[PATCH] notmuch.pod: pod version of documentation, converted by rman, massaged by hand.

[PATCH] notmuch.pod: pod version of documentation, converted by rman, massaged by hand.

[david]

From: David Bremner <bremner@unb.ca>

Some places I deleted a bit of the continuity text introducing a
command because I didn't see how to make it work with the slightly
more structured layout.
---

The idea here is to be able to generate the online help and the man page from one source.

To generate a man page:
   
   pod2man notmuch.pod > notmuch.1

To generate help for a specific notmuch subcommand

   podselect -section 'Commands/subcommand.*' notmuch.pod | pod2text -c

In principle the output from podselect could be compiled into notmuch.
I'm not sure if the terminal escape codes are a good idea or not for
that application, but they make pretty output.

podselect and pod2man are included with perl 5.10.0; I'm not sure
before that.

 notmuch.pod |  344 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 files changed, 344 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 notmuch.pod

diff --git a/notmuch.pod b/notmuch.pod
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..680b5af
--- /dev/null
+++ b/notmuch.pod
@@ -0,0 +1,344 @@
+=head1 Name
+notmuch - thread-based email index, search, and tagging
+
+=head1 Synopsis
+
+=over 
+
+=item B<notmuch> I<command> [I<args> ...]
+
+=back
+
+=head1 Description
+
+Notmuch is a command-line based
+program for indexing, searching, reading, and tagging large collections
+of email messages. 
+ The quickest way to get started with Notmuch is to simply
+invoke the B<notmuch> command with no arguments, which will interactively
+guide you through the process of indexing your mail.
+
+=head1 Note
+
+While the command-line
+program B<notmuch> provides powerful functionality, it does not provide the
+most convenient interface for that functionality. More sophisticated interfaces
+are expected to be built on top of either the command-line interface, or
+more likely, on top of the notmuch library interface. See http://notmuchmail.org
+for more about alternate interfaces to notmuch.
+
+=head1 Commands
+
+=head2 setup
+
+Interactively sets up notmuch for first use.  The setup command will
+prompt for your full name, your primary email address, any alternate
+email addresses you use, and the directory containing your email
+archives. Your answers will be written to a configuration file in
+${NOTMUCH_CONFIG} (if set) or ${HOME}/.notmuch-config . This
+configuration file will be created with descriptive comments, making
+it easy to edit by hand later to change the configuration. Or you can
+run B<notmuch setup> again to change the configuration.
+
+The mail directory you specify can contain any number of
+sub-directories and should primarily contain only files with
+individual email messages (eg. maildir or mh archives are perfect). If
+there are other, non-email files (such as indexes maintained by other
+email programs) then notmuch will do its best to detect those and
+ignore them.
+
+Mail storage that uses mbox format, (where one mbox file contains many
+messages), will not work with notmuch. If that's how your mail is
+currently stored, it is recommended you first convert it to maildir
+format with a utility such as mb2md before running B<notmuch setup>
+
+Invoking B<notmuch> with no command argument will run B<setup> if the
+setup command has not previously been completed.
+
+=head2 new
+
+Find and import any new messages to the database.  The B<new> command
+scans all sub-directories of the database, performing full-text
+indexing on new messages that are found. Each new message will
+automatically be tagged with both the B<inbox> and B<unread> tags.
+You should run B<notmuch new> once after first running B<notmuch setup> to create the initial database. The first run may take a long
+time if you have a significant amount of mail (several hundred
+thousand messages or more). Subsequently, you should run B<notmuch
+new> whenever new mail is delivered and you wish to incorporate it
+into the database.  These subsequent runs will be much quicker than
+the initial run.
+
+Note:
+B<notmuch new> runs (other than the first run) will skip any read-only directories,
+so you can use that to mark directories that will not receive any new mail
+(and make B<notmuch new> even faster). 
+Invoking B<notmuch> with no command argument
+will run B<new> if B<notmuch setup> has previously been completed, but B<notmuch
+new> has not previously been run. 
+Several of the notmuch commands accept
+search terms with a common syntax. See the B<SEARCH SYNTAX> section below for
+more details on the supported syntax. 
+The B<search> and B<show> commands are
+used to query the email database. 
+
+=head2 search [options...] <search-term>... 
+
+Search for
+messages matching the given search terms, and display as results the threads
+containing the matched messages. 
+The output consists of one line per thread,
+giving a thread ID, the date of the newest (or oldest, depending on the
+sort option) matched message in the thread, the number of matched messages
+and total messages in the thread, the names of all participants in the
+thread, and the subject of the newest (or oldest) message. 
+Supported options
+for B<search> include 
+
+=over
+
+=item B<--sort=>(B<newest-first>|B<oldest-first>) 
+
+This option can be used
+to present results in either chronological order (B<oldest-first>) or reverse
+chronological order (B<newest-first>). 
+Note: The thread order will be distinct
+between these two options (beyond being simply reversed). When sorting by
+B<oldest-first> the threads will be sorted by the oldest message in each thread,
+but when sorting by B<newest-first> the threads will be sorted by the newest
+message in each thread. 
+By default, results will be displayed in reverse
+chronological order, (that is, the newest results will be displayed first).
+
+=back
+
+See the B<SEARCH SYNTAX> section below for details of the supported syntax
+for B<search-terms>. 
+
+=head2 show [options...] <search-term>... 
+
+Shows all messages matching
+the search terms. 
+The messages will be grouped and sorted based on the
+threading (all replies to a particular message will appear immediately
+after that message in date order). The output is not indented by default,
+but depth tags are printed so that proper indentation can be performed
+by a post-processor (such as the emacs interface to notmuch). 
+Supported
+options for B<show> include 
+
+=over 
+
+=item B<--entire-thread> 
+
+By default only those messages that
+match the search terms will be displayed. With this option, all messages
+in the same thread as any matched message will be displayed. 
+
+=back
+
+The  output
+format  is plain-text,  with all  text-content  MIME parts decoded. Various
+components in the output, (B<message>, B<header>, B<body>, B<attachment>, and MIME
+B<part>), will be delimited by easily-parsed markers. Each marker consists of
+a Control-L character (ASCII decimal 12), the name of the marker, and then
+either an opening or closing brace, ('{' or '}'), to either open or close the
+component. 
+
+A common use of B<notmuch show> is to display a single thread of
+email messages. For this, use a search term of "thread:<thread-id>" as can
+be seen in the first column of output from the B<notmuch search> command. 
+
+See the B<SEARCH SYNTAX> section below for details of the supported syntax
+for <search-terms>. 
+The B<reply> command is useful for preparing a template for
+an email reply. 
+
+=head2 reply [options...] <search-term>... 
+
+Constructs a reply template
+for a set of messages. 
+To make replying to email easier, B<notmuch reply>
+takes an existing set of messages and constructs a suitable mail template.
+The Reply-to header (if any, otherwise From:) is used for the To: address.
+Vales from the To: and Cc: headers are copied, but not including any of
+the current user's email addresses (as configured in primary_mail or other_email
+in the .notmuch-config file) in the recipient list 
+It also builds a suitable
+new subject, including Re: at the front (if not already present), and adding
+the message IDs of the messages being replied to to the References list
+and setting the In-Reply-To: field correctly. 
+Finally, the original contents
+of the emails are quoted by prefixing each line with '> ' and included in
+the body. 
+The resulting message template is output to stdout. 
+Supported
+options for B<reply> include 
+
+=over
+
+=item B<--format=>(B<default>|B<headers-only>) 
+
+=over
+
+=item B<default> 
+
+Includes
+subject and quoted message body. 
+
+=item B<headers-only> 
+
+Only produces In-Reply-To, References,
+To, Cc, and Bcc headers. 
+See the B<SEARCH SYNTAX> section below for details
+of the supported syntax for <search-terms>. 
+
+=back
+
+=back
+
+Note: It is most common to use
+B<notmuch reply> with a search string matching a single message, (such as
+id:<message-id>), but it can be useful to reply to several messages at once.
+For example, when a series of patches are sent in a single thread, replying
+to the entire thread allows for the reply to comment on issue found in
+multiple patches. 
+
+=head2 tag +<tag>|-<tag> [...] [--] <search-term>... 
+
+Add/remove tags for all
+messages matching the search terms. 
+Tags prefixed by '+' are added while
+those prefixed by '-' are removed. For each message, tag removal is performed
+before tag addition. 
+The beginning of I<search-terms> is recognized by the
+first argument that begins with neither '+' nor '-'. Support for an initial search
+term beginning with '+' or '-' is provided by allowing the user to specify a
+"--" argument to separate the tags from the search terms. 
+See the B<SEARCH SYNTAX> section below for details of the supported syntax for I<search-terms>.
+The B<dump> and B<restore> commands can be used to create a textual dump of
+email tags for backup purposes, and to restore from that dump 
+
+=head2 dump [<filename>]
+
+Creates a plain-text dump of the tags of each message. 
+The output is to
+the given filename, if any, or to stdout. 
+These tags are the only data
+in the notmuch database that can't be recreated from the messages themselves.
+The output of notmuch dump is therefore the only critical thing to backup
+(and much more friendly to incremental backup than the native database
+files.) 
+
+=head2 restore <filename> 
+
+Restores the tags from the given file (see B<notmuch dump>. 
+Note: The dump file format is specifically chosen to be compatible
+with the format of files produced by sup-dump. So if you've previously been
+using sup for mail, then the B<notmuch restore> command provides you a way
+to import all of your tags (or labels as sup calls them).
+
+
+=head1 Search Syntax
+
+Several
+notmuch commands accept a common syntax for search terms. 
+The search terms
+can consist of free-form text (and quoted phrases) which will match all
+messages that contain all of the given terms/phrases in the body, the subject,
+or any of the sender or recipient headers. 
+
+In addition to free text, the
+following prefixes can be used to force terms to match against specific
+portions of an email, (where <brackets> indicate user-supplied values): 
+
+=over
+
+=begin text
+
+ 	from:<name-or-address> 
+ 	to:<name-or-address> 
+ 	subject:<word-or-quoted-phrase> 
+ 	attachment:<word> 
+ 	tag:<tag> 
+ 	id:<message-id> 
+ 	thread:<thread-id> 
+
+=end text
+
+=back
+
+The B<from:> prefix is used to match the name or address of the sender
+of an email message.  The B<to:> prefix is used to match the names or
+addresses of any recipient of an email message, (whether To, Cc, or
+Bcc).  Any term prefixed with B<subject:> will match only text from
+the subject of an email.
+
+Searching for a phrase in the subject is supported by including quotation
+marks around the phrase, immediately following B<subject:>. 
+
+The B<attachment:>
+prefix can be used to search for specific filenames (or extensions) of
+attachments to email messages. 
+
+For B<tag:>, valid tag values include B<inbox>
+and B<unread> by default for new messages added by B<notmuch new> as well as
+any other tag values added manually with B<notmuch tag>. 
+
+For B<id:>, message
+ID values are the literal contents of the Message-ID: header of email messages,
+but without the '<', '>' delimiters. 
+
+The B<thread:> prefix can be used with the
+thread ID values that are generated internally by notmuch (and do not appear
+in email messages). These thread ID values can be seen in the first column
+of output from B<notmuch search> 
+
+In addition to individual terms, multiple
+terms can be combined with Boolean operators ( B<and>, B<or>, B<not> , etc.). Each
+term in the query will be implicitly connected by a logical AND if no explicit
+operator is provided, (except that terms with a common prefix will be implicitly
+combined with OR until we get Xapian defect #402 fixed). 
+Parentheses can
+also be used to control the combination of the Boolean operators, but will
+have to be protected from interpretation by the shell, (such as by putting
+quotation marks around any parenthesized expression). 
+
+Finally, results
+can be restricted to only messages within a particular time range, (based
+on the Date: header) with a syntax of: 
+
+=over
+
+<initial-timestamp>..<final-timestamp> 
+
+=back
+
+Each timestamp is a number representing the number of seconds since
+1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC. This is not the most convenient means of
+expressing date ranges, but until notmuch is fixed to accept a more
+convenient form, one can use the date program to construct
+timestamps. For example, with the bash shell the folowing syntax would
+specify a date range to return messages from 2009-10-01 until the
+current time:
+
+=over 
+
+text $(date +%s -d 2009-10-01)..$(date +%s) 
+
+=back
+
+=head1 See Also 
+
+The emacs-based interface to notmuch (available
+as B<notmuch.el> in the Notmuch distribution). 
+
+The notmuch website: L<http://notmuchmail.org>
+
+=head1 Contact 
+
+Feel free to send questions, comments, or kudos to the notmuch mailing
+list <notmuch@notmuchmail.org> . Subscription is not required before
+posting, but is available from the notmuchmail.org website. 
+
+Real-time interaction with the Notmuch community is available via IRC
+(server: irc.freenode.net, channel: #notmuch).
\ No newline at end of file
-- 
1.6.5

