Aliases in notmuch queries

[Suvayu Ali]

Hi David,

On Thu, Jul 18, 2013 at 06:12:19PM -0300, David Bremner wrote:
> Suvayu Ali <fatkasuvayu+linux at gmail.com> writes:
> 
> >
> > Often when searching for messages from these collaborators, I realise I
> > cannot recall their real names (or cannot spell it correctly).  It would
> > be great if notmuch had a facility to map nicknames to real names;
> > something like what git does with .mailmap.
> >
> > Does something like this exist?  If not, is it feasible?  I think it
> > would be a great addition.
> 
> It might be possible to use xapian synonyms
> 
>    http://xapian.org/docs/synonyms.html
> 
> to do this.

That is exactly the kind of functionality I was hoping for.

> 
> The basic synonym enabling doesn't look that hard, I think the fiddly
> bits would be in loading up the synonyms at right time.  We'd have to
> think about how to sensibly store/backup this information so that
> bindings users could have access to it.

I'm not familiar with the notmuch code base at all, but I would like to
help getting this feature in.  Do you have any hints where I should
start looking?  Is there any background work that I could do?

Cheers,

-- 
Suvayu

Open source is the future. It sets us free.