Miles wrote:
> Walter Bright wrote:
>> 1) No way to backup/restore the data. It's about as bad as O.E. here.
>> C'mon, Tbird developers, how hard can this be? I want a simple way to
>> back up EVERYTHING to a CD or another drive, and then restore it.
> 
> A long time ago, I remember reading something about this, either on
> bugzilla or on IRC. The rationale is that this is not something that
> should be handled by Mozilla (now Thunderbird), but instead, by your
> operating system. It doesn't make sense if you use 20 different programs
> to backup your data from every one separatelly.

Sure it makes sense. There are two kinds of backups - backup your whole system, and backup individual data sets. Backing up my mail fits about right on 1 CD, handy for archiving. So I definitely want to do it separately. Backing up my whole system requires buying another disk drive, as there's no reasonable way to back up 100 gigs on DVDs or CDs.

> Like pointed out, just copy your whole profile directory and you are
> set. No need to worry with registry keys.

That's fine for programmers like you and I. It isn't so fine for people who aren't power users - it doesn't help that the profile directory is stored many levels deep, inside a *hidden* directory, and a directory with a tty noise name. There's a lot to be said for a 1-click backup from the menu like Quicken's.

Walter Bright wrote:

> That's fine for programmers like you and I. It isn't so fine for people who aren't power users - it doesn't help that the profile directory is stored many levels deep, inside a *hidden* directory, and a directory with a tty noise name. There's a lot to be said for a 1-click backup from the menu like Quicken's.

That's true.

You can also start thunderbird with the '-p' switch, and startup the 'profile manager'. When you create a new profile you can specify the directory for the profile. It works in that way for Firefox too.

I've defaulted all the profiles in a something like 'd:/home/arathorn/var/thunderbird', 'd:/home/arathorn/var/firefox', and so on...

Some time ago I was able also to use the same profile directory from Windows, FreeBSD and OS X, so you can have all your messages, check mail, newsgroups and whatever OS you are using!

---
Paolo

Paolo Invernizzi wrote:
> Walter Bright wrote:
> 
>> That's fine for programmers like you and I. It isn't so fine for people who aren't power users - it doesn't help that the profile directory is stored many levels deep, inside a *hidden* directory, and a directory with a tty noise name. There's a lot to be said for a 1-click backup from the menu like Quicken's.
> 
> 
> That's true.
> 
> You can also start thunderbird with the '-p' switch, and startup the 'profile manager'. When you create a new profile you can specify the directory for the profile. It works in that way for Firefox too.
> 
> I've defaulted all the profiles in a something like 'd:/home/arathorn/var/thunderbird', 'd:/home/arathorn/var/firefox', and so on...
> 
> Some time ago I was able also to use the same profile directory from Windows, FreeBSD and OS X, so you can have all your messages, check mail, newsgroups and whatever OS you are using!
> 
> ---
> Paolo


Thanks for the tip, Paolo ~ that will come in handy

Walter Bright wrote:
> Stewart Gordon wrote:
>> Walter Bright wrote:
>>> 4) Spell checker. Gotta pay extra for a 3rd party spell checker for O.E.
>> Good idea.  Are you going to start spellchecking your web pages as well?
> 
> LOL. I don't have a standalone spellchecker.

I wonder if anyone's written a spellchecker in D yet....

<snip>
>> I'm surprised you stopped there in listing OE's bugs.  Here are just some of the annoying bugs I found:
>>
>> http://www.epinions.com/content_67328904836
> 
> I don't read news like the author does, so these problems never affected me.

I wouldn't be surprised that people's different routines in reading newsgroups affect how many of the bugs show up.  But I'd expect most people who have used OE to have been bitten by at least one of the bugs I listed in that review.

Stewart.

-- 
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
GCS/M d- s:-@ C++@ a->--- UB@ P+ L E@ W++@ N+++ o K-@ w++@ O? M V? PS- PE- Y? PGP- t- 5? X? R b DI? D G e++>++++ h-- r-- !y
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

My e-mail is valid but not my primary mailbox.  Please keep replies on the 'group where everyone may benefit.

Unknown W. Brackets wrote:
> I have to admit, I have had my problems with Thunderbird as well.
> 
> That said, it's all open source and I've done quite a lot of hacking
> when I want something changed.  XUL isn't hard to learn, and I really
> thing that's a big benfit over Outlook/similar - for simple changes.

I guess there is somewhere a good pocket-reference kind of site where the nuts and bolts of Thunderbird XUL hacking is covered -- without swamping the reader in masses of trivia?

> I make backups often.  I've also had to restore them.  It's tar cW
> %profile_dir% | bzip2 -7 > backup.tar.bz2, plain and simple.  But, I
> agree; a built in backup feature really would be nice.  It probably
> wouldn't be too hard to write an extension to make one.

Not needed. That's why it ain't there. On *nix one would put the command in a file and have cron run it, say, every week. On Windows, I guess the easiest would be to put it in a file, and create a desktop icon to it. -- For something this simple, it's just superfluous to develop some fancy backup scheme, especially when the power users wouldn't use it anyway.

