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GUI - Grand Unified Interface
dp | Dec 5 2005
I'm on a quest for the Grand Unified Interface. I have a detailed hierarchy in the Finder, with a folder for each project, and each project folder parked in the appropriate Active, On Hold, etc. parent folder. A project folder can contain anything from text files, to OmniOutlines, to image files, to FileMaker databases. But the one thing it cannot contain is email. Currently, there is a duplicate project hierarchy in my mailbox list in Mail. During my weekly review, I spend a great deal of time syncing the project data in Mail with the project data in the Finder. I've tried saving copies of email messages into the appropriate project folders in the Finder, but must still keep the originals in Mail in order to facilitate ongoing conversation. I've tried keeping everything in Mail, but that's cumbersome. Email programs are not designed to be GTD managers. I've tried DevonThink, but it doesn't handle email very well, and requires me to launch FileMaker and OmniOutliner in order to work those files. If I'm going to launch independent apps, I might as well use the Finder. I'm looking for a Finder with a tightly integrated email capability. Has anyone run across this holy grail? dp 11 Comments
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Unfortunately, Mail.app doesn't support drag...Submitted by Scott on January 8, 2006 - 5:08pm.
Unfortunately, Mail.app doesn't support drag and drop messages to the finder or other applications. Spotlight can search through email subjects and content, but can't "Find" a single message since subjects may be duplicated and messages IDs are not (to my knowledge) indexed by Spotlight. My guess is that Apple doesn't support drag and drop in Mail.app because the actual implementation of message storage is "private" and may change drastically, as it did between Panther and Tiger. I've looked at creating a Mail.app bundle to put the message text on the drag clipboard, but the bundle API is unsupported, which makes implementation difficult and prone to breakage when new versions of mail are released. Putting the current path on the drag clipboard instead really isn't a long term solution since the path and file names change when you move messages between folders. What we really need is a way to receive a storage independent, unique ID from Mail.app which can be used to track a message wherever it may go using spotlight. This would isolate developers from any changes Apple may make to how messages are stored. » POSTED IN:
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