From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: David Rogoff Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Thunderbird to Emacs migration Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2010 21:17:47 -0800 Organization: Newshosting.com - Highest quality at a great price! www.newshosting.com Message-ID: <4b9b1ffb$0$29861$c33e2976@unlimited.newshosting.com> References: <87y6hxku7l.fsf@kobe.laptop> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1272993005 17187 80.91.229.12 (4 May 2010 17:10:05 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 4 May 2010 17:10:05 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Tue May 04 19:10:04 2010 connect(): No such file or directory Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1O9LdD-0005mh-4e for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 04 May 2010 19:10:03 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:49869 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1O9LdC-0002aR-G4 for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 04 May 2010 13:10:02 -0400 Original-Path: usenet.stanford.edu!postnews.google.com!news2.google.com!npeer02.iad.highwinds-media.com!news.highwinds-media.com!feed-me.highwinds-media.com!post01.iad!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help Original-X-Complaints-To: abuse(at)newshosting.com User-Agent: Unison/2.0.4 Original-Lines: 58 Original-Xref: usenet.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:177451 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:72968 Archived-At: On 2010-03-12 15:15:26 -0800, Giorgos Keramidas said: > On Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:08:37 -0600, John Bokma wrote: >> I have been using Mozilla Thunderbird for many years. For the past >> year or so I've been using Emacs more and more (first as editor, now >> also to access Usenet), and I am wondering how easy migrating from >> Thunderbird to Emacs would be and which Emacs email solution would be >> the best. > >> Questions: >> >> - which package(s) do you recommend for reading/writing email (I have >> several accounts, most POP3, and one IMAP. Some POP3 accounts use >> SSL/TLS with CRAM) >> >> - is it possible to work directly with the email files Thunderbird >> creates, or do I have to convert them? > > Gnus is the mail reader I use. I am still learning how to use it > effectively after almost two years, but it is a very nice program with > literally hundreds of options. I've even written some Lisp code to > extend it and tweak its behavior in an automated manner. > > Gnus should be able to pull your messages from multiple IMAP and POP3 > accounts, but see below before you pull everything into Gnus. vm is much easier to use for mail than gnus. gnus is great as a (text) Usenet newsreader, but it just wasn't designed as a mail program and the attempts to make it so have all seemed pretty crazy to me. I gave it a try for a while but it just required the user to do things the way gnus wanted and not what made sense as a mail program. I liked using vm and gnus together. Any Usenet articles I wanted to save I could have gnus save into the folders I used for vm and read them later in vm. vm works great and is compatible with TB's mail folders since they both use (well, vm can also use other formats too) good old rfc822 / mbox text files. TB adds index files to speed up access, which I don't think vm will use. Here's some more detail: http://www.z-a-recovery.com/thunderbird-email-database.htm My info is probably a couple of years out of date (my company's IT dept only supported Outlook/exchange), so there may be some recent changes, but I went back and forth between TB (Netscape mail before that) and vm with little problem for a few years. However, as much as I'm an emacs advocate (been using it virtually every day for 22 years) and an advocate of plain text files (just started using org-mode a lot), I don't know if I'd go back to it for mail. There's so much HTML, RTF, and other enhanced mail messages I have to deal with every day that I've given in. Try just running M-x vm-visit-folder and point to one of your TB mail files. It should just load it and you can see how you like reading messages in vm without having to deal with all the setup for downloading messages. David