On 2023-06-16 at 06:26:11 UTC-0400 (Fri, 16 Jun 2023 12:26:11 +0200)
Robert M. Münch <mailmate@lists.freron.com>
is rumored to have said:

> I have the feeling the search is taking considerable longer than in the past.
>
> IMO MM flexible, easy to use search is a key USP.
>
> @Benny: Would be nice to speed things up (again). Not sure how MM does 
> searching, but using SQLite for full-text indexing, or special indexing 
> should help a lot.

MM uses an indexing mechanism that appears to be custom-designed for the 
specific purpose of searching email. You can see the artifacts of that in 
~/Library/Application Support/MailMate/Database.noindex/. Only Benny could 
conceivably explain the details, but it seems to me to be unlikely that he 
would get much from ripping all that out and replacing it with SQLite or some 
other off-the-shelf tool.

One serious issue with indexing email is that email is highly divergent in data 
structure, and while you can do a simple index for basic standard mail 
metadata, "full text" and "all headers" search for mail is a nightmare because 
real-world mail breaks almost every rule theoretically governing it and it is 
not a simple matter to determine what is or is not body text. Email typically 
arrives with multiple alternative parts theoretically representing the same 
message, possibly QP or B64 encoded and usually including one version with HTML 
markup. And that markup can be bad, wrong, or even intentionally malicious. 
Very large mail stores are inherently tough to search.


-- 
Bill Cole
b...@scconsult.com or billc...@apache.org
(AKA @grumpybozo and many *@billmail.scconsult.com addresses)
Not Currently Available For Hire
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