etc/dovecot/conf.d/10-mail.conf and set the following:

   mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir:LAYOUT=fs

4. Use the instructions from http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/44214/encrypt-offlineimap-password to set up GPG-encrypted passwords. (optional)
5. Put the following in ~/.offlineimaprc, changing the details as needed.

   [general]
   accounts = SachaGmail
   pythonfile = ~/bin/offlineimap-password.py
   
   [Account SachaGmail]
   localrepository = Local
   remoterepository = Gmail
   status_backend = sqlite
   
   [Repository Local]
   type = Maildir
   localfolders = ~/Maildir
   
   [Repository Gmail]
   type = Gmail
   maxconnections = 2
   remoteuser = sacha@sachachua.com
   realdelete = no
   folderfilter = lambda foldername: foldername in ['INBOX', '[Gmail]/All Mail', '[Gmail]/Sent Mail', '[Gmail].Starred', '[Gmail].Drafts', '[Gmail].Important']
   nametrans = lambda folder: re.sub('^INBOX$', '[Gmail].Inbox', folder)
   sslcacertfile = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
   remotepasseval = mailpasswd("gmail")
   

   If you feel comfortable specifying your password in your ~/.offlineimaprc, you can do so by changing remotepasseval to remotepass. If so, you don’t need the pythonfile line.

6. chmod go-rwx ~/.offlineimaprc for a little bit of safety.
7. Type offlineimap to start synchronizing.
8. While that’s synchronizing, use something like this as your ~/.gnus:

   (setq gnus-select-method
         '(nnimap "Mail"
   	       (nnimap-address "localhost")
   	       (nnimap-stream network)
   	       (nnimap-authenticator login)))
   
   (setq user-mail-address "youremail@example.com")
   (setq gnus-ignored-from-addresses "youruser")
   

9. Start Emacs. Start Gnus with M-x gnus. If you don’t see the INBOX group, press ^ (gnus-group-enter-server-mode), open nnimap:Mail, move your cursor to the INBOX, and either press RET to go into the group or press u (gnus-browse-unsubscribe-current-group) to toggle the subscription status until you’re subscribed to the group. Then it should show up on the group screen (M-x gnus).

Hope that helps. Have fun!

You can view 6 comments or e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.