[Patch v2 0/3] emacs: allow show to colour based on tags and flags

[Mark Walters]

On Wed, 02 May 2012, Jameson Graef Rollins <jrollins at finestructure.net> wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 29 2012, Austin Clements <amdragon at MIT.EDU> wrote:
>> I haven't really looked at this series yet, but I do have a quick
>> high-level question.  Why use separate customization variables for the
>> colors in search and show mode?  Wouldn't it make more sense to set
>> the colors just once and use them in both modes?
>
> I thought about this myself as soon as I read the patch.  I think I
> would always want the colors to match, so it would make sense to me to
> set them in one place.

Hi

I think both are useful (see my reply to Austin) but having show apply
the faces from notmuch-search first seems a good idea.

There are a couple of extra reasons why I like the show ones
separate. One is that I like to colour headerlines of matching messages to
highlight them, but in search mode that would highlight every
line. Secondly, I colour some things "negatively" in show mode: for
example I show excluded messages in grey. This negative colouring does
not make sense for search mode because I would only want to grey out
results where all messages were excluded not results where at least one
message is excluded. Of course we don't show entirely excluded threads
in search, but similar comments apply to say the "replied" tag: I could
show those in green (on the basis they are "dealt with") but I would not
want a thread coloured green just because I have replied to one message
in it.

>
>> BTW, I like how this clearly distinguishes tags and flags.  I wonder
>> if we could transition to flags for some information that's current
>> shoe-horned into tags but actually represents immutable information
>> about a message (attachment, signed, and encrypted or so).
>
> Yes!  As Austin probably remembers, we've discussed this before.  I
> definitely agree that it makes sense to somehow distinguish "immutable"
> information that is a fundamental, unchanging/able property of the
> message, and it might be nice to look ahead to that here.

In essence I agree: my only concern is can the user search for these
immutable things, and what syntax is used there. 

Best wishes

Mark