[MlMt] tags and email client

[Scott]

Hi,

> My understanding, as a non expert in mail clients’ subtleties, is that it is impossible to transfer tags (or smart mailboxes based on tags) from Mailmate to another client (except for a few IMAP keywords). Is it absolutely impossible, or is there a workaround?

In my experience, the issue isn't so much "transferring" from MailMate to another MUA, it's that other MUAs don't necessarily do tags the "right" way (IMAP keywords or flags) as MailMate does (with controversial definitions of what is Right and Wrong).

In other words, MailMate tells IMAP servers the right thing, and I've had no issues using:

* Mutt - CLI email with IMAP features
* Roundcube - Webmail UI that talks IMAP

To both work fine with "Tags" from MailMate.

In the latter case, I did have to install a Plugin from the RoundCube community, but, once I did, it worked as I needed.

Pragmatically, how different email clients deal with tagging of messages seems all over the place.

Most rely upon a private index/database kept on a local device, with only minimal server-side compatibility.

There was a pretty advanced looking Mail.app plugin for doing tags and I tried to convince them they should use IMAP to store tag state, to make it work between devices better, but, nope, they weren't interested (MailTags from SmallCubed) at the time.

There have been attempts over the years to get email applications like Thunderbird to support IMAP keywords, but, last I checked (a year or so), that did not work as one would hope.

Personally, I am VERY happy with how MailMate does it, but, from time to time I have to use other email applications for various reasons, and I sorely wish that they supported server-side IMAP keywords/flags the way MM does.

Scott