Hello again!

Right now org-mairix provides a very useful piece of functionality.  It
stores the message-id of an email, and creates a link from that
message-id which allows that specific email to be recovered using the
mairix search tool.  This is great for making todo items out of
individual mails, or for filing mails away for future reference.

Mairix provides the ability to search for lots of things other than
message-ids, though, and I think some of them would be useful in org.
For example, at the top of a project tree it might be useful to have a
link to a search like

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
mairix -t fc:client@example.com d:20080101-
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

This would give me a quick way to access all of the threads from, to, or
cc'd to client@example.com since the first of the year.  Assuming that's
when the project began, a search like this would be an excellent way to
get quick access to the emails relevant to the project.

So, I'd like to see org-mairix extended to include ways to build links
using more than just message-ids.

Recently the nnmairix backend for gnus has been released.  It includes
several great ways to build mairix searches from within emacs.  Users
can specify an arbitrary search string (nnmairix-search), build a search
string via interactive prompts in the minibuffer
(nnmairix-search-interactive), or use a neat widget interface to build
searches (nnmairix-widget-search).  Would it be possible to call these
functions from org-mairix to build more sophisticated searches for
links?  I believe that this would not even be gnus-specific, as the same
searches should work regardless of the client that eventually displays
the results.

On a gnus-specific note, nnmairix also includes some functions that
might be useful for linking to specific messages.
nnmairix-search-from-this-article and
nnmairix-search-thread-this-article could both be used in constructing
org links to individual messages, I think.

I should add that in some cases, the best option might be to create
search groups (nnmairix-create-search-group) and just link to those
using the gnus link type rather than using the mairix search type.  For
the most frequently used searches, I bet this is what I'll do.  Even
with this option, I still think being able to use all of the mairix
search syntax in the mairix link type will end up being useful.

Thanks for considering the request,
/au

-- 
Austin Frank
http://aufrank.net
GPG Public Key (D7398C2F): http://aufrank.net/personal.asc