Re: [PATCH] notmuch.pod: pod version of documentation, converted by rman, massaged by hand.

[David Bremner]

On Thu, 31 Dec 2009 13:39:29 -0400, david@tethera.net wrote:
> 
> The idea here is to be able to generate the online help and the man page from one source.
> 
> To generate a man page:
>    
>    pod2man notmuch.pod > notmuch.1
> 
> To generate help for a specific notmuch subcommand
> 
>    podselect -section 'Commands/subcommand.*' notmuch.pod | pod2text -c
> 

As I'm faced with writing docs for output selection, I'd like to revisit
this idea. I didn't get any feedback, positive or negative about the
idea of keeping the docs in pod.  I don't care much about the format,
but I think it would be nice to avoid maintaining two copies of the
documentation.

Should I rebase/rebuild this against the current docs, or not bother?

d

Re: [PATCH] notmuch.pod: pod version of documentation, converted by rman, massaged by hand.

[David Edmondson]

On Sat, 24 Apr 2010 11:04:49 -0300, David Bremner <david@tethera.net> wrote:
> As I'm faced with writing docs for output selection, I'd like to revisit
> this idea. I didn't get any feedback, positive or negative about the
> idea of keeping the docs in pod.  I don't care much about the format,
> but I think it would be nice to avoid maintaining two copies of the
> documentation.
> 
> Should I rebase/rebuild this against the current docs, or not bother?

I like the idea, but I have no experience with pod.

dme.
-- 
David Edmondson, http://dme.org

Re: [PATCH] notmuch.pod: pod version of documentation, converted by rman, massaged by hand.

[Carl Worth]

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-- 
carl.d.worth@intel.com
On Sat, 24 Apr 2010 11:04:49 -0300, David Bremner <david@tethera.net> wrote:
> As I'm faced with writing docs for output selection, I'd like to revisit
> this idea. I didn't get any feedback, positive or negative about the
> idea of keeping the docs in pod.  I don't care much about the format,
> but I think it would be nice to avoid maintaining two copies of the
> documentation.

Sorry about the lack of feedback from me on this.

I tried to look at it a couple of times, but it was already stale then
so I didn't look hard enough.

The couple of questions I have are:

  * How close does the generated output match what we have today?

  * What additional tools does this require for someone to build the
    tree from the git repository?

> Should I rebase/rebuild this against the current docs, or not bother?

I'd be interested in taking another look, if you're willing to take
another whack at it. I think that our command-line interface is changing
a lot more slowly such that this won't go immediately stale this time.

Though you could perhaps start by answering the above questions which
might be less work. :-)

-Carl

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Re: [PATCH] notmuch.pod: pod version of documentation, converted by rman, massaged by hand.

[David Bremner]

On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 16:33:27 -0700, Carl Worth <cworth@cworth.org> wrote:
> 
> I tried to look at it a couple of times, but it was already stale then
> so I didn't look hard enough.
> 
> The couple of questions I have are:
> 
>   * How close does the generated output match what we have today?

Pretty close, I think.  Essentially I just reformatted one or two places
to make the online help easier to pull out of the man pages.

>   * What additional tools does this require for someone to build the
>     tree from the git repository?

A recentish version of perl. 5.8.8 (2006) seems to have the utilities
we'd need.  I guess if people have git, they have perl. I guess in
principle we could ship the pre-processed docs in a distribution
tarball.

> > Should I rebase/rebuild this against the current docs, or not bother?
> 
> I'd be interested in taking another look, if you're willing to take
> another whack at it. I think that our command-line interface is changing
> a lot more slowly such that this won't go immediately stale this time.

Sure, I can have another go at it.  

d

[PATCH] notmuch.pod: pod version of documentation, converted by rman, massaged by hand.

[david]

From: David Bremner <bremner@unb.ca>

Some places I deleted a bit of the continuity text introducing a
command because I didn't see how to make it work with the slightly
more structured layout.

I also moved show in front of search, because it explains the output
formats.  Probably it would make sense to add a separate section
explaining common output formats.
---

You can take a look at the HTML output at

    http://pivot.cs.unb.ca/scratch/notmuch.html

We can also generate man pages and inline help from this file. I
didn't get that far yet, waiting for more encouraging noises :).

 notmuch.pod |  361 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 files changed, 361 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 notmuch.pod

