Allow for arbitrary labels (and recognize existing)

[GoogleCodeExporter]

In Thunderbird it is possible to define custom tags, and these appear to be 
stored as IMAP Keywords (http://kb.mozillazine.org/Tags#IMAP) on IMAP servers.

Feature request:

It would be very nice if this plugin was extended so that it:

1. would allow arbitrary labels based on existing keywords found for mails, and

2. have the option of defining new labels as well, and

3. would display the label name(s), either in their own column in the mail 
overview, and/or prepended the subject text (like GMail does)

Original issue reported on code.google.com by [email protected] on 14 Sep 2014 at 7:48

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Hi,

We also have the same demands mentions point 1 and 2.

Regarding 3: the situation ATM is, that as soon as there is more than one tag 
set the colored dot's cover the subject (1024x768). So an extra column would be 
nice, true.

4. the coloration of the whole mail is nice, but when you have more tags there 
seems to be no way to see those other tags as the mail will only have the 
colour of the most recently added label and the tabs which are there in the 
bullets-list don't show up in the message window any more. I think it makes 
sense to have those tabs shown in both settings.

5. when using colours instead of bullets and you have more than one tag set, 
the message should have the colour of the lowest tag in the list, not of the 
label most recently added

6. manual sorting of tags like done in TB with the "Tag Sequence Arranger" 
extension would be very handy especially with point 5.

Regarding the modification of the subject (as the default or instead of having 
their own column) I think it's not a good idea. Mail software should not modify 
the subject light-hearted. On the other hand - adding headers is fine (which is 
not important for us though).

Thanks for the good work. It already helps getting my work and life planned 
better.

Tom

Original comment by [email protected] on 30 Nov 2014 at 9:35

[helmo]

See https://github.com/Oygron/message_label for a plugin that does allow arbitrary labels.

It seems to lack maintenance... but could be useful as inspiration.

[TomFernandes]

We use the custom labels in Thunderbird a lot to easily organise mails with colleagues in shared folders. We also mostly use the custom lables. It really helps. I'd love to see this feature in a consistent way available as plugins in the common MUAs like TB, Roundcube and K9 and Outlook one day.

[m0rphU]

I +1 this request, because this is exactly how I use Thunderbird Labels as well. In fact, I almost never use the pre-definded labels 1-5 but at least 10 additional labels with custom names and colors.

I do not need automatic recognition of existing labels (allthough the newest version seems to already provide this in "bullets" mode). Even the coloring is not necessary. It would be sufficient for me to be able to add more than 5 labels :)

Essentially, I would like to see the functionality of https://github.com/g0dsCookie/imap_labels in here. Has anyone ever looked into this? Can the code base be extended for arbitrary labels?

[martinellimarco]

I've looked into the code and it's possible to add something like this in config.inc.php to override or add new labels.

  $rcmail_config['tb_label_custom_labels'] = [
    'LABEL1'=>'Custom Label 1', // 1 to 5 are predefined labels, overwritten
    'LABEL2'=>'Custom Label 2',
    'LABEL3'=>'Custom Label 3',
    'LABEL4'=>'Custom Label 4',
    'LABEL5'=>'Custom Label 5', 
    'LABEL6'=>'Custom Label 6', // 6 and 7 are custom labels
    'LABEL7'=>'Custom Label 7',
  ];

You can't set the colors here, but you can set them in tb_label.js coffeescript/css.coffee and then run coffee2js.sh to regenerate tb_label.js.

One thing I can't change is the color in the dropdown menu, but the bullets are working fine.