About the json output and the number of results shown.

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+From: Christophe-Marie Duquesne <chm.duquesne@gmail.com>\r
+Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2011 19:37:21 +0100\r
+Message-ID: <AANLkTi=Mzu9bu3y0RKB5YZUpZOT9qujXgxtpB-8Bvk=2@mail.gmail.com>\r
+Subject: About the json output and the number of results shown.\r
+To: notmuch@notmuchmail.org\r
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+\r
+Hi,\r
+\r
+The notmuch command line tool has an option that seems very\r
+interesting to me: --output=json\r
+\r
+In several languages, and especially in python, json is as easy to parse as:\r
+>>> res = json.load(stream)\r
+If your stream contains valid json, you then get all your data in res\r
+and you can immediately use it.\r
+\r
+With notmuch, some commands can bring a lot of results, and can take\r
+some time to return. That is why when I began to write a curse\r
+interface to notmuch, I added a mechanism to spawn these commands in\r
+background and gather the results asynchronously. Sadly, this makes me\r
+unable to use the built-in python json parser: As long as the output\r
+has not finished, the data on the stream is not valid json since it\r
+lacks at least the closing bracket '}'. As a consequence, I find\r
+easier not to use json and parse the data as it arrives.\r
+\r
+So I am wondering: what is the point of having a tool that is able to\r
+output json and ending in not using it? Is there a solution to make\r
+the json output more useable? One solution I've been thinking about\r
+would be to add an option: the range of results to show (something\r
+like --range=25:50). Is it doable easily? I mean: if results are not\r
+guaranteed to be in a given order, that would obviously be an issue.\r
+Same if finding the results 25:50 is exactly as long as finding the\r
+results 1:50. Otherwise, if it is doable, I guess this mail is a\r
+feature request. In any case, do you have any proposal for making\r
+sense of this json output without modifications in the notmuch CLI?\r
+\r
+Cheers,\r
+Christophe-Marie Duquesne\r