Re: [MlMt] Getting started with MailMate
On 24 Nov 2020, at 3:24, Andrew Buc wrote: On Nov 23, 2020, at 12:19 AM, Martin S Taylor wrote: • How much disk space does your current email library take up? Good question—how do I find out? As I said earlier, I want to bring only a subset of my legacy emails into MailMate. I tried selecting various mailboxes in Apple Mail and hitting cmd-I, but that didn’t get me mailbox sizes. In your Home Folder, look in Library>Mail and see how big that folder is. • How much disk space do you have free? 190GB. That should be enough. • How fast is your internet connection? Pretty slow: 1.5MB down. Looking into going with an ISP that will be faster, but for now, that’s where it’s at. Assuming you mean 1.5Mb/s (ie. Megabits per second) that's terrible. I'm surprised arranging your email is a higher priority that getting a faster internet connection, but only you know how you organise your life! Where do you live? I assume that when I first copy mail from my Apple Mail POP3 account to FastMail IMAP, it’ll take a while. Might be a good time to take a walk. At 1.5Mb/s it might be a very long walk, depending on how much mail you have. • Are you happy to pay FastMail $54 a year to maintain a big email server? For now, yes. Okay, that helps. The first stage is to set Apple Mail so that it can see your FastMail IMAP account. If you feel confident doing this, then by all means go ahead. There's a guide at https://www.fastmail.com/help/clients/mac.html but I found it confusing. I haven't got time to help you at the moment, but I'll hold your hand through the process in a week or so if you need help. It's best not to do this on the forum, so email me directly at mailmate at martinstaylor dot com MST ___ mailmate mailing list mailmate@lists.freron.com https://lists.freron.com/listinfo/mailmate
Re: [MlMt] Getting started with MailMate
> On Nov 23, 2020, at 12:19 AM, Martin S Taylor > wrote: > > > • How much disk space does your current email library take up? Good question—how do I find out? As I said earlier, I want to bring only a subset of my legacy emails into MailMate. I tried selecting various mailboxes in Apple Mail and hitting cmd-I, but that didn’t get me mailbox sizes. > > • How much disk space do you have free? 190GB. > > • How fast is your internet connection? Pretty slow: 1.5MB down. Looking into going with an ISP that will be faster, but for now, that’s where it’s at. I assume that when I first copy mail from my Apple Mail POP3 account to FastMail IMAP, it’ll take a while. Might be a good time to take a walk. > > • Are you happy to pay FastMail $54 a year to maintain a big email > server? For now, yes. > > • Would you understand how to set up your own IMAP server? (The default > answer to this is 'No’.) Not in the least, and I question whether I’d want to do it even if I could. Thank you. ___ mailmate mailing list mailmate@lists.freron.com https://lists.freron.com/listinfo/mailmate
Re: [MlMt] Getting started with MailMate
Hi Andrew: On 22 Nov 2020, at 23:51, Andrew Buc wrote: On Nov 22, 2020, at 3:40 PM, Glenn Parker wrote: Transferring old emails into an IMAP server may not not the best approach. You can still access any local folders via your AppleMail, or you might transition to a mail archiving utility for old messages, e.g. MailSteward. I want to bring some of my legacy emails (mainly years- or decades-long correspondence with friends) into MailMate so I can use MailMate’s search functionality on them. Everyone seems to be trying to second-guess your set-up. It's probably easiest if you tell us what your system is, and then we can advise you. 1. How much disk space does your current email library take up? 2. How much disk space do you have free? 3. How fast is your internet connection? 4. Are you happy to pay FastMail $54 a year to maintain a big email server? 5. Would you understand how to set up your own IMAP server? (The default answer to this is 'No'.) Answer these, and it will be much easier for us to help you! Martin___ mailmate mailing list mailmate@lists.freron.com https://lists.freron.com/listinfo/mailmate
Re: [MlMt] Getting started with MailMate
