Hi,
First off I want to say how much I've enjoyed using mutt for the last 5
years. It really is a great program and does almost everything I could
want.
In recent years, everyone seems to want instant searching/virtual
folder type of features. I know that's a bit out of mutt's scope.
I know tools like mu and notmuch exists but their functionality and
integration often leave something to be desired.
I run mutt on OS X. As I'm sure many of you know, OS X has a system
wide content indexing and search system called Spotlight. Spotlight
already indexes and searches emails stored individually as files
(similar to maildir) and OS X also has a preview function for said
files. All they require is to have the extension '.eml'.
If mutt simply wrote out messages in a maildir format with a '.eml'
extension, you'd get system wide search integration for free on OS X.
I've already played around with renaming some messages to have the
'.eml' extension in a maildir, and mutt reads them fine. Obviously, if
you go to modify that message, mutt mangles the filename (it appears to
assume the characters '.eml' are flags and resorts them). I'm thinking,
as a non-C programmer :), it's probably not *too* much work to get mutt
to add said extension to messages it writes out in maildir. I'm
assuming one would also need to check for said extensions when reading
and changing message flags.
How difficult would this be to implement? I know this is an open source
project, and if I want a feature, I should implement it myself. I'll be
honest with you, I don't really know C and mutt is a pretty mature
project; it's a bit intimidating to jump into. A few pointers would be
appreciated.
Thanks,
Tim
- maildir file extensions Tim Gray
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