notmuch-{dump,restore}.1: document new format options

[notmuch] / man / man1 / notmuch-dump.1

diff --git a/man/man1/notmuch-dump.1 b/man/man1/notmuch-dump.1
index 230deec2abd9aa5692c6c9f4062181ce7f9bd48d..770b00fcde6e2d0970e954553008fdf01d0e402f 100644 (file)
--- a/man/man1/notmuch-dump.1
+++ b/man/man1/notmuch-dump.1
@@ -5,6 +5,7 @@ notmuch-dump \- creates a plain-text dump of the tags of each message
 .SH SYNOPSIS
 
 .B "notmuch dump"
 .SH SYNOPSIS
 
 .B "notmuch dump"

+.RB  [ "\-\-format=(sup|batch-tag)"  "] [--]"

 .RI "[ --output=<" filename "> ] [--]"
 .RI "[ <" search-term ">...]"
 
 .RI "[ --output=<" filename "> ] [--]"
 .RI "[ <" search-term ">...]"
 


@@ -19,6 +20,64 @@ recreated from the messages themselves.  The output of notmuch dump is
 therefore the only critical thing to backup (and much more friendly to
 incremental backup than the native database files.)
 
 therefore the only critical thing to backup (and much more friendly to
 incremental backup than the native database files.)
 

+.TP 4
+.B \-\-format=(sup|batch-tag)
+
+Notmuch restore supports two plain text dump formats, both with one message-id
+per line, followed by a list of tags.
+
+.RS 4
+.TP 4
+.B sup
+
+The
+.B sup
+dump file format is specifically chosen to be
+compatible with the format of files produced by sup-dump.
+So if you've previously been using sup for mail, then the
+.B "notmuch restore"
+command provides you a way to import all of your tags (or labels as
+sup calls them).
+Each line has the following form
+
+.RS 4
+.RI < message-id >
+.B (
+.RI < tag "> ..."
+.B )
+
+with zero or more tags are separated by spaces. Note that (malformed)
+message-ids may contain arbitrary non-null characters. Note also
+that tags with spaces will not be correctly restored with this format.
+
+.RE
+
+.RE
+.RS 4
+.TP 4
+.B batch-tag
+
+The
+.B batch-tag
+dump format is intended to more robust against malformed message-ids
+and tags containing whitespace or non-\fBascii\fR(7) characters.
+Each line has the form
+
+.RS 4
+.RI "+<" "encoded-tag" "> " "" "+<" "encoded-tag" "> ... -- " "" " id:<" encoded-message-id >
+
+where encoded means that every byte not matching the regex
+.B [A-Za-z0-9@=.,_+-]
+is replace by
+.B %nn
+where nn is the two digit hex encoding.
+The astute reader will notice this is a special case of the batch input
+format for \fBnotmuch-tag\fR(1); note that the single message-id query is
+mandatory for \fBnotmuch-restore\fR(1).
+
+.RE
+
+

 With no search terms, a dump of all messages in the database will be
 generated.  A "--" argument instructs notmuch that the
 remaining arguments are search terms.
 With no search terms, a dump of all messages in the database will be
 generated.  A "--" argument instructs notmuch that the
 remaining arguments are search terms.