On 22 Nov 2020, at 18:51, Andrew Buc wrote: On Nov 22, 2020, at 3:40 PM, Glenn Parker wrote: Transferring old emails into an IMAP server may not not the best approach. You can still access any local folders via your AppleMail, or you might transition to a mail archiving utility for old messages, e.g. MailSteward. I want to bring some of my legacy emails (mainly years- or decades-long correspondence with friends) into MailMate so I can use MailMate’s search functionality on them. If you have good enough upload bandwidth, add the IMAP server to Apple Mail and move your POP mail folders from your old account to the new IMAP account. If you're short on disk space for email, at this point delete the account from Apple Mail. When you point MailMate at the new IMAP server, it will pick up the folder structure and all of the mails. When you're happy with that, delete the Apple Mail account if you haven't already done so, to free up the space used by those duplicate messages. --Steve Bellovin, https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb ___ mailmate mailing list mailmate@lists.freron.com https://lists.freron.com/listinfo/mailmate
Re: [MlMt] Getting started with MailMate
On 22 Nov 2020, at 15:46, Andrew Buc wrote: I think I’ll need to upgrade from my current 2GB plan to the 30GB plan. I noodled around with MailMate a few years ago, and ISTR that there was an option to import my entire Apple Mail database into MailMate, although I didn’t actually do it. I take it that that doesn’t address the issue you mention above, even if the database can be imported? Transferring old emails into an IMAP server may not not the best approach. You can still access any local folders via your AppleMail, or you might transition to a mail archiving utility for old messages, e.g. [MailSteward](https://mailsteward.com/). When you've ascertained that, you'll have to transfer all your Apple Mail folders which are stored 'On My Mac' onto the IMAP server at FastMail. You can do this by setting up Apple Mail so that it can access the IMAP server at FastMail, and then just dragging the folders from 'On My Mac' to FastMail. I assume this would be a separate account in Apple Mail? As I said earlier, I don’t want to ditch the POP3 mailbox until things are squared away with MailMate. The primary difference between POP3 and IMAP is moving versus copying. With POP3, the goal is to *move* messages from the POP3 server to your mail client. The main job of a POP3 server is to hold onto messages only until you have retrieved them. POP3 servers want to forget about your emails once you have retrieved them. Thus, managing email with POP3 is mostly a matter of managing the local storage used for your email files. Now, I know some folks may have already hit Reply to correct me, and there are indeed some tweaks that can extend the features of POP3, but POP3 was designed when servers didn’t have petabytes of storage to spare. IMAP was designed for a new era of internet servers with far more storage, and for a more distributed usage model with multiple access points to your email. With IMAP, the job of the server is to make it easy to maintain a synchronized *copy* of all your email. The server keeps every email you send and receive until you delete it. If your computer catches fire, all your emails will still be there on the IMAP server. You can set up another IMAP client and you’ll be back in business after it synchronizes. IMAP really shines when using multiple clients for the same account. I routinely use 4 IMAP clients (phone, tablet, laptop, desktop) all pointing at the same IMAP account. When I mark a message as read on one device, or re-folder, or delete a message, all the other clients reflect the same changes automatically. Managing email with IMAP is a bit more complicated because you are not in charge of the physical storage. You have a server-side quota, and you must decide how much email history you want to provide for your IMAP client(s). Right now I have four years worth of email using 4.8 GB out of a 10 GB quota. That has involved a certain amount of judicious pruning for very large emails, but I could easily manage another year or two before I start worrying about trimming old email. At that rate, a 2 GB quota would be more than adequate for a little over one year’s worth of email for me, but upgrading to 30 GB would be overkill (even though every year’s email archive is at least 30% bigger than the prior year). Glenn P. Parker glenn.par...@comcast.net ___ mailmate mailing list mailmate@lists.freron.com https://lists.freron.com/listinfo/mailmate
Re: [MlMt] Getting started with MailMate
