Re: notmuch.el: controlling what does and doesn't get expanded in searches

[Jani Nikula <jani@nikula.org>]

On Thu, 04 Aug 2016, Carl Worth <cworth@cworth.org> wrote:
>>  i) notmuch could have an "also expand tags" feature, where thread based
>>     results would auto expand matching tags.  I would set this to
>>     "unread".
>
> This approach makes a lot of sense to me based on how notmuch.el works.

My idea on how to do this: I'd like to have a key binding in the show
view to go through a customizable list of rules on how to
collapse/expand the messages. The rules could be:

* [ ] expand all matching messages
  [ ] expand messages having any of the specified tags
  [ ] expand messages having all of the specified tags
* expand all messages
* collapse all messages

(* are mutually exclusive, [ ] are not)

The first rule would define what is displayed by default. So you could
have, for example, "expand all matching messages and any messages that
have both inbox and unread tags", followed by "expand all matching
messages", followed by "expand messages that have inbox tag", followed
by "expand all messages", etc. any way you wish.

It would be a nice bonus if you could specify at which rule to start per
each saved search, instead of the first in the list.

I think this could replace the current M-RET and C-u M-RET
expand/collapse all bindings. Maybe M-RET could be reused for this.

This would obviously not require any changes to the SPC, n, p or other
navigation bindings, which I think are currently just fine.


BR,
Jani.