[feature-request] Support for xpat

[feature-request] Support for xpat

[Frank Schmitt]

Hello all

There's one thing I'm missing in Gnus which offered my last newsreader
(XNews) and this is support for the xpat command. This command is
implemented in most modern newsserver and allows searching for messages
with a given pattern in some header.

Say you want all articles in gnus.ding which include the words foo and
bar, you can then do the following:

group gnus.ding
xpat Subject 1234-4321 *foo*bar*

and the server will return article number and full header for every
matching article.

What I would like to have is something like this:

M-x gnus-xpat-search
<-Which header?
->Subject
<-Articles from 1234 to 5432 present, please enter min of range
(default: 1234).
->RET
<-Articles from 1234 to 5432 present, please enter max of range
(default: 5432).
->4321
<-Which pattern?
->*foo*bar*

Now Gnus should build a summary buffer with all articles which matched
and present it.

The benefit of this would be, that you can search in really big groups
without having to actually enter them, what can take several minutes if
the group is really big (some 10k messages).

-- 
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

Re: [feature-request] Support for xpat

[Jesper Harder]

Frank Schmitt <usereplyto@Frank-Schmitt.net> writes:

> There's one thing I'm missing in Gnus which offered my last newsreader
> (XNews) and this is support for the xpat command. This command is
> implemented in most modern newsserver and allows searching for
> messages with a given pattern in some header.

XPAT support would be nice.  Maybe we should consider creating a unified
way of searching.  Kai's nnir.el lets you search mail groups -- it would
be neat if nnir and XPAT searches had the same interface.

Re: [feature-request] Support for xpat

[Kai Großjohann]

Frank Schmitt <usereplyto@Frank-Schmitt.net> writes:

> group gnus.ding
> xpat Subject 1234-4321 *foo*bar*
>
> and the server will return article number and full header for every
> matching article.
>
> What I would like to have is something like this:
>
> M-x gnus-xpat-search
> <-Which header?
> ->Subject
> <-Articles from 1234 to 5432 present, please enter min of range
> (default: 1234).
> ->RET
> <-Articles from 1234 to 5432 present, please enter max of range
> (default: 5432).
> ->4321
> <-Which pattern?
> ->*foo*bar*

This sounds like a cool feature.  I wonder if it could be
incorporated into nnir.el?  I keep wanting to integrate it in Gnus,
but I still haven't found the time yet.

kai
-- 
A large number of young women don't trust men with beards.  (BFBS Radio)

Re: [feature-request] Support for xpat

[Kai Großjohann]

Jesper Harder <harder@ifa.au.dk> writes:

> XPAT support would be nice.  Maybe we should consider creating a
> unified way of searching.  Kai's nnir.el lets you search mail groups
> -- it would be neat if nnir and XPAT searches had the same
> interface.

This is not really true.  nnir.el provides a framework for searching
various kinds of groups.  You can just "plug in" a new search engine,
and off you go.

In principle, there shouldn't be a problem with just extending
nnir.el.

kai
-- 
A large number of young women don't trust men with beards.  (BFBS Radio)

Re: [feature-request] Support for xpat

[Simon Josefsson]

Jesper Harder <harder@ifa.au.dk> writes:

> Frank Schmitt <usereplyto@Frank-Schmitt.net> writes:
>
>> There's one thing I'm missing in Gnus which offered my last newsreader
>> (XNews) and this is support for the xpat command. This command is
>> implemented in most modern newsserver and allows searching for
>> messages with a given pattern in some header.
>
> XPAT support would be nice.  Maybe we should consider creating a unified
> way of searching.  Kai's nnir.el lets you search mail groups -- it would
> be neat if nnir and XPAT searches had the same interface.

Some unified searching with a good "advanced search" query buffer
would be quite useful.  I posted a proposed backend interface for
something like it long time ago, but I think there were some
(solvable?) problems with it.