[PATCH 1/4] doc: Clarify notmuch show --format=raw description
Austin Clements
amdragon at MIT.EDU
Fri Apr 18 12:33:15 PDT 2014
Quoth Mark Walters on Apr 18 at 8:23 pm:
>
> On Fri, 18 Apr 2014, Austin Clements <amdragon at MIT.EDU> wrote:
> > In addition to being generally more precise, this is explicit that
> > there is no charset conversion.
> > ---
> > doc/man1/notmuch-show.rst | 36 ++++++++++++++++++++----------------
> > 1 file changed, 20 insertions(+), 16 deletions(-)
> >
> > diff --git a/doc/man1/notmuch-show.rst b/doc/man1/notmuch-show.rst
> > index bad868b..2c0f64c 100644
> > --- a/doc/man1/notmuch-show.rst
> > +++ b/doc/man1/notmuch-show.rst
> > @@ -76,22 +76,26 @@ Supported options for **show** include
> >
> > http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/mail-mbox-formats.html
> >
> > - **raw** (default for a single part, see --part)
> > - For a message or an attached message part, the original, raw
> > - content of the email message is output. Consumers of this
> > - format should expect to implement MIME decoding and similar
> > - functions.
> > -
> > - For a single part (--part) the raw part content is output
> > - after performing any necessary MIME decoding. Note that
> > - messages with a simple body still have two parts: part 0 is
> > - the whole message and part 1 is the body.
> > -
> > - For a multipart part, the part headers and body (including
> > - all child parts) is output.
> > -
> > - The raw format must only be used with search terms matching
> > - single message.
> > + **raw** (default if --part is given)
> > + Write the raw bytes of the given MIME part of a message to
> > + standard out. For this format, it is an error to specify a
> > + query that matches more than one message.
> > +
> > + If the specified part is a leaf part, this outputs the
> > + body of the part after performing content transfer
> > + decoding (but no charset conversion). This is suitable for
> > + saving attachments, for example.
> > +
> > + For a multipart or message part, the output includes the
> > + part headers as well as the body (including all child
> > + parts). No decoding is performed because multipart and
> > + message parts cannot have non-trivial content transfer
> > + encoding. Consumers of this may need to implement MIME
> > + decoding and similar functions.
> > +
> > + Note that even a message with a simple body has two parts:
> > + part 0 is the whole message and part 1 is the body of the
> > + message.
>
> Generally this looks good. I wonder whether the paragraph above could be
> expanded slightly: my (quite possibly flawed) understanding is that
> simple messages don't need to be MIME encoded (at least some messages
> don't contain any mention of MIME). If this is correct then I think it
> would be worth clarifying that this paragraph applies even to non-MIME
> encoded messages.
It's true that even "non-MIME" messages have two MIME parts. Are you
thinking something like
Note that even a message with no MIME structure or a single body part
still has two MIME parts: part 0 is the whole message (headers and
body) and part 1 is just the body.
?
I wonder if this would be better in the documentation for --part.
> Best wishes
>
> Mark
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