25 KiB
- Meta
- Technology
- Education
- Music
- Pipe Smoking
- Dungeons & Dragons
- Footnotes
Meta @Meta
Technology @Technology
TODO A perfect email setup (for me)
I've never been satisfied with any of the email clients most people use.
I've tried Thunderbird, Evolution, Mailspring, Mail.app, Roundcube,
SOGo, Geary, and many more. None of them handle multiple accounts
particularly well because all of the emails associated with that account
are bound within it. Sure, you can make a new folder somewhere called
TODO and move all of your actionable emails to that folder but, when you
go to move actionable emails from another account into that folder,
you'll likely find that the client simply doesn't let you. If it does,
when you reply, it will likely be sent from the wrong account. This is a
limitation of the IMAP protocol; everything is managed locally but
changes are pushed to the remote server and mixing things the way I want
leads to broken setups.
Before I go any further, these are a few characteristics of my ideal email tool.
- Support for multiple accounts (obviously)
- Native desktop application (not Electron)
- Has stellar keyboard shortcuts
- Doesn't require internet connectivity (other than downloading and sending of course)
- Organisation can be done with tags
Why tags?
Because they're better. Hierarchies are useful for prose and code but
not for files, emails, notes, or anything where an item may fit within
multiple categories. Imagine you get an email from your Computer Science
professor that includes test dates, homework, and information about
another assignment. In that same email, he asks every student to reply
with something they learned from the previous class as a form of
attendance. In a hierarchy, the best place for this might just be a TODO
folder even though it would also fit under School, CS, Dates, To read,
and Homework. Maybe you have a few minutes and want to clear out some
emails that don't require any interaction. In a tag-based workflow, this
would be a good time to open To read, get that email out of the way, and
remove the To read tag. It would still show up under the other tags so
you can find it later and take the time to fully answer the professor's
question, add those dates to your calendar, and add the homework
assignments to your TODO list. Hierarchies can be quite cumbersome to
work with, especially when one folder ends up getting all the data. Tags
ensure that you only see what you want when you want it. Tags are more
efficient and they will remain my organisation system of choice.
The tools
In short, the tools we will be using are…
- OfflineIMAP to download our emails
notmuch, the primary way emails will be organisedafewto apply initialnotmuchtags based on subject, sender, recipient, etc.- NeoMutt to interact with those emails, reply, compose, add/remove tags, etc.
msmtpfor relaying our replies and compositions to our mail provider
Yes, it's a lot. Yes, it's time-consuming to set up. Yes, it's worth it (in my opinion).
OfflineIMAP
As I said above, IMAP is limiting; we need to use some other method of downloading our emails. There's an awesome piece of software called OfflineIMAP which is built for exactly this purpose. Its configuration can be rather daunting if you have as many accounts as I do (17) but it's not terrible.
General
[general]
metadata = ~/.offlineimap
accounts = use_exa
maxsyncaccounts = 1
ui = basic
ignore-readonly = no
pythonfile = ~/.offlineimap.py
socktimeout = 60
fsync = true
The first big option is accounts; it tells OfflineIMAP what to actually
sync. What to put there will be defined further down but use_exa is just
filler text. The example account is user@example.com and I shortened
that to use_exa. maxsyncaccounts is also fairly important as it tells
OfflineIMAP to only pull emails from one account at a time. This is
certainly slower than multiple but it's also safer because we'll be
running this in the background and don't want many OfflineIMAP processes
executing concurrently and interfering with each other. pythonfile will
be discussed later.
Account
[Account use_exa]
localrepository = use_exa-local
remoterepository = use_exa-remote
quick = 10
utf8foldernames = yes
postsynchook = notmuch new
In the first block, localrepository and remoterepository tell OfflineIMAP where
to look for your emails. use_exa-local is an arbitrary naming scheme I use to
differentiate between the various local and remote accounts. It can easily be
swapped with something else.
Repository
[Repository use_exa-local]
type = Maildir
localfolders = ~/mail/use_exa
sync_deletes = yes
[Repository use_exa-remote]
type = IMAP
remotehost = imap.example.com
starttls = yes
ssl = no
remoteport = 143
remoteuser = user@example.com
remotepasseval = get_pass("use_exa")
auth_mechanisms = GSSAPI, XOAUTH2, CRAM-MD5, PLAIN, LOGIN
maxconnections = 1
createfolders = True
sync_deletes = yes
The repository sections describe how the emails are stored or retrieved.
In the local block, you'll notice that the type is Maildir. In this
format, each email is given a unique filename and stored in a hierarchy
of folders within your account. This is often how your emails are stored
on your provider's mail server.
pythonfile is used here to authenticate with the remote server. This can
be complicated and depends entirely on how you manage your passwords. I
use KeePassXC and love it. When I set OfflineIMAP up, however, it didn't
have libsecret compatibility. This would have made setup significantly
easier but, as it already just works™, I don't really see a reason to
change it.