On 22 Nov 2020, at 15:46, Andrew Buc wrote: Thanks for your response. The fact that we both use Fastmail puts us on the same page. On Nov 22, 2020, at 11:05 AM, Martin S Taylor wrote: The snag you're likely to hit is that MailMate doesn't support mailboxes held 'On My Mac' as Apple Mail names it. It can only access mailboxes held on an IMAP server such as FastMail. The FastMail server will have a fair amount of space set aside for you: the exact amount depends on which scheme you pay for. However, if you have masses of old mail archived 'On My Mac', you should check that there's room on the FastMail server. I think I’ll need to upgrade from my current 2GB plan to the 30GB plan. I noodled around with MailMate a few years ago, and ISTR that there was an option to import my entire Apple Mail database into MailMate, although I didn’t actually do it. I take it that that doesn’t address the issue you mention above, even if the database can be imported? Right. The imported mail has to be stored in an IMAP account. Some people set up a local IMAP server for this (Dovecot being the simplest choice of software.) It is also possible to import mail into a fake never-online account, as long as you're willing to accept that it will be an essentially static archive. Because MM considers the online (server) version of an account's mail to be the authoritative truth, any changes you try to make to the contents of mail imported into a fake account will actually be pending until you (never) connect to the (non-existent) server. What I did is a variation on the import into a fake account. I used Emailchemy (https://weirdkid.com/emailchemy/) to bring ~20 years worth of Eudora mail in to MM by using its limited IMAP server functionality. That's less justifiable with Apple Mail (which is less arcane about its stored mail than Eudora was) so it is probably not worth the $30 license cost. -- Bill Cole b...@scconsult.com or billc...@apache.org (AKA @grumpybozo and many *@billmail.scconsult.com addresses) Not Currently Available For Hire ___ mailmate mailing list mailmate@lists.freron.com https://lists.freron.com/listinfo/mailmate
Re: [MlMt] Getting started with MailMate
Thanks for your response. The fact that we both use Fastmail puts us on the same page. > On Nov 22, 2020, at 11:05 AM, Martin S Taylor > wrote: > > The snag you're likely to hit is that MailMate doesn't support mailboxes held > 'On My Mac' as Apple Mail names it. It can only access mailboxes held on an > IMAP server such as FastMail. The FastMail server will have a fair amount of > space set aside for you: the exact amount depends on which scheme you pay > for. However, if you have masses of old mail archived 'On My Mac', you should > check that there's room on the FastMail server. I think I’ll need to upgrade from my current 2GB plan to the 30GB plan. I noodled around with MailMate a few years ago, and ISTR that there was an option to import my entire Apple Mail database into MailMate, although I didn’t actually do it. I take it that that doesn’t address the issue you mention above, even if the database can be imported? > > When you've ascertained that, you'll have to transfer all your Apple Mail > folders which are stored 'On My Mac' onto the IMAP server at FastMail. You > can do this by setting up Apple Mail so that it can access the IMAP server at > FastMail, and then just dragging the folders from 'On My Mac' to FastMail. I assume this would be a separate account in Apple Mail? As I said earlier, I don’t want to ditch the POP3 mailbox until things are squared away with MailMate. > > > Does that make sense? It's hard to judge your level of expertise from one > posting, so shoot back with any questions. My level of expertise is pretty low. ___ mailmate mailing list mailmate@lists.freron.com https://lists.freron.com/listinfo/mailmate
Re: [MlMt] Getting started with MailMate
Andrew: You're taking exactly the route I took about a month ago. MailMate has some quirks that take a bit of getting used to, but I certainly prefer it to Apple Mail, and used in conjunction with FastMail it works well. And ditching POP3 is an excellent plan! The snag you're likely to hit is that MailMate doesn't support mailboxes held 'On My Mac' as Apple Mail names it. It can only access mailboxes held on an IMAP server such as FastMail. The FastMail server will have a fair amount of space set aside for you: the exact amount depends on which scheme you pay for. However, if you have masses of old mail archived 'On My Mac', you should check that there's room on the FastMail server. When you've ascertained that, you'll have to transfer all your Apple Mail folders which are stored 'On My Mac' onto the IMAP server at FastMail. You can do this by setting up Apple Mail so that it can access the IMAP server at FastMail, and then just dragging the folders from 'On My Mac' to