> I imported my messages from Outlook 2003.  Had to strangle it a bit,
> but got it to work sufficiently.  The Received dates are all wrong,
> but I use the Date column instead and it seems to be fine.  I'm not
> sure how that compares with Outlook Express.
> 
> There are two methods of search; the quick one at the top right, and
> the other from Tools.  I find the quick one is mostly all I need for
> common searches.  I don't recall Outlook having much better search
> functionality.

I keep all my mail on the ISP server. That way I can read them anywhere I go.

But if one has the files on the hard disk, then one can even use Windows own search in File Explorer. If the file turns out to be in HTML or whatever, then just look at the date and subject and then find it in Thunderbird for pleasant viewing with layout and all. Piece of cake.

On *nix, what I constantly find is folks do not regulary create their own commands! That is, whenever one finds himself writing the same command line more than once, just copy the command line in a file, and save it in $HOME/bin as "myMailSearch" or whatever. (Oh yes, and then, from next session on, you only have to type "myM" <Tab> to get the command!!!)

That's actually how most of the standard programs/commands in *nix have come to exist. First one just makes a command as above. Later, when bored, one can insert $1 etc in it to facilitate giving simple arguments to the command. Some other month one might expand its functionality a little. And a year later one writes the whole thing in D. The entire existence of a Command Shell is for this _sole_ purpose. They wanted this to be as easy as ever possible. And it sure is. Talk about productivity, truly trivial customization, and usage efficiency.

> Anyway, just to warn you, the major problem I've had with it is that
> as your mailboxes grow, sometimes it doesn't work as well as you'd
> like.  I've had to manually compact folders and restart Thunderbird
> on many occasions.  It's rather annoying.  Luckily this doesn't
> affect newsgroups.

Split read mail in categories. (Work, D, Projects, Family, etc) and either every six months move stuff to them, or if you prefer, always having read a mail. Makes searching a lot faster. Or do it (lazy) like I do, every six months just move the more than 18 month old messages to OldMail.

(Funny how people have become passive. I guess this is because everyone uses M$ stuff, where you simply can't (with any reasonable effort anyway) do anything not expressly designed into the app. Then once folks start using *nix, or OSS on Windows, where one can do pretty much anything, and with ease, folks just sit on their butt complaining.)

You can actually have Thunderbird automatically move new (or even only the already read) mail into various folders, every time you open Thunderbird. This way your default inbox stays small, and the auto categorising works fast. (Ah, never try to make the categories perfect! Just stuff that _obviously_ belongs to some category (like mail from Georg, unknown senders, stuff containing "D", mail in HTML format, etc.), since it's no problem with the less obvious ones when you read them.

In article <e0hpll$gbd$1@digitaldaemon.com>, Walter Bright says...

I use PocoMail for years and I love it... even if it's not free.
If you want to check it : www.pocomail.com
( err.. no, I'm not paid by PocoSystems :) )

Walter Bright wrote:
> Roberto Mariottini wrote:
> 
>> Moreover, you can write your extension yourself, see "How to Write
>> an Extension" here: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/thunderbird/specs/extensions.html
> 
> I've got my hands full writing extensions to D <g>. But it's nice to
> know I can if I need to.
> 
> So far, Tbird seems good enough, and I won't be going back to O.E.

Congrats!

> Tbird also seems to handle html and attachments better, but it lacks
> in the "crispness" of response department.

How true. That's why I still use Microsoft Office for in-office stuff. It just feels crisper. But all serious work I do on Linux.

There are a few XUL reference sites.  Just search for that on Google. It helps to understand the W3C document object model, which Mozilla more or less follows in HTML and in XUL, and to be willing to sink a little bit of time mucking around.  Most of it is pretty darn simple.

There's a bunch of jar files in your chrome folder under Firefox/Mozilla/Thunderbird.  Unzip them and look at them.  They're interesting.  Grep is your friend.

Funny enough, Thunderbird isn't - imho - terribly terribly robust.  I mean, when you empty a folder, it uses JavaScript to select all the messages and pretends you hit delete.  I just find that silly.  But it's still better than Outlook.

There are a lot of things Firefox and Thunderbird do not need; but that's also what extensions are for.  You can add a cron, add a scheduled task (Windows; or write a light service to do it for you), or what have you... but if you want a menu option, you can do that too.

It's called making (closer to) everyone happy, so long as they're willing to work.  You need this when your software product deals with end-users.  You can't tell them they don't want what they want, it just does not work... unless your goal is to have only a certain subset of power users.

I've always disliked IMAP, because I prefer to use multiple email accounts and I don't want them separate, nor do I want them (or have the ability, in some cases, to have them) forwarded to each other.  I have all my email organized in a few separate folders, as well as in an Archived Messages folder.  Thunderbird would force me to have separate folder structures for each account, mirroring the IMAP folders.  Bleh.