diff --git a/notmuch.pod b/notmuch.pod
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..719dead
--- /dev/null
+++ b/notmuch.pod
@@ -0,0 +1,361 @@
+=head1 Name
+
+notmuch - thread-based email index, search, and tagging
+
+=head1 Synopsis
+
+=over
+
+=item B<notmuch> I<command> [I<args> ...]
+
+=back
+
+=head1 Description
+
+Notmuch is a command-line based program for indexing, searching,
+reading, and tagging large collections of email messages.  The
+quickest way to get started with Notmuch is to simply invoke the
+B<notmuch> command with no arguments, which will interactively guide
+you through the process of indexing your mail.
+
+=head2 Using notmuch
+
+The B<search> and B<show> commands are used to query the email
+database.  The B<tag> command is the only command available for
+manipulating database contents.  Several of the notmuch commands
+accept search terms with a common syntax. See the B<SEARCH SYNTAX>
+section below for more details on the supported syntax.
+
+=head2 Note
+
+While the command-line program B<notmuch> provides powerful
+functionality, it does not provide the most convenient interface for
+that functionality. More sophisticated interfaces are expected to be
+built on top of either the command-line interface, or more likely, on
+top of the notmuch library interface. See L<http://notmuchmail.org> for
+more about alternate interfaces to notmuch.
+
+=head1 Commands
+
+=head2 setup
+
+Interactively sets up notmuch for first use.  The setup command will
+prompt for your full name, your primary email address, any alternate
+email addresses you use, and the directory containing your email
+archives. Your answers will be written to a configuration file in
+${NOTMUCH_CONFIG} (if set) or ${HOME}/.notmuch-config . This
+configuration file will be created with descriptive comments, making
+it easy to edit by hand later to change the configuration. Or you can
+run B<notmuch setup> again to change the configuration.
+
+The mail directory you specify can contain any number of
+sub-directories and should primarily contain only files with
+individual email messages (eg. maildir or mh archives are perfect). If
+there are other, non-email files (such as indexes maintained by other
+email programs) then notmuch will do its best to detect those and
+ignore them.
+
+Mail storage that uses mbox format, (where one mbox file contains many
+messages), will not work with notmuch. If that's how your mail is
+currently stored, it is recommended you first convert it to maildir
+format with a utility such as mb2md before running B<notmuch setup>
+
+Invoking B<notmuch> with no command argument will run B<setup> if the
+setup command has not previously been completed.
+
+=head2 new
+
+Find and import any new messages to the database.  The B<new> command
+scans all sub-directories of the database, performing full-text
+indexing on new messages that are found. Each new message will
+automatically be tagged with both the B<inbox> and B<unread> tags.
+You should run B<notmuch new> once after first running B<notmuch
+setup> to create the initial database. The first run may take a long
+time if you have a significant amount of mail (several hundred
+thousand messages or more). Subsequently, you should run B<notmuch new>
+whenever new mail is delivered and you wish to incorporate it
+into the database.  These subsequent runs will be much quicker than
+the initial run.
+
+Invoking B<notmuch> with no command argument will run B<new> if
+B<notmuch setup> has previously been completed, but B<notmuch new> has
+not previously been run.
+
+=head2 show [options...] <search-term>...
+
+Shows all messages matching the search terms.  The messages will be
+grouped and sorted based on the threading (all replies to a particular
+message will appear immediately after that message in date order). The
+output is not indented by default, but depth tags are printed so that
+proper indentation can be performed by a post-processor (such as the
+emacs interface to notmuch).  Supported options for B<show> include
+
+=over
+
+=item B<--entire-thread>
+
+By default only those messages that
+match the search terms will be displayed. With this option, all messages
+in the same thread as any matched message will be displayed.
+
+=item B<--format=(json|text)>
+
+=over
+
+=item B<text>
+
+The default plain-text format has text-content MIME parts decoded.
+Various components in the output, (B<message>, B<header>, B<body>,
+B<attachment>, and MIME B<part>), will be delimited by easily-parsed
+markers. Each marker consists of a Control-L character (ASCII decimal
+12), the name of the marker, and then either an opening or closing
+brace, ('{' or '}'), to either open or close the component.
+
+=item B<json>
+
+Format output as Javascript Object Notation (JSON).
+JSON output always includes all messages in a matching thread; in effect
+B<--format=json> implies B<--entire-thread>.
+
+=back
+
+=back
+
+A common use of B<notmuch show> is to display a single thread of
+email messages. For this, use a search term of "thread:<thread-id>" as
+can be seen in the first column of output from the B<notmuch search>
+command.
+
+See the B<SEARCH SYNTAX> section below for details of the supported
+syntax for <search-terms>.
+
+=head2 search [options...] <search-term>...
+
+Search for messages matching the given search terms, and display as
+results the threads containing the matched messages.  The output
+consists of one line per thread, giving a thread ID, the date of the
+newest (or oldest, depending on the sort option) matched message in
+the thread, the number of matched messages and total messages in the
+thread, the names of all participants in the thread, and the subject
+of the newest (or oldest) message.  Supported options for B<search>
+include
+
+=over
+
+=item B<--format=>(B<json>|B<text>)
+
+Presents the results in either JSON or plain-text (default).
+
+=item B<--sort=>(B<newest-first>|B<oldest-first>)
+
+This option can be used to present results in either chronological
+order (B<oldest-first>) or reverse chronological order
+(B<newest-first>).  Note: The thread order will be distinct between
+these two options (beyond being simply reversed). When sorting by
+B<oldest-first> the threads will be sorted by the oldest message in
+each thread, but when sorting by B<newest-first> the threads will be
+sorted by the newest message in each thread.  By default, results will
+be displayed in reverse chronological order, (that is, the newest
+results will be displayed first).
+
+=back
+
+See the B<SEARCH SYNTAX> section below for details of the supported
+syntax for B<search-terms>.
+
+=head2 count <search-term>...
+
+Count messages matching the search terms.
+
+The number of matching messages is output to stdout.  With no search
+terms, a count of all messages in the database will be displayed.
+
+=head2 reply [options...] <search-term>...
+
+Constructs a reply template for a set of messages.  To make replying
+to email easier, B<notmuch reply> takes an existing set of messages
+and constructs a suitable mail template.  The Reply-to header (if any,
+otherwise From:) is used for the To: address.  Values from the To: and
+Cc: headers are copied, but not including any of the current user's
+email addresses (as configured in primary_mail or other_email in the
+.notmuch-config file) in the recipient list It also builds a suitable
+new subject, including Re: at the front (if not already present), and
+adding the message IDs of the messages being replied to to the
+References list and setting the In-Reply-To: field correctly.
+Finally, the original contents of the emails are quoted by prefixing
+each line with '> ' and included in the body.  The resulting message
+template is output to stdout.  Supported options for B<reply> include
+
+=over
+
+=item B<--format=>(B<default>|B<headers-only>)
+
+=over
+
+=item B<default>
+
+Includes subject and quoted message body.
+
+=item B<headers-only>
+
+Only produces In-Reply-To, References, To, Cc, and Bcc headers.
+
+=back
+
+=back
+
+Note: It is most common to use B<notmuch reply> with a search string
+matching a single message, (such as id:<message-id>), but it can be
+useful to reply to several messages at once.  For example, when a
+series of patches are sent in a single thread, replying to the entire
+thread allows for the reply to comment on issue found in multiple
+patches.
+
+=head2 tag +<tag>|-<tag> [...] [--] <search-term>...
+
+Add/remove tags for all messages matching the search terms.  Tags
+prefixed by '+' are added while those prefixed by '-' are removed. For
+each message, tag removal is performed before tag addition.  The
+beginning of I<search-terms> is recognized by the first argument that
+begins with neither '+' nor '-'. Support for an initial search term
+beginning with '+' or '-' is provided by allowing the user to specify
+a "--" argument to separate the tags from the search terms.  See the
+B<SEARCH SYNTAX> section below for details of the supported syntax for
+I<search-terms>.  The B<dump> and B<restore> commands can be used to
+create a textual dump of email tags for backup purposes, and to
+restore from that dump
+
+=head2 dump [<filename>]
+
+Creates a plain-text dump of the tags of each message.  The output is
+to the given filename, if any, or to stdout.  These tags are the only
+data in the notmuch database that can't be recreated from the messages
+themselves.  The output of notmuch dump is therefore the only critical
+thing to backup (and much more friendly to incremental backup than the
+native database files.)
+
+=head2 restore <filename>
+
+Restores the tags from the given file (see B<notmuch dump>.  Note: The
+dump file format is specifically chosen to be compatible with the
+format of files produced by sup-dump. So if you've previously been
+using sup for mail, then the B<notmuch restore> command provides you a
+way to import all of your tags (or labels as sup calls them).
+
+=head2 part --part=<part-number> <search-term>...
+
+
+Output a single MIME part of a message.  A single decoded MIME part,
+with no encoding or framing, is output to stdout. The search terms
+must match only a single message, otherwise this command will fail.
+The part number should match the part "id" field output by the
+"--format=json" option of "notmuch show". If the message specified by
+the search terms does not include a part with the specified "id" there
+will be no output.  See the B<SEARCH SYNTAX> section below for details
+of the supported syntax for <search-terms>.
+
+=head1 Search Syntax
+
+Several notmuch commands accept a common syntax
+for search terms.
+The search terms can consist of free-form text (and quoted
+phrases) which will match all messages that contain all of the given terms/phrases
+in the body, the subject, or any of the sender or recipient headers.
+ As
+a special case, a search string consisting of exactly a single asterisk
+("*") will match all messages.
+ In addition to free text, the following
+prefixes can be used to force terms to match against specific portions
+of an email, (where <brackets> indicate user-supplied values):
+
+
+        from:<name-or-address>
+        to:<name-or-address>
+        subject:<word-or-quoted-phrase>
+        attachment:<word>
+        tag:<tag> (or is:<tag>)
+        id:<message-id>
+        thread:<thread-id>
+
+
+The B<from:> prefix is used to match the name or address of the sender
+of an email message.  The B<to:> prefix is used to match the names or
+addresses of any recipient of an email message, (whether To, Cc, or
+Bcc).  Any term prefixed with B<subject:> will match only text from
+the subject of an email.
+
+Searching for a phrase in the subject is supported by including quotation
+marks around the phrase, immediately following B<subject:>.
+
+The B<attachment:>
+prefix can be used to search for specific filenames (or extensions) of
+attachments to email messages.
+ For B<tag:> and B<is:> valid tag values include
+B<inbox> and B<unread> by default for new messages added by B<notmuch new> as well
+as any other tag values added manually with B<notmuch tag>.
+For B<id:>, message
+ID values are the literal contents of the Message-ID: header of email messages,
+but without the '<', '>' delimiters.
+
+The B<thread:> prefix can be used with the
+thread ID values that are generated internally by notmuch (and do not appear
+in email messages). These thread ID values can be seen in the first column
+of output from B<notmuch search>
+
+In addition to individual terms, multiple
+terms can be combined with Boolean operators ( B<and>, B<or>, B<not> , etc.). Each
+term in the query will be implicitly connected by a logical AND if no explicit
+operator is provided, (except that terms with a common prefix will be implicitly
+combined with OR until we get Xapian defect #402 fixed).
+Parentheses can
+also be used to control the combination of the Boolean operators, but will
+have to be protected from interpretation by the shell, (such as by putting
+quotation marks around any parenthesized expression).
+
+Finally, results
+can be restricted to only messages within a particular time range, (based
+on the Date: header) with a syntax of:
+
+    <initial-timestamp>..<final-timestamp>
+
+Each timestamp is a number representing the number of seconds since
+1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC. This is not the most convenient means of
+expressing date ranges, but until notmuch is fixed to accept a more
+convenient form, one can use the date program to construct
+timestamps. For example, with the bash shell the folowing syntax would
+specify a date range to return messages from 2009-10-01 until the
+current time:
+
+
+   $(date +%s -d 2009-10-01)..$(date +%s)
+
+=head1 Environment
+
+The following environment variables can be used to control
+the behavior of notmuch.
+
+=over
+
+=item B<NOTMUCH_CONFIG>
+
+Specifies the location of the notmuch
+configuration file. Notmuch will use ${HOME}/.notmuch-config if this variable
+is not set.
+
+=back
+
+=head1 See Also
+
+The emacs-based interface to notmuch (available
+as B<notmuch.el> in the Notmuch distribution).
+
+The notmuch website: L<http://notmuchmail.org>
+
+=head1 Contact
+
+Feel free to send questions, comments, or kudos to the notmuch mailing
+list <notmuch@notmuchmail.org> . Subscription is not required before
+posting, but is available from the notmuchmail.org website.
+
+Real-time interaction with the Notmuch community is available via IRC
+(server: irc.freenode.net, channel: #notmuch).
\ No newline at end of file
-- 
1.7.1

Re: [PATCH] notmuch.pod: pod version of documentation, converted by rman, massaged by hand.

[Carl Worth]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 942 bytes --]

On Sun, 13 Jun 2010 12:01:30 -0300, david@tethera.net wrote:
> We can also generate man pages and inline help from this file. I
> didn't get that far yet, waiting for more encouraging noises :).

Hi David,

Having added some documentation recently, I do continue to be annoyed by
the need to add it all in two places.

So I am still interested in taking advantage of your work here.

I know that you've already refreshed it more than once, so I won't ask
you to do that again.

But if you could implement the ability to actually generate the inline
help and man page from this file (even just the version here would be
fine), then I'd be quite happy to look at that.

And then, if I'm happy with the result, I'd be willing to do the job of
refreshing the documentation to the latest.

Thanks again,

-Carl

PS. Or if you just want to drop this, that's fine too. I won't go
insisting that you do additional work if you don't feel like it. ;-)

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]

generate help from pod.

[david]

Hi Carl;

Here is the generation. I hope you don't hate perl too much.  I also
hope the syntax in notmuch.pod is self-explanatory.  For me, with perl
5.10.1, this only uses modules included with Perl.

[PATCH 1/4] notmuch.pod: pod version of documentation, converted by rman, massaged by hand.

[david]

From: David Bremner <bremner@unb.ca>

Some places I deleted a bit of the continuity text introducing a
command because I didn't see how to make it work with the slightly
more structured layout.

I also moved show in front of search, because it explains the output
formats.  Probably it would make sense to add a separate section
explaining common output formats.

The =for help lines are ignored for the man page, but used to generate
the online help.

