[MlMt] Message colouring AND sounds

[Pierre Igot]

An addition to my last post about using multiple smart mailboxes to colour inbox messages EITHER wholesale based on their account OR selectively based on other criteria:

Prior to this change, I also used the same inbox rules I had to colour messages (using the old hidden Styles.plist feature, since removed from MM) to PLAY DISTINCTIVE SOUNDS. In other words, if, for example, my rules determined that a specific message should be coloured sky blue, they also played a specific sound associated in my mind with that colour/category for incoming messages matching the conditions.

Now that colouring is done using smart mailboxes, is there a way to also play specific sounds for incoming messages that are assigned a specific colour by these smart mailboxes?

The answer is yes. Indeed, these smart mailboxes that are used to assign colours can also have THEIR OWN RULES. So I can add, for example, to the smart mailbox that, based on specific conditions, colours some of my inbox messages sky blue a RULE that says that, if the message is not read (which is true for all incoming messages when I am not reading them on another device), it should play a specific sound. Effectively, the conditions used to assign the colours can also be used to play sounds.

Prior to that, I was worried that I was going to have to continue to use inbox rules to play the sounds, and that these inbox rules would effectively have to exactly duplicate all the conditions defined for the smart mailboxes used to colour the messages. Now, with this discovery, I find that I no longer need inbox rules at all for this and that I don’t have to duplicate anything. I can just add a rule to play a sound, not to the inbox, but to the smart mailbox that colours the messages in a specific colour.

I am quite please with that, and I though I would share, in case there are other MM users that like having the redundant signaling provided by BOTH message colouring (permanent) and specific sounds (played once, when messages come in unread).

This helps me keep my e-life organized and I am delighted that I am able to still do all this with the latest version of MailMate. And I hope I can now look forward to many months or even years of not having to worry about these things breaking or becoming unsupported.

Pierre

On 9 Nov 2023, at 17:56, Pierre Igot wrote:

> Delighted to be able to answer my own question here, after some digging.
>
> While, as far as I can tell, there is no colouring hierarchy, there is a way to achieve what I want to achieve, i.e. to have a default colour for a specific email account AND a DIFFERENT colour for messages sent to that account that also meet specific criteria. The trick is to create a smart mailbox referring to other smart mailboxes.
>
> More specifically, if, say, I have a smart mailbox that colours all my shopping-related messages in sky blue based on various criteria (From addresses, To addresses, keywords, etc.) and I call this smart mailbox “Shop”, then I can create ANOTHER smart mailbox called “Personal” that includes the inbox for my personal email account but EXCLUDES messages in the inbox for my personal email account that happen to be in the “Shop” smart mailbox.
>
> This is done in the first pane in the definition for the “Personal” smart mailbox, which specifies the mailboxes that the smart box covers. In here, I include all messages in the inbox for my personal email account, but then I add a second condition that is actually a “None” handle that has a subcondition that specifies that the “Personal” smart mailbox cannot include messages from the “Shop” smart mailbox.
>
> And I can then assign a dark blue colour to that new “Personal” smart mailbox and its contents.
>
> So now ALL the messages in my personal account’s inbox are in dark blue, EXCEPT for the messages in that inbox that also meet the criteria defined for the “Shop” smart mailbox, which colours these messages in sky blue. Bingo! That’s exactly what I wanted.
>
> It’s a bit tedious to create all the additional smart mailboxes required here, especially if, like me, you have a fairly elaborate colouring scheme and quite a few different email accounts, but it’s something that only needs to be done once.
>
> BUT ALSO, as a bonus, to answer the OTHER question that I sent earlier today, I have found that I can create a general smart mailbox that includes all of the unified inbox with no conditions attached, leave that general smart mailbox at the root level under “Mailboxes”, and then drag and drop ALL THE OTHER smart mailboxes that I have just created for colouring purposes INSIDE that general smart mailbox, so that I can then close the disclosing triangle and hide them all from view, unless I do need to view them separately. I’ve decided to call that general smart mailbox at the root level under “Messages”… “Colours”. (Not very original, I know. But needs must.)
>
> So in the end, everything is neat and tidy, my messages are all coloured properly, AND the only visible sign that I am using an elaborate scheme to colour my messages is a single line under “Mailboxes” with a smart mailbox called “Colours”, under which all the other smart mailboxes involved in the scheme are hidden from view.
>
> Yey! And as far as I can tell there is no performance hit associated with using all these different smart mailboxes.
>
> Thanks to those who responded and guided me in the right direction here. I hope that what I explained above might be of some use to other people, especially those who have stayed behind with a version of MailMate that still supports the Styles.plist with colour definitions.
>
> And thanks to Benny for continuing to develop such a solid piece of software, even if he doesn’t always have the time to deal with individual requests from users like me who do not necessarily have an immediate grasp of all the features that he has designed and of the many different ways that they can be used. I understand that Benny’s time is limited and I hope that my experience here can be a source of inspiration for other MailMate users who aspire to exploit the software’s tremendous power to the fullest without necessarily having access to all the necessary documentation and explanations.
>
> Cheers.
>
> Pierre
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> One more question about message colouring using smart mailboxes in MailMate, and then I’ll try to keep quiet. (I checked the manual online, but obviously it hasn’t been updated recently and doesn’t contain anything about the new colouring features yet.)
>>
>> I would like to know if it is possible to have BOTH a default colour for all incoming messages for a given email account AND other colours applied to some of the messages for that given email account if they meet some specific criteria.
>>
>> Right now, I have a default colour for each of my email accounts, and I also have coloured smart mailboxes that apply colouring to incoming messages based on specific criteria that have nothing to do with which account the message belongs to. Unfortunately, it looks like the colour assigned to the email account SUPERSEDES the colour applied by the smart mailbox. Is there any way to get it to work the other way around, i.e. to get the colour applied by the smart mailbox to SUPERSEDE the colour assigned to the email account? In other words, is there some kind of colouring hierarchy?
>>
>> TIA
>>
>> Pierre
>>
>> PS: Sorry if I am not always using the exact terminology expected. I am just a user with fine-grained needs :).
>>
>
>

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