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dragndrop link to emails and mailboxes in other applications

#241

I would like to be able to create a link in other applications that would result in MailMate opening a specific email or mailbox.

The way this works in Apple Mail is to drag-n-drop a given email to another application that handles rich text (e.g. textedit). This creates a link. Clicking this link opens the relevant email in Apple Mail.

I would like MailMate to at least offer this option (maybe in addition to the way dragndrop works right now, which pastes the content of the email as text).

In addition, it would be ideal if MailMate would let me do the same thing but with mailboxes. Clicking on the link would in this case open the relevant mailbox in MailMate.

Reported by Vincent Noel · March 7th, 2012 @ 12:01 PM

State: new
Milestone: none
Assigned to: benny benny

Activity

  1. benny
    benny

    If I drag a message to TextEdit in plain text mode then a link is inserted. In rich text mode I get a useless icon (on Lion). I'll look into that, but I don't get the text as you describe.

    Also note the “Edit ▸ Copy as Link” menu item.

    The message links use an Apple URL scheme named message, but MailMate also works with mid and cid URLs. To my knowledge, no URL standard exists for mailboxes except for the IMAP URL scheme. I guess MailMate could support that, but that would not allow one to open smart mailboxes. (MailMate uses IMAP URLs internally, but they are not quite RFC compliant.) The alternative is to introduce a custom URL scheme, for example, named mailbox or mlmt-mailbox.

    March 8th, 2012 @ 02:59 PM

  2. benny
    benny
    • State changed from new to fixcommitted

    MailMate now behaves like Apple Mail when dragging messages. For plain text, a URL is inserted. For rich text, a subject-titled link is inserted.

    Mailbox links are a “blue sky” feature for now. At least until I figure out how to best implement it.

    March 9th, 2012 @ 11:03 AM

  3. Vincent Noel
    Vincent Noel
    • Title changed from dragndrop link to emails and mailboxes in other applications to link mailboxes in other applications

    Mmh, you are right that drag-n-dropping messages in textedit in plain text DOES create a message:// link. I had tried it with TextMate, and instead of creating a link it pastes the content of the dragged email as plain text. I assumed TextEdit would work in the same way, and I don't understand why this is not the case. There is a weird inconsistency there.

    The Edit -> Copy as Link menu item fills the bill though for the "link to email" part.

    I have changed the title of the ticket to reflect that it's only about creating links to mailboxes. I don't know what the best course of action is there.

    March 9th, 2012 @ 11:07 AM

  4. benny
    benny
    • State changed from fixcommitted to bluesky

    It is the receiving app that decides how to handle the drag. MailMate just puts variations on the pasteboard. Note that the same drag should be capable of being used to insert text in TextEdit and copy a file to Finder. But I've changed the behavior of dragging and I think TextMate will behave the same as TextEdit now (in plain text mode).

    With respect to the name change of this ticket, I'll then give it an official state of “blue sky”. That means I'm not rejecting the idea, but it is scheduled for version x.x for now :-)

    March 9th, 2012 @ 11:24 AM

  5. Vincent Noel
    Vincent Noel

    works for me :-)

    thanks for the reminder, I had forgotten how the clipboard works for a moment there :P

    March 9th, 2012 @ 11:35 AM

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