notmuch Digest, Vol 20, Issue 57

[Pieter Praet]

On Wed, 29 Jun 2011 16:19:44 -0600, Mark Anderson <ma.skies at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 29 Jun 2011 13:54:40 -0700, Jameson Graef Rollins <jrollins at finestructure.net> wrote:
> > On Wed, 29 Jun 2011 14:21:11 -0600, Mark Anderson <ma.skies at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I personally prefer --output=files remain as it was, with one file per
> > > mail (even though I submitted the patch to change it).  I suggest that
> > > we could add another format to supply all files (perhaps
> > > --output=allfiles, or --output=dupfiles).  I don't like my original
> > > suggestion of "filelists" because it implies a list of lists to me.  A
> > > list of lists would correlate better to the number of messages which
> > > match the search terms, but doesn't correlate well to xargs input.
> > 
> > What's wrong with just outputting all the files matching the search,
> > including duplicates?  I can't think of any reason where one would want
> > to not include all files matching the search.  I would be curious to
> > hear a use case there.
> 
> For someone who is using gmail + offlineimap, labels in gmail become
> folders in maildir.
> 
> The maildir structure can have a large number of copies of each email
> corresponding to the labels/tags which have been applied.
> 
> To add a label/tag that is visible to the gmail interface, one should
> copy a file representing the message to the folder representing the
> gmail label, which will then sync to gmail.
> 
> Copying more than one file for each message being labeled is more
> wasteful of time and storage.

Hardlinks to the rescue!

> With all files returned, a simple xargs script to add a label by copying
> files will end up with many copies of the same file in the new
> directory.

Shove in a "head -n 1" ?

> The consuming script could hunt for message-id's in files and uniquify,
> but since notmuch was doing that implicitly before, and it's fairly
> natural, it seems not a big deal to add.
> 
> > Since I'm on this kick anyway, I'm going to keep pushing against further
> > customizations where there really isn't a need.
> 
> With a common use case for the biggest email userbase which makes
> labels/tags natural, I think it is worth considering seriously.
> 
> There are certainly other namesets which could be used to reprecent the
> two categories.  I'm happy to use names that makes the 'allfiles' output
> the common case and the "one file/message" the longer string, but I
> think we should provide the "one file/message" output category.
> 
> The 'allfiles' case is great for deleting all copies of an email, so I
> definitely want it to continue being available.
> 
> -Mark
> 
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Peace

-- 
Pieter