Now that MailTags 1.2.1 is out 
, Scott Morrison has begun work on improvements and features for the next version.
These things are too interesting to keep to one’s self, so here is a teaser of what is still to come…
Listview enhancements
The next version of MailTags will allow you the option of displaying your metadata in the Message Listview window. Here it is – live and real – in Scott’s own inbox:
Click on the image for a full-sized view
IMAP support
Up until now, MailTags has stored its metadata in the local IMAP cache at the end of each message’s individual emlx file like this:
(Here you can see a message which among other things belongs to my “Hawk Wings” MailTags project).
Unfortunately, this data was only readable on one Mac.
Scott is working on a method for storing the metadata (encoded in base64) in an X-Header on the server itself, so that the information will be readable by any Mac (with MailTags installed) which connects to your IMAP account.
This is how it looks when you display an email’s headers (View > Message > Long headers):
The method that Scott is using may also allow you to enclose tags (at your discretion) when sending email to others and be able to accept the tags that are enclosed in email you receive.
In addition, Scott is working on something inspired by Boris Anthony’s ideas for an iCal-Mail.app mash-up and which will be well worth waiting for.
This continued development of MailTags outmatches any mail management system/enhancement at any price. The USD 20 suggested donation is outstanding when you think of what you get.
If you have been holding off your support of MailTags, now is the time to encourage its future development.
Thanks for the sneak peak.
Seems like a good time to send Scott a
bribedonation and ask about becoming a MailTags beta tester …Fantastic!!
This is truly a wonderful thing. Thanks for the heads-up on the future development!
It’s just too bad that he hasn’t come up with a way to integrate standard IMAP keywords with MailTags. (though I understand that may not be possible because of limits on the information MailTags gets from Apple Mail)
The advantage of using standard IMAP keywords would be that you could have at least limited tag support on other mail programs (even on other operating systems). Plus, other programs (even the mail server) could tag messages and those tags could be viewable in MailTags.
(don’t get me wrong — it sounds like there are some terrific improvements to MailTags coming; I’m just saying…)
Hi Ted –
It may be possible, via a user preference to have basic IMAP keyword support for keywords and projects only. An issue with this is that not all IMAP servers support arbitrary keywords, the IMAP keywords cannot contain specific characters (eg spaces).
Let me think about it.
Personally, I would be okay with a user preference that associates “a nice long pretty MailTags tag” with a “ShortAndUglyIMAPKeyword”. It would be okay with me if those associations were stored locally. (though remotely storing them would just be super cool; it’s hardly necessary though) I’m not sure if that would mean setting up an entire table in preferences that makes this mapping…
Maybe that’s how it would work. A user preference “Use IMAP Keyword Associations” that pops up a window that lists all MailTag-to-IMAP mappings. You could then “Add New IMAP Keyword” and add a new mapping.
Then every time you tag something with a project name, it not only gets a MailTag, but it also gets an IMAP tag. (and similarly, if a message is re-downloaded (does Apple Mail do that?) and it has a new tag applied, its corresponding MailTag would get updated)
Maybe that’s just too much of a mess.
It’s really too bad that there’s not a general “metadata” already built into IMAP. Maybe in the next version of IMAP? :)
The list view seems wonderful as all hell, but it’s not popping up on my end when I invoke the command for it. Anyone else having that issue?
Other than this, I love this application. Apple should buy him out with a very large check… Brilliant stuff.
Hi Anthony
These are teasers for the next version. They aren’t implemented in version 1.2.1 (the current release)
Anthony wrote:
hehehe…. With the new features coming up, I don’t think Apple can write a cheque that’s big enough ;-)
Ah, thanks for the clarification, folks. Much appreciated!
And you know, for all of the problems folks have with Apple Mail, you still can’t beat their message threading capability. Hands down, this is probably the biggest reason I don’t bolt for something else. Insofar as I’m concerned, no one has done it better than they have.
Oh, and that comment is coming from someone who loves Outlook on the PC (though I’m not the biggest Entourage fan).
Great stuff Scott, I think I’ll have to send another donation. I wish all developers were as dedicated as you.
Glad you like it, though other clients do a better job of threading (some using server-side IMAP capabilities, which Mail ignores). If you’re interested in more details, there’s been some fairly recent discussion of threading on a few weblogs, maybe here and on Betalogue. Normally I’d find and post some links in the spirit of helpfulness but today’s backlog insists I be a bit more selfish with my time. :)
Even if use of IMAP keywords proves too difficult it would still be nice to for the Mail Tags reference to be stored in the header in a format that is text parsable (e.g. X-MailTags: foo,bar).
I can configure SquirrelMail (my webmail client) to search on the basis of email headers – and other clients can too.
Not being able to search messages by tags through a web interface is one of those things holding me back from switching to using tags – and resulting in me using naff folders instead.
[...] Scott Morrison has released a third public beta of MailTags 2.0, the next supercharged version of his outstanding plugin for Mail.app (Read more about this plugin which has totally revolutionised the way I use Mail in earlier reviews of MailTags 1.2 and MailTags 1.2.2). [...]