I also added dummy sections for currently undocumented commands; or
more precisely, commands that were not documented that last time I
refreshed notmuch.pod.
---
 notmuch.pod |  409 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 files changed, 409 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 notmuch.pod

diff --git a/notmuch.pod b/notmuch.pod
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f4127e0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/notmuch.pod
@@ -0,0 +1,409 @@
+=head1 Name
+
+notmuch - thread-based email index, search, and tagging
+
+=head1 Synopsis
+
+=over
+
+=item B<notmuch> I<command> [I<args> ...]
+
+=back
+
+=head1 Description
+
+Notmuch is a command-line based program for indexing, searching,
+reading, and tagging large collections of email messages.  The
+quickest way to get started with Notmuch is to simply invoke the
+B<notmuch> command with no arguments, which will interactively guide
+you through the process of indexing your mail.
+
+=head2 Using notmuch
+
+The B<search> and B<show> commands are used to query the email
+database.  The B<tag> command is the only command available for
+manipulating database contents.  Several of the notmuch commands
+accept search terms with a common syntax. See the B<SEARCH SYNTAX>
+section below for more details on the supported syntax.
+
+=head2 Note
+
+While the command-line program B<notmuch> provides powerful
+functionality, it does not provide the most convenient interface for
+that functionality. More sophisticated interfaces are expected to be
+built on top of either the command-line interface, or more likely, on
+top of the notmuch library interface. See L<http://notmuchmail.org> for
+more about alternate interfaces to notmuch.
+
+=head1 Commands
+
+=head2 setup
+
+=for help args NULL
+
+=for help desc Interactively sets up notmuch for first use.
+
+The setup command will prompt for your full name, your primary email
+address, any alternate email addresses you use, and the directory
+containing your email archives. Your answers will be written to a
+configuration file in ${NOTMUCH_CONFIG} (if set) or
+${HOME}/.notmuch-config . This configuration file will be created with
+descriptive comments, making it easy to edit by hand later to change
+the configuration. Or you can run B<notmuch setup> again to change the
+configuration.
+
+The mail directory you specify can contain any number of
+sub-directories and should primarily contain only files with
+individual email messages (eg. maildir or mh archives are perfect). If
+there are other, non-email files (such as indexes maintained by other
+email programs) then notmuch will do its best to detect those and
+ignore them.
+
+Mail storage that uses mbox format, (where one mbox file contains many
+messages), will not work with notmuch. If that's how your mail is
+currently stored, it is recommended you first convert it to maildir
+format with a utility such as mb2md before running B<notmuch setup>
+
+Invoking B<notmuch> with no command argument will run B<setup> if the
+setup command has not previously been completed.
+
+=head2 new
+
+=for help args NULL
+
+=for help desc Find and import any new messages to the database.
+
+The B<new> command scans all sub-directories of the database,
+performing full-text indexing on new messages that are found. Each new
+message will automatically be tagged with both the B<inbox> and
+B<unread> tags.  You should run B<notmuch new> once after first
+running B<notmuch setup> to create the initial database. The first run
+may take a long time if you have a significant amount of mail (several
+hundred thousand messages or more). Subsequently, you should run
+B<notmuch new> whenever new mail is delivered and you wish to
+incorporate it into the database.  These subsequent runs will be much
+quicker than the initial run.
+
+Invoking B<notmuch> with no command argument will run B<new> if
+B<notmuch setup> has previously been completed, but B<notmuch new> has
+not previously been run.
+
+=head2 show [options...] <search-term>...
+
+=for help args [options...] <search-term>...
+=for help desc Shows all messages matching the search terms.
+
+The messages will be grouped and sorted based on the threading (all
+replies to a particular message will appear immediately after that
+message in date order). The output is not indented by default, but
+depth tags are printed so that proper indentation can be performed by
+a post-processor (such as the emacs interface to notmuch).  Supported
+options for B<show> include
+
+=over
+
+=item B<--entire-thread>
+
+By default only those messages that
+match the search terms will be displayed. With this option, all messages
+in the same thread as any matched message will be displayed.
+
+=item B<--format=(json|text)>
+
+=over
+
+=item B<text>
+
+The default plain-text format has text-content MIME parts decoded.
+Various components in the output, (B<message>, B<header>, B<body>,
+B<attachment>, and MIME B<part>), will be delimited by easily-parsed
+markers. Each marker consists of a Control-L character (ASCII decimal
+12), the name of the marker, and then either an opening or closing
+brace, ('{' or '}'), to either open or close the component.
+
+=item B<json>
+
+Format output as Javascript Object Notation (JSON).
+JSON output always includes all messages in a matching thread; in effect
+B<--format=json> implies B<--entire-thread>.
+
+=back
+
+=back
+
+A common use of B<notmuch show> is to display a single thread of
+email messages. For this, use a search term of "thread:<thread-id>" as
+can be seen in the first column of output from the B<notmuch search>
+command.
+
+See the B<SEARCH SYNTAX> section below for details of the supported
+syntax for <search-terms>.
+
+=head2 search [options...] <search-term>...
+
+=for help args [options...] <search-term>...
+=for help desc Search threads containing messages matching the given search terms.
+
+The output consists of one line per thread, giving a thread ID, the
+date of the newest (or oldest, depending on the sort option) matched
+message in the thread, the number of matched messages and total
+messages in the thread, the names of all participants in the thread,
+and the subject of the newest (or oldest) message.  Supported options
+for B<search> include
+
+=over
+
+=item B<--format=>(B<json>|B<text>)
+
+Presents the results in either JSON or plain-text (default).
+
+=item B<--sort=>(B<newest-first>|B<oldest-first>)
+
+This option can be used to present results in either chronological
+order (B<oldest-first>) or reverse chronological order
+(B<newest-first>).  Note: The thread order will be distinct between
+these two options (beyond being simply reversed). When sorting by
+B<oldest-first> the threads will be sorted by the oldest message in
+each thread, but when sorting by B<newest-first> the threads will be
+sorted by the newest message in each thread.  By default, results will
+be displayed in reverse chronological order, (that is, the newest
+results will be displayed first).
+
+=back
+
+See the B<SEARCH SYNTAX> section below for details of the supported
+syntax for B<search-terms>.
+
+=head2 count <search-term>...
+
+=for help args <search-term>...
+
+=for help desc Count messages matching the search terms.
+
+The number of matching messages is output to stdout.  With no search
+terms, a count of all messages in the database will be displayed.
+
+=head2 reply [options...] <search-term>...
+
+=for help args [options...] <search-term>...
+=for help desc Construct a reply template for a set of messages.
+
+To make replying to email easier, B<notmuch reply> takes an existing
+set of messages and constructs a suitable mail template.  The Reply-to
+header (if any, otherwise From:) is used for the To: address.  Values
+from the To: and Cc: headers are copied, but not including any of the
+current user's email addresses (as configured in primary_mail or
+other_email in the .notmuch-config file) in the recipient list It also
+builds a suitable new subject, including Re: at the front (if not
+already present), and adding the message IDs of the messages being
+replied to to the References list and setting the In-Reply-To: field
+correctly.  Finally, the original contents of the emails are quoted by
+prefixing each line with '> ' and included in the body.  The resulting
+message template is output to stdout.  Supported options for B<reply>
+include
+
+=over
+
+=item B<--format=>(B<default>|B<headers-only>)
+
+=over
+
+=item B<default>
+
+Includes subject and quoted message body.
+
+=item B<headers-only>
+
+Only produces In-Reply-To, References, To, Cc, and Bcc headers.
+
+=back
+
+=back
+
+Note: It is most common to use B<notmuch reply> with a search string
+matching a single message, (such as id:<message-id>), but it can be
+useful to reply to several messages at once.  For example, when a
+series of patches are sent in a single thread, replying to the entire
+thread allows for the reply to comment on issue found in multiple
+patches.
+
+=head2 tag +<tag>|-<tag> [...] [--] <search-term>...
+
+=for help args +<tag>|-<tag> [...] [--] <search-term>...
+
+=for help desc Add/remove tags for all messages matching the search terms.
+
+Tags prefixed by '+' are added while those prefixed by '-' are
+removed. For each message, tag removal is performed before tag
+addition.  The beginning of I<search-terms> is recognized by the first
+argument that begins with neither '+' nor '-'. Support for an initial
+search term beginning with '+' or '-' is provided by allowing the user
+to specify a "--" argument to separate the tags from the search terms.
+See the B<SEARCH SYNTAX> section below for details of the supported
+syntax for I<search-terms>.  The B<dump> and B<restore> commands can
+be used to create a textual dump of email tags for backup purposes,
+and to restore from that dump
+
+=head2 dump [<filename>]
+
+=for help args [<filename>]
+=for help desc Create a plain-text dump of the tags of each message.
+
+The output is to the given filename, if any, or to stdout.  These tags
+are the only data in the notmuch database that can't be recreated from
+the messages themselves.  The output of notmuch dump is therefore the
+only critical thing to backup (and much more friendly to incremental
+backup than the native database files.)
+
+=head2 restore <filename>
+
+=for help args [<filename>]
+=for help desc Restore the tags from the given file (see <notmuch dump>).
+
+Note: The dump file format is specifically chosen to be compatible
+with the format of files produced by sup-dump. So if you've previously
+been using sup for mail, then the B<notmuch restore> command provides
+you a way to import all of your tags (or labels as sup calls them).
+
+=head2 part --part=<part-number> <search-term>...
+
+=for help args --part=<part-number> <search-term>...
+=for help desc Output a single MIME part of a message.
+
+A single decoded MIME part, with no encoding or framing, is output to
+stdout. The search terms must match only a single message, otherwise
+this command will fail.  The part number should match the part "id"
+field output by the "--format=json" option of "notmuch show". If the
+message specified by the search terms does not include a part with the
+specified "id" there will be no output.  See the B<SEARCH SYNTAX>
+section below for details of the supported syntax for <search-terms>.
+
+=head2 search-tags
+
+=for help args dummy args
+=for help desc dummy description
+
+dummy text
+
+=head2 config
+
+=for help args dummy args
+=for help desc dummy description
+
+dummy text
+
+=head2 help
+
+=for help args dummy args
+=for help desc dummy description
+
+dummy text
+
+
+=head1 Search Syntax
+
+=for help name search_syntax
+
+Several notmuch commands accept a common syntax
+for search terms.
+The search terms can consist of free-form text (and quoted
+phrases) which will match all messages that contain all of the given terms/phrases
+in the body, the subject, or any of the sender or recipient headers.
+ As
+a special case, a search string consisting of exactly a single asterisk
+("*") will match all messages.
+ In addition to free text, the following
+prefixes can be used to force terms to match against specific portions
+of an email, (where <brackets> indicate user-supplied values):
+
+
+        from:<name-or-address>
+        to:<name-or-address>
+        subject:<word-or-quoted-phrase>
+        attachment:<word>
+        tag:<tag> (or is:<tag>)
+        id:<message-id>
+        thread:<thread-id>
+
+
+The B<from:> prefix is used to match the name or address of the sender
+of an email message.  The B<to:> prefix is used to match the names or
+addresses of any recipient of an email message, (whether To, Cc, or
+Bcc).  Any term prefixed with B<subject:> will match only text from
+the subject of an email.
+
+Searching for a phrase in the subject is supported by including quotation
+marks around the phrase, immediately following B<subject:>.
+
+The B<attachment:>
+prefix can be used to search for specific filenames (or extensions) of
+attachments to email messages.
+ For B<tag:> and B<is:> valid tag values include
+B<inbox> and B<unread> by default for new messages added by B<notmuch new> as well
+as any other tag values added manually with B<notmuch tag>.
+For B<id:>, message
+ID values are the literal contents of the Message-ID: header of email messages,
+but without the '<', '>' delimiters.
+
+The B<thread:> prefix can be used with the
+thread ID values that are generated internally by notmuch (and do not appear
+in email messages). These thread ID values can be seen in the first column
+of output from B<notmuch search>
+
+In addition to individual terms, multiple
+terms can be combined with Boolean operators ( B<and>, B<or>, B<not> , etc.). Each
+term in the query will be implicitly connected by a logical AND if no explicit
+operator is provided, (except that terms with a common prefix will be implicitly
+combined with OR until we get Xapian defect #402 fixed).
+Parentheses can
+also be used to control the combination of the Boolean operators, but will
+have to be protected from interpretation by the shell, (such as by putting
+quotation marks around any parenthesized expression).
+
+Finally, results
+can be restricted to only messages within a particular time range, (based
+on the Date: header) with a syntax of:
+
+    <initial-timestamp>..<final-timestamp>
+
+Each timestamp is a number representing the number of seconds since
+1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC. This is not the most convenient means of
+expressing date ranges, but until notmuch is fixed to accept a more
+convenient form, one can use the date program to construct
+timestamps. For example, with the bash shell the folowing syntax would
+specify a date range to return messages from 2009-10-01 until the
+current time:
+
+
+   $(date +%s -d 2009-10-01)..$(date +%s)
+
+=head1 Environment
+
+The following environment variables can be used to control
+the behavior of notmuch.
+
+=over
+
+=item B<NOTMUCH_CONFIG>
+
+Specifies the location of the notmuch
+configuration file. Notmuch will use ${HOME}/.notmuch-config if this variable
+is not set.
+
+=back
+
+=head1 See Also
+
+The emacs-based interface to notmuch (available
+as B<notmuch.el> in the Notmuch distribution).
+
+The notmuch website: L<http://notmuchmail.org>
+
+=head1 Contact
+
+Feel free to send questions, comments, or kudos to the notmuch mailing
+list <notmuch@notmuchmail.org> . Subscription is not required before
+posting, but is available from the notmuchmail.org website.
+
+Real-time interaction with the Notmuch community is available via IRC
+(server: irc.freenode.net, channel: #notmuch).
\ No newline at end of file
-- 
1.7.1

[PATCH 2/4] Perl script to generate online help.

