Comments on: MailTags for Thunderbird (sort of) http://www.hawkwings.net/2005/12/28/mailtags-for-thunderbird-sort-of/ Tips and add-ons to make Apple Mail / Mail.app even better Sun, 23 Nov 2008 10:18:54 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: Tim http://www.hawkwings.net/2005/12/28/mailtags-for-thunderbird-sort-of/#comment-1116 Tim Mon, 30 Jan 2006 06:18:39 +0000 http://www.hawkwings.net/?p=508#comment-1116 No. MailTags appends its metadata to the individual emlx file in the local cache. This is fine if you a POPper and OK for IMAPers until you need to rebuild mailboxes, in which case the local cache (along with the metadata) is scrubbed. The developer is <a href="http://www.hawkwings.net/2006/01/14/mailtags-to-get-new-features/#comment-982" rel="nofollow">working on overcoming the obstacles</a> of writing the data to the IMAP server itself. No. MailTags appends its metadata to the individual emlx file in the local cache.

This is fine if you a POPper and OK for IMAPers until you need to rebuild mailboxes, in which case the local cache (along with the metadata) is scrubbed.

The developer is working on overcoming the obstacles of writing the data to the IMAP server itself.

]]> By: Ted Pavlic http://www.hawkwings.net/2005/12/28/mailtags-for-thunderbird-sort-of/#comment-1114 Ted Pavlic Mon, 30 Jan 2006 06:12:42 +0000 http://www.hawkwings.net/?p=508#comment-1114 Additionally, both of these extensions work poorly on OS X. The "Header Tools Extension" doesn't work at all. About 80% of Mnenhy works well on OS X, but it's such a bloated application. Plus, this solution doesn't ACTUALLY use IMAP keywords. It just plays with tags in the header of the messages. That's a real hack. Implementing keywords like this should not be encouraged. There is a standard way to deal with IMAP keywords, and that's for a reason. Things will be much more portable if true IMAP keywords are used. (just hope that your IMAP server supports them) Someone needs to write an extension specifically for this. I wouldn't mind if they modeled like PINE. In PINE's configuration, you add a list of "Keywords." The last word in each line in that list is the actual IMAP keyword. Everything that comes before it is a display name for that keyword. The first letter of the display name is a shortcut to the keyword. When you read a message, you can hit * to bring up the flag menu and then either type the keyword shortcut (the first letter of the display name) or ^T to bring up a menu of keywords. You can then check off as many keywords as you like. It would be great if there was something similar in Thunderbird. Now, I haven't used MailTags much, but at first glance it didn't look like it used actual IMAP keywords. Are MailTags portable? If you open up Apple Mail on another machine that has MailTags installed, do the tags show up there too? Because (again, only at first glance) it seemed like MailTags built its own local database of tags so nothing actually got changed on the server. Am I incorrect? Additionally, both of these extensions work poorly on OS X. The “Header Tools Extension” doesn’t work at all. About 80% of Mnenhy works well on OS X, but it’s such a bloated application. Plus, this solution doesn’t ACTUALLY use IMAP keywords. It just plays with tags in the header of the messages. That’s a real hack. Implementing keywords like this should not be encouraged. There is a standard way to deal with IMAP keywords, and that’s for a reason. Things will be much more portable if true IMAP keywords are used. (just hope that your IMAP server supports them)

Someone needs to write an extension specifically for this. I wouldn’t mind if they modeled like PINE. In PINE’s configuration, you add a list of “Keywords.” The last word in each line in that list is the actual IMAP keyword. Everything that comes before it is a display name for that keyword. The first letter of the display name is a shortcut to the keyword.

When you read a message, you can hit * to bring up the flag menu and then either type the keyword shortcut (the first letter of the display name) or ^T to bring up a menu of keywords. You can then check off as many keywords as you like.

It would be great if there was something similar in Thunderbird.

Now, I haven’t used MailTags much, but at first glance it didn’t look like it used actual IMAP keywords. Are MailTags portable? If you open up Apple Mail on another machine that has MailTags installed, do the tags show up there too? Because (again, only at first glance) it seemed like MailTags built its own local database of tags so nothing actually got changed on the server. Am I incorrect?

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