On Sun, 22 Nov 2009 22:48:52 +0100, Tassilo Horn <tassilo@member.fsf.org> wrote:
> Ok, so new the question: I indexed all my 63.000 mails, and because it
> was a first-time indexing, all my mail now has the tags inbox and
> unread.  Of course, I don't want to SPC through all threads (using the
> great emacs interface) to remove the unread status.  So is there some
> catchup command, which marks all messages in the buffer as read?

With this patch

  <1258920736-14205-1-git-send-email-jed@59A2.org>

you would do

  * -inbox

or

  * -inbox -unread

On the command line, you can clear it with

$ notmuch tag -inbox tag:inbox

> BTW, what's the intention of the inbox tag?  When I've read a thread,
> both inbox as well as unread disappear, so I don't get the difference
> between them.

That is because SPC is bound to
notmuch-show-advance-marking-read-and-archiving which removes both tags.
The idea is that you can clear your inbox while retaining unread status,
or leave something important in your inbox even though you have read it.

Jed