[pchelpers] Re: Problem Getting Thunderbird To Open Next Mail In List/ And Open To Inbox

Hi Scott

> EGlnl> Don't worry, George, you didn't waste any of my time. It was a
> EGlnl> worthwhile learning experience, and it also seems that i solved
> EGlnl> one problem and found probable solutions for the other one. If
> EGlnl> the second problem goes away by compacting, you'll know that
> EGlnl> was the cause.
> 
> I still feel that there is a severe problem if problems are so
> frequently resolved by compaction. As an example, compare an old 20 MB
> hard drive with Stacker with a modern 20 GB hard drive with NTFS.
> Modern hard drives, while a thousand ties bigger and with a more
> complex structure, almost never suffer from corruption, whereas under
> plain DOS (even without Stacker), I used to see corrupted drives on a
> regular basis.

Not sure what you're saying here. I realise that you understand most or 
all of what follows, but others may think that there is a problem in 
Thunderbird when in fact it's just trying to make sure that people don't 
run into the trouble Outlook Express is famous for.

The problems some people have in TB are often/usually the result of not 
compacting enough within TB. This is not normally a question of file or 
drive corruption. TB stores all the mails in each folder in one big text 
file. Those people that constantly delete much or most of their mail 
make TB work overtime trying to constantly skip over and not show all 
the "deleted" emails that are still there and only marked ready for 
deletion by pressing the Delete button. In other words, the actual email 
file is usually intact; it's just the index file that tries to keep 
track of what parts to show and what parts not that gets huge or corrupted.

Compaction in TB can now be easily automated in tools < options < 
advanced < network & disk space.

Originally, it was considered better to do it manually to avoid the 
possibility of folder corruption due to simultaneous downloading of new 
messages. This caused a lot of problems in Outlook Express and the 
Mozilla people wanted to make sure people first went offline even though 
Thunderbird's storage system is much more robust than OE's.

Thunderbird now locks a folder before compacting it or downloading new 
messages, so it's no longer necessary to compact manually and go offline.

What happens in The Bat when someone deletes a large part of their daily 
mail? Does the program compact automatically or do users have to do it 
manually? Does the program choke if a large part of the inbox is deleted 
and compaction doesn't take place either manually or automatically?



-- 
-------list-services-below-----------
Regards, John Durham (list moderator) <http://modecideas.com/contact.html?sig>
Freelists login at http://www.freelists.org/cgi-bin/lsg2.cgi
List archives at http://www.freelists.org/archives/pchelpers
PC-HELPERS list subscribe/unsub at http://modecideas.com/discuss.htm?sig
Latest news live feeds at http://modecideas.com/indexhomenews.htm?sig
Good advice is like good paint- it only works if applied.

Other related posts: