Re: [OT] Mozilla Thunderbird
torhu n...@spam.invalid wrote in news:iehd51$2gl...@digitalmars.com: On 16.12.2010 14:39, Justin Johansson wrote: Just wondering how others rate Thunderbird as a decent newsreader. I suppose the real problem is that almost noone cares about newsgroups, so don't expect any improvements in this field to ever happen. I'm a Windows user, and Thunderbird is the newsreader I use. Thunderbird is pretty buggy, but I haven't found a good replacement, at least not yet. For what it's worth, Xnews on a Windows is fairly decent. I always found Thunderbird to be seriously ugly, but I haven't looked at it in years. Xnews is at http://xnews.newsguy.com/ . Unfortunately, it is Windows only. Someone suggested Claws-mail which I'll try when I get around to it. It appears to have a Windows port as part of Gpg4win at http://www.gpg4win.org/ .
Re: [OT] Mozilla Thunderbird
On Sat, 18 Dec 2010 05:24:14 +0100 torhu == torhu n...@spam.invalid wrote: torhu Thunderbird is pretty buggy, but I haven't found a good torhu replacement, at least not yet. Although I may be guilty of repeating myself, but I'll, again, recommend Claws-mail which serves as newsreader as well without any problem. Actually, 99% of all the mailing lists I follow are under Gmane and Claws is superb...fast, no loss etc. Sincerely, Gour -- Gour | Hlapicina, Croatia | GPG key: CDBF17CA signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [OT] Mozilla Thunderbird
torhu n...@spam.invalid wrote in message news:iehd51$2gl...@digitalmars.com... Thunderbird is pretty buggy, but I haven't found a good replacement, at least not yet. I regularly experience to annoying dataloss bugs. The first is when TB messes up posts. This is easily fixed by making it rebuild its index files (yes, TB corrupts its own data files on a regular basis, with no help at all). The second and worst is when it loses track of which posts I've read and which I haven't. There's no way that I know of to fix that. I don't mean to sound like an Outlook Express evangelist constantly banging an OE drum, but I've been using OE for years and never had any issues like that. Which actually makes me really puzzed, even though TBird's and OE's uses and basic interfaces are very similar: - Thunderbird apparently has *data loss/corruption* issues, and yet it's very popular. - OE *doesn't* have data loss/corruption issues, and yet it's widely looked-down upon. So what's wrong with this picture?
Re: [OT] Mozilla Thunderbird
- Thunderbird apparently has *data loss/corruption* issues, and yet it's very popular. - OE *doesn't* have data loss/corruption issues, and yet it's widely looked-down upon. So what's wrong with this picture? I've never used OE as, well, I preferred Thunderbird, however I've never experienced any data loss/corruption with Thunderbird. Perhaps it's not the products themselves but something in the environment that's causing the issue? The only thing that I can say definitively is that I did a quick DuckDuckGo Search for [outlook express data loss corruption] and [mozilla thunderbird data loss corruption] (Search terms between brackets) and where the first search had a number of results discussing data corruption with OE, the second had far fewer. Granted, this is not a scientific, but neither program can ensure data does not become corrupted. On a side note, as for why OE is looked down upon, at least from my point of view any environment where different pieces of software are so closely tied together that it makes various types of virii very easy to create/propagate is not one I want on my system. My word processor should not control my email client and vice-versa. I'm the type of person that if I don't know that a piece of software is being installed by company sysops, I'll report a virus since I was unaware of the installation and I didn't do it myself. And yes, I have done that. Casey
Re: [OT] Mozilla Thunderbird
sybrandy sybra...@gmail.com wrote in message news:iej200$30n...@digitalmars.com... - Thunderbird apparently has *data loss/corruption* issues, and yet it's very popular. - OE *doesn't* have data loss/corruption issues, and yet it's widely looked-down upon. So what's wrong with this picture? I've never used OE as, well, I preferred Thunderbird, however I've never experienced any data loss/corruption with Thunderbird. Perhaps it's not the products themselves but something in the environment that's causing the issue? Hmm, perhaps so. On a side note, as for why OE is looked down upon, at least from my point of view any environment where different pieces of software are so closely tied together that it makes various types of virii very easy to create/propagate is not one I want on my system. My word processor should not control my email client and vice-versa. The worm issues were fixed ages ago. As for connections with word processor/etc, I haven't seen any indication of OE ever acting any less like a stand-alone app than anything else. (And actually, Thunderbird has a lot of ties to Firefox, AIUI). Maybe you're thinking of Outlook, not OE? I'm the type of person that if I don't know that a piece of software is being installed by company sysops, I'll report a virus since I was unaware of the installation and I didn't do it myself. And yes, I have done that. Heh heh, I like that. :)
Re: [OT] Mozilla Thunderbird
On 18.12.2010 19:40, Nick Sabalausky wrote: torhun...@spam.invalid wrote in message news:iehd51$2gl...@digitalmars.com... [...] I don't mean to sound like an Outlook Express evangelist constantly banging an OE drum, but I've been using OE for years and never had any issues like that. Which actually makes me really puzzed, even though TBird's and OE's uses and basic interfaces are very similar: - Thunderbird apparently has *data loss/corruption* issues, and yet it's very popular. - OE *doesn't* have data loss/corruption issues, and yet it's widely looked-down upon. So what's wrong with this picture? IIRC, I decided against using EO because I wasn't satisfied with its keyboard navigation. TB is has good keyboard navigation, bar a couple of bugs that you learn to work around. I suppose the dataloss issues could be caused by my profile being old. Can't remember if I've tried starting with a new profile or not to fix the issues, but I think I have. I wouldn't be surprised if the newsgroup implementation is buggy. I guess I don't expect starting with a clean profile over again to actually help.
Re: [OT] Mozilla Thunderbird
On Thu, 16 Dec 2010 22:41:05 -0800 Walter == Walter Bright wrote: Walter I prefer to have control over my email database, and not rely Walter on some remote server that may go dark at any moment, or that Walter may sell my email database to anyone. I agree...that's why I fetch my mail with getmail and run my own dovecot IMAP server on my (localhost) desktop machine. The email is stored in (safe) Maildir format and accessed from Claws-mail and/or via ssh from the laptop. Sincerely, Gour (not having trust in remote mail servers) -- Gour | Hlapicina, Croatia | GPG key: CDBF17CA signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [OT] Mozilla Thunderbird
On 12/16/10 07:39, Justin Johansson wrote: Just wondering how others rate Thunderbird as a decent newsreader. My experience with Thunderbird is that it is not of a standard of distinction that one would hope for in 2010 coming 2011. For one thing, and perhaps this is a newsgroup server problem, but I doubt it, my Thunderbird client shows a number of D NG topics as being unread though the folder tree item for d.D shows all items as read. Aside from that issue, my experience with Thunderbird is that it is not particularly innovative in drawing my attention to the high-traffic topics apart from telling me that one-or-more responses are unread (as opposed to popular topics for example). Overall I think Thunderbird is a bit lame as a newsreader for this day and age, and, though it owes me nothing and I paid nothing for it, I do wonder what others think of their NG experience using Mozilla Thunderbird. -- Justin For my two cents, all I can say is that I've been using Thunderbird for eons, and whenever I have tried another client I've either found the UI highly unintuitive, or worse yet unintelligible, or I've found it pushing extra features on me that I have no use for. (The old version of Outlook I fiddled with for a short month comes to mind.) I really don't use it for anything other than newsgroups, so I don't care about anything to do with advanced message formatting (that usually isn't quite compatible with other readers anyhow, in my experience) or with many of the side features (such as personal calendars, which I have other more specialized programs for). There are a couple of clients mentioned in this thread I haven't tried before (such as Pan) so I may be giving them a shot. But... Thunderbird has done the job for me, and done it well, for several years. -- Chris N-S -- Thunderbird 3.1.7
Re: [OT] Mozilla Thunderbird
On 17/12/10 13:05, Walter Bright wrote: Nick Sabalausky wrote: but I found OE's annoyances to overall be somewhat less annoying than Thunderbird's. OE cannot back up or transfer its message database. That killed it for me. Email clients and newsgroup readers are different things. So while I can understand that one would want to have control of their email message database (as in ease of backup/import/export etc), when it comes to newsgroup messages the repository is maintained by the newsgroup server itself (and of course these repositories are generally replicated ad infinitum on the web). Accordingly it seems that comments like That killed it for me really only apply to email clients rather than newsgroup readers/clients.
Re: [OT] Mozilla Thunderbird
On 12/16/2010 08:39 AM, Justin Johansson wrote: Just wondering how others rate Thunderbird as a decent newsreader. In general I am happy with it. It has a couple of minor bugs or a feature missing that I want, but there's a lot that it does right. (Thanks to the person who recommended the QuoteCollapse add-on. This newsgroup desperately needs it.) For one thing, and perhaps this is a newsgroup server problem, but I doubt it, my Thunderbird client shows a number of D NG topics as being unread though the folder tree item for d.D shows all items as read. Try right-clicking on the newsgroup and selecting Mark Newsgroup Read. I think the unread number you see might be from not downloading all the messages. Aside from that issue, my experience with Thunderbird is that it is not particularly innovative in drawing my attention to the high-traffic topics apart from telling me that one-or-more responses are unread (as opposed to popular topics for example). In the columns list, there's a button to customize what columns to display. One of them is Total. If you collapse all threads ('\' hotkey, under View - Threads on the menu), you'll get a count for each thread. The above applies to version 3.0.
Re: [OT] Mozilla Thunderbird
On 18/12/10 13:41, Jeff Nowakowski wrote: On 12/16/2010 08:39 AM, Justin Johansson wrote: Aside from that issue, my experience with Thunderbird is that it is not particularly innovative in drawing my attention to the high-traffic topics apart from telling me that one-or-more responses are unread (as opposed to popular topics for example). In the columns list, there's a button to customize what columns to display. One of them is Total. If you collapse all threads ('\' hotkey, under View - Threads on the menu), you'll get a count for each thread. The above applies to version 3.0. Thanks for the tip; perhaps my experience was ill-founded.
Re: [OT] Mozilla Thunderbird
On 16.12.2010 14:39, Justin Johansson wrote: Just wondering how others rate Thunderbird as a decent newsreader. My experience with Thunderbird is that it is not of a standard of distinction that one would hope for in 2010 coming 2011. I suppose the real problem is that almost noone cares about newsgroups, so don't expect any improvements in this field to ever happen. I'm a Windows user, and Thunderbird is the newsreader I use. Thunderbird is pretty buggy, but I haven't found a good replacement, at least not yet. I regularly experience to annoying dataloss bugs. The first is when TB messes up posts. This is easily fixed by making it rebuild its index files (yes, TB corrupts its own data files on a regular basis, with no help at all). The second and worst is when it loses track of which posts I've read and which I haven't. There's no way that I know of to fix that. The real fix to this issue has to be that people stop using newsgroups and start using something else instead. Maybe the D mailing list newsgroup mirrors are is the solutions, I don't know. Should I bother trying, or would I just be replacing one set of problems with another?
Re: [OT] Mozilla Thunderbird
On 18/12/10 15:24, torhu wrote: I suppose the real problem is that almost noone cares about newsgroups, I suspect you are right; newsgroups are probably considered by most developers as legacy media (not that legacy has to mean bad though) and accordingly any development for newsgroup software is not perceived as being a sexy application. Still I will try out some of the other offerings that people have suggested here and see what goes. Thanks again to all for comments. Thunderbird is pretty buggy, but I haven't found a good replacement, at least not yet. I regularly experience to annoying dataloss bugs. The first is when TB messes up posts. This is easily fixed by making it rebuild its index files (yes, TB corrupts its own data files on a regular basis, with no help at all). The second and worst is when it loses track of which posts I've read and which I haven't. There's no way that I know of to fix that. The real fix to this issue has to be that people stop using newsgroups and start using something else instead. Maybe the D mailing list newsgroup mirrors are is the solutions, I don't know. Should I bother trying, or would I just be replacing one set of problems with another?
Re: [OT] Mozilla Thunderbird
Justin Johansson wrote: Email clients and newsgroup readers are different things. So while I can understand that one would want to have control of their email message database (as in ease of backup/import/export etc), when it comes to newsgroup messages the repository is maintained by the newsgroup server itself (and of course these repositories are generally replicated ad infinitum on the web). Accordingly it seems that comments like That killed it for me really only apply to email clients rather than newsgroup readers/clients. Except I use one for both, and when I can't back up my database, I lose all the marks saying which postings were read and which weren't.
Re: [OT] Mozilla Thunderbird
On 18/12/10 17:08, Walter Bright wrote: Justin Johansson wrote: Email clients and newsgroup readers are different things. So while I can understand that one would want to have control of their email message database (as in ease of backup/import/export etc), when it comes to newsgroup messages the repository is maintained by the newsgroup server itself (and of course these repositories are generally replicated ad infinitum on the web). Accordingly it seems that comments like That killed it for me really only apply to email clients rather than newsgroup readers/clients. Except I use one for both, and when I can't back up my database, I lose all the marks saying which postings were read and which weren't. Oh, okay. Fair enough.
Re: [OT] Mozilla Thunderbird
I'm using Thunderbird, but it's pretty much the only newsreader I've ever had so can't really compare it with others. But I use the following extensions to improve my experience: QuoteCollapse: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/347/ Not directly related with newsreading but still useful. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/12581/ I use other extensions as well but they are not newsreading related.
Re: [OT] Mozilla Thunderbird
Justin Johansson nore...@jj.com wrote in message news:ied4th$2vn...@digitalmars.com... Just wondering how others rate Thunderbird as a decent newsreader. My experience with Thunderbird is that it is not of a standard of distinction that one would hope for in 2010 coming 2011. For one thing, and perhaps this is a newsgroup server problem, but I doubt it, my Thunderbird client shows a number of D NG topics as being unread though the folder tree item for d.D shows all items as read. Aside from that issue, my experience with Thunderbird is that it is not particularly innovative in drawing my attention to the high-traffic topics apart from telling me that one-or-more responses are unread (as opposed to popular topics for example). Overall I think Thunderbird is a bit lame as a newsreader for this day and age, and, though it owes me nothing and I paid nothing for it, I do wonder what others think of their NG experience using Mozilla Thunderbird. FWIW: I tried Thunderbird breifly a few years ago. It seemed to get the job done, but there were a number of little annoyances that left me going back to Outlook Express. Let's see if I can remember some of them...(and again, like I said, little annoyances, so obviously these aren't super-major issues or anything): - When using view messages in plain-text (which I always use), it still converts *this* into bold (and removes the asterisks), /this/ into italic (and removes the slashes), and _this_ into underline (and removes the underscores). This really, really bugged me, but unfortunately there didn't seem to be a way to turn it off - despite the fact that it was supposedly plain-text mode. - Many UI elements seemed to be rather big-n-chunky. Almost like a GTK app, although not quite as bad. - There was a lot of invisi-text on my light-on-dark system. I seem to recall that it *was* possible to fix this, but it required manually hacking some obscure configuration files. - I seem to have a vague recollection that the UI became unresponsive while it was downloading emails, but I may very well be completely wrong about that. I think there was *something* weird about when it downloaded emails... I think there were some other little annoyances along similar lines, but I can't remember what they were. Granted, Outlook Express certainly has it's little annoyances too (a few people's NG messages show up as blank messages with the actual text in a text-file attachment, auto-quoting when replying doesn't always happen, and what I'm assuming are long GC collection cycles, and a few other things), but I found OE's annoyances to overall be somewhat less annoying than Thunderbird's.
Re: [OT] Mozilla Thunderbird
On Fri, 17 Dec 2010 00:39:15 +1100 Justin == Justin Johansson wrote: Justin Just wondering how others rate Thunderbird as a decent Justin newsreader. I use Claws-mail as mailer, news reader, rss reader...and I'm more than happy with it. Sincerely, Gour -- Gour | Hlapicina, Croatia | GPG key: CDBF17CA signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [OT] Mozilla Thunderbird
I personally like it a lot, though I haven't tried any other news readers on Linux. I think the biggest reason I like it is the fact that it's the same regardless of what platform it's on and I also like the arrangement of the windows. Overall, I've been quite happy with it. Casey
Re: [OT] Mozilla Thunderbird
On 17/12/10 06:34, Gour wrote: On Fri, 17 Dec 2010 00:39:15 +1100 Justin == Justin Johansson wrote: Justin Just wondering how others rate Thunderbird as a decent Justin newsreader. I use Claws-mail as mailer, news reader, rss reader...and I'm more than happy with it. Sincerely, Gour Thanks Gour and others for comments. Just been to the website. Reckon I'll try out Claws Mail and perhaps any other Linux clients that folks here recommend. Cheers Justin
Re: [OT] Mozilla Thunderbird
On Thu, 16 Dec 2010 15:06:20 -0500, sybrandy wrote: I personally like it a lot, though I haven't tried any other news readers on Linux. I think the biggest reason I like it is the fact that it's the same regardless of what platform it's on and I also like the arrangement of the windows. Overall, I've been quite happy with it. Casey You can try Pan some day. I prefer it to Thunderbird (it's really nice - in two words). Cheers Piotrek
Re: [OT] Mozilla Thunderbird
On Thu, 16 Dec 2010 08:39:15 -0500, Justin Johansson nore...@jj.com wrote: Just wondering how others rate Thunderbird as a decent newsreader. My experience with Thunderbird is that it is not of a standard of distinction that one would hope for in 2010 coming 2011. For one thing, and perhaps this is a newsgroup server problem, but I doubt it, my Thunderbird client shows a number of D NG topics as being unread though the folder tree item for d.D shows all items as read. Aside from that issue, my experience with Thunderbird is that it is not particularly innovative in drawing my attention to the high-traffic topics apart from telling me that one-or-more responses are unread (as opposed to popular topics for example). Overall I think Thunderbird is a bit lame as a newsreader for this day and age, and, though it owes me nothing and I paid nothing for it, I do wonder what others think of their NG experience using Mozilla Thunderbird. I tried the following newsreaders: Outlook Express Evolution Thunderbird Pan Opera Many of these systems had problems/features that I didn't like. So far, Opera has been the best fit for me. The only thing that annoys me about it is that my preferred browser is firefox, but it will only ever use itself to open links. -Steve
Re: [OT] Mozilla Thunderbird
VIM users should be pretty psyched about this thing: http://danielchoi.com/software/vmail.html Although it doesn't seem to work for Windows yet so I haven't tested it myself. :/ On 12/16/10, piotrek star...@tlen.pl wrote: On Thu, 16 Dec 2010 15:06:20 -0500, sybrandy wrote: I personally like it a lot, though I haven't tried any other news readers on Linux. I think the biggest reason I like it is the fact that it's the same regardless of what platform it's on and I also like the arrangement of the windows. Overall, I've been quite happy with it. Casey You can try Pan some day. I prefer it to Thunderbird (it's really nice - in two words). Cheers Piotrek
Re: [OT] Mozilla Thunderbird
On Thu, 16 Dec 2010 22:11:15 +0100, Andrej Mitrovic wrote: VIM users should be pretty psyched about this thing: http://danielchoi.com/software/vmail.html That looks pretty cool! But for some reason the web page calls it an interface to GMail, even though it seems to use IMAP. Can anyone think of a reason why it shouldn't work with other IMAP servers? -Lars
Re: [OT] Mozilla Thunderbird
Nick Sabalausky wrote: but I found OE's annoyances to overall be somewhat less annoying than Thunderbird's. OE cannot back up or transfer its message database. That killed it for me.
