Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2014 15:33:15 -0400
From: Austin Clements <amdragon@MIT.EDU>
To: Mark Walters <markwalters1009@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/4] doc: Clarify notmuch show --format=raw description
Message-ID: <20140418193315.GB9395@mit.edu>
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	<87lhv2h26m.fsf@qmul.ac.uk>
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Quoth Mark Walters on Apr 18 at  8:23 pm:
> 
> On Fri, 18 Apr 2014, Austin Clements <amdragon@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