Unfortunately, this happens now in all my folders, even my Inbox, which is actually my smallest folder.  It has nothing to do with me not organizing or archiving my messages.  I had a nice discussion with someone from mozillazine.org's support about it, and the decision was that compacting took it from every day to every week, and so it was the solution.  I thought I had it gone at one point, but it still happens.

And, really, I honestly hate that Thunderbird moves my spam and other things in a multi-step process.  I don't like seeing it jump in and out of folders, or etc.  Often I have to click a folder to have them go away, so I never know if I really have new mail.  Incidentally, it's when it does this that I get the crash; part of why I dislike it.

-[Unknown]


> Unknown W. Brackets wrote:
>> I have to admit, I have had my problems with Thunderbird as well.
>>
>> That said, it's all open source and I've done quite a lot of hacking
>> when I want something changed.  XUL isn't hard to learn, and I really
>> thing that's a big benfit over Outlook/similar - for simple changes.
> 
> I guess there is somewhere a good pocket-reference kind of site where the nuts and bolts of Thunderbird XUL hacking is covered -- without swamping the reader in masses of trivia?
> 
>> I make backups often.  I've also had to restore them.  It's tar cW
>> %profile_dir% | bzip2 -7 > backup.tar.bz2, plain and simple.  But, I
>> agree; a built in backup feature really would be nice.  It probably
>> wouldn't be too hard to write an extension to make one.
> 
> Not needed. That's why it ain't there. On *nix one would put the command in a file and have cron run it, say, every week. On Windows, I guess the easiest would be to put it in a file, and create a desktop icon to it. -- For something this simple, it's just superfluous to develop some fancy backup scheme, especially when the power users wouldn't use it anyway.
> 
>> I imported my messages from Outlook 2003.  Had to strangle it a bit,
>> but got it to work sufficiently.  The Received dates are all wrong,
>> but I use the Date column instead and it seems to be fine.  I'm not
>> sure how that compares with Outlook Express.
>>
>> There are two methods of search; the quick one at the top right, and
>> the other from Tools.  I find the quick one is mostly all I need for
>> common searches.  I don't recall Outlook having much better search
>> functionality.
> 
> I keep all my mail on the ISP server. That way I can read them anywhere I go.
> 
> But if one has the files on the hard disk, then one can even use Windows own search in File Explorer. If the file turns out to be in HTML or whatever, then just look at the date and subject and then find it in Thunderbird for pleasant viewing with layout and all. Piece of cake.
> 
> On *nix, what I constantly find is folks do not regulary create their own commands! That is, whenever one finds himself writing the same command line more than once, just copy the command line in a file, and save it in $HOME/bin as "myMailSearch" or whatever. (Oh yes, and then, from next session on, you only have to type "myM" <Tab> to get the command!!!)
> 
> That's actually how most of the standard programs/commands in *nix have come to exist. First one just makes a command as above. Later, when bored, one can insert $1 etc in it to facilitate giving simple arguments to the command. Some other month one might expand its functionality a little. And a year later one writes the whole thing in D. The entire existence of a Command Shell is for this _sole_ purpose. They wanted this to be as easy as ever possible. And it sure is. Talk about productivity, truly trivial customization, and usage efficiency.
> 
>> Anyway, just to warn you, the major problem I've had with it is that
>> as your mailboxes grow, sometimes it doesn't work as well as you'd
>> like.  I've had to manually compact folders and restart Thunderbird
>> on many occasions.  It's rather annoying.  Luckily this doesn't
>> affect newsgroups.
> 
> Split read mail in categories. (Work, D, Projects, Family, etc) and either every six months move stuff to them, or if you prefer, always having read a mail. Makes searching a lot faster. Or do it (lazy) like I do, every six months just move the more than 18 month old messages to OldMail.
> 
> (Funny how people have become passive. I guess this is because everyone uses M$ stuff, where you simply can't (with any reasonable effort anyway) do anything not expressly designed into the app. Then once folks start using *nix, or OSS on Windows, where one can do pretty much anything, and with ease, folks just sit on their butt complaining.)
> 
> You can actually have Thunderbird automatically move new (or even only the already read) mail into various folders, every time you open Thunderbird. This way your default inbox stays small, and the auto categorising works fast. (Ah, never try to make the categories perfect! Just stuff that _obviously_ belongs to some category (like mail from Georg, unknown senders, stuff containing "D", mail in HTML format, etc.), since it's no problem with the less obvious ones when you read them.

Walter Bright wrote:
>> Like pointed out, just copy your whole profile directory and you are
>> set. No need to worry with registry keys.
> 
> That's fine for programmers like you and I. It isn't so fine for people who aren't power users - it doesn't help that the profile directory is stored many levels deep, inside a *hidden* directory, and a directory with a tty noise name. There's a lot to be said for a 1-click backup from the menu like Quicken's.

Why hasn't anyone mentioned MozBackup yet?

http://mozbackup.jasnapaka.com/

It can make backups for any of the mozilla programs. You just select which profile to backup, what to include, and where to put the file. The backup files seems to be just ordinary zip files.