>This is the best argument I've seen for avoiding Apple's Mail program--the >data structure is complicated, as in OE. It's not so complicated in Mozilla's >Thunderbird, so fewer things are likely to go wrong. I dumped Apple Mail ages >ago after using it for only a couple of weeks. Went back and tried it again >last week and dumped it again.
Not fair and not correct. Thunderbird and Apple Mail do virtually the same thing in this regard. Thunderbird uses mbox format. Apple Mail uses emlx format. Emlx stores one message per file within folders and these files can be accessed via the Finder -- viewed directly using QuickView or a variety of other ways. Mbox has a number of variations, but typically stores one folder per file. Mbox files can be viewed in any text viewer. Both email programs maintain a separate index file. Apple used to use mbox and still labels many files with an mbox extension, even though they are not mbox. I don't know why they do that. Perhaps they consider emlx to be just a further development of mbox? It is similar enough that one could argue for this. I don't think the Apple Mail team possesses the sharpest pencils, but it is not a bad product. Thunderbird is better in some cases, but the feature sets are not identical. Either is a fine choice depending on circumstances. Either mbox or emlx are in sharp contrast to what MS does: storing all emails in one huge, fragile database file that is constantly hit with changes and hard to back up (due to its potentially huge size and frequent changes). I just spent 10 hours recovering 100s of lost messages from a 2.5 GB MS database file. It was a brutal job. I'm now looking at alternatives for my client. ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
