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36 id 1V6Q0S-0003q6-Sa; Mon, 05 Aug 2013 14:59:49 -0400
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37 Date: Mon, 5 Aug 2013 14:59:47 -0400
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38 From: Austin Clements <amdragon@MIT.EDU>
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39 To: Ramakrishnan Muthukrishnan <ram@rkrishnan.org>
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40 Subject: Re: unread message appear `folded'
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41 Message-ID: <20130805185947.GD7794@mit.edu>
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80 Quoth Ramakrishnan Muthukrishnan on Aug 05 at 11:35 pm:
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81 > Ramakrishnan Muthukrishnan <ram@rkrishnan.org> writes:
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85 > > Pardon me for using non-standard terms here because of lack of knowledge
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86 > > of the language used in the email world.
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88 > > I have this thread in which some messages are tagged unread. When the
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89 > > thread is opened, I see that those unread messages are not shown in full
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90 > > in the threaded view. Instead they appear `folded' with only the summary
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91 > > appearing in the thread, as if they are read.
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93 > > Here is a screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/Eh8SKe6.png
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95 > > I am attaching the messages in the thread shown in the screenshot as a
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98 > I just forgot to mention that I see this only when I do a
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99 > notmuch-search with `*' and not when I search with a tag.
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101 '*' turns out to be the key. When showing a thread,
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102 notmuch-show-build-buffer constructs a new query from the thread ID
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103 and the original search query of the form
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105 thread:X and (original query)
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107 If the original query is '*', this is
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111 But * isn't part of the Xapian query syntax. Notmuch specially
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112 handles queries that exactly match "*" before passing the query to
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113 Xapian. When * is embedded in a larger query, this special casing
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114 doesn't apply. In fact, Xapian parses this query as
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116 (Tmail AND (and:(pos=1) FILTER GX))
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118 The "and" in the query turned into a plain search term (the "AND" is a
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119 proper boolean operator, but is unrelated to the provided query).
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121 This is a symptom of a general problem where we assume queries are
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122 textually composable, when they are not. We have the same problem at
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123 least in notmuch-search-filter and in notmuch tag query optimization.
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124 In this particular case, the * causes Xapian's query grammar to fail
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125 to parse the query, which Xapian handles by re-parsing the entire
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126 query will all query features disabled (which includes disabling
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127 support for boolean operators). Unfortunately, just handling * better
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128 isn't really a solution because it's just one of many things that
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129 violates query composability.
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131 Some solutions I can see are:
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133 1) Switch to a composable query syntax (which would include *). This,
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134 obviously, requires a custom query parser, but is the most
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135 localized change I can think of and keeps queries as strings.
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137 2) Never construct queries by pasting strings together. This would
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138 require changes to both the libnotmuch and CLI interfaces and
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139 queries could no longer be strings, but in the words of Alan
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140 Perlis, the string is a stark data structure. (In the case of
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141 show, I would actually love it if we could specify separate search
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142 and match queries because that would eliminate --entire-thread as
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143 well as the fallback in notmuch-show-build-buffer when search
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144 returns nothing, but I digress.)
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146 3) Keep queries as plain strings, but switch to some hybrid syntax
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147 that lets us combine Xapian queries with composable operators
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148 parsed by notmuch. When we need to combine queries, do it using
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149 the composable operators. This actually may not be a bad way to
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150 transition to a full custom query parser; I think it would be
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151 relatively easy to take over parsing Xapian's boolean syntax, but
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152 leave the "prob" parsing to Xapian.
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154 I lean towards 3 because it seems like the least disruptive and offers
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155 a smooth transition to 1.
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