5 ms·

> Nothing to envy from Gmail. I switched because of search, which is amazing in gmail and hard in mutt (for me). What do you do?

by elsigh 10y ago

profeta 10y ago
> search amazing in gmail. really? until a few months ago, you couldn't find anything besides whole words with textual search on gmail. why do people have it's search at such high standards? how bad was the alternative you had?
- fizzbatter 10y ago
  It's funny, i have been frustrated since day 1 which gmails search. Granted, it could very likely be user error - as i often forget the set of keywords that might lead me to the email i desire, but regardless i as a user am left frustrated. Since someone may ask, my desires are simple in nature, but i'm sure difficult to implement. I simply want to find an email. On the Google Search side of things, i have often been very impressed by the search results i am able to achieve. Yet for email, it's been far less successful. On Search, i'm able to use synonyms, or hell even vaguely describe (in the case of movies) plots, and often be presented with what i want. On Gmail, it feels like Gmail has no idea about the context or content of my mail (which is arguably their selling point), and instead i'm purely searching by keyword. The frustration is amplified by the fact that Search(proper) works so surprisingly well, i'm sure.
  - thesimpsons1022 10y ago
    Search has the benefit of all they data they have from the millions of other users who searched the same term and clicked certain results. It also has the backing of Pagerank. Your email is unique to you and doesn't have any of these advantages.
- wodenokoto 10y ago
  What are you talking about? What have you've been missing? Senders name or email? That has always been an option. Has attachments? Been an option since forever. tags? Since forever. date? Available since forever.
  - devdas 10y ago
    Regexp.
    - i336_ 10y ago
      RIP Google Code Search :( For reference, you used to be able to do this - https://code.google.com/p/chromium/codesearch https://code.google.com/p/chromium/codesearch - with an archived cross-section of code on the Web. I wonder if we'll ever be able to do regex Google searches in the future, or if AI/machine learning will make that sort of flexibility redundant by the time the hardware would be able to handle it.
      - rakoo 10y ago
        FWIW codesearch's spirit lives on with debian code search (https://codesearch.debian.net/ https://codesearch.debian.net/) which allows you to do the same as codesearch, except for Debian only. Checkout also the thesis behind (https://codesearch.debian.net/research/bsc-thesis.pdf https://codesearch.debian.net/research/bsc-thesis.pdf) that explains a lot about the challenges and the architecture.
  - Fogest 10y ago
    It's cool to hate on Google though I thought? But seriously, all these hard core unix fans seem a little odd here. Gmail search has always been powerful, and is even more powerful now. It sounds like a case of user error if it isn't working for someone.
  - dmlorenzetti 10y ago
    Not OP, but here's something I miss in Gmail search all the time-- ability to target a search at a particular directory and its sub-directories. Suppose, for example, I have set up a subdir for conferences. That subdir contains a bunch of subdirectories for individual conferences. I know the e-mail I'm looking for is stored in there, because it relates to a conference publication I wrote. However, that subdir itself is "empty" as far as gmail search is concerned (because it's a "tag" rather than a true subdirectory). The net effect of these hollow imitations of directories is I can either target the search to a specific tag, or I can search throughout my entire collection of messages. (Or, I suppose, I can tag every e-mail with every single sub-tag represented in the directory hierarchy I have mentally set up, just in case I might want to search for it someday.) The gmail ideal, of course, is that I abandon the notion of directories altogether, and just let all my messages stew in the ocean of e-mail that one accumulates over the years. Supposedly their "powerful" search capabilities will help me find what I want. In my experience, though, under this approach most reasonable searches produce multiple pages of possible matches. This, of course, is hardly efficient. It would also be nice if I could perform a search and then pull out that page of returned results into a separate screen/window for ongoing reference. Often when I'm searching for something, I'm looking broadly for resources or related conversations, rather than for a specific message. Another place where I feel gmail search is brain-dead is its lack of regex capability (which @devdas has already mentioned).
- ghshephard 10y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean here - I've searched in email for years with gmail - and it's basically always been flawless. Search on From:, To:, Subject, Date, etc... - in addition to searching for content in the body. I'm curious, what other search does one do in email?
  - melloc 10y ago
    The search I have the most trouble with is searching for things that match a label and are in my inbox. GMail will consistently miss messages. I don't know what it is about them, but I imagine it's some indexing bug. I can go to my inbox, click through the first several pages of messages, and see that a message is there, and has my label. I can go to my label, and find it there too. But a search for 'label:foo in:inbox' will come up empty.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
jamespo 10y ago
I use mairix, which is very old but still does the job.
brunosutic 10y ago
I use `notmuch` for searching local mail. It's pretty powerful and blazing fast.
nextos 10y ago
I use notmuch. It's really powerful and quick. You get all Gmail features, plus some more. There's also mutt-kz, with notmuch deeply integrated.
ulysses 10y ago
grepmail zcat Mail/2015/mbox.gz | grepmail -i whatever | grepmail 'perl.style.*regex' >myresults mutt -f myresults

