[MlMt] search for different Flags

[Benny Kjær Nielsen]

On 14 Jul 2016, at 16:52, Robert Brenstein wrote:

> On 12.07.2016 at 16:38 Uhr +0900 Gary Hull apparently wrote:
>
>> Thanks. This finally made me figure out tags, and yes, they seem 
>> quite handy! The "T" modifier in Search View is great! Thanks again.
>
> Can you elaborate on the T modifier for a MailMate newbie coming from 
> Eudora? I am trying to come to grips with flags and tags and having 
> fits and frustrations.

It should be simple in the sense that it doesn't do much. The `T` 
modifier simply provides you with a text field for entering your tags. 
It'll also show you any existing tags for the currently selected 
message. Tag names are automatically completed and if you enter one that 
does not exist then MailMate helps you create it. You can review your 
tags in the Tags preferences pane including the corresponding IMAP 
keywords (which is not always the same because of IMAP limitations).

Special case: If multiple emails are selected then MailMate shows 2 text 
fields. The first one is for tags to add and the second one is for tags 
to remove.

Note that if you have multiple installs of MailMate then you need to 
configure the tags on all of them. The “mapping” from tag name to 
IMAP keyword is not (yet) automatically synchronized. Some day I'll 
hopefully look into some kind of hack which can provide this kind of 
synchronization.

> I just tried to tag a single email with 1 tag and 436 emails got 
> tagged with 2 tags, and I can't undo that so far.

I don't know how that happened, but if you figure out how tags work and 
you can reproduce something which appears to be a bug then please send 
me an email.

> Having only keyboard shortcuts for dealing with flags and tags is 
> really a major shortcoming for me. I am not only overloaded with 
> things to remember as it is, I also prefer using mouse over keyboard.

The rudimentary support for colored flags certainly needs some more GUI 
support, but tags are not really intended to work differently than they 
do now. You are only supposed to remember the `T` shortcut (but I guess 
an equivalent toolbar button would be nice - I'll note that). You can 
review existing tags in the Tags preferences pane and although you'll 
probably dislike it then here's another tip: If you hit space in the 
Tags text field then a list of all existing tags is shown.

> Are tags really freely transferred through IMAP servers?

Good question and unfortunately not easily answered. I would claim that 
tags as implemented in MailMate is the best way to do it with IMAP 
servers. It is based on so-called IMAP keywords and some servers do not 
support this very well, but this is typically servers which have all 
kinds of other issues anyways. The most notable example is Exchange 
IMAP. (Tags work fine with Gmail.)

Some servers have an upper limit on the number of IMAP keywords 
available. In general, I don't recommend using a large number of tags.

> The documentation says that IMAP tags are only reliable. I was 
> watching communication with one or two of my server and they showed 
> the list of accepted tags, which were the standard IMAP tags as listed 
> in the Mailmate doc.

Since you're looking at logs then here is what to look for if you want 
to know what the server can do.

Look for a `SELECT` command similar to this:

	C: C6 SELECT "Some Mailbox"

Then the important part of the server response is this:

	S: * OK [PERMANENTFLAGS (\Answered [...] \Seen  \*)]

That last part, `\*`, tells MailMate that new IMAP keywords can be 
created.

I hope that makes a bit of sense.

-- 
Benny
(On vacation, please be patient.)
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