This new feature allows libresecret-based applications to query
KeePassXC for your passwords or store them there on your behalf. CLI/TUI
applications that need a secure mechanism for background authentication
can use secret-tool lookup Title "TITLE_OF_PASSWORD" as the password
command. See the pull request for more details. Because this wasn't a
feature when I first set it up, I put my passwords in plaintext files
and encrypted them with the GPG key stored on my YubiKey. As long as my
key is plugged in, OfflineIMAP can authenticate and download all my
emails just fine. The process for using a GPG key not stored on a
hardware token is pretty much the same and I'll talk about that process
instead.
These are the contents of my ~/.offlineimap.py.
#! /usr/bin/env python2
from subprocess import check_output
def get_pass(account):
return check_output(["gpg", "-dq", f" ~/.mail_pass/{account}.gpg"]).strip("\n")
This runs gpg -dq ~/.mail_pass/use_exa.gpg then strips the newline
character before returning it to OfflineIMAP. -d tells GPG that you're
passing it a file you want decrypted and -q tells it not to give any
output other than the file's contents. For a setup that works with this
Python script, put your passwords in plaintext files with the account
name as the file name (e.g. use_exa). You'll then encrypt it with gpg
-er <YOUR_KEY_ID> use_exa. Running gpg -dq use_exa.gpg should display
your password. Repeat for every account and store the resulting files in
~/.mail_pass/.
The other option, sync_deletes, is whether or not to delete remote
emails that have been deleted locally. I enabled that because I want to
have easy control over how much remote storage is used.
Here's the next block again so you don't have to scroll up:
[Repository use_exa-remote]
type = IMAP
remotehost = imap.example.com
starttls = yes
ssl = no
remoteport = 143
remoteuser = user@example.com
remotepasseval = get_pass("use_exa")
auth_mechanisms = GSSAPI, XOAUTH2, CRAM-MD5, PLAIN, LOGIN
maxconnections = 1
createfolders = True
sync_deletes = yes
This one's pretty self-explanatory. type, remotehost, starttls, ssl, and
remoteport should all be somewhere in your provider's documentation.
remoteuser is your email address and remotepasseval is the function that
will return your password and allow OfflineIMAP to authenticate. You'll
want enter the name of your password file without the .gpg extension;
the script takes care of adding that. Leave auth_mechanisms alone and
the same for maxconnections unless you know your provider won't rate
limit you or something for opening multiple connections. sync_deletes is
the same as in the previous block.
Copy those three blocks for as many accounts as you want emails
downloaded from. I have 510 lines just for Account and Repository blocks
due to the number of address I'm keeping track of.
notmuch
notmuch is a fast, global-search, and tag-based email system. This
what does all of our organisation as well as what provides the "virtual"
mailboxes NeoMutt will display later on. Configuration is incredibly
simple. This file goes in ~/.notmuch-config.
[database]
path=/home/user/mail/
[user]
name=Amolith
primary_email=user@example.com
[new]
tags=unread;new;
ignore=Trash;
[search]
exclude_tags=deleted;spam;
[maildir]
synchronize_flags=true
First section is the path to where all of your archives are, the [user]
section is where you list all of your accounts, [new] adds tags to mail
notmuch hasn't indexed yet and ignores indexing the Trash folder, and
[search] ignores mail tagged with deleted or spam. The final section
tells notmuch to add maildir flags which correspond with notmuch tags.
These flags will be synced to the remote server the next time
OfflineIMAP runs and things will be somewhat organised in your webmail
interface.
After creating the configuration file, run notmuch new and wait for all
of your mail to be indexed. This could take a short amount of time or it
could take minutes up to an hour, depending on how many emails you have.
After it's finished, you'll be able to run queries and see matching
emails:
$ notmuch search from:user@example.com
thread:0000000000002e9d December 28 [1/1] Example User; Random subject that means nothingThis is not terribly useful in and of itself because you can't read it or reply to it or anything. That's where the Mail User Agent (MUA) comes in.
afew
afew is an initial tagging script for notmuch. After calling notmuch
new, afew will add tags based on headers such as From:, To:, Subject:,
etc. as well as handle killed threads and spam. The official quickstart
guide is probably the best resource on getting started but I'll include
a few tips here as well.
NeoMutt
msmtp
msmtp is what's known as a Mail Transfer Agent (MTA). You throw it an
email and it will relay that to your mail provider's SMTP server so it
can have the proper headers attached for authentication, it can be sent
from the proper domain, etc. All the necessary security measures can be
applied that prevent your email from going directly to spam or from
being rejected outright.
msmtp's configuration is also fairly simple if a bit long, just like
OfflineIMAP's.