> Nothing to envy from Gmail. I switched because of search, which is amazing in gmail and hard in mutt (for me). What do you do?

by elsigh 10y ago

> Nothing to envy from Gmail. I switched because of search, which is amazing in gmail and hard in mutt (for me). What do you do?

profeta 10y ago

> search amazing in gmail. really? until a few months ago, you couldn't find anything besides whole words with textual search on gmail. why do people have it's search at such high standards? how bad was the alternative you had?

fizzbatter 10y ago
It's funny, i have been frustrated since day 1 which gmails search. Granted, it could very likely be user error - as i often forget the set of keywords that might lead me to the email i desire, but regardless i as a user am left frustrated. Since someone may ask, my desires are simple in nature, but i'm sure difficult to implement. I simply want to find an email. On the Google Search side of things, i have often been very impressed by the search results i am able to achieve. Yet for email, it's been far less successful. On Search, i'm able to use synonyms, or hell even vaguely describe (in the case of movies) plots, and often be presented with what i want. On Gmail, it feels like Gmail has no idea about the context or content of my mail (which is arguably their selling point), and instead i'm purely searching by keyword. The frustration is amplified by the fact that Search(proper) works so surprisingly well, i'm sure.
- thesimpsons1022 10y ago
  Search has the benefit of all they data they have from the millions of other users who searched the same term and clicked certain results. It also has the backing of Pagerank. Your email is unique to you and doesn't have any of these advantages.
wodenokoto 10y ago
What are you talking about? What have you've been missing? Senders name or email? That has always been an option. Has attachments? Been an option since forever. tags? Since forever. date? Available since forever.
- devdas 10y ago
  Regexp.
  - i336_ 10y ago
    RIP Google Code Search :( For reference, you used to be able to do this - https://code.google.com/p/chromium/codesearch https://code.google.com/p/chromium/codesearch - with an archived cross-section of code on the Web. I wonder if we'll ever be able to do regex Google searches in the future, or if AI/machine learning will make that sort of flexibility redundant by the time the hardware would be able to handle it.
    - rakoo 10y ago
      FWIW codesearch's spirit lives on with debian code search (https://codesearch.debian.net/ https://codesearch.debian.net/) which allows you to do the same as codesearch, except for Debian only. Checkout also the thesis behind (https://codesearch.debian.net/research/bsc-thesis.pdf https://codesearch.debian.net/research/bsc-thesis.pdf) that explains a lot about the challenges and the architecture.
- Fogest 10y ago
  It's cool to hate on Google though I thought? But seriously, all these hard core unix fans seem a little odd here. Gmail search has always been powerful, and is even more powerful now. It sounds like a case of user error if it isn't working for someone.
- dmlorenzetti 10y ago
  Not OP, but here's something I miss in Gmail search all the time-- ability to target a search at a particular directory and its sub-directories. Suppose, for example, I have set up a subdir for conferences. That subdir contains a bunch of subdirectories for individual conferences. I know the e-mail I'm looking for is stored in there, because it relates to a conference publication I wrote. However, that subdir itself is "empty" as far as gmail search is concerned (because it's a "tag" rather than a true subdirectory). The net effect of these hollow imitations of directories is I can either target the search to a specific tag, or I can search throughout my entire collection of messages. (Or, I suppose, I can tag every e-mail with every single sub-tag represented in the directory hierarchy I have mentally set up, just in case I might want to search for it someday.) The gmail ideal, of course, is that I abandon the notion of directories altogether, and just let all my messages stew in the ocean of e-mail that one accumulates over the years. Supposedly their "powerful" search capabilities will help me find what I want. In my experience, though, under this approach most reasonable searches produce multiple pages of possible matches. This, of course, is hardly efficient. It would also be nice if I could perform a search and then pull out that page of returned results into a separate screen/window for ongoing reference. Often when I'm searching for something, I'm looking broadly for resources or related conversations, rather than for a specific message. Another place where I feel gmail search is brain-dead is its lack of regex capability (which @devdas has already mentioned).
ghshephard 10y ago
I'm not sure what you mean here - I've searched in email for years with gmail - and it's basically always been flawless. Search on From:, To:, Subject, Date, etc... - in addition to searching for content in the body. I'm curious, what other search does one do in email?
- melloc 10y ago
  The search I have the most trouble with is searching for things that match a label and are in my inbox. GMail will consistently miss messages. I don't know what it is about them, but I imagine it's some indexing bug. I can go to my inbox, click through the first several pages of messages, and see that a message is there, and has my label. I can go to my label, and find it there too. But a search for 'label:foo in:inbox' will come up empty.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

jamespo 10y ago

I use mairix, which is very old but still does the job.

brunosutic 10y ago

I use `notmuch` for searching local mail. It's pretty powerful and blazing fast.

nextos 10y ago

I use notmuch. It's really powerful and quick. You get all Gmail features, plus some more. There's also mutt-kz, with notmuch deeply integrated.

ulysses 10y ago

grepmail zcat Mail/2015/mbox.gz | grepmail -i whatever | grepmail 'perl.style.*regex' >myresults mutt -f myresults