Feature proposal: OUTPUT_AUTHOR format

[Johannes Kulick]

Hi all,

I have the following idea for a new feature. I'd implement it myself, but I
wanted to ask the list first, whether something like this would have a chance to
go into mainline (given that it is implemented cleanly, well documented etc.)
or if people wouldn't like it at all.

I suggest to add a new output format, namely something like OUTPUT_AUTHORS. It
would for a given query return a list of all authors found in the messages and
the number of messages they have.

With that notmuch could be used for something I call a "people centric view".
That should give the user the possibility to sort its mail by authors. I - for
example - mainly communicate with only a couple of persons. If I'd have a view
showing me these persons on top would be very handy. That way I'd be able to
fast start a new conversation with my main conversation-partners, see e.g. all
threads I had with them or see all attachments I've got from them.

One could argue that a search to "from:<NAME>" would do it, but that way my
notmuch client isn't able to render such a view automatically, since no
information about all authors can be retrieved (at least not easily). So I'd
have to search for each name manually.

One could also argue that tagging each mail by the authors name would do the
trick. This is probably true, but would also mix tags and authors in an unclean
way, I'd say. I'd need to add a tag for every new person I mail to and would add
a tag to mail with information, which is already saved in the from field.

An authors output format would not add redundant information to a mail, would be
relatively easy to implement and I would find a people centric view - which
doesn't interfere with any other concept of notmuch - very worth the couple of
new lines of code.

What would you say?

Best,
Johannes

(Since I'm new to the list: Hello to all. I'm using notmuch with alot as client
for a couple of years now and very happy with it. I did some minor contributions
to alot so far. Apart from that I'm Ph.D. student in computer science and do
research about machine learning and robotics topics)


-- 
uni stuttgart      machine learning and robotics lab
http://ipvs.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/mlr/johannes

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