[MlMt] due dates?

[Eric Sharakan]

On 23 Mar 2018, at 11:37, Benny Kjær Nielsen wrote:

> On 22 Mar 2018, at 14:35, Eric Sharakan wrote:
>
>> [due dates]
>
> Just for the record, I consider this the same feature as when asked 
> about postponing or snoozing messages. Some times [“tickler 
> (file)”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tickler_file) 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.

So I understand the concept of postponing messages, as I did at one time 
use a (now-defunct) iOS email client that did just that, but only for 
gmail.

But what I'm asking for goes a bit further than that.  I also want to be 
able to preview upcoming messages, not just wait until the day they're 
due for them to pop into view in some way.  MailTags allows for that, 
and even provides its own set of (somewhat configurable) smart mailboxes 
to see messages due today, soon, or further in the future.  In addition, 
the messages could be color-coded by how far in the future their due 
date was.

>
>> But perhaps it could be accomplished via specially formatted IMAP 
>> keywords that look acceptable to IMAP but can be parsed as dates by 
>> MM?
>
> 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).
>
> 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 *can* be done using 
> IMAP keywords, but it has to be smart about it. The following is how I 
> *think* 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 :)
>
> 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 
> `$MailFlagBit0`, `$MailFlagBit1` and `$MailFlagBit2` and the 
> “trick” is to use them as the bits of a number.

I didn't realize those were just named keywords; I actually thought 
there was an available bitfield they were utilizing.  To mimic Apple 
Mail's fags submenu, I had created a set of smart mailboxes named for 
the various colors Apple used, with the condition being the appropriate 
combination of those three keywords.  That is, until I learned about the 
flags>>color condition you had made available. :-)

>
> The same could be done using `$TicklerBit0`-`$TicklerBitX`, 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.

This seems like a reasonable approach.

>
> 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.

I believe this is part of how the now-defunct "Mailbox" iOS email client 
did its magic.

> 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.)
>
> 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.

FWIW, I'm not overly concerned with having a way to see messages with 
tickler dates attached in other email clients. :-)

-Eric

>
> Have a nice weekend :)
>
> -- 
> Benny


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