[david]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3410 bytes --]

From: David Bremner <bremner@unb.ca>

This is a bit more complicated than expected, mainly because it needs
to split a chunk of the docs into 3 pieces corresponding to the
strings currently filled into a struct command_t.

To disable the ANSI escape codes, replace Pod::Text:Color with
Pod::Text. It would not be that much more work to generate colorized
and uncolorized help strings, and choose at runtime.
---
 pod2help_h.pl |  108 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 files changed, 108 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 pod2help_h.pl

diff --git a/pod2help_h.pl b/pod2help_h.pl
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..99cfb96
--- /dev/null
+++ b/pod2help_h.pl
@@ -0,0 +1,108 @@
+#!/usr/bin/perl
+
+# Copyright © David Bremner, 2010
+# This file is distributed under the same terms as perl, Artistic or GPL 1+.
+#
+# Authors: David Bremner <david@tethera.net>
+
+use Pod::Select;
+use Pod::Text::Color;
+use strict;
+
+# Create customized version of Pod::Select, that uses Pod::Text to
+# format pieces of the file.
+
+package OurParser;
+our @ISA = qw(Pod::Select);
+
+sub new{
+  my $class = shift;
+  my $self =  { body => "" , name => undef};
+  bless $self, $class;
+  $self->initialize();
+  return $self;
+}
+
+# process verbatim blocks, err, verbatimly. Note that $self->{body} is
+# processed a second time by Pod::Text
+
+sub verbatim {
+  my ($self,$text,$line_num,$pod_para)=@_;
+
+  $self->{body} .= $text;
+}
+
+# process a normal text or command block. Either do some command
+# starting with =for, append to text to be process, or process the
+# current section.  Note that this has the weakness/bug that nested
+# sections are not supported as chunks of text for help.
+sub textblock{
+    my ($self,$text,$line_num,$pod_para) = @_;
+
+    my $cmd = $pod_para -> cmd_name;
+
+    if ($cmd =~ /^head/){
+
+      $self->output() if defined($self->{name});
+
+      # grab name heuristically as the first word.
+      $text =~ m/\s*\w+\s+([\w-]+)/;
+      $self->{name} = $1;
+      $self->{name} =~s/-/_/;
+
+    } elsif ($cmd =~ /^for/){
+
+      $text =~ s/^\s+//;
+      $text =~ s/\s+$//;
+
+      # work around a pod bug/misfeature that requires a blank line between
+      # =for paragraphs.
+
+      my @lines=split("\n",$text);
+      foreach my $line (@lines){
+
+	$line =~ s/^=for\s+help\s+//;
+
+	# override name if specified.
+	$self->{name} = $1 if ($line =~ m/^name\s+(.*)$/);
+
+	# other "subcommands" could be supported here.
+	if ($line =~ s/^(args|desc)\s+//) {
+	  my $quote="\"";
+	  my $subcmd=$1;
+
+	  # special case NULL; we don't want "NULL"
+	  $quote = "" if ($line =~ /^NULL/);
+
+	  print ("#define HELP_$self->{name}_$subcmd $quote$line$quote\n");
+	}
+      }
+    } else {
+      $self->{body} .= $text;
+    }
+}
+
+sub output {
+  my $self = shift;
+  my $formatter = new Pod::Text::Color(margin=>4);
+  my $output;
+  $formatter -> output_string (\$output);
+  $formatter -> parse_string_document ("=pod\n\n".$self->{body});
+
+  # post-process to turn into a C string.
+  $output =~ s/"/\\"/g;
+  $output =~ s/\n/\\n"\\\n"/g;
+  $output =~ s/\e/\\e/g;
+
+  print "#define HELP_$self->{name}_text \\\n\"$output\"\n";
+  $self->{body} = "";
+
+}
+
+package main;
+
+my $parser =  new OurParser();
+
+$parser->select("Commands/..*","Search Syntax");
+$parser->parse_from_filehandle(\*STDIN);
+$parser->output();
-- 
1.7.1

[PATCH 3/4] Add rules to build notmuch.1 and notmuch-help.h from the pod file.

[david]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 20348 bytes --]

From: David Bremner <bremner@unb.ca>

Add generated files to CLEAN. Remove notmuch.1 from git because we
auto generate it now.
---
 Makefile.local |   22 ++-
 notmuch.1      |  609 --------------------------------------------------------
 2 files changed, 21 insertions(+), 610 deletions(-)
 delete mode 100644 notmuch.1

diff --git a/Makefile.local b/Makefile.local
index 490265b..3e20d0c 100644
--- a/Makefile.local
+++ b/Makefile.local
@@ -251,6 +251,18 @@ notmuch_client_srcs =		\
 	show-message.c		\
 	json.c
 
+notmuch_help_files= \
+	notmuch-setup-help.h    \
+	notmuch-new-help.h      \
+	notmuch-show-help.h     \
+	notmuch-search-help.h   \
+	notmuch-count-help.h    \
+	notmuch-reply-help.h    \
+	notmuch-tag-help.h	\
+	notmuch-dump-help.h	\
+	notmuch-restore-help.h  \
+	notmuch-part-help.h
+
 notmuch_client_modules = $(notmuch_client_srcs:.c=.o)
 
 notmuch: $(notmuch_client_modules) lib/libnotmuch.a
@@ -259,6 +271,14 @@ notmuch: $(notmuch_client_modules) lib/libnotmuch.a
 notmuch-shared: $(notmuch_client_modules) lib/$(LINKER_NAME)
 	$(call quiet,$(FINAL_NOTMUCH_LINKER) $(CFLAGS)) $(notmuch_client_modules) $(FINAL_NOTMUCH_LDFLAGS) -o $@
 
+notmuch.1: notmuch.pod
+	pod2man --stderr --center "User Commands" --release $(VERSION) $^ > $@
+
+notmuch.o: notmuch-help.h
+
+notmuch-help.h: notmuch.pod pod2help_h.pl
+	perl pod2help_h.pl < notmuch.pod > notmuch-help.h
+
 notmuch.1.gz: notmuch.1
 	gzip --stdout $^ > $@
 
@@ -294,4 +314,4 @@ install-desktop:
 	desktop-file-install --mode 0644 --dir $(DESTDIR)$(desktop_dir) notmuch.desktop
 
