Thunderbird ain't perfect, either

[Georg Wrede]

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.