Re: Email Lines Mess

[Robert Holmgren holmgren@xxxxxxxx]

** Reply to message from "J. R. Fox"  on Sun, 19 May 2002
16:03:43 -0800

Jordan:

> The essential criteria
> for me, though, include good conversion of existing NS Mail / Folders into the
> replacement program's own format. Apparently both have such a utility or feature,
> so it may come down to which does this best.

I don't know about MR/2 (multiplatform?? I don't think so), but Polarbar has
the best method of accepting files from other mailers that I've seen yet (and
the best format: none). You just copy all the files from the old mailer's
various Inbox (or whatever-its-called) folders, into Polarbar folders, and
"Reindex" one or all of them simultaneously. Or just reopen the program, it
reindexes at every launch. All your msgs from other programs are presto
integrated, organizable by date/subject/to/from/whatever. Polarbar stuff is all
plain text, you can read/edit/import/export to XyWrite with hardly any effort
(just launch "t1310 to expand LineFeeds into true s).

Now, of course, this assumes that your (supremely crummy) NS mailer isn't
storing files in some proprietary format, as opposed to plain text. If the
former, you'd have to do a mass export as plain text, Headers and all... It
*is* getting harder to find and edit the NS Prefs files and other initialization
stuff, as the company's version evolves into v6+ -- although compared to
MSExplorer, they're the paragon of openness; and I would imagine that on the
open source Mozilla development track, it's probably fairly easy to seize the
controls.

There is no single "best" thing about Polarbar, but -- did I mention safety?
It has a great tool that can "examine" attachments passively to find out what
they are. It also has controls that limit incoming size, i.e. that warn you
before you start to download a 3Mb family photo to your 28|53K hotel-room dialup
(god I hate people who send huge files unbidden) -- *OR* your oh-so-cool 19K
cellphone attached to your laptop on battery power in the rest stop near the
toll booth.

-----------------------------
Robert Holmgren
holmgren@xxxxxxxx
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