537915 - need meta-commands for improving Search All Messages experience

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Thunderbird :: Search, enhancement)

Description

[Dominique De Vito]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; fr; rv:1.9.1.6) Gecko/20091201 Firefox/3.5.6
Build Identifier: 

for searching into emails, TB gives an input bar for entering searched items.
but this entry bar gives limited flexibility, limited configuration capabilities.


Reproducible: Always




I propose TB search bar to enable user-defined metacommands and to search according to that commands.

Let's take an example. I want to search only into today's emails about a man named Marc. I want to enter into the search bar the following string:
"Marc +today".

I want to be able to define "today" keyword into some search option panel through the following 
"msg.date = getdate($now)" 
or simpler/nicer 
"date = getdate($now)" 
where $now is a predefined variable and "getdate()" a built-in function.

This kind of flexibility would enable a much greater search experience.

Let's imagine I want to search only into recent emails. I want to enter into the search bar the following string:
"Marc +recent".

Or for searching into very recent emails only:
"Marc +veryrecent"

I want "recent" or "veryrecent" keywords to be user-defined. And the configuration capabilities I propose above enables such a flexibility. Let's define "recent" as 
"getdate($now) - msg.date < getweekduration(1)" 
or simpler/nicer:
"getdate($now) - date < getweekduration(1)" 
and if the variable "1week" is defined :
"getdate($now) - date < 1week" 

A lot of people are aware of small languages like VB-like, so I have little doubt users will find this feature usable and quicky, very useful.

It would improve quite a lot the search bar.

Comment 1

[Dominique De Vito]

Choosing the "+" symbol may be misleading due to Google use of such symbol for Google search engine.

May be the "%" symbol, into, for example, "Marc %recent", should be a better match.

Comment 2

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

are you proposing this for for the "search all messages" mode of search, or for filters?

Comment 3

[Dominique De Vito]

I am suggesting this enhancement for the "search all messages" mode of search.

Comment 5

[Aaron J. Peterson]

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=556292 was closed as a duplicate, but the plea there is "It would be helpful to have some documentation for the syntax of the "Search all messages" option."   bug 537915 isn't that at all.  

The existing global search functionality does not have documentation for its features and syntax that I can find at https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/global-search and similar.

Documentation for Global Search Syntax would be really useful.  Should there be a separate bug for that?

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=63573