man: clarify search --exclude=flag

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

diff --git a/man/man1/notmuch-search.1 b/man/man1/notmuch-search.1
index aa670245af87ec751041b206da6d12c122c6da6a..da2f1dd1d179748b47159bc250249f9b565ce9db 100644 (file)
--- a/man/man1/notmuch-search.1
+++ b/man/man1/notmuch-search.1
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-.TH NOTMUCH-SEARCH 1 2013-01-16 "Notmuch 0.15~rc1"
+.TH NOTMUCH-SEARCH 1 2013-02-17 "Notmuch 0.15.2"
 .SH NAME
 notmuch-search \- search for messages matching the given search terms
 .SH SYNOPSIS
@@ -132,13 +132,26 @@ Limit the number of displayed results to N.
 .TP 4
 .BR \-\-exclude=(true|false|flag)
 
-Specify whether to omit messages matching search.tag_exclude from the
-search results (the default) or not. The extra option
+A message is called "excluded" if it matches at least one tag in
+search.tag_exclude that does not appear explicitly in the search terms.
+This option specifies whether to omit excluded messages in the search
+process.
+
+The default value,
+.BR true ,
+prevents excluded messages from matching the search terms.
+
+.B false
+allows excluded messages to match search terms and appear in displayed
+results. Excluded messages are still marked in the relevant outputs.
+
 .B flag
 only has an effect when
-.B --output=summary
-In this case all matching threads are returned but the "match count"
-is the number of matching non-excluded messages in the thread.
+.BR --output=summary .
+The output is almost identical to
+.BR false ,
+but the "match count" is the number of matching non-excluded messages in the
+thread, rather than the number of matching messages.
 .RE
 
 .SH EXIT STATUS