 SRCS  := $(SRCS) $(notmuch_client_srcs)
-CLEAN := $(CLEAN) notmuch notmuch-shared $(notmuch_client_modules) notmuch.elc notmuch.1.gz
+CLEAN := $(CLEAN) notmuch notmuch-shared $(notmuch_client_modules) notmuch.elc notmuch.1.gz notmuch.1 notmuch-help.h
diff --git a/notmuch.1 b/notmuch.1
deleted file mode 100644
index 2c33749..0000000
--- a/notmuch.1
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,609 +0,0 @@
-.\" notmuch - Not much of an email program, (just index, search and tagging)
-.\"
-.\" Copyright © 2009 Carl Worth
-.\"
-.\" Notmuch is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
-.\" it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
-.\" the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
-.\" (at your option) any later version.
-.\"
-.\" Notmuch is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
-.\" but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
-.\" MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
-.\" GNU General Public License for more details.
-.\"
-.\" You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
-.\" along with this program.  If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/ .
-.\"
-.\" Author: Carl Worth <cworth@cworth.org>
-.TH NOTMUCH 1 2009-10-31 "Notmuch 0.1"
-.SH NAME
-notmuch \- thread-based email index, search, and tagging
-.SH SYNOPSIS
-.B notmuch
-.IR command " [" args " ...]"
-.SH DESCRIPTION
-Notmuch is a command-line based program for indexing, searching,
-reading, and tagging large collections of email messages.
-
-The quickest way to get started with Notmuch is to simply invoke the
-.B notmuch
-command with no arguments, which will interactively guide you through
-the process of indexing your mail.
-.SH NOTE
-While the command-line program
-.B notmuch
-provides powerful functionality, it does not provide the most
-convenient interface for that functionality. More sophisticated
-interfaces are expected to be built on top of either the command-line
-interface, or more likely, on top of the notmuch library
-interface. See http://notmuchmail.org for more about alternate
-interfaces to notmuch.
-.SH COMMANDS
-The
-.BR setup
-command is used to configure Notmuch for first use, (or to reconfigure
-it later).
-.RS 4
-.TP 4
-.B setup
-
-Interactively sets up notmuch for first use.
-
-The setup command will prompt for your full name, your primary email
-address, any alternate email addresses you use, and the directory
-containing your email archives. Your answers will be written to a
-configuration file in ${NOTMUCH_CONFIG} (if set) or
-${HOME}/.notmuch-config . This configuration file will be created with
-descriptive comments, making it easy to edit by hand later to change the
-configuration. Or you can run
-.B "notmuch setup"
-again to change the configuration.
-
-The mail directory you specify can contain any number of
-sub-directories and should primarily contain only files with individual
-email messages (eg. maildir or mh archives are perfect). If there are
-other, non-email files (such as indexes maintained by other email
-programs) then notmuch will do its best to detect those and ignore
-them.
-
-Mail storage that uses mbox format, (where one mbox file contains many
-messages), will not work with notmuch. If that's how your mail is
-currently stored, it is recommended you first convert it to maildir
-format with a utility such as mb2md before running
-.B "notmuch setup" .
-
-Invoking
-.B notmuch
-with no command argument will run
-.B setup
-if the setup command has not previously been completed.
-.RE
-
-The
-.B new
-command is used to incorporate new mail into the notmuch database.
-.RS 4
-.TP 4
-.B new
-
-Find and import any new messages to the database.
-
-The
-.B new
-command scans all sub-directories of the database, performing
-full-text indexing on new messages that are found. Each new message
-will automatically be tagged with both the
-.BR inbox " and " unread
-tags.
-
-You should run
-.B "notmuch new"
-once after first running
-.B "notmuch setup"
-to create the initial database. The first run may take a long time if
-you have a significant amount of mail (several hundred thousand
-messages or more). Subsequently, you should run
-.B "notmuch new"
-whenever new mail is delivered and you wish to incorporate it into the
-database. These subsequent runs will be much quicker than the initial
-run.
-
-Invoking
-.B notmuch
-with no command argument will run
-.B new
-if
-.B "notmuch setup"
-has previously been completed, but
-.B "notmuch new"
-has not previously been run.
-.RE
-
-Several of the notmuch commands accept search terms with a common
-syntax. See the
-.B "SEARCH SYNTAX"
-section below for more details on the supported syntax.
-
-The
-.BR search ", " show " and " count
-commands are used to query the email database.
-.RS 4
-.TP 4
-.BR search " [options...] <search-term>..."
-
-Search for messages matching the given search terms, and display as
-results the threads containing the matched messages.
-
-The output consists of one line per thread, giving a thread ID, the
-date of the newest (or oldest, depending on the sort option) matched
-message in the thread, the number of matched messages and total
-messages in the thread, the names of all participants in the thread,
-and the subject of the newest (or oldest) message.
-
-Supported options for
-.B search
-include
-.RS 4
-.TP 4
-.BR \-\-format= ( json | text )
-
-Presents the results in either JSON or plain-text (default).
-.RE
-
-.RS 4
-.TP 4
-.B \-\-output=(summary|threads|messages|files|tags)
-
-.RS 4
-.TP 4
-.B summary
-
-Output a summary of each thread with any message matching the search
-terms. The summary includes the thread ID, date, the number of
-messages in the thread (both the number matched and the total number),
-the authors of the thread and the subject.
-.RE
-.RS 4
-.TP 4
-.B threads
-
-Output the thread IDs of all threads with any message matching the
-search terms, either one per line (--format=text) or as a JSON array
-(--format=json).
-.RE
-.RS 4
-.TP 4
-.B messages
-
-Output the message IDs of all messages matching the search terms,
-either one per line (--format=text) or as a JSON array
-(--format=json).
-.RE
-.RS 4
-.TP 4
-.B files
-
-Output the filenames of all messages matching the search terms, either
-one per line (--format=text) or as a JSON array (--format=json).
-.RE
-.RS 4
-.TP 4
-.B tags
-
-Output all tags that appear on any message matching the search terms,
-either one per line (--format=text) or as a JSON array
-(--format=json).
-.RE
-.RE
-
-.RS 4
-.TP 4
-.BR \-\-sort= ( newest\-first | oldest\-first )
-
-This option can be used to present results in either chronological order
-.RB ( oldest\-first )
-or reverse chronological order
-.RB ( newest\-first ).
-
-Note: The thread order will be distinct between these two options
-(beyond being simply reversed). When sorting by
-.B oldest\-first
-the threads will be sorted by the oldest message in each thread, but
-when sorting by
-.B newest\-first
-the threads will be sorted by the newest message in each thread.
-
-.RE
-.RS 4
-By default, results will be displayed in reverse chronological order,
-(that is, the newest results will be displayed first).
-
-See the
-.B "SEARCH SYNTAX"
-section below for details of the supported syntax for <search-terms>.
-.RE
-.TP
-.BR show " [options...] <search-term>..."
-
-Shows all messages matching the search terms.
-
-The messages will be grouped and sorted based on the threading (all
-replies to a particular message will appear immediately after that
-message in date order). The output is not indented by default, but
-depth tags are printed so that proper indentation can be performed by
-a post-processor (such as the emacs interface to notmuch).
-
-Supported options for
-.B show
-include
-.RS 4
-.TP 4
-.B \-\-entire\-thread
-
-By default only those messages that match the search terms will be
-displayed. With this option, all messages in the same thread as any
-matched message will be displayed.
-.RE
-
-.RS 4
-.TP 4
-.B \-\-format=(text|json|mbox)
-
-.RS 4
-.TP 4
-.B text
-
-The default plain-text format has all text-content MIME parts
-decoded. Various components in the output,
-.RB ( message ", " header ", " body ", " attachment ", and MIME " part ),
-will be delimited by easily-parsed markers. Each marker consists of a
-Control-L character (ASCII decimal 12), the name of the marker, and
-then either an opening or closing brace, ('{' or '}'), to either open
-or close the component.
-.RE
-.RS 4
-.TP 4
-.B json
-
-The output is formatted with Javascript Object Notation (JSON). This
-format is more robust than the text format for automated
-processing. JSON output always includes all messages in a matching
-thread; in effect
-.B \-\-format=json
-implies
-.B \-\-entire\-thread
-
-.RE
-.RS 4
-.TP 4
-.B mbox
-
-All matching messages are output in the traditional, Unix mbox format
-with each message being prefixed by a line beginning with "From " and
-a blank line separating each message. Lines in the message content
-beginning with "From " (preceded by zero or more '>' characters) have
-an additional '>' character added. This reversible escaping
-is termed "mboxrd" format and described in detail here:
-http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/mail-mbox-formats.html
-.RE
-A common use of
-.B notmuch show
-is to display a single thread of email messages. For this, use a
-search term of "thread:<thread-id>" as can be seen in the first
-column of output from the
-.B notmuch search
-command.
-
-See the
-.B "SEARCH SYNTAX"
-section below for details of the supported syntax for <search-terms>.
-.RE
-.TP
-.BR count " <search-term>..."
-
-Count messages matching the search terms.
-
-The number of matching messages is output to stdout.
-
-With no search terms, a count of all messages in the database will be
-displayed.
-.RE
-.RE
-
-The
-.B reply
-command is useful for preparing a template for an email reply.
-.RS 4
-.TP 4
-.BR reply " [options...] <search-term>..."
-
-Constructs a reply template for a set of messages.
-
-To make replying to email easier,
-.B notmuch reply
-takes an existing set of messages and constructs a suitable mail
-template. The Reply-to header (if any, otherwise From:) is used for
-the To: address. Vales from the To: and Cc: headers are copied, but
-not including any of the current user's email addresses (as configured
-in primary_mail or other_email in the .notmuch\-config file) in the
-recipient list
-
-It also builds a suitable new subject, including Re: at the front (if
-not already present), and adding the message IDs of the messages being
-replied to to the References list and setting the In\-Reply\-To: field
-correctly.
-
-Finally, the original contents of the emails are quoted by prefixing
-each line with '> ' and included in the body.
-
-The resulting message template is output to stdout.
-
-Supported options for
-.B reply
-include
-.RS
-.TP 4
-.BR \-\-format= ( default | headers\-only )
-.RS
-.TP 4
-.BR default
-Includes subject and quoted message body.
-.TP
-.BR headers\-only
-Only produces In\-Reply\-To, References, To, Cc, and Bcc headers.
-.RE
-
-See the
-.B "SEARCH SYNTAX"
-section below for details of the supported syntax for <search-terms>.
-
-Note: It is most common to use
-.B "notmuch reply"
-with a search string matching a single message, (such as
-id:<message-id>), but it can be useful to reply to several messages at
-once. For example, when a series of patches are sent in a single
-thread, replying to the entire thread allows for the reply to comment
-on issue found in multiple patches.
-.RE
-.RE
-
-The
-.B tag
-command is the only command available for manipulating database
-contents.
-
-.RS 4
-.TP 4
-.BR tag " +<tag>|\-<tag> [...] [\-\-] <search-term>..."
-
-Add/remove tags for all messages matching the search terms.
-
-Tags prefixed by '+' are added while those prefixed by '\-' are
-removed. For each message, tag removal is performed before tag
-addition.
-
-The beginning of <search-terms> is recognized by the first
-argument that begins with neither '+' nor '\-'. Support for
-an initial search term beginning with '+' or '\-' is provided
-by allowing the user to specify a "\-\-" argument to separate
-the tags from the search terms.
-
-See the
-.B "SEARCH SYNTAX"
-section below for details of the supported syntax for <search-terms>.
-.RE
-
-The
-.BR dump " and " restore
-commands can be used to create a textual dump of email tags for backup
-purposes, and to restore from that dump
-
-.RS 4
-.TP 4
-.BR dump " [<filename>]"
-
-Creates a plain-text dump of the tags of each message.
-
-The output is to the given filename, if any, or to stdout.
-
-These tags are the only data in the notmuch database that can't be
-recreated from the messages themselves.  The output of notmuch dump is
-therefore the only critical thing to backup (and much more friendly to
-incremental backup than the native database files.)
-.TP
-.BR restore " <filename>"
-
-Restores the tags from the given file (see
-.BR "notmuch dump" "."
-
-Note: The dump file format is specifically chosen to be
-compatible with the format of files produced by sup-dump.
-So if you've previously been using sup for mail, then the
-.B "notmuch restore"
-command provides you a way to import all of your tags (or labels as
-sup calls them).
-.RE
-
-The
-.B part
-command can used to output a single part of a multi-part MIME message.
-
-.RS 4
-.TP 4
-.BR part " \-\-part=<part-number> <search-term>..."
-
-Output a single MIME part of a message.
-
-A single decoded MIME part, with no encoding or framing, is output to
-stdout. The search terms must match only a single message, otherwise
-this command will fail.
-
-The part number should match the part "id" field output by the
-"\-\-format=json" option of "notmuch show". If the message specified by
-the search terms does not include a part with the specified "id" there
-will be no output.
-
-See the
-.B "SEARCH SYNTAX"
-section below for details of the supported syntax for <search-terms>.
-.RE
-
-The
-.B config
-command can be used to get or set settings int the notmuch
-configuration file.
-
-.RS 4
-.TP 4
-.BR "config get " <section> . <item>
-
-The value of the specified configuration item is printed to stdout. If
-the item has multiple values, each value is separated by a newline
-character.
-
-Available configuration items include at least
-
-	database.path
-
-	user.name
-
-	user.primary_email
-
-	user.other_email
-
-	new.tags
-.RE
-
-.RS 4
-.TP 4
-.BR "config set " <section> . "<item> [values ...]"
-
-The specified configuration item is set to the given value.  To
-specify a multiple-value item, provide each value as a separate
-command-line argument.
-
-If no values are provided, the specified configuration item will be
-removed from the configuration file.
-.RE
-
-.SH SEARCH SYNTAX
-Several notmuch commands accept a common syntax for search terms.
-
-The search terms can consist of free-form text (and quoted phrases)
-which will match all messages that contain all of the given
-terms/phrases in the body, the subject, or any of the sender or
-recipient headers.
-
-As a special case, a search string consisting of exactly a single
-asterisk ("*") will match all messages.
-
-In addition to free text, the following prefixes can be used to force
-terms to match against specific portions of an email, (where
-<brackets> indicate user-supplied values):
-
-	from:<name-or-address>
-
-	to:<name-or-address>
-
-	subject:<word-or-quoted-phrase>
-
-	attachment:<word>
-
-	tag:<tag> (or is:<tag>)
-
-	id:<message-id>
-
-	thread:<thread-id>
-
-The
-.B from:
-prefix is used to match the name or address of the sender of an email
-message.
-
-The
-.B to:
-prefix is used to match the names or addresses of any recipient of an
-email message, (whether To, Cc, or Bcc).
-
-Any term prefixed with
-.B subject:
-will match only text from the subject of an email. Searching for a
-phrase in the subject is supported by including quotation marks around
-the phrase, immediately following
-.BR subject: .
-
-The
-.B attachment:
-prefix can be used to search for specific filenames (or extensions) of
-attachments to email messages.
-
-For
-.BR tag: " and " is:
-valid tag values include
-.BR inbox " and " unread
-by default for new messages added by
-.B notmuch new
-as well as any other tag values added manually with
-.BR "notmuch tag" .
-
-For
-.BR id: ,
-message ID values are the literal contents of the Message\-ID: header
-of email messages, but without the '<', '>' delimiters.
-
-The
-.B thread:
-prefix can be used with the thread ID values that are generated
-internally by notmuch (and do not appear in email messages). These
-thread ID values can be seen in the first column of output from
-.B "notmuch search"
-
-In addition to individual terms, multiple terms can be
-combined with Boolean operators (
-.BR and ", " or ", " not
-, etc.). Each term in the query will be implicitly connected by a
-logical AND if no explicit operator is provided, (except that terms
-with a common prefix will be implicitly combined with OR until we get
-Xapian defect #402 fixed).
-
-Parentheses can also be used to control the combination of the Boolean
-operators, but will have to be protected from interpretation by the
-shell, (such as by putting quotation marks around any parenthesized
-expression).
-
-Finally, results can be restricted to only messages within a
-particular time range, (based on the Date: header) with a syntax of:
-
-	<intial-timestamp>..<final-timestamp>
-
-Each timestamp is a number representing the number of seconds since
-1970\-01\-01 00:00:00 UTC. This is not the most convenient means of
-expressing date ranges, but until notmuch is fixed to accept a more
-convenient form, one can use the date program to construct
-timestamps. For example, with the bash shell the folowing syntax would
-specify a date range to return messages from 2009\-10\-01 until the
-current time:
-
-	$(date +%s \-d 2009\-10\-01)..$(date +%s)
-.SH ENVIRONMENT
-The following environment variables can be used to control the
-behavior of notmuch.
-.TP
-.B NOTMUCH_CONFIG
-Specifies the location of the notmuch configuration file. Notmuch will
-use ${HOME}/.notmuch\-config if this variable is not set.
-.SH SEE ALSO
-The emacs-based interface to notmuch (available as
-.B notmuch.el
-in the Notmuch distribution).
-
-The notmuch website:
-.B http://notmuchmail.org
-.SH CONTACT
-Feel free to send questions, comments, or kudos to the notmuch mailing
-list <notmuch@notmuchmail.org> . Subscription is not required before
-posting, but is available from the notmuchmail.org website.
-
-Real-time interaction with the Notmuch community is available via IRC
-(server: irc.freenode.net, channel: #notmuch).
-- 
1.7.1

