Attributes for E-mail Folders

Attributes for E-mail Folders

At first blush, Be's built-in mail application, BeMail, and the system-level mail handling seem kind of light on features. For example, there is no built-in mail-handling window, with your mailboxes and mail messages listed with the usual column headings of From, Subject, etc.

Instead, each mail message is stored as a file in a single folder in the Tracker (/home/mail/in/). You use Tracker windows (in List View) to display your mail in list format. While you can move mail into multiple folders, you do have to do all your mail management in the Tracker. To make things worse, Tracker windows only show a few columns of information that are useless for managing mail. Or do they?

Actually, the Tracker is extremely intelligent and flexible about showing information appropriate to the contents of a given folder. While your mail folders will default to showing only the (for mail, totally useless) file name, size, and modified timestamp attributes, you can change and rearrange the attributes displayed in the window's List View. That's what the Attributes menu is all about.

In a folder with ordinary files, the Attribute menu doesn't offer too much that is interesting; it's just what you'd expect for listings of files. In a folder with e-mail files, though, the Attributes menu adds a new item, a hierarchical "E-mail" menu, with a slew of e-mail specific attributes which you can display. These extra attributes let you turn an ordinary Tracker window into the E-mail listing window of your dreams.

Here's how to do it:

First, add all the attributes you want for your e-mail listing, by choosing them one at a time from the E-mail sub-menu of the Attributes menu.

I use "Status", "Name" (which is the name of the message sender; very different from the file name attribute!), "Subject", and "When". A listing of the e-mail attributes and their content is at the end of this Tip.
Next, remove all the ordinary attributes that are not interesting in an e-mail listing, by choosing them one at a time from the Attribute menu (choose all of the items with a checkmark in front of them from the main Attribute menu). This includes the file "Name", "Size", and "Modified" attributes.
Last, you can rearrange and resize the columns to suit your fancy. See the BeOS User's Guide for information about rearranging and resizing Tracker List View columns.

As you can see, the basic e-mail functionality of the BeOS is quite a bit greater than immediately apparent! Next week we'll have a tip about how to query your mail, to increase your understanding of the BeOS's e-mail functionality even more.

Here's a listing of all of the e-mail specific attributes, and what they contain:

Attribute	What It Is
Name	The human name of the sender of the message. The BeOS mail_daemon, when it receives mail, attempts to determine the human name of the sender, extracting it from the From: mail header.
Subject	The subject of the message, from the Subject: mail header.
To	The recipient of the message, from the To: mail header. This might not be you specifically, if the message was sent to a list or mail alias that includes your address.
From	The sender of the message, from the From: mail header. Includes the e-mail address and (frequently) the human name of the sender.
Reply To	The address to which you should reply to this message, from the Reply To: mail header, if there is one (and blank otherwise).
Status	The status of the message. Can be New or Read (for incoming messages), or Pending or Sent (for outgoing messages). This is set automatically by the BeOS.
Priority	The priority of the message, from the Priority: mail header.
When	The date and time the message was sent, from the Date: mail header.