# Set default values for all following accounts.
defaults
# Use the mail submission port 587 instead of the SMTP port 25.
port 587
# Always use TLS.
tls onThis section just sets the defaults. It uses port 587 (STARTTLS) for all SMTP servers unless otherwise specified and enables TLS.
account user@example.com
host smtp.example.com
from user@example.com
auth on
user user@example.com
passwordeval secret-tool lookup Title "user@example.com"
This section is where things get tedious. When passing an email to
msmtp, it looks at the From: header and searches for a block with a
matching from line. If it finds one, it will use those configuration
options to relay the email. host is simply the SMTP server of your mail
provider, sometimes this is mail.example.com, smtp.example.com, etc.
I've already explained from, auth simply says that a username and
password will have to be provided, user is that username, and
passwordeval is a method to obtain the password.
When I got to configuring msmtp, KeePassXC had just released their
libsecret integration and I wanted to try it. secret-tool is a command
line tool used to store and retrieve passwords from whatever keyring
you're using. I think KDE has kwallet and GNOME has gnome-keyring if
you already have those set up and want to use them; the process should
be quite similar regardless.
As mentioned above secret-tool stores and retrieves passwords. For
retrieval, it expects the command to look like this.
secret-tool lookup {attribute} {value} ...
I don't know what kwallet and gnome-keyring's attributes are but
this can be used with KeePassXC by specifying the Title attribute. If
the password to your email account is stored in KeePassXC with the
address as the entry title, you can retrieve it by simply running…
secret-tool lookup Title "user@example.com"If you have a different naming system, you'll have to experiment and try different things; I don't know what KeePassXC's other attributes are so I can't give other examples.
You could also just use the same method I described in the Repository section! It will work perfectly fine here as well.
passwordeval gpg -dq ~/.mail_pass/use_exa.gpgNow that the whole block is assembled, copy/paste/edit for as many accounts as you want to send email from.
Summary
TODO Pong fluffy when finished
TODO Making yourself overly available
Notes
Get rid of information that isn't important
Escalate the info that is
Set clear boundaries for when you are available
Enforce those with automatic DnD rules or use timers
With groups…
Specialisation is good and should be encouraged
All of the above points apply with coworkers as well
TODO Pong Jake when finished
TODO Catchy title about Supernote being "the new paper" Supernote Writing Productivity Organisation
I like writing things down. I like the feel of the pen (preferably a fountain pen) glide smoothly over the paper, that nice solid feeling of the tip against the table, seeing the ink dry as it flows from the nib, accidentally swiping my hand through it before it's finished and smearing a bit of ink across the page, cursing under my breath as I dab it up with a handkerchief or a napkin or something else nearby. I also love that writing things by hand has an impact on memory and improves retention.
The problem
Unfortunately, I don't love keeping up with that paper. Across many different classes, even with dedicated folders for each one, something important inevitably gets lost. Notebooks are also bulky and can take up a lot of space. I tried bullet journalling for about a month earlier this year and, while the process was enjoyable, the maintenance was not. My brain moves faster than my pen (even though I have terrible handwriting) and I inevitably forget letters or even whole words. This is a problem while writing in pen because white-out looks ugly and I dislike wasting whole pages because of a couple mistakes.
The obvious solution here is to get an iPad with an Apple Pen, right? Right??
Wrong because Apple bad1.
The solution
Enter the world of … what are they even called? E-ink notebooks? Paper tablets? E-R/W2? Do they even have a "device category" yet? I don't know but they solve my problem in a wonderful way.
As the names suggest, these are devices that can usually open and read e-books (EPUBs, PDFs, etc.), annotate them, and create standalone pages of notes as if they were full notebooks. The most well-known of these devices is likely the reMarkable. They had a hugely successful crowdfunding campaign and produced the reMarkable 1, followed by the reMarkable 2 in 2020. There are a few others by now but we'll look at the reMarkable first.
The reMarkable
This device boasts all of the features I was looking for. It renders digital content, from books and manuals to comics and light novels, allows you to mark those documents up as you would if it were physical media, create full notebooks of hand written text, organise them, search, and, if your handwriting is legible enough (mine certainly is not), perform OCR on your notes and email a transcription to yourself. It even runs Linux and the developers have opened SSH up so you can remote in and tinker with it as much as you like. Because of this, there's a pretty awesome community of people creating third-party tools and integrations that add even further functionality. My favourite is probably rMview, a really fast VNC client for the reMarkable that allows you to view your device's screen on any computer.
