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Re: IMAP server side search integration



On Sat, Sep 03, 2005 at 10:53:09AM -0700, Brendan Cully wrote:
> 1. Silently treat the arguments to ~(b|h|H) as simple strings and pass
>    them to the server. You'd lose the ability to do full-text regular
>    expression searches on IMAP folders. On the other hand, client-side
>    searches are currently painful enough that probably no one does
>    them anyway.

This is probably the easiest to code... but the down side is it
introduces yet another folder-format-specific inconsistency in mutt's
UI, which is something that I personally don't like.  I strongly
believe that the data format should have no impact on the behavior of
the UI, ever.

> 2. Three more pattern commands. Since there aren't many letters left,
>    these would end up being pretty obscure, and normal body searches
>    would still have to fetch every message. I don't really like this
>    option.

But, from the standpoint of UI consistency, this is the best option.
I also think it would be useful to have a substing search feature for
other formats... It is generally less expensive than regex, and I
think more often than not substrings are what people want to search
for.  Thus it is an all-around win, IMO.

Note that in truth, I never use this option whatever, so my advocacy
is based purely on what I think The Right Way is.  Of course,
different opinions can be valid too.

> 3. A modifier for ~b..., eg $~b or $~h, indicating that the parameters
>    are substrings rather than regular expressions. Would people
>    actually remember to use it or is it just a nuisance?

To my eye, this seems the least desireable of the options you present.
It seems needlessly complex for the user.

-- 
Derek D. Martin    http://www.pizzashack.org/   GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
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