Aliases in notmuch queries

Aliases in notmuch queries

[Suvayu Ali]

Hi,

I was wondering if it is possible to have email/name aliases of some
kind when performing notmuch queries.

I work in a very international environment.  It is quite common for
people with complicated names to go by simpler nicknames (e.g. Greek,
Russian, Chinese names).

Often when searching for messages from these collaborators, I realise I
cannot recall their real names (or cannot spell it correctly).  It would
be great if notmuch had a facility to map nicknames to real names;
something like what git does with .mailmap.

Does something like this exist?  If not, is it feasible?  I think it
would be a great addition.

Thanks,

-- 
Suvayu

Open source is the future. It sets us free.

Re: Aliases in notmuch queries

[David Bremner]

Suvayu Ali <fatkasuvayu+linux@gmail.com> writes:

>
> Often when searching for messages from these collaborators, I realise I
> cannot recall their real names (or cannot spell it correctly).  It would
> be great if notmuch had a facility to map nicknames to real names;
> something like what git does with .mailmap.
>
> Does something like this exist?  If not, is it feasible?  I think it
> would be a great addition.

It might be possible to use xapian synonyms

   http://xapian.org/docs/synonyms.html

to do this.

The basic synonym enabling doesn't look that hard, I think the fiddly
bits would be in loading up the synonyms at right time.  We'd have to
think about how to sensibly store/backup this information so that
bindings users could have access to it.

d

Re: Aliases in notmuch queries

[Suvayu Ali]

Hi David,

On Thu, Jul 18, 2013 at 06:12:19PM -0300, David Bremner wrote:
> Suvayu Ali <fatkasuvayu+linux@gmail.com> writes:
> 
> >
> > Often when searching for messages from these collaborators, I realise I
> > cannot recall their real names (or cannot spell it correctly).  It would
> > be great if notmuch had a facility to map nicknames to real names;
> > something like what git does with .mailmap.
> >
> > Does something like this exist?  If not, is it feasible?  I think it
> > would be a great addition.
> 
> It might be possible to use xapian synonyms
> 
>    http://xapian.org/docs/synonyms.html
> 
> to do this.

That is exactly the kind of functionality I was hoping for.

> 
> The basic synonym enabling doesn't look that hard, I think the fiddly
> bits would be in loading up the synonyms at right time.  We'd have to
> think about how to sensibly store/backup this information so that
> bindings users could have access to it.

I'm not familiar with the notmuch code base at all, but I would like to
help getting this feature in.  Do you have any hints where I should
start looking?  Is there any background work that I could do?

Cheers,

-- 
Suvayu

Open source is the future. It sets us free.

Re: Aliases in notmuch queries

[David Bremner]

Suvayu Ali <fatkasuvayu+linux@gmail.com> writes:
> I'm not familiar with the notmuch code base at all, but I would like to
> help getting this feature in.  Do you have any hints where I should
> start looking?  Is there any background work that I could do?

I think the following pieces are needed:

1) Enable synonyms when opening the database

2) enable synonyms in the query parser

These first two should be covered in the xapian docs

3) load the synonyms from a file.
   - this needs some infrastructure, and some decisions about how to
   handle such configuration info.

4) add the synonyms (using db.add_synonym)

d