Re: My Default Account in OS X Mail

Dave Balderstone <dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> In article <1h6rf71.1042a0msdhns8N%see_signature@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Jon
> <see_signature@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > The other one is Smart Folders - incredibly useful.
>
> I confess to seeing a lot of use for Smart Folders as opposed to my
> extensive list of filters.

(Sorry if I got a bit long-winded in the following, it is only that
Smart folders actually tend to change your way of thinking a bit, and
that is hard to describe in so many words. Sorry if I repeat myself.)

I have some of those [filters] as well, but they serve slightly
diffferent purposes for me. I think the keyword for me is "Static" vs
"Dynamic". If I want something to filter in a special way permanently, I
can use filters, if I need something filtered only this week or this
month, but maybe not the next, I use Smart folders. But if I filter
something into normal folders, those messages go away from the Inbox,
which I might not want.

So if I just want to keep all my mail in the Inbox or Sent box until I
move it to my archival folders, I can use Smart folders. (I archive mail
strictly on a chronological basis; seems most other systems get
confusing over time.) That also keeps searching a lot faster and
simpler.

The key is that the Smart folder is not a real folder, and doesn't move
the messages around.

> What do you use them for? I did create one to quickly locate messages
> that had attachments, but that's it.

It mainly does away with lots of traditional mailboxes that require you
to physically move the messages into them. So I use Smart Mailboxes more
and more; for every mail that comes from my bank (online), every mail
from my church, every mail containing a due date (courtesy of MailTags,
fantastic feature for e.g., electronic payment reminders or mails
containing "To Do"-items), every project I work on this month into its
own special "folder", and so forth.

Now that seems like what you do with normal filtering, but it isn't. As
I said, the mails stay where they are, which to me is crucial. This also
means that one and the same message can appear in more than one Smart
folder (e.g., one based on sender, one on topic) and changes in one
place show up in another (e.g., I answered or forwarded a messgage,
changing its status). There are actually only a very few categories of
mail that I want to take physically out of the mainstream of my mail
workflow.

Because like I said, the neat thing is that in this way messges never
actually move out of the main INBOX or wherever they are (e.g, Sent,
which is equally useful). I can therefore create and delete the smart
folder when I need to and not lose messages. That way searching and
archiving is kept easy and simple, since everything is in one or a very
few mailboxes "really". You can probably think of Smart folders as
"visible filters" or some such.

In my personal opinion - or maybe wishful thinking - this is the way the
Finder should also be moving. Indeed, many have thought so and it is a
distant echo of the way I understand the BeOS metadata-based file system
works/worked. "Folders" do not (or not necessarily) represent physical
locations in such a system, but rather logical organisations of files
based on contents or metadata (the info "about" the file).

> Inquiring minds...

Good, we need those! :-)
--
/Jon
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