[Dovecot] Gmail like labels, three years later

[Timo Sirainen]

On 27.3.2013, at 17.28, Pablo Vieira <pablo at vieira.es> wrote:

>> My latest idea: Keep using the rather dummy simple IMAP keywords. Use IMAP
>> METADATA to create a mapping between keyword <-> human readable name.
>> Dovecot is getting close to having native METADATA support. Such IMAP
>> standard would still need to be designed though. Anyone up for writing an
>> RFC? :)
>> 
>> Thanks Timo, I'm not quite sure what IMAP METADATA is. Will have some
> spare time this summer. Any good readings about IMAP you can recommend?
> MIght as well help in that department.

METADATA is simply about adding simple key=value pairs to mailboxes. So you could have something like:

/shared/keywords/$Label1 = Important
/shared/keywords/$Label2 = Work
/shared/keywords/HelloWorld = Hello World messages

Probably it wouldn't need to be any more complex than that. The clients would then handle adding/changing/removing those keywords.

http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5464 describes METADATA.