[MlMt] Close to pulling trigger.

[Zvi Biener]

I also don't know how VIP works, but below is a fairly straightforward 
way to implement smart mailboxes that single out specific users 
flexibly. It is not based on contacts or addresses explicitly, but on 
the contents of the mailbox. The system works like this:

The first time I receive an email from a member of group X (e.g., VIP), 
I file it manually in a mailbox X - a traditional mailbox is some 
location. I set up rules so that if an incoming email is from a sender 
in mailbox X, the message automatically goes in there, gets tagged, 
flagged, etc. No need to maintain rules that cite actual addresses. I 
imagine, this can certainly be made to emulate some VIP behavior.

Here's a riff on the same solution solution:
1. Set up an IMAP mailbox - call it MB1. Put a single message in there 
from each user you consider a VIP.
2. Set up a smart mailbox (MB2), that matches all emails from users that 
are also in MB1.
3. If you need incoming messages from MB1 users to *not* show up in the 
regular INBOX, set up an inbox rule that matches incoming emails to 
senders in MB1. You can tag messages as "VIP", move them, or whatever. 
(If you tag them, you can also just create a smart mailbox that matches 
the "VIP" tag.

The advantage in having a small IMAP mailbox with a single message from 
each user is that they are very easy to manage. This is like an internal 
address group and equally flexible. the only downside is that it isn't 
integrated with Contacts. But if the people in MB1 match the people in 
your VIP list, the smart mailbox should emulate the behavior of the VIP 
box.

BUT NOTE: To me, failure to integrate with "Contacts" is actually a 
bonus. I am a college professor, and I deal with emails from hundreds of 
students per year, divided into distinct several "boxes", corresponding 
to courses. I certainly do not want these addresses in my contacts. This 
system lets me make automatically sort their email very simply, and then 
I just destroy the lists (by removing MB1, or MB2, etc.) when I'm done 
with the course.

Best,
Zvi



On 6 Dec 2014, at 7:00, Robert Garcia wrote:

> The experiment you did with apple mail and syncing, was next on my 
> list to try. I will do some research and see if I can find some api to 
> get at VIP data stored in the cloud.
>
> -- 
> Robert Garcia
> BigHead Technology
> 15520 Coutolenc Rd
> Magalia, Ca 95954
> ph: 530.645.4040 fax: 530.645.4040
> rgarcia at bighead.net - http://bighead.net/
> On 5 Dec 2014, at 23:55, Benny Kjær Nielsen wrote:
>
>> On 5 Dec 2014, at 19:23, Robert Garcia wrote:
>>
>>> I manage several clients and our own mail server for all of them. I 
>>> have moved myself and several of my largest clients off of gmail 
>>> (gapps) email and onto our own mail server, zarafa, which has been 
>>> working fine. Most of us use macs and have been using Airmail as the 
>>> client, which works pretty well with Gmail. Airmail 2 came out and 
>>> it has tons of issues and takes up tons of CPU, etc. Also has bugs 
>>> with Zarafa.
>>
>> I don't really know Zarafa and I don't know if MailMate has any 
>> issues with it, but you can let me know if anything turns up.
>>
>>> Mailmate would not win a beauty contest, but it works great. I felt 
>>> it was sluggish and piggy, like apple mail, then I found the latest 
>>> 64 bit version. Wow, so smooth, nice, doesn't use much cpu, that 
>>> made everything better.
>>
>> Well that's good news for the 64 bit version. Thanks.
>>
>>> Before I recommend this to the rest of my family and clients, 
>>> though, I am struggling with one issue. How to make some type of 
>>> smart folder with VIP users? We all user our iPhones and iPads and 
>>> use VIP, and when your desktop client doesn't comply, it makes it 
>>> tough. It is probably the only single feature that pulls me back to 
>>> apple mail.
>>>
>>> Any thoughts?
>>
>> To be honest I haven't really looked into how Apple Mail implements 
>> VIPs. For MailMate to support it, 2 things need to be possible:
>>
>> * MailMate should be able to retrieve VIP addresses from Contacts.
>> * MailMate should be able to enable/disable the VIP status of a 
>> contact.
>>
>> The first one is probably more important to you than the second one. 
>> MailMate is actually quite badly integrated with Contacts since it's 
>> not possible to do queries (smart mailboxes and rules) based on 
>> groups in Contacts. This is a relatively high priority and a frequent 
>> request, but I cannot give you a time frame. It would be natural to 
>> look into VIP compatability at the same time.
>>
>> A quick search does not reveal an official API to access this 
>> information, but I might not have looked hard enough. It also looks 
>> like it's an Apple Mail feature and if synchronization requires Apple 
>> Mail to be running then there is no way to hack VIP compatibility :-(
>>
>> Ok, quick experiment. I used Apple Mail to mark a VIP sender. This 
>> showed up in the following file:
>>
>> 	~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/VIPSenders.plist
>>
>> I quit Apple Mail, logged into iCloud webmail, and removed the VIP 
>> sender. I waited a while to see if the change was synchronized to the 
>> file above. This did not happen. I then launched Apple Mail and the 
>> file was immediately updated. Unless I missed something then that is 
>> bad news for the potential future of full VIP compatibility — not 
>> even as a horrible hack.
>>
>> -- 
>> Benny
>> _______________________________________________
>> mailmate mailing list
>> mailmate at lists.freron.com
>> http://lists.freron.com/listinfo/mailmate
> _______________________________________________
> mailmate mailing list
> mailmate at lists.freron.com
> http://lists.freron.com/listinfo/mailmate