Re: [PATCH] Add --message-headers flag to notmuch-show

[Daniel Kahn Gillmor <dkg@fifthhorseman.net>]

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Hi Johan--

On Sun 2019-11-10 13:49:29 +0100, Johan Parin wrote:
> Add a new flag --message-headers to notmuch show, in order to let the
> user specify displayed headers using `notmuch-message-headers' in the
> emacs mua.

This is interesting work, thanks for proposing it.

I haven't reviewed the C changes in detail, but i wanted to ask a couple
of bigger-picture questions about where you see this going and how it
fits into the broader ecosystem around notmuch:

 - What is the specific use case for this? For example, can you identify
   situations where different headers need to be emitted by different
   users?  Even one motivating example would help others on this list
   understand why they might want to care :)

 - Do we need full configurability here?  I'd generally prefer for
   notmuch to be simple, instead of offering lots of ways for things to
   be subtly different across installations.  If there's an additional
   header that notmuch-show should be exporting in machine-readable
   mode, why not just export it unilaterally, and let the consumer of
   the headers filter out what they want to filter out?

 - If we do go ahead with the configurability approach, is there a
   rationale for requiring that the option should be a full list, rather
   than a differential approach?  for example "--include-header=Foo" and
   "--suppress-header=Bar" would let the user stick as close to the
   defaults as possible.  That way an upgrade to notmuch that does
   something nice to the default headers wouldn't necessarily get
   overridden by anyone in the habit of making these adjustments.

 - Again, if we're going with the configurability approach, should it
   just be a command line argument, or is this something that someone
   might want to set/retrieve with "notmuch config"?

These are meant as constructive questions, not as a critique -- i'm
hoping that we can make notmuch solve the problems you're trying to
solve!

All the best,

        --dkg

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