Mail archive search

[Germán Poó Caamaño <gpoo ubiobio cl>]

According to the ToDo List at:
http://live.gnome.org/SysadminToDoList#head-f0c6a308a64a8f5661c76d7077c84d83a4183ea6

the archive indexing is not maintained.

Some time ago I proposed to use Google as indexer, and it wasn't
considered a good choice.  However, we don't have a good solution 
working yet. So, here I go again.

What I propose is to use something like:
http://www.gnome.org/~gpoo/search/

Advantages:
- Public mail archives are already indexed by Google (443.000 pages).
- Google is good scoring messages.
- Fast.
- It's only required to keep updated the list of mailing-lists in the
  form. The list can get updated by running a simple script in a cron
  job.
- No extra software required
  => less work of maintenance
  => less security issues.
- It's working *now*.

Some possible disadvantages:
1. The results page has ads.
2. The results page is limited in its customization.
3. The form in the result page is not the same as the form proposed.
4. It can't be sorted by other criteria (date, size, thread, size)

(1), (2), (3) are easy to fix.  GNOME as non-profit organization can
apply for a Public Search Service for free[1], place where is possible
to custom all the result page.  For my example I just used a Free 
Google search account.

(4). Namazu can do it.  But, it can be partially solved with a couple 
of tips or adding other combobox.  Some examples:
- If I'm looking for a message about 'evolution' that I rememeber was
  published in march in calendar-list; just I would ask for 'evolution
  march' choosing 'calendar-list' from the combobox.
- If I'm looking for a message published by Harish about dbus in
  evolution-hackers; then I choose 'evolution-list' and write
  'harish dbus'.

Why do we need a "sorted" criteria when the results are reduced?

The only missing stuff will be "sorted by size", that exists with 
namazu nowadays.

In my personal case, it's faster searching an email in mail.gnome.org
using a custom google than namazu.

[1] https://services.google.com/publicservice/login

-- 
Germán Poó Caamaño
http://www.ubiobio.cl/~gpoo/
Concepción - Chile