From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Richard Stallman Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: RMAIL, MIME-related bug Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2003 19:20:34 -0400 Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+emacs-devel=quimby.gnus.org@gnu.org Message-ID: References: <200310121947.h9CJlhKH006102@oak.pohoyda.family> <874qy4vbg7.fsf@mail.jurta.org> Reply-To: rms@gnu.org NNTP-Posting-Host: deer.gmane.org X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1066693332 11981 80.91.224.253 (20 Oct 2003 23:42:12 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2003 23:42:12 +0000 (UTC) Cc: monnier@IRO.UMontreal.CA, emacs-devel@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+emacs-devel=quimby.gnus.org@gnu.org Tue Oct 21 01:42:10 2003 Return-path: Original-Received: from quimby.gnus.org ([80.91.224.244]) by deer.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1ABjf8-00008u-00 for ; Tue, 21 Oct 2003 01:42:10 +0200 Original-Received: from monty-python.gnu.org ([199.232.76.173]) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1ABjf8-0004uX-00 for ; Tue, 21 Oct 2003 01:42:10 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.24) id 1ABjRC-0007Nx-LR for emacs-devel@quimby.gnus.org; Mon, 20 Oct 2003 19:27:46 -0400 Original-Received: from list by monty-python.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.24) id 1ABjOn-00070O-Nd for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 20 Oct 2003 19:25:17 -0400 Original-Received: from mail by monty-python.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.24) id 1ABjOG-0006rs-Jr for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 20 Oct 2003 19:25:15 -0400 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.164] (helo=fencepost.gnu.org) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.24) id 1ABjOF-0006rD-UW for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 20 Oct 2003 19:24:43 -0400 Original-Received: from rms by fencepost.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.24) id 1ABjKE-0006Mq-Ns; Mon, 20 Oct 2003 19:20:34 -0400 Original-To: Juri Linkov In-reply-to: <874qy4vbg7.fsf@mail.jurta.org> (message from Juri Linkov on 19 Oct 2003 23:59:22 +0300) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.2 Precedence: list List-Id: Emacs development discussions. List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+emacs-devel=quimby.gnus.org@gnu.org Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:17278 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel:17278 1. Often there is a need to grep the mail archive for some old message. This is impossible if message is encoded in base64/quoted-printable. It just means it might be useful for the program that searches to know how to decode attachments. 2. Sometimes there is a need to make a bookmark to the message to be able to quickly return to it later. That could mean various things--I don't understand why you think it is so hard. Only one way to fetch old message is to start MUA and browse through dozens of folders and hundreds of messages in every folder. That is certainly not the only way. The way I normally do this is with grep. It works pretty well, but it could be better. I think we could use a program designed to search through mail folders in mbox format. Such a program could be convenient in many ways. For instance, it could have a feature to decode base64 and quoted-printable encodings. It could also have the ability to search for matches against specific header fields, or against the body, and handle boolean combinations of such criteria. It should output the messages that meet the specified criterion, and add to each message something in the form of a header field that says which file it came from and which line number. That way another program could look at the output and find the relevant messages in the files where they originally came from. If the output gives you too many messages, you could apply the search program to the output of the previous run, to filter it further. It would not be a very big job to write this program by adapting grep. Would anyone like to try?