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<p dir="auto">On 22 Mar 2018, at 14:35, Eric Sharakan wrote:</p>
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<div style="white-space:normal"><blockquote style="border-left:2px solid #777; color:#777; margin:0 0 5px; padding-left:5px"><p dir="auto">[due dates]</p>
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<p dir="auto">Just for the record, I consider this the same feature as when asked about postponing or snoozing messages. Some times <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tickler_file" style="color:#3983C4">“tickler (file)”</a> is used (which I kind of like) and even “discard” (temporarily). There are probably more names. Some times the services followup.cc and Sanebox are also mentioned.</p>
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<div style="white-space:normal"><blockquote style="border-left:2px solid #777; color:#777; margin:0 0 5px; padding-left:5px"><p dir="auto">But perhaps it could be accomplished via specially formatted IMAP keywords that look acceptable to IMAP but can be parsed as dates by MM?</p>
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<p dir="auto">The problem with IMAP keywords are that they are often limited in how many can exist on a given server (and some times they are not supported at all, but I don't worry to much about that as long as the feature still works locally).</p>
<p dir="auto">Every time I'm asked about this feature I give it some more thought and I've got quite a lot of notes about it. It <em>can</em> be done using IMAP keywords, but it has to be smart about it. The following is how I <em>think</em> it could be implemented, but I haven't done anything yet and I make no promises. It's also very technical and basically just me thinking out loud. Maybe someone has something interesting to add :)</p>
<p dir="auto">Apple uses a nice trick for colored flags where up to 8 different colors can be specified using 3 IMAP keywords. These flags are named <code style="background-color:#F7F7F7; border-radius:3px; margin:0; padding:0 0.4em" bgcolor="#F7F7F7">$MailFlagBit0</code>, <code style="background-color:#F7F7F7; border-radius:3px; margin:0; padding:0 0.4em" bgcolor="#F7F7F7">$MailFlagBit1</code> and <code style="background-color:#F7F7F7; border-radius:3px; margin:0; padding:0 0.4em" bgcolor="#F7F7F7">$MailFlagBit2</code> and the “trick” is to use them as the bits of a number.</p>
<p dir="auto">The same could be done using <code style="background-color:#F7F7F7; border-radius:3px; margin:0; padding:0 0.4em" bgcolor="#F7F7F7">$TicklerBit0</code>-<code style="background-color:#F7F7F7; border-radius:3px; margin:0; padding:0 0.4em" bgcolor="#F7F7F7">$TicklerBitX</code>, but the problem is that much larger numbers are needed depending on the “base” of the number. This could be solved by having a separate value defining the base such as $TicklerMinutes, $TicklerHours, and $TicklerDays (this could be a bit pattern too, but I think that's overkill). I think this would reduce the need for IMAP keywords to a set of around 8 in most cases.</p>
<p dir="auto">In addition to this, it might be worth considering to offer the user to also automatically move these emails into a separate IMAP folder, e.g., named “Tickler File” in each IMAP account. Each subfolder should be named after the original mailbox of the emails within the mailbox. When the time is up then MailMate can move the emails back based on the mailbox name. There would also be a need for doing this atomically if there are multiple active installations of MailMate. (I think I've figure out how to do this as well.)</p>
<p dir="auto">Alternatively (or optionally), emails with tickler-values could just be hidden from display, but this would only work well in MailMate and not if using a tickler-unaware email client, e.g., on an iPhone.</p>
<p dir="auto">Have a nice weekend :)</p>
<p dir="auto">-- <br>
Benny</p>
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