| Index > Scribe > mailbox compression | |
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| Author/Date | mailbox compression |
| Pixador 28/11/2003 5:35am | Hi,
I just love Scribe :) It's a great program and its only defect is not being opensource ;) I'd like to make a suggestion: could the mails be stored in a compressed way inside the mailbox file? I mean, not compress the mailbox itself but pack every email (both text and attachments) before adding it to the mailbox. Is this possible? Even if needs a plugin. This way it would have no performance impact on deleting messages and compacting mailboxes. It would be nice if this was optional, so people using old PCs could leave mails uncompressed, but those on fast PCs or short in disk space (for example, using an USB memory stick) could benefit from a slower growth in mailbox file. Speaking on saving disk space, is there any way to have an English-only resource file? So I can save the space used to store the strings in all other languages. Thanks for your soft! |
| fReT 28/11/2003 7:08am | I could be much more aggressive about packing the data into the mail folders file. I even thought of a way to do it semi on the fly, or in idle time.
But at the moment it's easier to pack the file manually every so often rather than upset the apple cart and introduce a whole new unknown element into the code base. It takes a lot of time to get the storage system stable and relitively bug free. And I'm loath to go and brake something in there. Plus I'm thinking of ditching the whole format for v2 and going for a filesystem in a file. Maybe like reiser4 or something. So it's kinda hard putting engineering time into something that I know I'm probably going to throw away in 6 months. The resource file can be striped of various languages by using the lrstrip tool. I'd love to open source, but I've already commited to commercial partners and they don't want to compete with "free" just yet. I feel snowed under with all the work that Scribe needs, and I'm just "one guy". I think that I wouldn't be able to sell InScribe if anyone could build it for free and give it away. And then I wouldn't be able to cover the cost of this website and maintain my computer and internet connection, which at the moment costs me more than I make from this software. And well I wouldn't work on it if I didn't get some pay for it. I have a family and a mortgage, I guess the times of doing it for love are rapidly dwindling away. Like they say, find something you love doing and work out a way to get paid for it. Maybe one day when enough people really get behind funding open source I'll be worth my while. But I don't think people are there yet. |
| Pixador 28/11/2003 11:06am | Thank you very much for your answer.
I understand what you say about compressing the mailbox... well, it seemed easy to me compressing every mail before writting it to disk, but I'm not a developer myself (I just write some silly little Delphi stuff :D) so I guess it's not that easy, and you're right, it would not be worth it if the whole thing is going to be changed soon. About lrStrip, it doesn't work :( It pops up a messagebox saying "The procedure entry point ??0GToken@@QA@PAD0_N@Z could not be located in the dynamic link library Lgi.dll". That was with Lgi.dll from Test44. I tried it with the one in 1.84 and it does not complain, but it doesn't work either. It just seem to be in an endless loop, reducing computer speed and raising CPU temperature :D I let it run for maybe 4 or 5 minutes, then I Ctrl+C it and all I got was an 1Kb result file :( Maybe I will write my own tool for cleaning up lr8 files :) Thanks for the explanation about why not going opensource. It's very legitimate, you've worked very hard to get such a great product, and it's fair being paid for it. Anyway, maybe a donation system could work? I bet lots of happy inScribe users would send you some money even if they didn't need to, specially after seeing you really care about your users, answering to questions in your forums and adding requested features when needed. Anyway, I bought inScribe a few minutes ago :) Too bad the Kagi page was complaining about missing data... I had to resubmit 4 times the page until it accepted it... and then I found out they have 4 transactions with my inScribe request!!! Are they going to charge me 4 times for the same program? Stupid Kagi! :( |
| fReT 28/11/2003 6:37pm | Ok sorry about the Kagi thing, I'll try my best to sort things out at this end. If multiple transactions come through I'll talk to Kagi and refund the dupes.
However I still havn't seen the first purchase email so I don't think any of them went through. You can also now buy InScribe through PayPal, through the link on the InScribe page. I know LrStrip is broken, and I went to update the page last night but the site was down and so I couldn't. I think a mere recompile and and few edits and it'll be up and running again. |
| Pixador 29/11/2003 11:16am | Thank you very much :)
I'll wait to hear from Kagi before trying PayPal (I sent them an email explained what happened). |
| fReT 29/11/2003 7:12pm | I've updated LrStrip to work with the new format resource files, and it now has it's own dll as well. |
| Pixador 06/12/2003 6:11am | Thanks, LrStrip worked great :)
I finally got an answer from Kagi: "use another card". That helps a lot, of course :( So I finally applied it via PayPal and it all went ok :) |
| Dan 09/06/2004 12:39am | I'm noticing that my "folders.mail2" file never gets any smaller, even after i empty the trash. Is this a bug or am I missing some extra step to purge the mailbox file?
Love the program, I take it with me on a USB drive and have my mail, contacts and calendar always at my fingertips. |
| fReT 09/06/2004 12:44am | Dan:
File->Compact Folders. |
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