Jake. (and other Mac users)

Under Mac OS v.10.4.11 the mbox file opened up with "Text Edit". I
saved it as a .txt file. (took a few minutes). Regardless, the
original or .txt format, won't import to Mail 2.1

I thought for the halibut, I'd convert it to an RTF file under Text
Edit. This is still taking a long time FWIW.

i.e. as we speak, It is still chugging away in the background with the
"Spinning Beach Ball-o-Death" !

Neil.

On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 1:31 PM, Jake de Villiers
<crescentbeachguitar@gmail.com> wrote:
> Wow Wes, thanks for doing this!   You too John.  :-)
>
> Now all I have to do is figure out how to use the file!
>
> On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 10:43 AM, pickle vanagon <greenvanagon@gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> A while ago, I promised that I would put together a file with some
>> easy-to-follow instructions about how to get the vanagon archives into your
>> gmail account "in a few days".  First a few words on why this is necessary:
>> the web search interface for the archives doesn't use an indexed search,
>> which means that searching it can take 5 minutes or so, or, in practice,
>> hours or more, since it will often simply time out before returning a
>> result.  Searching the archives with google is not a good substitute, since
>> google doesn't index most of the archives, so that a google search will
>> miss
>> many messages.  (I will not cover this fact in these directions.  If you
>> missed my previous examples of how the google search doesn't work, "search
>> the archives" to find them.  Once you follow the directions below to get
>> the
>> archives in a browseable and searchable form, it will become obvious just
>> how bad google is for the archives, as you'll see that some searches that
>> get only a handful of hits with google should actually be getting
>> hundreds).  There is one decent alternative to what I describe below when
>> it
>> comes to searching the archives: the "email" search interface, described
>> here: http://gerry.vanagon.com/info/searching.html.  It is still painfully
>> slow and has its own share of issues, but it doesn't time out and is
>> reliable.
>>
>> Weeks later, I'm finally ready to deliver something less than what I
>> promised.  It is possible to get all of the archives into gmail (I've done
>> it with my account) but I don't recommend it.  It is slow and tedious (it
>> took me more than a week of constant uploading by an automated script) due
>> to gmail's slow imap import process.  It can also make gmail mad at you (I
>> got locked out of my account for a day at some point) and is generally not
>> a
>> good choice for most people.  For that reason, I'm not going to try to give
>> "step-by step" directions on how to get the archives into your gmail.
>>
>> But what I will do is almost as good (or maybe even better).  By importing
>> the archives into the opera mail client (which is free), you will have
>> access to the entire archives of the vanagon list whether or not you are
>> connected to the internet.  Plus, since opera mail has an "indexed search",
>> you can search the entire archives in seconds all on your own machine.  The
>> best thing would be if the web archive interface was "fixed" to use an
>> indexed search, but until that happens, I consider this to be a pretty good
>> solution for most people.
>>
>> I've prepared the archives as an "mbox" file, which John Meeks has been
>> kind
>> enough to agree to host for listmembers to download on his vanagonauts
>> site.  You can also import the mbox file into a different email client of
>> your choice, but I can't write instructions for every email client so
>> you're
>> on your own there.  I chose opera as the "suggested" client because it
>> seems
>> to be the only readily available client that has an "indexed search" built
>> in (and is available for just about any operating system), but another
>> solution is to use another client (like thunderbird) in conjunction with
>> google desktop or a similar search program.  Like I said before, you are on
>> your own if you want to pursue that route.
>>
>> One final thing: in spite of the fact that these directions can give us the
>> ability to have complete access to the archives, I think we should keep in
>> mind that most listmembers will not bother to download the file and go
>> through with this (which is quite reasonable, since the process requires
>> upwards of a gigabyte of free space to complete).  As a result, I would
>> suggest that it is still probably not very constructive to answer peoples
>> questions with the answer "search the archives", since, for many intents
>> and
>> purposes, the web archives remain broken and google doesn't work either.
>>
>>
>> Here are my directions to get the archive into opera mail:
>>
>> 0.  Download the gerry.zip file from
>> http://www.vanagonauts.com/files/gerry.zip
>> 1.  The file gerry.zip is compressed and needs to be unzipped.  (Some
>> versions of Windows may have this functionality built in?)  The size of the
>> file gerry.zip is 162M.  If you have a file that is much smaller than that,
>> it probably didn't download correctly.  (For anybody that wants to know,
>> the
>> MD5 sum of the file is 408626910cc14145089907ba7f7c66c1)
>> 2.  When unzipped, the file "gerry" (no extension) is 576 megabytes.  It
>> contains every message in the vanagon archives (starting on April 2 1994)
>> through November 30, 2008.  The unzipped file is an "mbox" file, which can
>> be imported or used by most mail programs.  You are on your own when it
>> comes to importing this into your mail program of choice.  I will show you
>> how to import the file into opera mail, which includes an indexed search so
>> that you can search the entire archive in seconds.
>> 3. Install opera (get it for free from www.opera.com)
>> 4. On the left bar in opera, click on the envelope button to go to opera
>> mail.  Under the file menu, choose "Import and Export" > "Import Mail".
>> Choose "generic mbox file" and click next.  Hit the "add mbox..." button
>> and
>> locate the unzipped "gerry" file.  Under "Import into:", you can leave the
>> setting as "new account" or you can choose an existing account if you
>> already have an account setup that you would like to use.  Click next, and
>> opera will start processing the file.  This will take a long time.  When it
>> finishes, you will have the archives in an easily searchable and browsable
>> location.
>> 5.  If you setup opera as your email client for your vanagon subscription
>> (follow readily available online instructions), you will always have all of
>> the vanagon mail available for search, minus the "gap" between November 30,
>> 2008 and whenever you set it up.  Maybe at some point in the future, I will
>> make an extra file to cover the "gap".
>>
>> Happy searching!
>> Wes
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Jake
> 1984 Vanagon GL
> 1986 Westy Weekender "Dixie"
> Crescent Beach, BC
> www.crescentbeachguitar.com
> http://subyjake.googlepages.com/mydixiedarlin%27
>

--
Neil Nicholson '81 VanaJetta "Jaco
http://groups.google.com/group/vanagons-with-vw-inline-4-cylinder-gas-engines
http://web.mac.com/tubaneil
http://tubaneil.googlepages.com/