[MlMt] will MailMate be a good mail mate for me?

[Bill Cole]

On 16 Jun 2016, at 11:45, Robert Brenstein wrote:

> Thanks a lot to all posters. I am reading all posts carefully. It is 
> nice to see that Mailmate has a real community of users, something 
> that I truly appreciated about Eudora.
>
> I am responding here to Bill since he most directly addressed my 
> concerns.
>
> On 14.06.2016 at 14:02 Uhr -0400 Bill Cole apparently wrote:
[slash & burn]
>
>> MailMate does not currently handle the IMAP "\Recent" flag correctly, 
>> so if you set it up to check mail on a slow POP-like schedule, you 
>> have no automatic way to see "what was newly-arrived in my last 
>> check." You could mimic that with the right combination of rules 
>> attached to IMAP mailboxes and smart mailboxes, *I THINK*. I have 
>> opened a bug on the \Recent flaw so maybe Benny will fix it soon.
>
> I would be fine if I can set a fixed time span when an email is 
> considered "new" and have smart mailboxes showing me where that is. I 
> guess I need to connect Mailmate to one of my higher traffic accounts 
> and see how that works. My initial testing was with two accounts that 
> have very low traffic.

Easy: smart mailboxes start with a definition of which IMAP mailboxes 
(or other smart mailboxes)  to possibly include messages from, have 
conditions a message must meet which include relative received date, and 
can have sub-mailboxes split up by any message attribute, including 
which IMAP source folder it is "really" in or any header or any of the 
normalized pseudo-headers that Benny synthesizes for each message when 
it is first seen.

So, in concrete terms: if you have rules attached to your Inboxes that 
move messages into other IMAP mailboxes on arrival, you can create a 
smart mailbox that just covers the mailboxes into which mail is sorted 
OR "All Messages", with a condition of "Date is within last 30 minutes", 
sub-mailboxes split up by source mailbox, and the displayed counter 
being the number of new messages.

>> Each account has its own default synch periodicity (5/10/30/60 
>> minutes or manually only) and each IMAP mailbox can have its own 
>> special synch schedule, including "Connected" mode, an IMAP feature 
>> where the client sends an "IDLE" command within a mailbox and waits 
>> for the server to tell it when there's any change.
>
> I guess I need to dig deeper into the settings since I haven't seen 
> such a thing in Mailmate so far.

Select an IMAP account ("Source") or any of its mailboxes, menu item 
"Mailbox->Synchronization schedule" or use the contextual menu 
(right-click/ctrl-click)

> Also, if the sync periodicity is not matched across all mailboxes, it 
> won't help me much. I need definite time spans when no new mail comes 
> at all.

Every mailbox synch schedule is the same as the IMAP account schedule 
unless you set it otherwise. INBOX *may* be an exception that is set to 
a "Connected" schedule (IMAP IDLE whenever the account is online) but 
you can change that to whatever schedule you like.

>> With those warnings, I can imagine many reasons to NEED to move on 
>> from Eudora and I can't name any other MacOS MUA that comes anywhere 
>> close to being a fit replacement for Eudora with your sort of use. 
>> Switching won't be easy and painless, but it would be better than 
>> trying to switch to any other MacOS MUA.
>
> Thanks for your feedback. Very useful.

Happy to help. I was amazed to see someone still using the REAL Eudora, 
given the limitations that imposes.

> One question: When I started Mailmate, it asked me to access my 
> Address Book, which I refused. I keep the mail-related addressbook 
> only in Eudora. The system addressbook serves a different purpose. 
> However, I do not see any menu items related to an addressbook in 
> Mailmate. Is it possible that it requires to use the system address 
> book or I am just not seeing it yet?

MailMate uses Special Benny Magic there...

You can give MM access to the system AB but you don't need to. If you do 
not, then when you type in the "To:" field of a message (or any other 
address field you add, such as Cc or Reply-To)  MM gives you a drop-down 
menu of options for autocompletion, built from the recipient addresses 
of mail in your unified "Sent Messages" mailbox. Because the core of MM 
is its message indexing database (everything else is just data input and 
GUI reporting for that database :) this is very fast and it makes a 
certain sort of sense.

Because that sense is NOT sensible for many people who are used to using 
the system AB for everything or who send mail to people they really want 
to forget, over the years Benny has added access to the system AB and a 
hidden feature (think "x-eudora-setting:" whereby you can set any 
mailbox (including a smart mailbox) as an alternative source for the 
autocomplete drop-down. IMHO this is a beautifully elegant solution, 
giving options to those who want them. I also like the results I get 
from the union of "who I've mailed" and "who is in my AB" so I have 
nothing to complain about. Others may differ in their views, of 
course...