Ancestors

Toot

Written by David Schuetz on 2024-10-17 at 16:51

Just verifying: There are no established email clients out there that let you use an IMAP server with “normal" folder structures, and also some kind of tagging system separate from folders, but available on multiple systems?

Looks like Postbox (built on Thunderbird) sorta does it, but all the tagging information is stored out-of-band (not on the server), and obviously web clients won't handle it.

It doesn't seem like there's any server-side support for tagging other than how Google does it, in lieu of folders (that is, you either get folders, or tags, but not both). Fastmail seems to do the same thing, likely the same way (so some clients built for Gmail might work with Fastmail. maybe.)

I just wanted to be sure that there isn't something magical and widely supported out there that I've missed, or if other web providers support even the current "standard” (I'm trying to avoid moving to Google).

(RT for reach? Thanks.)

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Descendants

Written by Dan Wing :unverified: on 2024-10-17 at 18:32

@darthnull Overall, it seems unlikely.

Apple uses IMAP's keywords to set colors on messages which works across clients that understand it (read: Apple clients), see http://www.emaildiscussions.com/showthread.php?t=71034 and https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32851152/how-to-read-apple-mail-custom-imap-flags-with-php.

Also see https://www.iana.org/assignments/imap-jmap-keywords/imap-jmap-keywords.xhtml for the short list of IANA-registered keywords and https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5788.html

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Written by David Schuetz on 2024-10-17 at 18:48

@danwing Keywords? Interesting! Oh. I see.

I've pretty much already figured out the status quo, and how ... unhelpful…it is. I'd hoped maybe I was just...dunno, using the wrong terminology or something, and there was a solution hiding somewhere. Seems like not.

sigh. You'd think after…decades…we'd have something better? The easy answer is just to blame Google and gmail. (probably the correct answer, too).

Thanks, though -- interesting reading! (and a vaguely amusing hack for the 7 colors…)

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Written by Bernard Quatermass on 2024-10-17 at 20:49

@darthnull @danwing And for completeness there's a brand new draft doc for more, https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-jenkins-mail-keywords-00.html

But the problem as it intersects your requirement is one of applicability.

The IMAP keyword mechanism is for functional tagging. The keywords have consistent meaning as defined in their relevant standards.

What you've described as a requirement is an account-based content/logical tagging mechanism. Inter-op registration/discovery would be a nightmare to get through standards adoption, and then there's still the matter of anybody implementing it. Not to say that's it's not desirable but the inertia on older protocols is huge (I have scars and my newest proposal is being held back until the current SMTP “this decade it's complete" draft gets its carcass pushed over the line).

Until then, best bet might be some agreed header that can be fiddled with so clients can filter accordingly.

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Written by David Schuetz on 2024-10-17 at 21:16

@QuatermassTools @danwing Oh, yeah, the content couldn’t be standardized. They’d all have to be arbitrary and account centric.

Interesting reading at least. :)

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