{"id":488,"date":"2007-04-20T15:38:49","date_gmt":"2007-04-20T21:38:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antone.geckotribe.com\/alpha-gecko\/2007\/04\/20\/transition-from-mailapp-to-thunderbird-custom-compiled\/"},"modified":"2007-04-20T16:11:10","modified_gmt":"2007-04-20T22:11:10","slug":"transition-from-mailapp-to-thunderbird-custom-compiled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zeta.geckotribe.com\/alpha-gecko\/transition-from-mailapp-to-thunderbird-custom-compiled\/","title":{"rendered":"Transition from Mail.app to Thunderbird (custom compiled)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, I heard that version 2.0 of the Thunderbird<\/a> email client had been released, so I decided to check it out. I would have switched a while back except for one annoying problem -- I prefer the two-paned view with a separate window for reading messages, which works great in Thunderbird except that when I delete an open message, instead of the window going away, the next message, which I may have no intention of reading at the moment, gets displayed and marked \"read\". Yuck! There's a preference setting (which you have to go into the \"config editor\" from the \"Advanced \/ General\" panel to edit) that looks like it should control this behavior, but it has no effect. And version 2.0 didn't fix the problem. :-(<\/p>\n

The last time around, I let it go at that and stayed with Apple's Mail.app. This time I decided to download the source code and see if I could fix the problem in my own custom build. I didn't know what I was getting into.<\/p>\n

First, I got the code, and read the instructions for building Thunderbird. I decided I'd better upgrade to the latest XCode, which I discovered I'd already downloaded but hadn't installed. Interesting. I uninstalled the old XCode, and since I often find myself low on space in my boot partition (partly because Mozilla keeps saving a gazilion copies of it's bookmarks file -- I've looked up information on the problem and how to solve it, but it hasn't helped), I made the \"Developer\" directory a symlink to a directory on a bigger partition. That saved a bunch of space where it was most needed. So far so good.<\/p>\n

So I got XCode started compiling the code unchanged, just to make sure I could do it, and then went looking for the place in the code that controlled whether that window closed. Interestingly enough, that code is written in JavaScript, as is a lot of Thunderbird -- I didn't know that. After a little Googling, I figured out how to retrieve the value of that preference setting I mentioned earlier, and (in a separate copy of the source file), made the little one-line change needed to bend Thunderbird to my will. Then I waited for the compile to finish. And waited... And was very grateful for preemptive multitasking, which enabled me to work on other things for a few hours, checking on the compile periodically until it finally completed. I've gotta get me a newer computer -- this 400MHz G4 is really showing its age.<\/p>\n

Once the first compile finished, I launched the app, and lo and behold! It worked perfectly! The icon was different from the pre-built Thunderbird I'd downloaded, but otherwise it seemed the same. So I backed up the original of the file I'd modified, copied my changed file into the source tree, and recompiled. And waited. But not nearly so long since I didn't do a clean compile. But it still took a long time. Once the compile was complete, I tested my changes, and they worked perfectly! Almost ready for the switch, I thought.<\/p>\n

Then I selected \"Tools \/ Import\" from the menus, selected the \"Mail\" radio button, clicked \"Next\"...and discovered that Thunderbird doesn't know how to import mail from Mail.app. Oh great. A few Googleseconds later (Googleseconds are a lot longer than normal seconds, but we love them anyway), I had import instructions from TwisterMC<\/a> (be sure to check the comments for info needed if you're running the latest MacOS X), had my copy of emlxconvert<\/a>, and started converting mail folders...of which I have about a googol.<\/p>\n

Well, the transition took a little more work than expected, but I'm now happily running my own custom version of Thunderbird, secure in the knowledge that if I don't like the way it works, I can always change it. For anyone who may want the close-window-on-delete behavior, and doesn't mind compling their own app, here's the necessary code change: in mozilla\/mail\/base\/content\/messageWindow.js, change this (at line 210):<\/p>\n

if (gNextMessageViewIndexAfterDelete != nsMsgViewIndex_None)<\/p>\n

to this:<\/p>\n

if ((!gPrefBranch.getBoolPref('mail.close_message_window.on_delete')) && (gNextMessageViewIndexAfterDelete != nsMsgViewIndex_None))<\/p>\n

...and make sure you've got that configuration setting set to true.<\/p>\n

Anyone involved in Thunderbird care to get that functionality working in a future revision?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, I heard that version 2.0 of the Thunderbird email client had been released, so I decided to check it out. I would have switched a while back except for one annoying problem -- I prefer the two-paned view with a separate window for reading messages, which works great in Thunderbird except that when I...
[read more<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-email"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zeta.geckotribe.com\/alpha-gecko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zeta.geckotribe.com\/alpha-gecko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zeta.geckotribe.com\/alpha-gecko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeta.geckotribe.com\/alpha-gecko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeta.geckotribe.com\/alpha-gecko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zeta.geckotribe.com\/alpha-gecko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zeta.geckotribe.com\/alpha-gecko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeta.geckotribe.com\/alpha-gecko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeta.geckotribe.com\/alpha-gecko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}