FastMail. When you've done this, you'll be able to see them using MailMate. Does that make sense? It's hard to judge your level of expertise from one posting, so shoot back with any questions. Martin On 22 Nov 2020, at 18:42, Andrew Buc wrote: Although MailMate doesn’t work with my current POP3 mailbox, I bought a license a few years ago to support development of MailMate. Now I’m close to being ready to start using it, and I’m asking for pointers. I’ve never used an IMAP mail client before. I’m currently using Apple Mail. A bit of back story: I have my own domain, as you might guess from my address. I have the domain registrar forward all incoming mail to the POP3 mailbox (at my ISP) and to a webmail account I have at fastmail.fm. The webmail account is IMAP, but I’ve been accessing it only through a web browser. The plan is to access the webmail account with MailMate and have it become my primary email. Once this is accomplished, I’ll have my domain registrar forward emails only to the webmail address. I have a comprehensive set of folders (and rules to put mail in them) in Apple Mail. I have only the minimum folders in the webmail account—inbox, sent, trash, drafts, archive. I assume that as I get to work duplicating my current Apple Mail folder structure in MailMate, the corresponding folders will be created in the webmail account. As a starting point, I want to import certain mailboxes from Apple Mail into MailMate, but not all of them. I plan to leave my legacy Apple Mail database in place. I could theoretically import my entire Apple Mail database into MailMate and then delete the mailboxes I don’t want, but is that the best approach? I’ll probably have more questions as I move along with this. Thank you. ___ mailmate mailing list mailmate@lists.freron.com https://lists.freron.com/listinfo/mailmate ___ mailmate mailing list mailmate@lists.freron.com https://lists.freron.com/listinfo/mailmate
[MlMt] Getting started with MailMate
Although MailMate doesn’t work with my current POP3 mailbox, I bought a license a few years ago to support development of MailMate. Now I’m close to being ready to start using it, and I’m asking for pointers. I’ve never used an IMAP mail client before. I’m currently using Apple Mail. A bit of back story: I have my own domain, as you might guess from my address. I have the domain registrar forward all incoming mail to the POP3 mailbox (at my ISP) and to a webmail account I have at fastmail.fm. The webmail account is IMAP, but I’ve been accessing it only through a web browser. The plan is to access the webmail account with MailMate and have it become my primary email. Once this is accomplished, I’ll have my domain registrar forward emails only to the webmail address. I have a comprehensive set of folders (and rules to put mail in them) in Apple Mail. I have only the minimum folders in the webmail account—inbox, sent, trash, drafts, archive. I assume that as I get to work duplicating my current Apple Mail folder structure in MailMate, the corresponding folders will be created in the webmail account. As a starting point, I want to import certain mailboxes from Apple Mail into MailMate, but not all of them. I plan to leave my legacy Apple Mail database in place. I could theoretically import my entire Apple Mail database into MailMate and then delete the mailboxes I don’t want, but is that the best approach? I’ll probably have more questions as I move along with this. Thank you. ___ mailmate mailing list mailmate@lists.freron.com https://lists.freron.com/listinfo/mailmate
Re: [MlMt] Getting started with MailMate
On 6 Dec 2016, at 14:19, Matt wrote:
Thanks for considering MailMate (and for the extensive use of Markdown).
I'll do my best to answer your questions.
# Sending email
1. **Automatic switching of SMTP server when sender changes.** I have
one email account that receives emails for 3 different domains. You
discussed this
[here](https://lists.freron.com/mailmate/2016-January/005366.html) on
the mailing list, but I wasn't subscribed then so I can't reply.
I have a separate SMTP login (via [Mailgun](http://www.mailgun.com))
for each of my domains in order to get DKIM and SPF correct. In
MailMate, SMTP servers don't automatically update when I switch
sending identities if they are part of the same IMAP account. This is
a huge problem given how often I context switch between
domains/identities/SMTP servers. Is there a way to do this, or a
workaround (even if hacky)? This is my #1 blocker to switching to
MailMate from Postbox or Google Inbox in a browser.
