[MlMt] "tagging" messages

[Jonathan Clark]

On 10 Jan 2014, at 16:55, Kee Hinckley wrote:

> One of the things I miss from Mail is the ability to "label" messages 
> with a color, so I can easily browse my mail for different kinds of 
> messages that I've tagged with filters.

Likewise, and I think from previous conversations, Benny has some plans 
for ways for theming or skinning the app, to give more possibilities. 
And I'm sure colour would be right in there.

> I was thinking about that, and I thought about the fact that in that 
> sentence I just used the words "label", "color" and "tagged". Those 
> are really different concepts (well, perhaps labels and tags are the 
> same), but they all combine to mean "make it easy to identify types of 
> messages.
>
> When I started this message, I was thinking of requesting the addition 
> of the ability to color messages, but now I'm thinking that perhaps 
> what I'd rather have is the ability to associate visual attributes 
> with MailMate's existing tags. If I could specify that a tag has a 
> color and/or icon associated with it, we could use the existing 
> capabilities to visually identify items. "Flagged" messages already 
> implicitly do this. But I like the idea of being able to have 
> arbitrary icons and colors.

I've tried most email clients out there, and the best visual look for me 
is either Sparrow or Airmail. Both have colours associated with tags 
(which can be set by the user), and various different ways of showing 
them. I personally like having a small triangular coloured 'notch' in 
the top right of the message list item (which can be multiline). Or you 
can list the coloured tag(s) at the start of the message subject, like 
Gmail.

> Less clear is what to do when there is more than one tag. You could 
> always prioritize them by the order of tags in the attributes panel. 
> But it might be nice to combine them in some way. Colors could 
> literally be combined, but I don't know if that would really work. 
> Icons could show one in the column, and more in the header?

Where there are multiple tags and the design only allows one to be 
shown, then I suspect the least frequently-used one should be shown.

Regards,

-- Jonathan