Email flow with rules and labels

Email arrives.

A rule determines that it is low priority.  So I want it to be labelled Inbox/Low_Priority.

I.e. I do NOT want to see it in my normal Inbox.  Aka my priority Inbox.

But I *do* want to see it as a subfolder of my Inbox.   So, here is an example of a case where I do not want the browseable interface to the label graph to show all items with label - where the fact that it has a sublabel (of a particular type) implying that it should not be shown as the default query for Inbox.  But of course I might want to be able to see all items tagged Inbox, ewven though sublabels imply hiding.

Possibility: steal an idea from Bazaar DVCS:  Inbox/* => all items with label Inbox, but not with "masking" sublabels.   Whereas Inbox/** => all labels tagged Inbox, even with masking sublabels.

Inbox|Some_Other_Label - independent, not really path oriented
Inbox/NonMaskingSubLabel
Inbox//MaskingSubLabel

I probably won't get around to processing such Inbox/LowPriority emails very often.  But when I do, and I handle them, I probably want to change the label from Inbox/LowPriority to straight LowPriority.

I.e. LowPriority is not just a sublabel.  It is actually an independent label. But the instance on a particular item may indicate the masking sublabel relationship to Inbox.

If something gets tagged Inbox/SubLabel initially, and then just becomes SubLabel, and then is moved back to Inbox, should it go back to being Inbox/Subel?  Or should it be Inbox|SubLabel?

If Inbox/SubLabel -> SubLabel -> Inbox/SubLabe, should this be

a) because it was originally Inbox/SubLabel - i.e. based on history of the labelling?

or

b) because SubLabel is marked as being in a possibly subservient relationship to Inbox?


Inbox is a special case.