Re: Reusing descriptive sender name when replying

Subject: Re: Reusing descriptive sender name when replying

Date: Sat, 05 Feb 2022 12:27:19 +0100

To: David Bremner, notmuch@notmuchmail.org

Cc:

From: inasprecali


Thank you for the reply.

I don’t think I have explained myself properly.  What I would like
to have is to automatically have my descriptive name (the one
before the actual address in angled brackets) be filled in the
From: header when replying.  Right now, the only workarounds I
know of are using a prefix argument or just typing it manually
(which defeats the point of automatic detection in the first
place).  I used a prefix argument to compose this very reply.

> I think the two options supported out of the box are setting
> user.name and setting notmuch-identities in emacs. The latter
> should let you choose via completing-read at composition time.

user.name seems to only support a single, "global" name" and
notmuch-identities allows me to choose the name only if using a
prefix argument.  Without it, notmuch only fills in the address,
but not the descriptive name.  Setting the
notmuch-always-prompt-for-sender variable to t does not help,
since its description says (as of 0.31.4):

```
Documentation:
Always prompt for the From: address when composing or forwarding a message.

This is not taken into account when replying to a message, because in that case
the From: header is already filled in by notmuch.
```

And it’s still a workaround, because I have to choose the sending
identity "manually".

> I'm curious about your use case. Do you have a large number of
> values of "Foo", conveniently provided by the senders of your
> messages?

No, it’s the exact opposite.  I have multiple identities which I
use to send messages with, with different descriptive names.  In
my example, I’d like the name "Bar" to be automatically filled in,
but at the moment it is not.  The From: header in the new reply is
the problem.

> At the moment I'm feeling a bit negative about putting more
> tweaks into notmuch-reply; it seems like everybody wants
> something different but small, and those kind of customizations
> are better done in the emacs layer. OTOH I've changed my mind
> before about this kind of thing.

I don’t doubt that different people have different needs and
desires, but having multiple identities each with their respective
"real" name does not seem like such an exotic scenario in my
opinion (and since notmuch itself supports multiple addresses out
of the box, I’d say it agrees with me).  notmuch-reply can already
fill in the correct address in the From: header anyway, I don’t
think it would be very difficult to add the descriptive name as
well.  Could you please point me towards the specific code which
notmuch-reply uses to obtain the address to use in the From:
header?
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