You found the correct mailing list message with respect to what is
currently possible. There's also [this
ticket](https://freron.lighthouseapp.com/projects/58672/tickets/220)
which is still open, because there is no way to do what you ask for. I
indicate that it's possible to specify more SMTP accounts and I think
that works, but they would not be automatically selected for various
email addresses.
Since you don't mind a low-level (hacky) solution then I might look into
getting at least that part to work.
# Sub-mailbox behavior
2. **Multi-level sub mailboxes.** I'd like to be able to have a tree
of sub-mailboxes. Ideally, this would be as easy as putting a "/" in
the "Mailbox name format". For example, INBOX/tag/recipient/sender
could be:
`${##tags.tag.#name}/${#recipient.#identity}/${from.#correspondent.address}`
That's not possible and I'm afraid it's not something I can quickly
implement.
3. **Selective display of tags.** I'd like to be able to create a
smart mailbox that only shows tags that contain (or don't contain) a
given string. I can already figure out how to filter by emails that
have tags containing a string, but the sub-mailboxes show all tags for
those emails, not just the tags that were filtered on.
* I want to use this to artificially and creatively mimic features
that MailMate doesn't have. For example: follow-up dates, priority
levels, who a task has been assigned to, etc.
Also a tricky one. I guess it might be possible using a custom
specifier. The default one for tags is like this:
tags = {
headers = ( "##tags" );
specifierRegex = '(\S+)';
specifierCaptures = {
1 = { specifier = "tag"; parsers = ( "tag"); /*alwaysImplicit =
:true;*/ };
};
multiValue = :true;
};
The regex controls how the IMAP keywords string is split into separate
IMAP keywords. This could be altered to skip those of them which are not
of interest. And then name the specifier, e.g., `project`. I haven't
tried it though. As a starting point take the above and replace `tag`
with `project` everywhere except for `##tags`. Some inspiration can be
found
[here](https://www.mail-archive.com/mailmate%40lists.freron.com/msg02220.html).
4. **Sub-mailbox de-duping.** It seems that sub-mailboxes don't
de-dupe/merge when they have the same name. This is unexpected
behavior.
The partitioning is based on the primary setting for submailboxes:
“Submailbox for each unique value of ...”. The name format is just
for prettifying.
For example, I have multiple ExampleService accounts (registered to
"`xyz.exampleservi...@example.com`",
"`abc.exampleserv...@example.com`", etc.) and I use a filter like
(below) which I was hoping would merge them. Instead, I end up with
many sub-mailboxes named "exampleservice".
Filter I'm using:
`${#recipient.#identity.user/.+\.(example1|exampleservice|example2)$/$1/}`
You might be able to do it using a custom specifier instead such that
the partitioning itself is as expected.
# Feature requests (not blockers, but would be beneficial):
5. **Some way to snooze an email, a sub-mailbox, or a tag.** In other
words, to temporarily hide display but automatically bring it back
later. I realize doing this system-wide (All Messages) would be kludgy
and violate some of the spirit of MailMate. However, if I could
somehow make it happen for a sub-mailbox **that would be
game-changing. I would pay 2-4x the usual MailMate software license
cost if it had this functionality.** I am imagining the sort of "view
every morning at 7am" or "snooze until tomorrow" functionality that
Google Inbox provides for a "bundle." (Which I actually use to
auto-assign Gmail labels which connect to tags in MailMate)
I'm not getting what this would do: "view every morning at 7am"
The usual request is some way to snooze an email in a way such that it
is moved away from, e.g., the Inbox and then later
[MlMt] Getting started with MailMate
Hi Benny!
I'm considering purchasing a number of MailMate licenses for myself and
a few colleagues that deal with high volumes of email. I've spent the
last 30 days diving in headfirst and seeing if it would help me manage
our onslaught of email. It's got a number of big advantages, especially
its power with regexes, but a few features are missing that are
important for our workflow. I was wondering if you had any thoughts on
whether: there are workarounds, I'm missing something obvious, or
if/when you will implement this functionality.
