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 with a folder inside it for each basket—Inbox, Unknown Senders, Newsletters, Spam, Sent, Drafts and Outbox—and every message is a file whose name begins with the date it was written, so you sort, drag and delete messages as you would any file. The ones you haven't read are in bold. Open one and it's shown in a sealed box that runs no scripts and fetches nothing from the internet until you ask, which means the tracking pixel that tells the sender the moment you opened it never gets sent. Mail from your contacts lands in the Inbox, strangers wait in Unknown Senders, where Add to Contacts... makes one a contact, bulk mail goes to Newsletters, and what Spam Watch recognizes goes to Spam. A reply is a document too, written in the Outbox, and Send sends it at once, or when the network is there.

Where It Stands

A Mailbox Is a Folder

A mailbox lives in your Mail folder, which is part of the PIM folder that keeps your mail, contacts and calendars together, and the Social desktop is that folder. Open a mailbox and it appears in the View on its Inbox, with a tab along the top for each basket: Inbox, Unknown Senders, Newsletters, Spam, Sent, Drafts and Outbox. Click a tab and that basket's folder is listed, newest first, with From, Subject, Received and Size. A basket is an ordinary folder, and Up from one leaves the mailbox for the folder it's in. Beside Up is a button with a circle of arrows: that's Check Mail, shown only in a mailbox and its baskets, since a folder has no buttons of its own and what a mail program's buttons would do is offered there and on the right-click menus instead.

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. The Mail folder makes mailboxes, too: open its Set Up Email icon, which asks its questions right in the View, or right-click the folder and choose New Mailbox. Set Up Email comes with Desktop Minder; it isn't a separate program to download.

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. A picture dropped on the words of a message you're writing is placed where you drop it, and goes as part of the message.
• 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, dropped on it. A message received lets you save its attachments; it never opens or runs them.
• Contacts. A message from someone you don't know offers Add to Contacts..., and that sender's mail moves to the Inbox. Contacts are a folder of vCards, listed as any folder is.

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.

In This Section

Mailboxes and Baskets covers setting a mailbox up (Gmail included), 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, its bar, 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, and how to teach it.

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.
• Tidying old spam and replaced newsletters out of a Gmail mailbox.
• A few refinements to Spam Watch, listed under Contacts, Strangers and Spam.