Ann: Packer plugin for reading Unix mailbox files released!

[Juergen]

Hello,

I'm happy to announce the first public release of my packer plugin for reading Unix mailbox files (.MBX). I hope, that it will be useful for some of you.

The plugin stamps each mail according to it's header "Date" field. Since this time stamp is expressed in Universal Time Coordinated (UTC), messages from all parts of the world (e.g. on a mailing list) can be sorted by time in a consistent way.
The mails inside the MBX files also can be sorted by subject or size, of course. For more details read the documentation, please.

This is version 1.00 beta. Although it runs stable with TC 5.50 and TC 5.51 on my PC on Windows 98/1st ed., I call it "beta" because at the moment, there are no experiences on other systems.

You can download it at: http://luethje.de.vu/prog/

Any questions, suggestions, comments, and bug reports are welcome.

Best regards,
Juergen

[Juergen]

I've just released version 1.00 beta 2.

fixed
--------
o Obsolete time zone formats (according to RFC 2822) now are handled correctly.

changed
----------
o The mbox files now are opened in binary mode. So the plugin can read even corrupted files that contain binary data.

o When extracting messages, any ASCII character 26 ("End of File" marker) is replaced with the string "<EOF>". So it should be possible, to open even corrupted messages with almost any text editor after extraction.

o Several minor tweaks.

o Documentation considerably improved.

Best regards,
Juergen

[shammat]

Thanks for the plugin! It works fine.

However I do have one problem:

I'd like to use this plugin for reading my Mozilla mailboxes. But they do not have the extension .mbx (actually they don't have an extension at all)

Is there any way I can still look at them?

Ctrl-Page Down doesn't work on those files (if I rename them to .mbx they work fine though)

Is there any feature in TC where I can specify the plugin, when opening an archive?

Cheers
Thomas

[Juergen]

Hello Thomas,

at the moment, unfortunally I don't see a way to open your mbox files, that don't have an extension, with this plugin. AFAIK TC doesn't allow to associate <no extension> with a plugin. Also, the current version of my plugin does not support [Ctrl]+[PageDown], but I'll add this in the next version. Thanks for the suggestion!

I only know of the possibility to associate a plugin with a 'class' of files (by specifying an extension via "Configuration" > "Options"). But I don't know, whether or not you can choose, which plugin shall be used to open an individual archive. Other people here certainly know that.

Best regards,
Juergen

[shammat]

Also, the current version of my plugin does not support [Ctrl]+[PageDown], but I'll add this in the next version

That would be enough! No need to hack around the no-extension problem.

Thanks

[Juergen]

For v1.00 beta 2, no bugs have been reported, now v1.00 beta 3 is available.
+ new: Mailboxes can be opened with <Ctrl>+<PageDown>, regardless of the file extension.

There is a glitch concerning the new feature in this version, which I can't explain:
Suppose this plugin is associated with files with extension .MBX. Now I can also open an mbox file with say no extension, by pressing <Ctrl>+<PageDown>. OK, then all messages are listed, I can view their contents, etc.
But when I mark two messages inside this mbox file, and choose "Files" > "Compare By Content...", this does not work. It works fine with the same file, though, when I just rename it, so that it has the extension .MBX!
Does anyone know what happens here? I don't see a way to influence this behaviour by my plugin.

Best regards,
Juergen

[sqa_wizard]

Congratulations !
Nice and handy plugin.

I still cannot open a file without extension using <Ctrl>+<PageDown> ( even with beta3 )

Is there any chance to implement a deletion of selected mails ?

[Juergen]

Thanks.

Did you uninstall any older version of 'mbox.wcx' before you installed the new version? (For details please see the section 'Installation' in 'mbox_eng.txt'.) TC requires this, in order to recognize the additional capability of the new plugin version.

Yes, I plan to support deletion of selected messages, as well as creation of new mailboxes, and the capability to add messages to existing mailboxes in a later version (not 1.00 final).
For the sake of data security, the version 1.00 will remain 'read-only'. If there is more experience after some time, and no heavy bugs are reported, I'll go ahead, and implement those more critical features.

Best regards,
Juergen

[Juergen]

Supplement to the license of mbox
"You are not allowed to wrap the file 'mbox.zip', that means you must not distribute the file in the way, that it is packed in another archive or such."
This applies to all versions of 'mbox.zip' that I have released so far.

Maxwish, I just saw, that you distribute a file named "wcx_mbox.zip" on the site http://www.clubtotal.tk/
It contains my plugin, together with the file 'ClubTotal.nfo', that hasn't got to do anything with the plugin. Please stop it! Remove the file "wcx_mbox.zip" from the website.
If you want to distribute the pure original unchanged, and not in any way wrapped file "mbox.zip", though: fine.

Regards,
Juergen

[shammat]

Ctrl-Page Down works fine for me with Beta3 !

Thanks for that.

One small problem still: Emails where the header is encoded due to special characters are not displayed correctly, e.g.

Code: Select all

Subject: Wie lautet Deine =?iso-8859-2?Q?L=F6sung=3F?=

Cheers
Thomas

[Juergen]

Wasn't it Shakespeare who said: "Thou shouldst not put these funny 'umlauts' in thy e-mail headers."?

Seriously:
Thanks for pointing this out to me, Thomas. Now I recall, that special characters are allowed in e-mail header fields, according to RFC 2047. I almost had forgotten about it ...

I just want to mention, that the plugin handles a mail with a subject such as "Wie lautet Deine =?iso-8859-2?Q?L=F6sung=3F?=" correctly. That is, the plugin shows, extracts etc. it like any other mail.

But such a subject / filename looks ugly, and is hard to read, of course. That means, I must add support for "BASE64" and "Quoted-Printable" decoding, and for at least say two or three character sets. I think this is good stuff for version 1.1 or so. Thanks again, it's good to have watchful beta testers.

Best regards,
Juergen

[Maxwish]

I just saw, that you distribute a file named "wcx_mbox.zip" on the site http://www.clubtotal.tk/
It contains my plugin, together with the file 'ClubTotal.nfo', that hasn't got to do anything with the plugin. Please stop it! Remove the file "wcx_mbox.zip" from the website.

If you do not agree to my methodes, that I have explained below, I am always happy to change the links for your plugin. No license change needed for that.... So I have now linked the download at Club Total to your homepage.
But the reasons I do this are:
-----
[1] Many people on other websites and support forums make links to certain files at Club Total. If the archive names at Club Total would changed due to a file update (example: CABplugin21.zip to CABplugin22.zip) then many of these external links would become broken. By making links to archives that always keeps the same name (example: CABplugin.zip) and then adding the newer files into that archive, this problem can be avoided.

[2] The original files that are packed in the 'outer shell' now don't have to be renamed and and in some casses I can also add additional files to the 'outer shell' for example Source Codes or Extra documents without having to make seperate download for each file. This is easy for everybody (me as webmaster and the visitors that can now download one complet package instead of seperate files)

[3] The .nfo thing is just to make clear the files are not from the original authors site but from an online archive.

[4] Because Club Total holds more than 120 plugins, I have developped a naming system for the outer shell that will give some structure to the different names the 60+authors have giving : plugintype_Filename.zip
example:
what does a file like cpl.zip mean to you ?
What kind of plugins is it ? (or is it a tool), what version is it ?
I would place the original file (with an added fileversion if not present) in an outer shell like: wfx_cpl.zip
This makes sorting and finding of plugins much easier, and by opening the outhershell the real filename and version is also clear....

But everybody is free to unzip the file as soon as they have download it and store the orginal filename if they want. The outer shell is only working as a kind of directory. I'm just making use of the great TC function "Treat archives as directories" (see TC - Configuration - Packers - top line)

PS1: I have seen this naming system being used by some plugin authors when releasing new files, so I guess some people like it.
PS2: Remember these files are not programs you can run seperately but are plugins for TC, so making a reference in the filename to this is IMO not a bad idea.
------

[djk]

PS1: I have seen this naming system being used by some plugin authors when releasing new files, so I guess some people like it.

True.... it's a good way of naming. I also prefer adding the version number at the end of it but I understand you don't because of the linking to download as you mentioned above.

[Juergen]

If you do not agree to my methodes, that I have explained below, I am always happy to change the links for your plugin. No license change needed for that.... So I have now linked the download at Club Total to your homepage.

Thanks.
The license change is needed, because I want to prevent other people from distributing my plugin in that way, too.

[1] Many people on other websites and support forums make links to certain files at Club Total.

It is debatable, whether making such "deep links" to other websites is good style, but that's not my point ATM.

... in some casses I can also add additional files to the 'outer shell' for example Source Codes or Extra documents without having to make seperate download for each file.

That's exactly what I do not want with my plugin!
If someone wants any supplement to the plugin, just let me know, and I'll be happy to talk about it. (I'll release the source code with version 1.00 final, BTW.)

Regards,
Juergen

[sqa_wizard]

Did you uninstall any older version of 'mbox.wcx' before you installed the new version?

Oops, that did the trick