# Sending email
1. **Automatic switching of SMTP server when sender changes.** I have
one email account that receives emails for 3 different domains. You
discussed this
[here](https://lists.freron.com/mailmate/2016-January/005366.html) on
the mailing list, but I wasn't subscribed then so I can't reply.
I have a separate SMTP login (via [Mailgun](http://www.mailgun.com)) for
each of my domains in order to get DKIM and SPF correct. In MailMate,
SMTP servers don't automatically update when I switch sending identities
if they are part of the same IMAP account. This is a huge problem given
how often I context switch between domains/identities/SMTP servers. Is
there a way to do this, or a workaround (even if hacky)? This is my #1
blocker to switching to MailMate from Postbox or Google Inbox in a
browser.
# Sub-mailbox behavior
2. **Multi-level sub mailboxes.** I'd like to be able to have a tree of
sub-mailboxes. Ideally, this would be as easy as putting a "/" in the
"Mailbox name format". For example, INBOX/tag/recipient/sender could be:
`${##tags.tag.#name}/${#recipient.#identity}/${from.#correspondent.address}`
3. **Selective display of tags.** I'd like to be able to create a smart
mailbox that only shows tags that contain (or don't contain) a given
string. I can already figure out how to filter by emails that have tags
containing a string, but the sub-mailboxes show all tags for those
emails, not just the tags that were filtered on.
* I want to use this to artificially and creatively mimic features
that MailMate doesn't have. For example: follow-up dates, priority
levels, who a task has been assigned to, etc.
4. **Sub-mailbox de-duping.** It seems that sub-mailboxes don't
de-dupe/merge when they have the same name. This is unexpected behavior.
For example, I have multiple ExampleService accounts (registered to
"`xyz.exampleservi...@example.com`", "`abc.exampleserv...@example.com`",
etc.) and I use a filter like (below) which I was hoping would merge
them. Instead, I end up with many sub-mailboxes named "exampleservice".
Filter I'm using:
`${#recipient.#identity.user/.+\.(example1|exampleservice|example2)$/$1/}`
# Feature requests (not blockers, but would be beneficial):
5. **Some way to snooze an email, a sub-mailbox, or a tag.** In other
words, to temporarily hide display but automatically bring it back
later. I realize doing this system-wide (All Messages) would be kludgy
and violate some of the spirit of MailMate. However, if I could somehow
make it happen for a sub-mailbox **that would be game-changing. I would
pay 2-4x the usual MailMate software license cost if it had this
functionality.** I am imagining the sort of "view every morning at 7am"
or "snooze until tomorrow" functionality that Google Inbox provides for
a "bundle." (Which I actually use to auto-assign Gmail labels which
connect to tags in MailMate)
6. **Follow-up dates.** I want to be able to flag an email with a
follow-up date. This could be a tag or something else entirely. This
way, I can have a smart mailbox that shows me emails by month or year.
If you implemented the selective display of tags feature above, this
could be hacked together by with a smart mailbox.
7. **Count of submailboxes.** "Displayed Count" currently has options
for "All", "Unread", "Flagged", "Unreplied", and "Recent". It would be
nice to have one additional option: "# of Submailboxes". For example, I
have a "Tasks" smart mailbox that shows anything with tags that contain
"Task_". It then shows submailboxes for each task by using mailbox name
format `${##tags.tag.#name/Task_/_/}`. I'd like to have a count on that
smart mailbox that shows how many tasks remain, rather than how many
emails are assigned to a task bucket.
The combination of sub-mailbox counts, multi-level sub-mailboxes,
selective display of tags, sub-mailbox deduping, and snoozes would
create an incredibly customizable, flexible, and powerful mail
management system. I can think of dozens of use cases that would be
served.
# Ideas:
8. **Mailbox structure exposé on your website, along with UI export and
import.** This isn't really necessary for us, per se, but it would be
awesome. The idea would be to have a user-contributed directory on your
website of mailbox structures along with some Reddit-esque up-voting and
commenting functionality. For example, it would be awesome to see your
