Currently there is no easy way to add support for different structured formatters (like JSON). For example, adding support for S-Expressions would result in code duplication. This patch series amends the situation by introducing structured formatters, which allow different implementations of structures like lists, maps, strings and numbers. The new code in sprinter.h and sprinter-json.c can be used instead of the current ad-hoc output in all parts of notmuch, a patch for notmuch-search.c is included. In a later patch, all other parts of notmuch should be adapted to the structured formatters, and the creation of formatters should be centralised (to make adding new formatters easier). A "structured" formatter is provided for notmuch-search that prints the current text format. This removes almost all the special-casing from notmuch-search.c. Overall diff --stat: Makefile.local | 2 + notmuch-search.c | 301 +++++++++++++---------------------------------- sprinter-json.c | 185 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ sprinter-text.c | 126 ++++++++++++++++++++ sprinter.h | 68 +++++++++++ test/json | 34 +++--- 6 files changed, 484 insertions(+), 232 deletions(-) Changes versus v6 of this patch: - is_text_printer is now a field, not a function. - minor formatting - sprinter_text_search has been renamed to sprinter_text (as it contains no search-specific code). - string sanitization removed from sprinter_text, the caller should sanitize the strings.