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New Mozilla-based Mail Client: Minotaur
Ant writes "Minotaur is a redesign of the Mozilla mail component. Our goal is to produce a cross platform stand alone mail application using the XUL user interface language. We are modeling ourselves after the Phoenix rewrite of the Mozilla browser. Our intended customer is someone who uses Phoenix (or another non mozilla.exe browser) as their primary browser and wants a mail client based on mozilla that "plays nice" with their browser. Currently, mozilla -mail is not a good option for these users because link clicks and attachments end up going to mozilla browser windows instead of the preferred browser. In addition, by focusing solely on stand alone mail, we believe we can make some dents in the overall footprint and performance of the mail client by removing components and chrome we don't need."
As for shared FAT32 drive, can't you mount the FAT32 in linux and symlink the mail folders directory in linux to the location on the windows drive? Never tried it, but it should be possible...
Minotaur has nothing to do with that... even current Mozilla Mail can do that... you only have to specify the email client a directory where to save mail (whatever this directory is : fat32, nfs, floppy, ...)
I forgotten the command to specify directory, is there a Mozilla guru reading?
As for shared FAT32 drive, can't you mount the FAT32 in linux and symlink the mail folders directory in linux to the location on the windows drive?
I had something like this working for a while with Netscape 4, when I was dual-booting between Red Hat 6 and Windows 98. As long as the mail program doesn't want to do any operations that aren't supported on FAT32 (I doubt it would), everything should be fine.
One thing that may trip you up is that the mail program creates index files for each of your mail folders to speed up access to them. In Netscape, at least, the naming convention was different in the two operating systems. That means that if you boot one OS, download some mail, and boot the other OS, (some of) your mail folders are newer than their indexes in that OS. This makes it think that you've hacked the folder manually, so it rebuilds the indexes to reflect your changes. Worse than that, neither version of the mail program recognises the other's index files, so it lists them as folders - but then claims they're not in the expected format.
My solution to this was rather than symlinking the directory that contained the mail folders, I created symlinks for each folder and its index file. This worked for me because the structure of my folders doesn't change very much. If you regularly create and rearrange folders, you might find it useful to run the Linux program with a wrapper script that recreates the symlinks.
Having said all of that, the Mozilla developers are probably aware of this problem. I wouldn't swear to it, but I think Mozilla uses the same naming convention for indexes on all platforms, so just symlink the directory and forget about it.
Just another wannabe fantasy novelist...
This isn't about removing features. They are talking about removing those parts of the mozilla code from minotaur that it doesn't make use of at all. End users won't notice anything (except the smaller size of course). Minotaur is just a mail client. So obviously it won't need the navigator/irc etc. parts of mozilla. Besides there would be some libraries that are not used by the mailnews component. So those can go too. Get it? BTW, You can learn more about how mozilla is organized here.
I've been doing exactly that for about a year now with Mozilla's current mail.
Just move the mail folders (sometimes takes a little digging to find them) over to the shared drive and change the Account settings to point to the new location. (Hint: if you can't find this setting it's at the bottom of the server settings screen) It works pretty well except for occasionally being a little slow to index folders.
Now I just wish I could figure out how to do the same thing with prefs and bookmarks.
user_pref("network.protocol-handler.external.mailt o", true);
...and it will use the system-defined mailer. Don't ask me why this isn't the default...
(of course take out the space between 'mailt' and
'o' because Slashdot's lameness filter is designed to prevent information sharing among technical folks)
The user.js file in in your Mozilla profile - it there isn't one, just make a new one. user.js doesn't get whacked by upgrades.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
[mailnews]edit>account settings>{servername}>server setting
Local Directory: [.......]
The main advantage of IMAP is that all of your emails are stored remotely and merely synchronized with any client machines you use. This means your home desktop, your laptop, and your ISP's webmail will have the same messages. This also means you don't have to worry about losing emails when you format your hard drive as they are all stored on the server.
I had the exact same feeling when I saw the Phoenix announcement: WHY?!
Not affiliated with this project at all, but I thought I might comment on this. I compiled mozilla 1.3 on a fairly well spec-ed, 2-way SPARC/Solaris box a few weeks ago. Once the source was unpacked and about 4 hours later the source had almost finished building - it ran out of disk space. I was surprised.
At that point 'du' reported ~/mozilla (containing source and object files) as 1.6GB. Now that's bloated.
Personally, I don't like having the mail client integrated with the browser. I don't want HTML mail support (reading or composition). I certainly don't want any scripting support. I don't want a newsreader built in (I use pan/nget for that). I want smarter filtering capabilities, or no filtering capabilities and lastly I don't want any of the offline reading support. I'm not even sure I want the address book.
I'm all for splitting the applications. I seldom use the composer (but it's nice to have there, when I need it). The IRC client is installed but has never been used, it's just wasting space. I usually run the mail client on one machine and the browser on another so that they're on different screens.
Mozilla mail is the certainly the nicest IMAP client that I've come across, but I want the smallest possible RSS (especially on SunRay servers). A fresh start is often a good way of clearing out the cruft in a application. It's now at the point where it's almost unusable on a 5 year old machine.
# init 5
Connection closed.
Oh...
Really?
As others have stated already... IMAP is a much better cross platform solution, and with procmail and fetchmail, it gets even better.
Not to be redundant but I'll give you more advantages.
You can use ANY IMAP capable client on any platform with out having to import, export, or convert any messages. Pine, Evolution, Mahogany, Outlook Express, Pegasus, Opera 7.x, Mozilla, Web based like IMP, SquirrelMail and many others.
The mail, all folders, and all attachments are easy to backup and restore by tar.gz'ing your mail directory.
You can access all of your mail from ANY internet computer (depending on your home network setup) with any IMAP client. This can be secured via SSH or SSL.
Works seemlessly with procmail to direct your mail into specific folders and for spam filtering. These filters are not client specific so there is no need to create rules for every mail client that you plan on using.
Fetchmail to get your mail from other IMAP and POP (and others) servers (can use SSH and SSL also).
Anyone that has a cross platform need, does not want to constantly import and convert mail formats, and only wants to deal with filters one time should be using this trio.
Search Google for any of these for mounds of configuration and installation tips.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
I want to be able to put my mail on a shared FAT32 drive, and have access to my email seamlessly whether I boot up in Windows or Linux
Related Mozilla bugs include 58647 and 66259. Get a Bugzilla account and vote for these bugs, or contribute if you can.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
> I forgotten the command to specify directory, is there a Mozilla guru
> reading?
I'm not a guru, but it is straightforward:
Edit -> Mail & News Account Settings -> account_name -> Server Settings -> Local directory.
I have put in a shared FAT32. Works fantastic. Once in a while I defragment the drive.
Phoenix is much faster for me, although it is most obvious on my older machines on which Mozilla is too big.
I've heard this complaint before and almost always it is because someone didn't read the FAQ. You must nuke your old Mozilla preferences (~/.mozilla in unix) before starting Phoenix; alternatively, you can create a new profile for Phoenix (-ProfileWizard or -ProfileManager). Phoenix will be very slow if you use a profile created by 'regular' Mozilla.
Here's something to read for IMAP client authors: IMAP Client Coding HOWTO.