Re: Add (extracted) attachment text to the search index?

Subject: Re: Add (extracted) attachment text to the search index?

Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2017 09:45:18 +1100

To: Steven Allen

Cc: notmuch@notmuchmail.org, David Bremner

From: Olaf TNSB


On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 4:55 AM, Steven Allen <steven@stebalien.com> wrote:
>
>
> David Bremner <david@tethera.net> writes:
> > This would require some modifications of notmuch. Either modifying
> > lib/index.cc to add the terms at indexing (notmuch new/insert) time, or
> > providing some way of adding the terms later. The former actually sounds
> > simpler to me.
>
> To do this correctly, you'd want to be able to run an external text
> extraction tool (for PDFs, word documents, etc.) so I think the latter
> would be better in the long run (it would allow the user to index
> attachments in the hooks).

(As a non-dev...) I agree.  The ability to add (and delete!) content
post-insert sounds more desirable.  I don't want to have to re-index all my
email as the next version of <horrible-binary-object>-to-text gets
released.  I'd like to be able to (search-for-attachment)-(delete)-(re-add).


I was thinking a really hacky solution would be fake up a new email with
the same headers but body being the attachment text, doing a notmuch
new/insert and then replacing the file on disk of the new email with a link
to the original message (not sure if that will trigger notmuch new, I don't
think so).  Doesn't feel robust, but...


What do ya reckon?

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