Enhance Emacs Email: Dirvish File Attachment Feature

Hey everyone! Today, we're diving into a feature request that aims to supercharge the way we handle email attachments within Emacs, specifically for email clients like mu4e and gnus. The core idea? Leveraging the power of Dirvish, a fantastic file management tool, to make attaching files to emails a breeze. Let's break down the problem, the proposed solution, and why this could be a game-changer for Emacs users.

The Challenge: Attaching Files in Emacs Email Clients

So, what's the current situation? For those of us who live and breathe in Emacs, composing emails is often done within clients like mu4e or gnus. While gnus has a handy gnus-dired-attach function, mu4e users often find themselves picking files one by one, often relying on tools like Ivy. This can turn into a tedious process, especially when you need to attach multiple files scattered across different directories. Typing out file paths without shortcuts? No bueno! This is where the need for a streamlined solution for attaching multiple files to emails in Emacs becomes apparent, particularly for users of mu4e. Currently, the lack of an efficient file-picking mechanism within mu4e can be a significant bottleneck in email composition, leading to frustration and decreased productivity. Navigating through directories and manually selecting each file for attachment can be time-consuming and error-prone. The absence of features like bookmarking, filtering, and multiple selection further exacerbates this issue, making it difficult to manage and attach files effectively. Imagine having to attach several documents, images, or other files to an email one at a time. The process not only takes a considerable amount of time but also disrupts the flow of writing and communication. This inefficiency highlights the importance of integrating a robust file-picking tool with email clients in Emacs, ensuring a seamless and productive email composition experience. The ability to quickly and easily select multiple files from different locations, without the need for manual typing or repetitive navigation, would significantly enhance the usability of Emacs for email management. This improvement is crucial for users who rely on Emacs for their daily communication and require a smooth and efficient workflow for handling email attachments. Therefore, addressing this challenge is essential for improving the overall Emacs experience and empowering users to manage their emails more effectively.

The Proposed Solution: Dirvish as a File Picker

Here's where Dirvish steps into the spotlight. Imagine Dirvish, already a powerful file manager, acting as a file picker within your email compose buffer. When used in dirvish-side mode, it could be the perfect solution. Think about it: you get access to bookmarks, filters, powerful searches, and the ability to select multiple files at different levels of your directory structure. The magic would happen if we could store the paths to all the marked files individually and then seamlessly paste them into the email compose buffer with the correct attachment formatting. This integration of Dirvish would provide a significant upgrade to the email composition workflow in Emacs. By leveraging Dirvish's existing capabilities, users can benefit from a more intuitive and efficient way to select and attach files. The ability to use bookmarks to quickly jump to frequently accessed directories, apply filters to narrow down file selections, and perform searches to locate specific files would greatly streamline the process of gathering attachments. Moreover, the feature of multiple selection at different directory levels would allow users to attach a collection of files from various locations in a single operation, saving considerable time and effort. To achieve this seamless integration, a mechanism for storing the paths of marked files individually is essential. Once the paths are stored, they can be easily pasted into the email compose buffer in the required format, ready for attachment. This approach would not only simplify the process of attaching files but also minimize the risk of errors associated with manual file path entry. The end result would be a more fluid and productive email composition experience, empowering users to focus on the content of their messages rather than the mechanics of file attachment. By transforming Dirvish into a file picker for email clients, we can unlock its full potential and enhance the overall usability of Emacs for email management.

Drawing Inspiration: nnn and ranger

Other file managers like nnn and ranger have already paved the way with their file picker modes. They can store paths of marked files and, combined with some clever shell scripting, populate attachments in email clients like nmail. This is a testament to the productivity boost such a feature can bring. This functionality in nnn and ranger offers a glimpse into the potential benefits of integrating a similar file-picking capability into Emacs. The ability to store paths of marked files and use them to populate attachments in email clients is a game-changer for productivity. It eliminates the need to manually type file paths or navigate through directories repeatedly, saving valuable time and effort. The integration of such a feature often involves using shell scripting to bridge the gap between the file manager and the email client. This allows for a seamless transfer of file paths, which can then be automatically formatted and added as attachments to the email. The success of nnn and ranger in this area demonstrates the feasibility and value of adopting a similar approach in Emacs. By drawing inspiration from these tools, we can learn from their implementation strategies and adapt them to the Emacs environment. This would not only enhance the functionality of Emacs email clients but also bring Emacs in line with the best practices in file management and email composition. The key takeaway from the success of nnn and ranger is the importance of a streamlined workflow for attaching files. Users want a quick and easy way to select multiple files, store their paths, and add them to emails without hassle. By incorporating these principles into the design of a file-picking feature for Emacs, we can create a tool that truly empowers users and enhances their productivity. This is a significant step towards making Emacs an even more versatile and efficient platform for email management.

Exploring Alternatives and the Core Request

Now, one could argue that a command should be implemented directly within mu4e (and other clients) to make this process seamless. That's certainly a valid point. However, at the very least, it would be incredibly helpful if Dirvish could store and