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Thunderbird Tagging Extension
February 21st, 2006Proposal
My modest proposal to implement tagging in Thunderbird. This is a proposal I said I’d write in response to a discussion at fredericiana in the comments of a post entitled Thunderbird Tagging Extension.
This is a feature that would put Thunderbird over the top, in my book, in comparsion to Apple Mail. I use Thunderbird now to read and search mail on my OS X Powerbook. I’ve found that Apple Mail is too slow when searching IMAP folders. Furthermore, I’m finding that the constant indexing performed in Tiger means that I can no longer watch DVDs on my Powerbook without performance blips. I’ve turned Spotlight off to regain usage of my CPU and harddrive.
Thunderbird uses the search capabilities of my IMAP server. It is much faster than Apple Mail. I’m able to read my e-mail from difference computers, since it’s stored in IMAP, and I can use Thunderbird on those different computers, since it is cross-platform.
Since I’d like to stick with Thunderbird, I’d like to have a tagging extension. There already exists a project called Tag the Bird, which may be a good jumping off point, but I thought I’d start with a clean slate discussion of what a tagging extension should be.
Use Cases
Let’s start with the ability to create tag based folders. It is not easy to gather a list of all tags. Not acorss IMAP at least. The only way I can think of, offhand, is an exhaustive search. Perhaps, Thunderbird can keep of list of tags seen in the client, but it would not be authortative. If not, then a person will have to specify which tag based folders they would like to see in their folder pane explicitly.
People will want to tag quickly as they go. I’ve read article about how people are using the five built in categories in Thunderbird as an implementation of Getting Things Done. I’d like to keep similar functionality. I’d like to have hot keyed tags that people could apply to messages in an e-mail triage system.
I’d also like to have hot keyed tag removal, so that someone could sort through a tag based folder, one tagged “deferred” for example, removing the tag for the folder and applying more meaningful tags.
The tagging panel can appear above or below the header window in the message pane. This is where the information about spam and blocked images appears. It would be a simple text box for the addition of tags, with a tag cloud beneath it.
The user will be able to read her mail using the space bar. Tagging is initiated by pressing a hot key to open the tagging panel or to focus on the tagging panel. Tags are entered as space or comma separated tags. When enter is pressed focus returns to the message pane so that the user can continue to browse e-mail using the space bar.
There will be mouse actions as well, but I imagine that many people will want to keep their hands on the keyboard while tagging.
Implementation
Tags are applied to an e-mail message by adding one or more X-Tag headers to the message.
Search is performed using the existing search engine in Thunderbird or through IMAP by searching for an exact match against the value of an X-Tag header. Multiple tags are sought using an boolean and. Ideally searches are case insensitive, which may mean that tags are stored after conversion to lowercase, if the search engines to not support case insenstive matching.
Tag folders are implemented as saved searches, with an interface that creates the folders by specifying the tags to match as a space or comma delimited list.
Questions
I’m not sure which sort of list delimiter I prefer. Space separated tag lists mean no spaces in the tag. This is the format used by del.icio.us. I like del.icio.us and when I use it, I don’t miss whitespace. Comma delimited tag lists allow for spaces in tag names.
Case sentitivity may not be an issue, but I need to know one way or another.
In the comments on Fred’s blog, Alexandre Lemieux has already voiced support for the X-Tag concept. Paul Alexandrow the author of Tag the Bird, has noted that his extension allows for the addition of user tags and that he’s wanted to add IMAP support, which is why I’m going to start out by reading through his source code.
Further thoughts?
Note: Thunderbird Tagging is my original post on this subject, and I’m linking to it to create a trackback.
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Comments 
[...] UPDATE: Thunderbird Tagging Extension - A proposal for IMAP and POP based tagging in Thunderbird. Apple Mail Is Busted [...]
Alan - this is a great idea! I have used TBird since about v0.5, and I love it. Saved searches have been useful, but tagging would make tha a whole lot better.
I’d love to see tagging int Thunderbird, particularly with IMAP support as you suggest.
Perhaps you could utilise Thunderbird’s saved searches feature to give you the power to view the tags. If you had an extension that applied the X-Tag header to emails, then you could have a rough tags implementation quite quickly.
I am now playing with a very manual means of adding the X-Tag. It is a evaulation to determine if I want to hack this out, or switch to gmail now that I can host gmail under my domain.
One thing to consider is that if you bounce a message to someone, you are going to bounce to bounce any X-Tag headers as well, so you need to be careful about how you tag a bounced message. Someone might expect that to always be private, and have “X-Tag: Buffoon” assigned to their CEO’s most recent newsletter.
The people at Thunderbird core are a it, too. The feature was requested 2001-12-11 for the first time!
Check
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird2:Tags
and
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=114656
I’m no expert, but IMAP seems to implement a “KEYWORD” feature natively. I’d love to see this come true one way or the other!
You might want to cheak out the HeaderTools extension - this allows adding of arbitrary headers to messages, and so probably contains some code of relevance to message tagging with headers as you propose. I don’t believe HeaderTools works over IMAP though.
Also, you might want to check out the ANNOTATE extension to the IMAP protocol:
“The ANNOTATE extension to the Internet Message Access Protocol permits clients and servers to maintain “meta data” for messages, or individual message parts, stored in a mailbox on the server.”
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-imapext-annotate-15.txt
[...] I’m going to acquire a MacBook. With it I will return to programming. Thunderbird Tagging, WordPress hacks, and an offering to the City of New Orleans. MacBook Posted by Alan Gutierrez Filed in Software Development, Aside [...]
[...] I’m not alone [...]
HeaderTools seems to work over IMAP for me. I ‘tagged’ it in thunderbird then logged into webmail and saw the X-Tag in the header. But I can’t seem to search for anything in the header.
I currently use HeaderTools with Mozilla Thunderbird. Applying the tags is not very efficient, but it is the only desktop tagging solution that gives me the portability I desire. I can search on the X-Tags header in TB and also pull up messages by tags using my Web mail’s full-text search (I use Squirrel Mail).
But an addon for MS Outlook 2003 (BETA only) may lead me to dropping Thunderbird. Taglocity has a very nice tagging interface and allows tags to be saved as a footer to the message allowing portability and social e-mail tagging.
I’m experimenting with the latest “Tag the Bird” implementation. The earlier “tag the bird” project relied entirely on suggested tags and required you to run your mail through an external server. That was not going to happen, at least not in my world.
The new version looks a lot closer to what I need: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1832/
Still a little buggy (er, I mean a lot buggy) but worth keeping an eye on.
I have been using “Tag the Bird” and have found it quite useful. You can set up commonly used tags for quick addition. It will look up tag suggestions if you so desire, and it will quickly filter based on the tag clicked.
I think the tags make more sense in the message header as opposed to the message body.
The suggestions made here are good ones. I would like to see more keyboard based tag entry options, but more importantly, the ability to update many messages at once and also rule based tagging.
Hi there,
I would really love to have a good tag support for Thunderbird, something like del.icio.us. Where you don’t have folders any more, but only tags to choose from on the left (or right) side. The tagging system TB has at the moment is way too complicated. Check out this one for example: http://www.icio.de/user/helveticus
Just adding (+) or subtracting (-) tags to view the wished emails quickly would be GREAT GREAT GREAT! But it changes basic EMail-Programs-Structure (folders will be gone). And there need to be mail-rules to auto-tag mails when they are incoming. For example: When I receive a mail by my wife I want it to be tagged with a special “LovelyWife”-Tag. That would make working with mails sooo comfortable… how is the status with extensions and so on?
I really hope that this will replace folders… folders are just stupid one-way-tags -.- Do the real thing