IMAP search

[Kabouik]

That would be nice.

[d99kris]

Support for server-side (IMAP) search has been added in 1337358 / v5.4.4.

From the README:

Press ' in the message list view to search the server for emails in the current active folder. The server search supports space-separated terms which may be prefixed by body:, subject:, from: or to:. The search query terms are implicitly combined with logical "and". Results are sorted by email timestamp.

Let me know if you encounter any issues. The key binding is configurable with key_search_server in key.conf.

[Kabouik]

Thanks a lot for implementing the feature, Kris. I haven't tried it yet because I haven't taken the time to update the Guix package (I do not see any extra dependency in the commit so hopefully this will be straightforward), but am eager to try it.

[Edit: this was indeed very straightforward. I updated locally, but typically most Guix packages are based on releases, so I'll wait for a next release before submitting a patch for the Guix channel.]

[Kabouik]

Would it make sense to change the keybinding from ' to ?? ' can be a dead key in some keyboard layouts, and hence not necessarily usable as a keybind, while ? is on the same hardware key as / which is the typical search key in many programs, including nmail for local search or keyword search in messages. Additionally, ? is already used in a search context in nmail to find next occurrences of a search term, so this would keep all search functions in nmail on fewer keys.

[Edit: ' works even if it's a dead key, so it's not as important as I thought, but still think ? would maybe make more sense and be easier to remember. I'm happy to just change that locally in my configuration if you think it's best to keep ' though.]

[d99kris]

Hi @Kabouik - yes it's a good point you bring up about the default key binding. Initially I intended to use ? (or \) but I felt it was a little unintuitive to have a key with different functionality for different contexts. In message view ? performs "find next match in message" and in search result list view \ toggles viewing of folder. So after testing a little, I decided to find a new key binding, and landed on ' which is around the same area as those other keys on a US layout keyboard.

I'm still open to reconsider, perhaps ' is in a very poor position in some keyboard layouts. Or perhaps there's some other "standard search key" aside from / that would make sense.

[Kabouik]

Thanks for the reply. I see your point about having keys performing different actions depending on their context, but in that case if you stick with distinct keys, I feel it would make sense to let those keys trigger their action wherever the user is (except compose view, that is), but I might be wrong.

Would the current keybinding implementation support a usecase like I described above with ?, i.e., a user preferring to use fewer distinct keys in their ui.conf, but having context-dependent actions?

I didn't know about the \ toggle. Convenient. I'll look into enabling it by default.

[d99kris]

Yes, one can configure key_search_server to use ? without issues.

I think there are already some other shared key bindings with different functions in different contexts (space and enter, maybe others too), so it's not a rule of any kind. I just felt it was more intuitive (to me) to have / being local search in message list, and doing find when viewing message. ? is find again, but there is no "local search again", so I preferred it being unmapped in message list.

[krackout]

Out of curiosity, what is the benefit of IMAP search? Since all mails are cached locally on nmail (one of its main strengths for me), wouldn't local and IMAP search produce the same results?

I've just updated to 5.4.5, tried this feature and from my initial test searches, I haven't got different results, either imap or local. Difference on speed only, imap is slower.

[Kabouik]

All mails are cached locally only if you do a full sync with `s`. I used to do that but some of my mailboxes are getting really large and I don't always need my old emails, so I don't necessarily sync my old folders now when I set up nmail on a new computer.

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On 29 April 2025 20:14:13 CEST, krackout ***@***.***> wrote: Out of curiosity, what is the benefit of IMAP search? Since all mails are cached locally on nmail (one of its main strengths for me), wouldn't local and IMAP search produce the same results? I've just updated to 5.4.5, tried this feature and from my initial test searches, I haven't got different results, either imap or local. Difference on speed only, imap is slower.

[krackout]

Oh, haven't thought about it. Thank you for answering.

[d99kris]

I'll close this feature request for now, please report related improvement requests or bugs as separate items, thanks!