Thank you for your answer and explainations. It think the problem harder than it looked like to me.
I told XML, cause it is universal, but anything easy to manipulate and transform could be fine. My problem is how to manage hundred and hundred email I need to archive and access quickly, and how to convert old outlook archives to the best format I can do (fast and compact). Mbox or Mail and tar/gzip could be what I'm looking for ;-) The Kmail converter crashes when I want to convert these old archives. I 'll try grepmail (time for me to learn a bit of perl). > Not likely -- XML would not be a good fit. XML is a great solution for > getting structured data out of one system into another system, because > it allows you to define the meta data attributes right there with the > raw data. XML is a lousy solution for storing unstructured data that you > don't intend to send to a foreign system. Email has some loose structure > in the header, but the part you probably care about, body and > attachments, has practically no structure at all and can only be > indexed/searched with brute force. Since it'll be brute forced any way, > why add the bulk of XML? > > Using a SQL database might make a little more sense, until you start to > think about how to build the tables and realize that this is putting raw > data into a system designed to hold meta data. Now building a SQL > database that indexes the meta data and spits out pointers to the raw > data would make more sense, if you can think of a way to extract useful > meta data from body and attachments without just throwing the whole > damned mess into the database. > > There are two solutions that make sense to me: > > 1) leave everything in plain text mbox or maildir on a hard disk. When > you want to find something, use Unix tools. For instance, > #!/bin/sh > # This is a wrapper to the grepmail Perl script which searches mail. > # The wrapper will take regexp from the commandline, recurse through > # a mail folder, then put the results into a new box: "results.$TERM". > # If no parameters, show proper usage and fail. > if [ $# -lt 1 ] ; then > echo "Usage: grepmymail \"singleterm\"" > echo "Usage: grepmymail \"(1term|2terms|3terms)\"" > exit 2 > fi > # Options: -R is recursive, -m adds a header line showing the mailbox > # the message was found in, -M skips MIME attachments, and -b searches > # bodies, not headers. > for TERM in $1; do > grepmail -RmMb $TERM $HOME/mail > /tmp/results.$TERM > mv /tmp/results.$TERM $HOME/mail/ > done > > 2) Use Evolution and create vfolders when you want to look for > something. Note that these are not mutually exclusive as Evolution keeps > everything in plain text formats any way. > > Jack > > On Mon, 2003-06-09 at 16:28, Stephlub wrote: > > is anybody can help me? > > > ...and about an xml converter > > > mbox2xml maildir2xml anyproprietary2xml > > > (mailxml2mbox mailxml2maildir mailxml2sql...) > > > > > > 1 I think it very useful: convert and archive mail with xml for cataloging > > > reasons, from kmail > > > 2 less important: make kmail (and others) able to read this xml > > > > > > this could be wery interesting for sorting cataloging and fist: archiving > > > and have best access to archives > > > I can't figure out how to archive my emails and access it like with a DB. > > > Just make a small search seems to be impossible with kmail to me. > > > I used outlook and even if it's hard to manage archives, i could do > > > recursive search for mail of 2 years old... further true db management > > could > > > be great! > > > > > > This feature could exists yet. Just tell me. > > > > > > > > ______________________________________________________________________ > > > > Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? > > Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com > -- > Jack Coates > Monkeynoodle: A Scientific Venture... > http://www.monkeynoodle.org/resume.html > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- > Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? > Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com >
Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
