A search feature request

[Harry Putnam <reader@super.zippo.com>]

I am, no doubt the newest kid on the block here, but hope you will
take time to read this and let me know if this is already possible or
if you think it would be a desirable addition to Gnus already
formidable searching ability.

I'll confess right off the bat that this functionality is a feature
of "Forte Agent" news reader. ( a windows application) the
functionality about to be described is very usefull for finding
information in news or mail postings/messages.

With Quassia's offline abilities and the holding of large numbers of
articles on disk, the following functions become highly desirable and
possible to carry out at good speeds.

What it amounts to is being able to aim a regexp search at any part of
a posting.  The part searched (header or body) to be designatable, and
having the ability to limit the view to those articles answering the
regexp, in the same fashion we can do now with regexp against subject,
and author.

The value of this over the existing (M-s) regexp search is:
1) Being able to aim at a header or body separately
2) The hits would be assembled in summary fashion where they could be
surveyed quickly and the most appropriate ones chosen for further
action, or simply read. ( ie view limited to hits)
As against the current process of viewing each hit as it is found.

A further advancement of this would be  the ability to perform a regexp 
search across selected or all groups.  Again, with the hits being
assembled in a separate view (possibly a new frame or seperate buffer)
With Summary style, author subject listing and additional information
on summary line showing which group the hit came from.

I have been told that nnkiboze, functions something like above but
after reading and experimenting with it, was not able to see much
similarity.

I have found the functions describe above to be a very useful feature
of a News and mail reader.  Already knowing of Gnus ability to be
adapted and expanded I suspect this is already possible, but would
like to hear how it could be done.

-- 

Harry Putnam  reader@super.zippo.com