User:Beckley/Indexed Search Proposal

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This is a proposal for integrating/adding indexed search functionality in to the Thunderbird email client.

Rationale

The current Search Messages feature in Thunderbird is very slow for users that have a normal amount of accumulated messages. Each time a user initiates a search, the individual mailbox files are opened up and searched for the matching text. This can wind up taking tens of seconds, even minutes to complete. Users have become accustomed to Internet search engines which provide near instantaneous results, and if the entire Web can be searched that quickly then we can do the same for a user's mail store.

Providing instant results will require the use of a indexing engine. Most recent operating systems come with an indexing engine, or make it available as a free download. However, there are reasons why it would be beneficial to include an indexing engine as part of Thunderbird. We will look at both solutions here.

Using the OS Indexing Engine

Recent OSes have indexing engines included or available for download. Windows Vista comes with Windows Search, and it is available for XP as well. Mac OSX has had Spotlight for several versions now. For Linux there is Beagle, Tracker, Strigi, Recoll, and a number of others. There's even Google Desktop Search, which has versions for all 3 OSes.