Notes folder?

[beq]

I just noticed the addition of an FM IMAP folder called "Notes" in my desktop clients, which seems to be currently empty. It does not show up in FM's web mailbox interface.

Is this something that FastMail added recently, perhaps a work-in-progress towards a better Notepad?

I searched the forum but did not find anything, other than old threads such as:

http://www.emaildiscussions.com/showthread.php?p=369957

http://www.emaildiscussions.com/showthread.php?t=20771


EDIT: Nevermind, I now see this folder in the web interface (after refreshing folder list), which makes me think it might have been created inadvertently on my side (perhaps one of my email programs). Can anyone else see if they also have this "Notes" email folder?

[n5bb]

I believe that you or your email client must have created the Notes folder. To my knowledge, there is nothing that the IMAP server at Fastmail can do to create a new folder on your client unless you choose to subscribe to an existing Fastmail folder or you create a new folder using your client.

• Are you subscribed to this Notes folder on your client?
• Do you see such a folder in the Fastmail Options>Folders screen?

I don't see Notes in my account using a client.

Bill

[dzh]

Are you using an iPhone or Apple Mail?

[beq]

Thanks for the confirmation n5bb.

dzh, you're completely right, I forgot about the new IMAP-based Notes syncing feature in iOS 4 (which was responsible for creating the Notes folder). I've now turned it off for all my IMAP accounts on the iPhone.

P.S. It's too bad that over-the-air Notes syncing is still not available for Exchange accounts, so I still have to sync Exchange-based Notes via iTunes on the desktop... (Not to mention that syncing of Tasks is still not supported at all, at least without 3rd-party software)

[n5bb]

I don't have an iPhone, but after reading about the Notes feature I would be interested in knowing what an iPhone note looks like in the new Fastmail Notes folder which it created. Do the notes have titles (which become email subjects)? I assume that the note is contained in the message body. Is it a text body, or HTML? What do the email headers look like?

Bill

[matthewc]

Hopefully none of this is info I probably don't want to post for privacy concerns. The only thing I changed were The to "From" lines which were my name.

Headers:
From:
My Full Name@unspecified-domain [Add]
To:

Date:
Mon, 5 Jul 2010 9:25 PM (4 mins 47 secs ago)
View as HTML - Show original
Hide full header

Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v1081)
X-Universally-Unique-Identifier: 6be3bead-abfb-4914-8433-e0f8e1692824
X-Mail-Created-Date: Mon, 5 Jul 2010 21:25:05 -0400
Content-Type: text/html;
charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Message-Id: <04891F2D-6DFC-45FC-B9E6-989A2FDD8611@at.cox.net>
From:My Full Name
X-Apple-Mail-Remote-Attachments: YES
X-Uniform-Type-Identifier: com.apple.mail-note
Subject: on mb in fm
X-Apple-Base-Url: x-msg://10/
Date: Mon, 5 Jul 2010 21:25:17 -0400

[denis]

Bill,

In my Mail App, I have a Notes folder with two sub-folders, On My Mac and Fastmail. iTunes appears to use the folder On My Mac for synchronisation by default. By moving all the notes to the Fastmail folder (drag and drop), I seem to get synchronisation across all of iPhone, Mail App and the Fastmail web interface.

The Notes do have titles, seemingly taken from the first line of the Note.

"Show Original" in the Fastmail web interface suggests the note is HTML, but this surprises me. Perhaps Fastmail translates a text original to HTML? On this last point, you can see I am guessing.


Denis.

[n5bb]

Thanks to both of you. From the headers posted, it appears that the note is HTML, and that they use a Universally Unique Identifier (which allows them to be unique, so that you could combine trillions of these notes from various sources and the UUI's would be different) and a Uniform Type Identifier of "com.apple.mail-note". Very interesting -- I wonder if you created a new HTML note in an email client, but added those two headers (X-Universally-Unique-Identifier and X-Uniform-Type-Identifier) and filed it in your notes folder, would the note show up on your device? There are a couple of other special headers which might also be required (X-Apple-Base-Url and X-Apple-Mail-Remote-Attachments). Not having such an Apple product, I'm not familiar with their normal email headers, so these might not be needed.

You would think that by now we would have universal agreement on a note format, with at least these features:

• MIME or similar structure allowing different object types (text, html, photos, sound files) to be contained.
• A wide range of sizes.
• Creation and modification dates.
• Optional Universally Unique Identifier.
• Optional encryption.
• Optional unencrypted title.

Emails already meet some of these criteria.

Bill