Re: [OT] Mozilla Thunderbird
Walter Bright newshou...@digitalmars.com wrote in message news:ieegkh$1mu...@digitalmars.com... Nick Sabalausky wrote: but I found OE's annoyances to overall be somewhat less annoying than Thunderbird's. OE cannot back up or transfer its message database. That killed it for me. Yea, that has been in the back of my mind ever since one other time that you mentioned it. Been meaning to do somethng about it, but just been kinda sticking with it anyway while I have 100 more urgent things :/
Re: [OT] Mozilla Thunderbird
Nick Sabalausky wrote: Walter Bright newshou...@digitalmars.com wrote in message news:ieegkh$1mu...@digitalmars.com... Nick Sabalausky wrote: but I found OE's annoyances to overall be somewhat less annoying than Thunderbird's. OE cannot back up or transfer its message database. That killed it for me. Yea, that has been in the back of my mind ever since one other time that you mentioned it. Been meaning to do somethng about it, but just been kinda sticking with it anyway while I have 100 more urgent things :/ I procrastinated doing something about it for a long time, too, for the same reasons. Until one day my machine got hit with a virus, and the only way to get rid of it was to wipe reinstall Windows. That was I think the 3rd time I lost my O.E. database, and I'd had enough. T-bird has its annoying problems, too, but losing my mail database can have disastrous consequences for my business. I can back up T-bird's database, and that is the #1 feature for me.
Re: [OT] Mozilla Thunderbird
Walter Bright newshou...@digitalmars.com wrote in message news:ieen8f$25s...@digitalmars.com... Nick Sabalausky wrote: Walter Bright newshou...@digitalmars.com wrote in message news:ieegkh$1mu...@digitalmars.com... Nick Sabalausky wrote: but I found OE's annoyances to overall be somewhat less annoying than Thunderbird's. OE cannot back up or transfer its message database. That killed it for me. Yea, that has been in the back of my mind ever since one other time that you mentioned it. Been meaning to do somethng about it, but just been kinda sticking with it anyway while I have 100 more urgent things :/ I procrastinated doing something about it for a long time, too, for the same reasons. Until one day my machine got hit with a virus, and the only way to get rid of it was to wipe reinstall Windows. That was I think the 3rd time I lost my O.E. database, and I'd had enough. Oh, I thought you were saying that the whole problem was just the whole proprietary storage format and that there wasn't a way to migrate to/from another email program. It *is* possible to backup and restore OE's DB, it just doesn't have a simple option for it through the UI: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/270670 Basically, for the messages, you just backup a certain directory, and there's a place in OE's options that will tell you the directory's path. There's also ways to backup/restore the address book and mail/NG accounts. Yea, it would definitely be nice if it had a single simple button to backup everything, or a simple way to cron it or something, but it is at least possible to backup/restore OE's data. T-bird has its annoying problems, too, but losing my mail database can have disastrous consequences for my business. I can back up T-bird's database, and that is the #1 feature for me.
Re: [OT] Mozilla Thunderbird
Nick Sabalausky wrote: Oh, I thought you were saying that the whole problem was just the whole proprietary storage format and that there wasn't a way to migrate to/from another email program. It *is* possible to backup and restore OE's DB, it just doesn't have a simple option for it through the UI: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/270670 Microsoft had no mechanism for backup/restore at the time; I called their support center. Having the mail database in a proprietary format in a hidden directory didn't help.
Re: [OT] Mozilla Thunderbird
On Thursday 16 December 2010 21:37:11 Walter Bright wrote: Nick Sabalausky wrote: Oh, I thought you were saying that the whole problem was just the whole proprietary storage format and that there wasn't a way to migrate to/from another email program. It *is* possible to backup and restore OE's DB, it just doesn't have a simple option for it through the UI: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/270670 Microsoft had no mechanism for backup/restore at the time; I called their support center. Having the mail database in a proprietary format in a hidden directory didn't help. Using IMAP solves the problem, since then the mail is safely on a server somewhere rather on your own computer. It also has the advantage of making it possible to sync state between machines. It does mean, however, that you have to be deal with an e-mail account which is IMAP-capable. - Jonathan M Davis
Re: [OT] Mozilla Thunderbird
Jonathan M Davis wrote: Using IMAP solves the problem, since then the mail is safely on a server somewhere rather on your own computer. It also has the advantage of making it possible to sync state between machines. It does mean, however, that you have to be deal with an e-mail account which is IMAP-capable. I prefer to have control over my email database, and not rely on some remote server that may go dark at any moment, or that may sell my email database to anyone. Having my old emails has saved me countless over the years. You wouldn't believe how many times companies (even large ones!) have lost the contracts I made with them, and I had to go back through the emails and forward them copies.