Support for Zimbra tags

Well, in theory you should be able to go to the Tags preferences pane in MailMate and bind a tag named, e.g., “MyTag” to the IMAP keyword \MyTag1:FLAG661007. The IMAP keyword is a bit unusual, but maybe Zimbra needs them to be globally unique or something like that.

(I didn't know Zimbra could do this and I don't know if any MailMate users utilize it.)

Good point. I'll give tag binding a try!

I managed to bind the IMAP keywords.

One question (or issue) remains: If I tag a message, Mailmate won't sync back the tags to Zimbra. I couldn't really figure out a reproduction path, but what I can observe is that Mailmate (or Zimbra) messes up with the "\" before the IMAP keyword. I think Zimbra doesn't set them while Mailmate (correctly) sets them. This way you'll end up with something like "\Recent \Seen MyTag1 \MyTag1". Does my explanation make sense?

Hmm, I'm not sure about that explanation. You can try this:

• Open the Activity Viewer (⌥⌘0).
• Set a tag server side and wait for it to sync with MailMate.
• Set a tag in MailMate and wait for it to sync with Zimbra (or not sync).
• Use “Help ▸ Send Server Logs”.

Then I can see if there's anything suspicious in the logs.

The interesting part is that my flag "URGENT" works without any issue, while my other flags like "DESIGN" don't, for no apparent reason. I just sent you my server log via e-mail.

I can confirm that URGENT seems fine in your logs, but I don't see any attempts to set any other keywords. (Note that logging is only enabled while the Activity Viewer is open.)

Maybe try another set of logs where you try more actions. Also try taking the account offline/online while logging since this'll allow me to see what the server tells MailMate about what is possible (what kind of flags are allowed).

Sure, I just sent you another log.

Thanks. I can only see that you tried to disable the DESIGN tag from MailMate, but I can also see some interesting things about TECHNEWS.

It appears that the server tells MailMate that the following keywords are allowed:

S: * FLAGS (\Answered \Deleted \Draft \Flagged \Seen $Forwarded $MDNSent Forwarded $Junk $NotJunk Junk JunkRecorded NonJunk NotJunk DESIGN TECHNEWS)

This line also tells MailMate that it cannot create any new keywords. This indicates that new tags can only be created server-side. It's also possible that MailMate might not always pick up changes to the set of allowed keywords since this is not a common scenario.

If you create, e.g., TECHNEWS server side, are you then still unable to use MailMate to set this tag on a message (in the same mailbox)?

Now it's getting interesting! Yes, if I've set TECHNEWS server-side beforehand, I'm then able to set this tag on a message within Mailmate and it syncs its state properly with the server.

I'd love if we could investigate one step deeper. We narrowed down the situation to the following problem:

Even if the tags are created on the server, I need to set the tag of an e-mail on the server-side first to allow it to be removed/ re-added client-side in Mailmate. I could imagine that URGENT works without issues because it already exists as a standard tag. But any other, custom tag (like DESIGN or TECHNEWS) generates the aforementioned issue.

You can try the following manually in a Terminal window:

telnet zimbra.webstyle.ch 143

Then login:

0 LOGIN username password

Then select a mailbox:

0 SELECT INBOX

List its messages:

0 FETCH 1:* (UID FLAGS)

Finally, try setting a non-existing keyword (replace 12345 with a valid UID in the list returned above):

0 UID STORE 12345 +FLAGS (DUMMY)

Now, see if this last action is successful despite the non-existence of the keyword. If this works then I could add an option to ignore that the server tells MailMate that this is not possible.

The last action was successful and also re-listed the messages to be sure: The non-existing tag was successfully added despite its non-existence.

Ok, try this. Edit this file:

~/Library/Application Support/MailMate/Sources.plist

Add ignorePermanentFlags = 1; to the Zimbra account and save the file.

Hold down ⌥ when clicking “Check Now” in the Software Update preferences pane (r5296).

This should make MailMate ignore the PERMANENTFLAGS response in the sense that MailMate assumes the server allows the creation of new IMAP keywords.

Awesome. I successfully applied the update. I still have some sync issues, but I'll have to observe a bit longer to figure out a patterns. Will come back with more insights!

Ok, I didn't really test the workaround (not having a Zimbra account or something similar) and it's possible that I failed to implement it correctly.

It's also possible that the Zimbra server does not always allow the implicit creation of IMAP keywords.

After a few tests, the situation is actually a bit weirder. In the sense of less reproducible:
* The existing tag DESIGN syncs perfectly client- and server-side. * The existing tag TECHNEWS doesn't sync at all. * The existing tag URGENT doesn't sync at all. * The new client-side tag DONOW is not created on the server-side. Can't really see a pattern yet. At least the tags DESIGN and TECHNEWS/ URGENT should have the exact same behaviour.

Well, I guess we are at a dead end then unless this somehow means the workaround is not doing as advertised.

Looks like Zimbra is pretty buggy in this regard :/ Just curious: Are you aware of any open-source e-mail servers that fully support IMAP keywords?

My personal favorite is Dovecot.