mjl- / mox

modern full-featured open source secure mail server for low-maintenance self-hosted email
https://www.xmox.nl
MIT License
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Manage the labels/tags #216

Open ally9335 opened 2 months ago

ally9335 commented 2 months ago

Firstly, is it labels or tags? Let's say, tags.

mjl- commented 2 months ago

They are in IMAP, where they are called flags. There are predefined flags (\Seen or $Junk etc), and the rest is essentially free-form (not starting with \ or $). Mail clients (mail user-agents) typically call the concept labels or tags, and they will set them using IMAP. Thunderbird does not display free-form flags unless you first define them in Thunderbird. In Thunderbird, you can give a label/tag a color and probably a different text, but those properties are custom per application, IMAP has no mechanism (that I know of) for storing/sharing them.

The mox webmail shows all non-predefined flags. Also those set by Thunderbird, with the original text as used by Thunderbird. You can toggle (add/remove) tags/labels on a message in the mox webmail (the list shown is taken from all known tags/labels used on the mailbox, mox keeps track of them per mailbox). You can also set a label with a new value that doesn't exist yet. See screenshot.

image

In webmail, whilst adding a new tag is possible, there's no way to rename or delete it. Right? Not yet?

That may depend on what you want to achieve. For individual messages you can remove a tag/label. Renaming would be adding a new tag and removing the old one. But perhaps you're hoping to also (re)define tags/labels in the mox webmail, where an IMAP-level flag is shown with a different text (eg "$label1" becomes "todo") and a color. Then a rename wouldn't change anything at the IMAP level, but just redefine the tag/label in the mail application (a change you would have to make in all connected mail clients). This would be a useful addition to the webmail. I think Thunderbird has the (rather unhelpful) habit of choosing IMAP flag names for tags, like $label1.

If an IMAP flag was previously used in a mailbox but not anymore, the label is still shown in the mox webmail. I don't think it's currently possible to get rid of such a flag.

Summary: mox webmail currently only works with IMAP flags, and doesn't yet have a higher-level way to (re)define tags/labels, but such functionality would be useful.

ally9335 commented 1 month ago

I see, thanks