Pretty much a year ago, I wrote this post, and then this post, about downloading Apple’s mailing lists in order to be able to search them better.
What I didn’t do was go the rest of the way and make up a Search Kit-based application to allow for robust queries into all that downloaded data.
Well, there’s good news, and there’s bad news.
The bad news is that I’m never going to get around to it. Hey kids, welching on your promises can be fun!
The good news is that Apple is going to do my work for me in the upcoming Mac OS X 10.4 a.k.a. “Tiger”. Spotlight even uses Search Kit, just the way I would have. The small, individual text files that make up the mailing list download will be ideal for Spotlight.
So now you have something to look forward to. In the meantime, did you notice the new mailing list search UI at http://search.lists.apple.com? It seems to be faster, more flexible, and return better information. As a Web app, it still may not do the thorough indexing that Spotlight would do locally, but it’s available today.
That should keep you out of trouble while you’re waiting for Tiger.
Weaponized Fluff 
“What I didn’t do was go the rest of the way and make up a Search Kit-based application to allow for robust queries into all that downloaded data.”
I did, but it’s hardly robust:
http://www.cocoabuilder.com/archive/message/cocoa/2004/5/3/106099