After watching all of MyDeepGuide's extensive playlist on the reMarkable, however, I decided to go with a different product.
Enter the Supernote A5X
The Supernote A5X has all of the basic features the reMarkable has: reading documents, writing notes, and organising your content. Its implementation, on the other hand, seems to be much more polished. It also lacks some features from the reMarkable while adding others.
Operating System
While the reMarkable runs Codex3, a "custom Linux-based OS optimised for low-latency e-paper", the Supernote just runs Android. There are both benefits and detriments to this; on one hand, they're running all of Android, bloated that it is, on a very lightweight tablet. On the other, they don't have to develop and maintain a custom operating system. This allows them to focus on other aspects that are arguably more important so I don't actually mind that it runs Android.
The only place that Android stands out is in system operations; file transfer uses MTP and, when you swipe down from the top of the device, a small bar appears as in early Android. This lets you change WiFi networks, sync between the companion app on your LAN, the remote servers, take a screenshot, search, and access the system settings. Nothing else about the device really makes me think of Android.
Community
I don't usually browse Reddit but the Supernote community there is fascinating. I haven't looked around enough to know exactly what his relationship is with the company, but one of the members, u/hex2asc, seems to represent Supernote in something of an official capacity. He's incredibly active and usually responds to posts and questions within a couple of days.
Before I purchased one, I wrote a post asking about a couple of things that concerned me: sync targets, open document formats, and cross-note links. I don't ever plan to write full documents with a keyboard on the Supernote but it would still be nice. The other features would be absolutely killer for me as I would like to maintain a Zettelkasten (I wrote about using Vim to do so last year but didn't end up sticking with it) and manage document synchronisation with my own Nextcloud server. The community was quick to respond and confirm that Zettelkasten functionality would be implemented soon™. u/hex2asc responded the day after and said that WebDAV would be supported but not earlier than May, ODF would likely not be supported, and cross-note links were definitely a possibility. Another community member has been avidly following the subreddit and even put together an unofficial roadmap.
Interfaces
Home & Organisation
TODO Record very short videos
Settings
TODO Record very short videos
Writing & Annotating
The following images are screenshots of the full page above with the possible UI variations while reading a book. This first one is default, with the editing bar at the top. It is exactly the same as what's displayed on the blank pages for hand writing full notes. From left to right is the Table of Contents toggle, the pen tools (fineliner, "fountain" pen4, and highlighter), the erasers, lasso select tool, undo/redo, context menu, palm rejection toggle, previous page, goto page, next page, and exit.
You can hold your finger on that bar and drag it down to detach it from the top. The default width exposes all the tools without whitespace. You can move it around the screen by dragging the circle with a straight line through the middle on the far left.
If you tap that circle, the width shrinks and everything except the pens, erasers, and undo/redo buttons are hidden. It can be dragged the same was as in the previous image and tapping that circle will expand the bar again.
The last mode is with the bar completely hidden. You achieve this just by dragging it to the right edge of the screen. Once hidden, you can swipe right to left from the edge and it will be revealed flush with the right edge.
Experience
Reading content
I love e-ink. I think it looks beautiful and would love to have an e-ink monitor5. That said, the Supernote has an especially nice display with 226 PPI (pixels per inch). The image below was taken with my phone's camera so it's not very good. However, if you zoom in a bit, you can see that the curved edges of some letters are slightly pixellated. Viewing with my naked eye at a comfortable distance, it does look better to me than some of my print books.
At the moment, I am pretty disappointed with Table of Contents detection for ePUBs. A great many of my books seem to use a legacy ToC format that the Supernote sees and tries/fails to read before attempting to read the more recent
Writing notes
I write notes as often if not more often than I read and annotate books. It's the main reason I purchased the device and I love the experience.
Surfacing Content
TODO Pong Isi and Volpeon when finished
TODO Setting LXC up for local "cloud" development
Education @Education
TODO Homeschooling
Music @Music
Pipe Smoking @Pipe__Smoking
Dungeons & Dragons @Dungeons__and__Dragons
Footnotes
It's not really a fountain pen even though that's what they call it; it's just pressure-sensitive.
While this would be absolutely awesome, it would also be prohibitively expensive and difficult to write software for. E-ink displays are far from cheap and the incredibly low refresh rate would render usual computing habits … odd. For example, words wouldn't show up right as you type them; the delay there would be significant and the same goes for a mouse. The idea is nonetheless compelling.
3Taken from their support page about the reMarkable 2; search the page for operating system and it should show up.
1I dislike Apple's operating system, their hardware, business model, privacy practises, and much of what they stand for as a company. Don't @ me.
2E-R/W is a play on media commonly being labelled as R/W when you can read from it and write to it.