[PATCH v4 2/4] reply: Add a JSON reply format.

[Adam Wolfe Gordon]

Hi Dmitry,

On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 00:22, Dmitry Kurochkin
<dmitry.kurochkin at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Reply now enforces that only one message is returned, as the semantics
>> of replying to multiple messages are not wel-defined.
>
> s/wel/well/

Oops! git filter-branch to the rescue :-).

>> Show is modified such that --format=json no longer implies
>> --entire-thread, as MUAs will use --format=json when constructing
>> replies. The man page is updated to reflect this change.
>
> I did not look into details.  But I am surprised that user needs to call
> notmuch show --format=json to make reply.  I would expect notmuch reply
> to provide all required info (except for bodies).

I agree, it would be ideal to include the data from show --format=json
in the reply JSON. I started down the path of implementing this, but
realized it requires either copying quite a bit of code from show or
factoring it out, and both options felt kind of dirty. I'd like show
and reply to share a function that produces the JSON-formatted body of
a message, but it doesn't feel right to expose the entire JSON format
and all the functions that go with it from notmuch-show.c and put the
structure and all the prototypes in notmuch-client.h.

Will Austin's show rewrite make this easier/cleaner? Or am I being too
squeamish about moving code?

> Anyway, I think you should put this change in a separate patch.

Yeah, if I leave it as is it changes a default behavior, so a separate
patch would probably be a good idea.

> Also, we clearly need a NEWS entry for it and user-customizable Emacs
> variable changes.  Though it can be done after this series is pushed, I
> guess.

I don't think there are any emacs customization changes here, unless
we want to implement the notmuch mode config file that was discussed
before to give message-citation-line-format and other things nice
defaults. Or are you suggesting that there should be some new
customization options? (One I can think of would be the list of
preferred types for multipart/alternative display, which right now is
hardcoded in notmuch-show.el.)

> Thank you for this work, it is much appreciated.

Thanks for taking the time to review these patches! I think as a
result of everyone's reviews I've pushed the series toward what I
envisioned/wanted in the first place, rather than the kinda kludgey
thing I did initially.

Amusingly, I've started a new job since I wrote the original patch and
no longer receive much HTML-only email, but I like this patch series
enough to see it through anyway :-).