Re: signed/encrypted tagging in crypto branch

[Pieter Praet <pieter@praet.org>]

On Sun, 06 Mar 2011 11:15:00 -0800, Jameson Rollins <jrollins@finestructure.net> wrote:
> On Sat, 05 Mar 2011 00:26:46 -0800, Jameson Rollins <jrollins@finestructure.net> wrote:
> > Hey, folks.  I just pushed a couple of patches to my "crypto" branch [0]
> > that add support for auto-tagging of multipart/signed and
> > multipart/encrypted messages with the "signed" and "encrypted" tags
> > respectively.  Only new messages are thus tagged, so a database rebuild
> > is required to auto-tag old messages.
> 
> So I realized last night, what now seems obvious, that restoring tags
> after a notmuch new will override any initial auto tagging.  This means
> that doing a database rebuild will *not* crypto tag all your old mail if
> you then restore tags from a tag dump afterwords.
> 
> I'm not sure if there's anything that can be done about this.  I think
> we either have to have a way to merge tags, or the signed and encrypted
> indicators need to exist in a different field in the database.  Tags
> allow more flexibility in the UIs, but maybe we could just tag based on
> a the new database field somehow?
> 
> It's not such a big deal that we only get "signed" and "encrypted" from
> here forward, but it would be nice to re-tag old messages this way.  I
> can imagine that something like this will come up again in the future,
> and it would be nice if we had a solution.  I'm open to suggestions.
> 
> jamie.
Non-text part: application/pgp-signature
> _______________________________________________
> notmuch mailing list
> notmuch@notmuchmail.org
> http://notmuchmail.org/mailman/listinfo/notmuch


As long as we're talking solely about "signed" and "encrypted" (so no
verification-wise information whatsoever), I'd definitely vote for a
dedicated database field.

It's absolutely immutable metadata, embedded in the message content.

No point in using tags for that, though it's not mutually exclusive:
"notmuch tag +signed -- is:signed" (or whatever, knock yourself out)

If folders -which DO change, although rarely- got one, so should crypto.


...but that's just my (insufficiently) humble opinion.


Peace

-Pieter