Re: Jumping ship

On Wed 30 Nov 2011 20:44:12 NZDT +1300, cr wrote:

> For the past few years I've been using Kmail under Gnome.   I just installed 
> the 'latest' versions with Debian Squeeze.   On starting kmail from the 
> command line (ssh'd in a terminal window from my laptop, that's why) I noticed 
> a lot of messages about akonadi.

The personal information stuff has been revamped, I expect to the better
but haven't yet had a close look. Akonadi has always been running. The
system is used to keep track of appointment, events, reminders, todo
lists and whatnot. I doubt it is used to also store the content of the
actual emails. There kmail uses a 1-email-per-file storage, or
alternatively mbox. I find the calendar etc quite good actually, and
it's independent of the email (unlike outhouse). Crank up korganizer and
you'll see - email is just one of the options.

I don't find the much-maligned mbox to be a problem, and it is efficient
storage, much(!) more so than maildir. The performance hit is no bigger
than maildir, and kmail proves that. The potential security risk can be
relatively easily dealt with (qed: procmail, mutt). In 20 years I've
never had a file-problem related to mbox. It's reliable (qed: mutt).
It is however true that a lot modern gui mail clients don't grok mbox
properly. That problem is with the client, not mbox. Whenever I need a
mail client that absolutely just works and shows me the content of file
X, I crank up mutt. All the gui stuff is a waste of time for that.

Thunderbird uses mbox. Its mbox files are read by mutt. However what
doesn't work is that importexporttools plugin, and though I've told its
author months ago how to trivially fix it he's obviously not capable.
The problem here is in the "From " line, which the plugin creates with
time zone offset and name (both not permissable, and the year in the
wrong place (it needs to be at the end of the line, like the American
default output of date). Easily fixed with a text editor, but of course
annoying. Alternatively move/copy all the mails to be exported into one
of tb's local(!) directories under ~/.thunderbird/, that can be opened
with mutt -f.

> Any others?    I don't need or want a calendar, or an appointments book, or an 
> organiser, I just want a mailreader/writer.    Kmail 1.13 is fine.   (Can you 
> hear me, KDE?   Thought not).

Of course, upgrading your mail client majorly without a full backup of
your email is just dumb ;-) And that holds for any gui client. Funny,
the real programs like mutt never have that problem.

You might want to verify first whether kmail really stores its emails
any differently, and whether it's just the extra lafaffel. I recently
read a description of how to turn all that off - drats, I forgot to note
where.

I gave up looking for a decent gui client that just works all the time.
kmail is the least annoying for me.

HTH,

Volker

-- 
Volker Kuhlmann			is list0570 with the domain in header.
http://volker.dnsalias.net/	Please do not CC list postings to me.

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