[PATCH 4/4] notmuch.c: use help strings generated from notmuch.pod.

[david]

From: David Bremner <bremner@unb.ca>

It is quite possible this could be more automagically generated; there
is a certain amount of boilerplate in typing HELP_command_args,
HELP_command_desc, HELP_command_text. But, this way is less error
prone.
---
 notmuch.c |  388 +++++++++----------------------------------------------------
 1 files changed, 54 insertions(+), 334 deletions(-)

diff --git a/notmuch.c b/notmuch.c
index 030e494..d1ae366 100644
--- a/notmuch.c
+++ b/notmuch.c
@@ -21,6 +21,7 @@
  */
 
 #include "notmuch-client.h"
+#include "notmuch-help.h"
 
 typedef int (*command_function_t) (void *ctx, int argc, char *argv[]);
 
@@ -36,354 +37,73 @@ static int
 notmuch_help_command (void *ctx, int argc, char *argv[]);
 
 static const char search_terms_help[] =
-    "\tSeveral notmuch commands accept a comman syntax for search\n"
-    "\tterms.\n"
-    "\n"
-    "\tThe search terms can consist of free-form text (and quoted\n"
-    "\tphrases) which will match all messages that contain all of\n"
-    "\tthe given terms/phrases in the body, the subject, or any of\n"
-    "\tthe sender or recipient headers.\n"
-    "\n"
-    "\tAs a special case, a search string consisting of exactly a\n"
-    "\tsingle asterisk (\"*\") will match all messages.\n"
-    "\n"
-    "\tIn addition to free text, the following prefixes can be used\n"
-    "\tto force terms to match against specific portions of an email,\n"
-    "\t(where <brackets> indicate user-supplied values):\n"
-    "\n"
-    "\t\tfrom:<name-or-address>\n"
-    "\t\tto:<name-or-address>\n"
-    "\t\tsubject:<word-or-quoted-phrase>\n"
-    "\t\tattachment:<word>\n"
-    "\t\ttag:<tag> (or is:<tag>)\n"
-    "\t\tid:<message-id>\n"
-    "\t\tthread:<thread-id>\n"
-    "\n"
-    "\tThe from: prefix is used to match the name or address of\n"
-    "\tthe sender of an email message.\n"
-    "\n"
-    "\tThe to: prefix is used to match the names or addresses of\n"
-    "\tany recipient of an email message, (whether To, Cc, or Bcc).\n"
-    "\n"
-    "\tAny term prefixed with subject: will match only text from\n"
-    "\tthe subject of an email. Quoted phrases are supported when\n"
-    "\tsearching with: subject:\"this is a phrase\".\n"
-    "\n"
-    "\tFor tag: and is:, valid tag values include \"inbox\" and \"unread\"\n"
-    "\tby default for new messages added by \"notmuch new\" as well\n"
-    "\tas any other tag values added manually with \"notmuch tag\".\n"
-    "\n"
-    "\tFor id:, message ID values are the literal contents of the\n"
-    "\tMessage-ID: header of email messages, but without the '<','>'\n"
-    "\tdelimiters.\n"
-    "\n"
-    "\tThe thread: prefix can be used with the thread ID values that\n"
-    "\tare generated internally by notmuch (and do not appear in email\n"
-    "\tmessages). These thread ID values can be seen in the first\n"
-    "\tcolumn of output from \"notmuch search\".\n"
-    "\n"
-    "\tIn addition to individual terms, multiple terms can be\n"
-    "\tcombined with Boolean operators (\"and\", \"or\", \"not\", etc.).\n"
-    "\tEach term in the query will be implicitly connected by a\n"
-    "\tlogical AND if no explicit operator is provided, (except\n"
-    "\tthat terms with a common prefix will be implicitly combined\n"
-    "\twith OR until we get Xapian defect #402 fixed).\n"
-    "\n"
-    "\tParentheses can also be used to control the combination of\n"
-    "\tthe Boolean operators, but will have to be protected from\n"
-    "\tinterpretation by the shell, (such as by putting quotation\n"
-    "\tmarks around any parenthesized expression).\n"
-    "\n"
-    "\tFinally, results can be restricted to only messages within a\n"
-    "\tparticular time range, (based on the Date: header) with:\n"
-    "\n"
-    "\t\t<intial-timestamp>..<final-timestamp>\n"
-    "\n"
-    "\tEach timestamp is a number representing the number of seconds\n"
-    "\tsince 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC. This is not the most convenient\n"
-    "\tmeans of expressing date ranges, but until notmuch is fixed to\n"
-    "\taccept a more convenient form, one can use the date program to\n"
-    "\tconstruct timestamps. For example, with the bash shell the\n"
-    "\tfollowing syntax would specify a date range to return messages\n"
-    "\tfrom 2009-10-01 until the current time:\n"
-    "\n"
-    "\t\t$(date +%%s -d 2009-10-01)..$(date +%%s)\n\n";
+  HELP_search_syntax_text;
 
