Feature request: `%tags%` Variable

[infinitelyintrigued]

I use Thunderbird tags to categorize emails. I would like to see a variable (e.g., %tags%) to embed assigned tag names in templates (e.g., tag1,tag2,....)

It would also be great if the variable can do pattern matching optionally (e.g, %tags("pattern")% for matching and %tags("^pattern") non-matching) to include and exclude some tags.

I use the same tag names in other applications that have their own email addresses. Being able to tag reply and forward messages will be a great time-saver.

Thank you

[RealRaven2000]

Maybe something like this

%tags()%                 -- (return all tags - comma separated)
%tags(matchPattern)%        -- returns matching tags (regular expression)
%tags(matchPattern,excludePattern)%   -- returns matching tags, exluding matches of 2nd expression
%tags(matchPattern,excludePattern,toclipboard)%  --literal parameter to copy the list to the clipboard.

I think it could also be useful to optionally restrict to just one tag somehow, if there was some processing or a field that couldn't take multiple tags?

[infinitelyintrigued]

Looks good to me. I can't wait to see this new feature!

[RealRaven2000]

Here is a first test version. Currently only supports 2 uses %tags% and %tags(color)% [this one only makes sense in HTML emails, just a little thing I added for better visibblity] - try it out!

smartTemplate-fx-4.8.2pre24.zip

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To install version above download zip file and drag the file into Thunderbird Add-ons Manager (do not extract contents, it won't install like that)

[infinitelyintrigued]

Yes, it works. Very nice. This will help me a lot!

I have one more request if you don't mind. Could you also provide an option to format each tag name? Some applications I use automatically recognize a text as a tag when it's prefixed with a special character such as "#". For example, %tags produces "tag1,tag2,tag3,..." and %tags(format:"#\0")% produces "#tag1,#tag2,#tag3"?

[RealRaven2000]

I have one more request if you don't mind. Could you also provide an option to format each tag name? Some applications I use automatically recognize a text as a tag when it's prefixed with a special character such as "#". For example, %tags produces "tag1,tag2,tag3,..." and %tags(format:"#\0")% produces "#tag1,#tag2,#tag3"?

I will look into it. At the moment I am just wrapping the whole lot like this:

      for (let t of tags) {
        const labelObject = `<span style="color:${t.color}; border: 1px solid ${t.color};border-radius: 0.2em; padding: 0.05em 0.1em;">${t.label}</span>`;
        labelAtoms.push(labelObject);
      }

I already thought to myself that the formatting string (which is now hard coded) could be somehow configurable in a global preferences somewhere.

[infinitelyintrigued]

Thank you. I'll be looking forward to it. The current implementation is very helpful as it is. I can feel my workflow is smoother.

[RealRaven2000]

I think this might be a good candidate to tie to one of the license levels either SmartTemplates Pro only or at least ST Standard with some restrictions. Simply making it a Pro feature would be my preference, as it is a little outside the wheel house of the ordinary user. I have to make sure that I convert a few more users to licensees as I am putting a lot of work in which isn't currently reflected in sales. Partly a problem of it being too complex of course, but that's to be addressed in a different topic.

[infinitelyintrigued]

I think it makes sense to make it a pro-only feature.

[RealRaven2000]

Here is a new version with more features:

smartTemplate-fx-4.8.2pre36.zip

you can add the following parameters:

color this will use a preset format with colored labels (as before)
delimiter="-" what to put in between the tags. If this is not given as parameters it defaults to , (a single comma followed by a single space)
format="formatString" how to format each tag label
toclipboard copies the result to the clipboard instead of inserting it

formatString can contain single or multiple instances of $label$ and $color$

$label$ placeholder for the tag text
$color$ 6 digit hex value of the tag's color

Example:

%tags(color,delimiter=" ")%

result (used in a standard quote header with small font):

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To install the above version download zip file and drag the file into Thunderbird Add-ons Manager (do not extract contents, it won't install like that)

[RealRaven2000]

Had to edit the previous comment, because MarkDown messed with my $label$ and $color$ parameters (by removing the $ signs and turning them into italic text instead).

[RealRaven2000]

I have one more request if you don't mind. Could you also provide an option to format each tag name? Some applications I use automatically recognize a text as a tag when it's prefixed with a special character such as "#". For example, %tags produces "tag1,tag2,tag3,..." and %tags(format:"#\0")% produces "#tag1,#tag2,#tag3"?

with the latest version I linked above, please try:

  %tags(format="#$label$",delimiter=",")%