Mail Act-On

I like to keep my mail's inbox well organized: filing and flagging messages in different ways when they
come in. However, quickly filing messages in my inbox in a variety of folders can be a drag and drop
process or a using a menu that often involves submenus. Setting colors of messages involves bring
up the color palette and manually selecting a color.

Mail lacks a simple method of organizing messages based on user-defined keystrokes. As it stands,
the only way of doing this is to write a series of AppleScripts that does each task, saving them to
Mail's applescript folder and naming them so that a control key combination can be used. This is very
cumbersome as it takes a knowledge of AppleScript to devise the actions and adding new rules is
not a simple process. To fulfill my personal need, I dived into the world of mail plug ins and wrote Mail
Act-On to solve all my life's (er -- email) problems.

What is Mail Act-On?

Mail Act-On is a mail plugin in that allows you, the user, to map specific mail rules or actions to "Act-
On" keys. When viewing mail you can aply the "Act-On" action for a message by making simple
keystrokes. For example, hit the Act-On menu key [ ` (backtick)] and the Act-On menu bezel
appears for 5 seconds. While the Act-On menu bezel is visible, hit the Act-On key for a rule and rule
is applied. If you have multiple messages selected, the Act-On is perform on all the selected
messages. Additionally, you can Act-On a message immediately, bypassing the Act-On menu, by
using the ctrl-key in conjunction with the appropriate Act-On key. For example, if the 'w' Act On key
moves a message to the "Web Folder" then ctrl-w will perform the Act-On with out the menu. When a
Act-On action is performed, Act-On will display a short notification to inform you which action took
place.

Figure 1: The Act-On menu bezel

Configuring Rules
Mail Act-On makes use of Mail's existing rule engine, so if you have ever created a rules, you already
know 99% of what you need to know to build an Act-On action. Imagine, no AppleScripts or other
macros. (Even if you haven't ever created a mail rule, there is very little learn!)

Figure 2. List of Mail Rules with several Act-On actions.

To create an Act-On action,

1. View Mail's preferences and select the Rules pane.
2. Create a new mail rule with a description that has the prefix "Act-On:" followed by the Act-On
key to be used for the action, a divider | , and finally the action title.

For example: "Act-On: w | Move Message to web folder"

(Note that the Act-On key is case sensitive.)

3. Configure the actions: set the rule apply to every message* and configure the actions as you
normally would with normal mail rules. You can even run AppleScripts through Act-On
actions.
 Figure 3. Configuring an Act-On action.

*Note: Although Act-On actions and regular mail rules use the same rule mechnism, all Act-Ons
actions are ignored through the normal application of rules (when receiving messages or
selecting Apply Rules from Mail's Message menu). Likewise all normal rules are ignored when
an Act-On action is being performed.

Installation
Install Mail Act-On applescript will install Mail Act-On into the appropriate location in the current user's
library folder and enable plug ins for Apple's Mail.

To install Mail Act-On, double click on the Install Mail Act-On applescript on Mail Act-On's dmg.

Manual installation
If, for whatever reason, the plugin cannot be properly installed, you may wish to manually install it.
Also if you want to install Mail Act On for all users, you can manually install it.

Step 1: Copy the MailActOn.bundle to ~/Library/Mail/Bundles (for current user) or to /Library/Mail/

Bundles for all users
Step 2: Enable mailbundles in the terminal (open the terminal and type:
defaults write com.apple.mail enablemailbundles 1

Version History - aka ChangeLog

Version 1.0b1 - 4/17/2005
Initial release.

Known Issues
• The Act-On menu bezel does not update if you add, remove, or change rules. Restart Mail to
update the list. New or modified rules are still active and available although they are not listed.
Road Map
• Add a preference pane for setting the menu key, Act-On Rule prefix, bezel delay times, opacity,
and position.

Donations (aka, support your friendly software developer and build karma points)
This program is free and open source, you can use this program as you like. That said, if you use it
daily and you find that using mail without it is a pain, wouldn't it be nice to build some karma and
send a small token of appreciation my way. Tip me a few bucks, and you will bring a smile to my face
and a warm glow to your heart. It's a decent thing to do. Even if you email me and tell me what you
think, I would be happy. Visit my website at http://www.indev.ca if you are currently underkarmic.

License & Source Code

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,

but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.

Copyrights and Credits

Mail Act-On is Copyright 2005, Scott Morrison.

Some portions of code may be from

Thomas Staller, Author of Virtue (some Bezel Window code)
Benjamin Han, Author of JunkMatcher -- All the techniques of working with Mail Rules to
"steer" rule functionality
Ken Ferry, Author of MailTypeSelect -- All the techniques of writing a mail bundle and
trapping keystrokes. Thanks Ken for making your source code available, the advice and
the inspiration that a lot can be done with mail that goes beyond the box.