On Mon, 19 Dec 2011 15:13:51 +0100, Justus Winter <4winter@informatik.uni-hamburg.de> wrote:
> Is your new tag called 'is:new'? Mine is just called 'new'

is: is a search prefix, synonymous with tag:

> That could be a problem since 'new' as tag for new mails is currently
> hardcoded at various locations. I thought it was universally accepted,
> but then again hardcoding these things is obviously a bad practice...

Tags for new messages is configurable with the new.tags config setting.
If you're program needs to know that setting, I suggest it retrieve it
From the notmuch config directly ("notmuch config get new.tags").

jamie.