Re: [Evolution] Searching emails?

[Adam Tauno Williams <awilliam whitemice org>]

On Thu, 2011-02-24 at 12:57 +0100, Michael Below wrote: 
> Am Do 24 Feb 2011 06:28:39 CET
> schrieb Adam Tauno Williams <awilliam whitemice org>:
> > On Thu, 2011-02-24 at 11:09 +0100, Michael Below wrote: 
> > > Am Do 24 Feb 2011 09:31:58 CET
> > > schrieb Pete Biggs <pete biggs org uk>:
> > > > > Any suggestions? I want a fully indexed search and would like
> > > > > to be able to specify all the "common" attributes.
> > > ...
> > > > The other alternative is to use something like Beagle - that will
> > > > index Evo messages (and just about everything else on your
> > > > computer)
> > > > - and in the process suck all your CPU time and memory :-)
> > > > Beagle isn't the only search tool/indexer, and it's use seems to
> > > > be declining in recent years, but I *know* it will index Evo
> > > > messages.
> > > I tried beagle, tracker & co for desktop searc with little success:
> > Agree.  
> > Beagle is broken for some recent document formats and Evolution mail.
> > Tracker, at least the version on openSUSE 11.3, seems broken for
> > everything but plain text and markup.   It doesn't even work for PDF
> > files, which really hurts. It does *index* e-mail, at least it appears
> > to, but there is no way to *search* e-mail.

A bit of testing shows that currently my version [of Tracker] does not
index PDF or OpenOffice documents.  But it does index Microsoft Office
documents. 

> > > tracker is in the process of being transformed into a meta-service
> > > expecting dbus-signals and couldn't be expected to do something as
> > > menial as indexing mail folders, 
> >
> > I think this statement is bogus.  Tracker is a desktop search tool -
> > of course it uses DBus messaging - how else would it collaborate with
> > applications?  You *cannot* do effective search without collaboration
> > with applications.
> I have to admit that I tried this one year ago, from a Claws
> Mail/MH perspective. Things may have changed. Back then, the capability
> to search through e.g. mail files had been removed from Tracker, and it
> relied only on applications reporting to it.

There is an evolution plugin to connect to tracker.  As soon as you
enable it you see activity in the Evolution status bar and 'indexing
mail' appears under the tracker status icon [right-click].

> I filed a wishlist bug to support mail indexing and I was told: 
> "The things have changed radically in tracker from the 0.6 times. In
> 0.7+ are the programs the responsibles to put data into tracker
> (instead of the previous approach of tracker "discovering" the things
> from the application files).
> This means that this is now a bug in claws mail that should support
> "export to tracker" functionality (as evolution and kmail already do
> via plugins). Feel free to discuss the topic in the tracker mailing
> list."

Which makes perfect sense.  Only an application really knows about its
content.  Peaking up an application's skirt is generally a bad idea
[Beagle had this issue where it would lock files beneath Evolution and
cause application hangs].

> I will gladly switch to Tracker when procmail has been modified to send
> appropriate DBus signals, but I suspect this will take some time
> yet... :)

I think *desktop* search and "procmail" are mutually exclusive.  But
since procmail can do anything [a bug, IMO, not a feature] putting in a
Python script to ping the D-Bus service shouldn't been much effort for a
motivated soul.  The desktop is about *applications*.  Nobody who uses
procmail is in the end-user category; they are applying sys-admin think
to their desktop.