Email is where all the other kinds of document meet. A message is text, often formatted; it carries pictures, some inside it and some only pointed at; it carries attachments of every kind; it links to the web. In Desktop Minder there is no mail program to hold all that. A mailbox is a folder, every message in it is a file, reading a message is opening it, and writing one is just another document. It's nearly done, and it already runs on my own mailbox.

Where It Stands

A Mailbox Is a Folder

A mailbox is a folder with a folder inside it for each basket: Inbox, Unknown Senders, Newsletters, Spam, Sent, Drafts and Outbox. It opens in the same folder view as any other folder, with a Mail menu beside File, because a folder has no buttons, so what a mail program's buttons would do is offered on its menu instead. Every message is a file, whose name begins with the date it was written, so you sort messages, drag them, copy them and delete them as you would any file. Unread messages are in bold.

That's the whole trick, and it means mail needs almost nothing of its own. The folder view lists it. The Recycle Bin is its trash. A message copied out to another folder still opens, there, as the message it is.

Made of Everything Else

Mail is the best test of the idea that runs through all of Desktop Minder: that any document should be able to hold any other, wherever that makes sense. Here is how far mail has got:

• Text. A message being read is shown as the page it is, formatted or plain. A message being written is written in the same paragraph editor as a web page, plain or formatted, as you choose.
• Pictures. Pictures that came inside a message are shown. Pictures it only points at, somewhere on the internet, wait until you ask, because fetching them would tell the sender you'd opened it.
• Links. A link to a web page opens it right there in the View, and Back brings you back to the message.
• Attachments. A message being written takes any files as attachments. A message received lets you save its attachments; it never opens or runs them.

The rest of the combining is still ahead. A received attachment can't yet be opened as the document it is, in the View, or dragged straight out to a folder; and a message being written takes files as attachments, but can't yet hold a picture inside the message itself.

In This Section

Mailboxes and Baskets covers setting a mailbox up, how mail is collected, and the rules that mean a message is never fetched twice and never lost. Reading Mail is about the message itself, and why it's treated as hostile. Writing Mail is the other half. Contacts, Strangers and Spam is about how mail finds the right basket.

What's Left

• Addresses filled in from your contacts as you type them.
• Searching a mailbox, which was left out of the first version on purpose.
• A notice when new mail reaches the Inbox. The program already knows when it happens; nothing listens yet.
• Attachments opened in place and dragged out, and pictures placed inside a message being written.
• A few refinements to Spam Watch, listed under Contacts, Strangers and Spam.

Progress

• 13 September 2026—Contacts: one vCard file, a table to keep it in, and a way to bring in Google's.
• By 1 October, when the project's detailed history begins—The message reader, with its three walls; a mailbox window of its own, with buttons; Set Up Email; signing in; the spam dialog.
• 2 October—Mailboxes become folders, opening in the ordinary folder view with a Mail menu, and the mailbox window goes. Messages are named by their dates, and the rules for never twice, never lost are settled. That evening, contacts start vouching for mail: Add to Contacts, Sort Mail, and mail sorted again whenever the contacts change.
• 3 October—Spam Watch and the Newsletters basket. Unread mail in bold. Sending, and the Outbox. New Message, Reply, Reply All, Forward and Send Again, written in the new paragraph editor, plain or formatted.
• 4 October—A trash can on an open message, and link addresses shown on hover. Delete from Host offered only where the host keeps its copy. Links open in the View. Sort Mail says what it's doing. Mailboxes checked when opened and every hour. Mail's own settings files renamed, like the rest, to .dmini. Then Up and a spam can on an open message; the sheet saying how a sending went, and a log of every sending; icons of their own for messages, newsletters and spam; a mailing list as a choice in Mark as Spam; the sender checks believed only from the mailbox's own server; and no Delete from Host on Gmail.