Re: [PATCH 2/2] nnir.el: New `notmuch' backend.

[Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com>]

On Wed, 06 Apr 2011 08:08:24 +0200 Erik Colson <eco@ecocode.net> wrote: 

EC> One remaining issue is searching the mailboxes through the IMAP
EC> server. It works, but it is slow due to the slowness of the IMAP
EC> server. So my wish would be to have a _local_ index of the distant mail
EC> on the IMAP server, without having a local cache of all the mails.

EC> Probably it would be preferable to have a separate process running a
EC> IMAP client which would read all new mails and index them locally. If
EC> anyone knows of such a software, please tell me!

It's probably easier to use the Gnus registry for local searching after
the recent rewrite.  For instance there's a
`gnus-registry-wash-for-keywords' function which will store all the
keywords for an article in the registry, and IIRC nnir has some glue for
it as well.

Once you are tracking keywords (set up with
`gnus-registry-track-extra'), any keywords noticed in an article will
end up indexed.  So then you just say

(registry-lookup-secondary-value gnus-registry-db 'keyword "thekeyword")

and you'll get a list of message IDs (which you can then look up to get
the group).  The nice thing is that when you set this up, it works
anytime you visit a group so it doesn't require external processes or
indices.  And it's using hashtables so it's a very fast lookup.

It would not be hard to use the notmuch keywords instead of the keywords
from the article body, if they are in the headers or connected to the
message ID somehow.  But I don't know notmuch well enough to do it.

Ted