notmuch.el: controlling what does and doesn't get expanded in searches

[Carl Worth]

On Thu, Aug 04 2016, Matt Armstrong wrote:
> Yes, I find the query semantics with respect to tags and threads a bit
> confusing at times.  This is not a problem specific to notmuch, as I
> find the same kinds of issues in GMail.  Usually the problem occurs at
> the semantic border between per-message tags and thread-based
> operations.
>
> I can now explain what I am seeing.

Hi Matt,

I haven't been very active on the notmuch mailing list in quite some
time, but I wanted to poke my head in quickly to welcome you and to
thank you for your contribution.

I really like detailed discussions like this about coming up with good
workflows, and trying to figure out how notmuch could better accommodate
those workflows. I think this is one of the most valuable aspects of
notmuch, (that it lets us ask these kinds of questions).

So, please, keep it up!

>  i) notmuch could have an "also expand tags" feature, where thread based
>     results would auto expand matching tags.  I would set this to
>     "unread".

This approach makes a lot of sense to me based on how notmuch.el works.

>  ii) notmuch could have an "expand query" feature, where thread based
>      results would use an entirely different query to decide, within a
>      thread, which messages to expand.  I would set this query to
>      "tag:unread".

This approach would necessarily be quite a bit more complex in the
implementation without much difference in the user-visible behavior. So
I don't think we would want to pursue this.

-Carl
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