 command_t commands[] = {
     { "setup", notmuch_setup_command,
-      NULL,
-      "Interactively setup notmuch for first use.",
-      "\tThe setup command will prompt for your full name, your primary\n"
-      "\temail address, any alternate email addresses you use, and the\n"
-      "\tdirectory containing your email archives. Your answers will be\n"
-      "\twritten to a configuration file in ${NOTMUCH_CONFIG} (if set)\n"
-      "\tor ${HOME}/.notmuch-config.\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\tThis configuration file will be created with descriptive\n"
-      "\tcomments, making it easy to edit by hand later to change the\n"
-      "\tconfiguration. Or you can run \"notmuch setup\" again.\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\tInvoking notmuch with no command argument will run setup if\n"
-      "\tthe setup command has not previously been completed." },
+      HELP_setup_args,
+      HELP_setup_desc,
+      HELP_setup_text },
     { "new", notmuch_new_command,
-      "[--verbose]",
-      "Find and import new messages to the notmuch database.",
-      "\tScans all sub-directories of the mail directory, performing\n"
-      "\tfull-text indexing on new messages that are found. Each new\n"
-      "\tmessage will be tagged as both \"inbox\" and \"unread\".\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\tYou should run \"notmuch new\" once after first running\n"
-      "\t\"notmuch setup\" to create the initial database. The first\n"
-      "\trun may take a long time if you have a significant amount of\n"
-      "\tmail (several hundred thousand messages or more).\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\tSubsequently, you should run \"notmuch new\" whenever new mail\n"
-      "\tis delivered and you wish to incorporate it into the database.\n"
-      "\tThese subsequent runs will be much quicker than the initial run.\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\tSupported options for new include:\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\t--verbose\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\t\tVerbose operation. Shows paths of message files as\n"
-      "\t\tthey are being indexed.\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\tInvoking notmuch with no command argument will run new if\n"
-      "\tthe setup command has previously been completed, but new has\n"
-      "\tnot previously been run." },
+      HELP_new_args,
+      HELP_new_desc,
+      HELP_new_text },
     { "search", notmuch_search_command,
-      "[options...] <search-terms> [...]",
-      "Search for messages matching the given search terms.",
-      "\tNote that the individual mail messages will be matched\n"
-      "\tagainst the search terms, but the results will be the\n"
-      "\tthreads (one per line) containing the matched messages.\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\tSupported options for search include:\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\t--format=(json|text)\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\t\tPresents the results in either JSON or\n"
-      "\t\tplain-text (default)\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\t--output=(summary|threads|messages|files|tags)\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\t\tsummary (default)\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\t\tOutput a summary of each thread with any message matching the\n"
-      "\t\tsearch terms. The summary includes the thread ID, date, the\n"
-      "\t\tnumber of messages in the thread (both the number matched and\n"
-      "\t\tthe total number), the authors of the thread and the subject.\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\t\tthreads\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\t\tOutput the thread IDs of all threads with any message matching\n"
-      "\t\tthe search terms, either one per line (--format=text) or as a\n"
-      "\t\tJSON array (--format=json).\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\t\tmessages\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\t\tOutput the message IDs of all messages matching the search\n"
-      "\t\tterms, either one per line (--format=text) or as a JSON array\n"
-      "\t\t(--format=json).\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\t\tfiles\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\t\tOutput the filenames of all messages matching the search\n"
-      "\t\tterms, either one per line (--format=text) or as a JSON array\n"
-      "\t\t(--format=json).\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\t\ttags\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\t\tOutput all tags that appear on any message matching the search\n"
-      "\t\tterms, either one per line (--format=text) or as a JSON array\n"
-      "\t\t(--format=json).\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\t--sort=(newest-first|oldest-first)\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\t\tPresent results in either chronological order\n"
-      "\t\t(oldest-first) or reverse chronological order\n"
-      "\t\t(newest-first), which is the default.\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\tSee \"notmuch help search-terms\" for details of the search\n"
-      "\tterms syntax." },
+      HELP_search_args,
+      HELP_search_desc,
+      HELP_search_text
+    },
     { "show", notmuch_show_command,
-      "<search-terms> [...]",
-      "Show all messages matching the search terms.",
-      "\tThe messages are grouped and sorted based on the threading\n"
-      "\t(all replies to a particular message appear immediately\n"
-      "\tafter that message in date order).\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\tSupported options for show include:\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\t--entire-thread\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\t\tBy default only those messages that match the\n"
-      "\t\tsearch terms will be displayed. With this option,\n"
-      "\t\tall messages in the same thread as any matched\n"
-      "\t\tmessage will be displayed.\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\t--format=(text|json|mbox)\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\t\ttext (default)\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\t\tThe default plain-text format has all text-content MIME parts\n"
-      "\t\tdecoded. Various components in the output, ('message', 'header',\n"
-      "\t\t'body', 'attachment', and MIME 'part') are delimited by\n"
-      "\t\teasily-parsed markers. Each marker consists of a Control-L\n"
-      "\t\tcharacter (ASCII decimal 12), the name of the marker, and\n"
-      "\t\tthen either an opening or closing brace, '{' or '}' to\n"
-      "\t\teither open or close the component.\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\t\tjson\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\t\tThe output is formatted with Javascript Object Notation\n"
-      "\t\t(JSON). This format is more robust than the text format\n"
-      "\t\tfor automated processing. JSON output always includes all\n"
-      "\t\tmessages in a matching thread; in effect '--format=json'\n"
-      "\t\timplies '--entire-thread'\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\t\tmbox\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\t\tAll matching messages are output in the traditional, Unix\n"
-      "\t\tmbox format with each message being prefixed by a line\n"
-      "\t\tbeginning with 'From ' and a blank line separating each\n"
-      "\t\tmessage. Lines in the message content beginning with 'From '\n"
-      "\t\t(preceded by zero or more '>' characters) have an additional\n"
-      "\t\t'>' character added. This reversible escaping is termed\n"
-      "\t\t\"mboxrd\" format and described in detail here:\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\t\thttp://homepage.ntlworld.com/jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/mail-mbox-formats.html\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\tA common use of \"notmuch show\" is to display a single\n"
-      "\tthread of email messages. For this, use a search term of\n"
-      "\t\"thread:<thread-id>\" as can be seen in the first column\n"
-      "\tof output from the \"notmuch search\" command.\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\tSee \"notmuch help search-terms\" for details of the search\n"
-      "\tterms syntax." },
+      HELP_show_args,
+      HELP_show_desc,
+      HELP_show_text
+    },
     { "count", notmuch_count_command,
-      "<search-terms> [...]",
-      "Count messages matching the search terms.",
-      "\tThe number of matching messages is output to stdout.\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\tWith no search terms, a count of all messages in the database\n"
-      "\twill be displayed.\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\tSee \"notmuch help search-terms\" for details of the search\n"
-      "\tterms syntax." },
+      HELP_count_args,
+      HELP_count_desc,
+      HELP_count_text
+    },
     { "reply", notmuch_reply_command,
-      "[options...] <search-terms> [...]",
-      "Construct a reply template for a set of messages.",
-      "\tConstructs a new message as a reply to a set of existing\n"
-      "\tmessages. The Reply-To: header (if any, otherwise From:) is\n"
-      "\tused for the To: address. The To: and Cc: headers are copied,\n"
-      "\tbut not including any of the user's configured addresses.\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\tA suitable subject is constructed. The In-Reply-to: and\n"
-      "\tReferences: headers are set appropriately, and the content\n"
-      "\tof the original messages is quoted and included in the body\n"
-      "\t(unless --format=headers-only is given).\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\tThe resulting message template is output to stdout.\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\tSupported options for reply include:\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\t--format=(default|headers-only)\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\t\tdefault:\n"
-      "\t\t\tIncludes subject and quoted message body.\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\t\theaders-only:\n"
-      "\t\t\tOnly produces In-Reply-To, References, To\n"
-      "\t\t\tCc, and Bcc headers.\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\tSee \"notmuch help search-terms\" for details of the search\n"
-      "\tterms syntax." },
+      HELP_reply_args,
+      HELP_reply_desc,
+      HELP_reply_text
+    },
     { "tag", notmuch_tag_command,
-      "+<tag>|-<tag> [...] [--] <search-terms> [...]",
-      "Add/remove tags for all messages matching the search terms.",
-      "\tThe search terms are handled exactly as in 'search' so one\n"
-      "\tcan use that command first to see what will be modified.\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\tTags prefixed by '+' are added while those prefixed by\n"
-      "\t'-' are removed. For each message, tag removal is performed\n"
-      "\tbefore tag addition.\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\tThe beginning of <search-terms> is recognized by the first\n"
-      "\targument that begins with neither '+' nor '-'. Support for\n"
-      "\tan initial search term beginning with '+' or '-' is provided\n"
-      "\tby allowing the user to specify a \"--\" argument to separate\n"
-      "\tthe tags from the search terms.\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\tSee \"notmuch help search-terms\" for details of the search\n"
-      "\tterms syntax." },
+      HELP_tag_args,
+      HELP_tag_desc,
+      HELP_tag_text
+    },
     { "dump", notmuch_dump_command,
-      "[<filename>]",
-      "Create a plain-text dump of the tags for each message.",
-      "\tOutput is to the given filename, if any, or to stdout.\n"
-      "\tThese tags are the only data in the notmuch database\n"
-      "\tthat can't be recreated from the messages themselves.\n"
-      "\tThe output of notmuch dump is therefore the only\n"
-      "\tcritical thing to backup (and much more friendly to\n"
-      "\tincremental backup than the native database files.)" },
+      HELP_dump_args,
+      HELP_dump_desc,
+      HELP_dump_text
+    },
+
     { "restore", notmuch_restore_command,
-      "<filename>",
-      "Restore the tags from the given dump file (see 'dump').",
-      "\tNote: The dump file format is specifically chosen to be\n"
-      "\tcompatible with the format of files produced by sup-dump.\n"
-      "\tSo if you've previously been using sup for mail, then the\n"
-      "\t\"notmuch restore\" command provides you a way to import\n"
-      "\tall of your tags (or labels as sup calls them)." },
+      HELP_restore_args,
+      HELP_restore_desc,
+      HELP_restore_text
+    },
     { "search-tags", notmuch_search_tags_command,
-      "[<search-terms> [...] ]",
-      "List all tags found in the database or matching messages.",
-      "\tRun this command without any search-term(s) to obtain a list\n"
-      "\tof all tags found in the database. If you provide one or more\n"
-      "\tsearch-terms as argument(s) then the resulting list will\n"
-      "\tcontain tags only from messages that match the search-term(s).\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\tIn both cases the list will be alphabetically sorted." },
+      HELP_search_tags_args,
+      HELP_search_tags_desc,
+      HELP_search_tags_text
+    },
     { "part", notmuch_part_command,
-      "--part=<num> <search-terms>",
-      "Output a single MIME part of a message.",
-      "\tA single decoded MIME part, with no encoding or framing,\n"
-      "\tis output to stdout. The search terms must match only a single\n"
-      "\tmessage, otherwise this command will fail.\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\tThe part number should match the part \"id\" field output\n"
-      "\tby the \"--format=json\" option of \"notmuch show\". If the\n"
-      "\tmessage specified by the search terms does not include a\n"
-      "\tpart with the specified \"id\" there will be no output." },
+      HELP_part_args,
+      HELP_part_desc,
+      HELP_part_text
+    },
     { "config", notmuch_config_command,
-      "[get|set] <section>.<item> [value ...]",
-      "Get or set settings in the notmuch configuration file.",
-      "    config get <section>.<item>\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\tThe value of the specified configuration item is printed\n"
-      "\tto stdout. If the item has multiple values, each value\n"
-      "\tis separated by a newline character.\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\tAvailable configuration items include at least\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\t\tdatabase.path\n"
-      "\t\tuser.name\n"
-      "\t\tuser.primary_email\n"
-      "\t\tuser.other_email\n"
-      "\t\tnew.tags\n"
-      "\n"
-      "    config set <section>.<item> [value ...]\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\tThe specified configuration item is set to the given value.\n"
-      "\tTo specify a multiple-value item, provide each value as\n"
-      "\ta separate command-line argument.\n"
-      "\n"
-      "\tIf no values are provided, the specified configuration item\n"
-      "\twill be removed from the configuration file." },
+      HELP_config_args,
+      HELP_config_desc,
+      HELP_config_text
+    },
     { "help", notmuch_help_command,
-      "[<command>]",
-      "This message, or more detailed help for the named command.",
-      "\tExcept in this case, where there's not much more detailed\n"
-      "\thelp available." }
+      HELP_help_args,
+      HELP_help_desc,
+      HELP_help_text
+    }
 };
 
 static void
@@ -454,7 +174,7 @@ notmuch_help_command (unused (void *ctx), int argc, char *argv[])
 	    }
 	}
 	printf ("\n");
-	printf (search_terms_help);
+	fputs (search_terms_help, stdout);
 	return 0;
     }
 
-- 
1.7.1

Re: [PATCH 3/4] Add rules to build notmuch.1 and notmuch-help.h from the pod file.

[David Bremner]

On Wed,  3 Nov 2010 14:18:55 -0300, david@tethera.net wrote:
> +notmuch_help_files= \
> +	notmuch-setup-help.h    \
> +	notmuch-new-help.h      \
> +	notmuch-show-help.h     \
> +	notmuch-search-help.h   \
> +	notmuch-count-help.h    \
> +	notmuch-reply-help.h    \
> +	notmuch-tag-help.h	\
> +	notmuch-dump-help.h	\
> +	notmuch-restore-help.h  \
> +	notmuch-part-help.h
> +

Oops. This bit is leftover from when I tried to do everything in the
Makefile. It is not needed now.

Also I'm sad that deleting a file made a 600 line diff, sorry about
that. Maybe there is  some option to tell it that the patch will be
applied by  git. I didn't see it right away.

d