[MlMt] Links to email messages

[Benny Kjær Nielsen]

On 31 Jan 2019, at 16:37, John Cooper wrote:

> Florian Heidenreich wrote (at 2:23 on 31 Jan 2019):
>
>> I’m often keeping track of specific conversations by creating a 
>> link to a specific email in another program by dragging the email to 
>> this program.
>
> This is meant as a general question, and not something for Florian 
> alone to answer: would you describe a situation in which you use this 
> kind of link?

I use them like Florian. I like plain text files and links are an easy 
way to reference emails. Essentially, I use them just like I use links 
to web resources.

> As it happens, in thirty years of using email, I've never used this 
> particular function, and I'm wondering about its possibilities.

Everyone uses web links and usually we would never consider copying the 
information on a web page. We just use the link (even when we know that 
it could disappear some day). Email links is the same idea and they are 
based on the `Message-ID` within the emails. This is pretty robust (it's 
independent of the actual location of the email on the server or on the 
disk). The only problem is that the `message:` URL scheme is not really 
a standard. I chose it because it works with Apple Mail which means that 
these links should continue to work if switching from MailMate to Apple 
Mail.

There's also the more general `file://` URL scheme which can be used to 
reference any file on your system, but I rarely use that myself (in my 
plain text notes), because they are not robust with respect to moving 
them.

> There would seem to be certain limitations. For example, you wouldn't 
> share this link with anyone else, because they wouldn't be able to 
> resolve it. The target message would also have to be retained on the 
> local system somewhere, right? Would the link continue to work even if 
> the message is in the Trash folder?

The link works as long as the email exists in MailMate (or Apple Mail if 
MailMate is not the default email client). This also means that the link 
works if you send it to someone using MailMate or Apple Mail with the 
same email in their message store.

Coincidentally, I was recently introduced to a utility which offers to 
make more/all types of resources “linkable”. Essentially you can 
take any document/page in any application and link it to any other 
document/page and/or create a link referencing it (including making a 
Markdown link). It's kind of like creating your own private internet/web 
of resources. The idea is that if you, for example, view an email in 
MailMate then you can quickly see if you have any other resources linked 
to it (web-pages, support ticket, github issue, etc.) -- and vice versa. 
It has not quite become part of my workflow yet, but I like the concept. 
Its name is “Hook” and there is a public beta available 
[here](https://hookproductivity.com) if anyone is interested.

-- 
Benny
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