notmuch/man/man1/notmuch-show.1

.TH NOTMUCH-SHOW 1 2011-12-04 "Notmuch 0.10.2"
.SH NAME
notmuch-show \- Show messages matching the given search terms.
.SH SYNOPSIS

.B notmuch show
.RI "[" options "...] <" search-term ">..."

.SH DESCRIPTION

Shows all messages matching the search terms.

The messages will be grouped and sorted based on the threading (all
replies to a particular message will appear immediately after that
message in date order). The output is not indented by default, but
depth tags are printed so that proper indentation can be performed by
a post-processor (such as the emacs interface to notmuch).

Supported options for
.B show
include
.RS 4
.TP 4
.B \-\-entire\-thread

By default only those messages that match the search terms will be
displayed. With this option, all messages in the same thread as any
matched message will be displayed.
.RE

.RS 4
.TP 4
.B \-\-format=(text|json|mbox|raw)

.RS 4
.TP 4
.BR text " (default for messages)"

The default plain-text format has all text-content MIME parts
decoded. Various components in the output,
.RB ( message ", " header ", " body ", " attachment ", and MIME " part ),
will be delimited by easily-parsed markers. Each marker consists of a
Control-L character (ASCII decimal 12), the name of the marker, and
then either an opening or closing brace, ('{' or '}'), to either open
or close the component. For a multipart MIME message, these parts will
be nested.
.RE
.RS 4
.TP 4
.B json

The output is formatted with Javascript Object Notation (JSON). This
format is more robust than the text format for automated
processing. The nested structure of multipart MIME messages is
reflected in nested JSON output. JSON output always includes all
messages in a matching thread; in effect
.B \-\-format=json
implies
.B \-\-entire\-thread

.RE
.RS 4
.TP 4
.B mbox

All matching messages are output in the traditional, Unix mbox format
with each message being prefixed by a line beginning with "From " and
a blank line separating each message. Lines in the message content
beginning with "From " (preceded by zero or more '>' characters) have
an additional '>' character added. This reversible escaping
is termed "mboxrd" format and described in detail here:

.nf
.nh
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/mail-mbox-formats.html
.hy
.fi
.
.RE
.RS 4
.TP 4
.BR raw " (default for a single part, see \-\-part)"

For a message, the original, raw content of the email message is
output. Consumers of this format should expect to implement MIME
decoding and similar functions.

For a single part (\-\-part) the raw part content is output after
performing any necessary MIME decoding.

The raw format must only be used with search terms matching single
message.
.RE
.RE

.RS 4
.TP 4
.B \-\-part=N

Output the single decoded MIME part N of a single message.  The search
terms must match only a single message.  Message parts are numbered in
a depth-first walk of the message MIME structure, and are identified
in the 'json' or 'text' output formats.
.RE

.RS 4
.TP 4
.B \-\-verify

Compute and report the validity of any MIME cryptographic signatures
found in the selected content (ie. "multipart/signed" parts). Status
of the signature will be reported (currently only supported with
--format=json), and the multipart/signed part will be replaced by the
signed data.
.RE

.RS 4
.TP 4
.B \-\-decrypt

Decrypt any MIME encrypted parts found in the selected content
(ie. "multipart/encrypted" parts). Status of the decryption will be
reported (currently only supported with --format=json) and the
multipart/encrypted part will be replaced by the decrypted
content.
.RE

A common use of
.B notmuch show
is to display a single thread of email messages. For this, use a
search term of "thread:<thread-id>" as can be seen in the first
column of output from the
.B notmuch search
command.

See the
.B "SEARCH SYNTAX"
section below for details of the supported syntax for <search-terms>.
.RE
.RS 4