398371 - Editing the shortcut target properties does not redirect to specific folder

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Penelope Graveyard :: Installer, defect, P3)

Description

[Fulano]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.7) Gecko/20070914 Firefox/2.0.0.7 Creative ZENcast v1.04.06
Build Identifier: 8.0.0 Beta 1

In Eudora we could edit the desktop shortcut(s) to have an independent instance of the program running.
For example my "Target" field of the Properties menu of one shortcut reads:
"C:\Program Files\Qualcomm\Eudora\Eudora.exe" "E:\Files\Email"
All the mail and settings are in a folder for each instance.
I have several instances of Eudora each with different people/personalities mail AND settings, some in different hard drives.
To move to another computer it was only necessary to copy those folders and edit new shortcuts, or just move the flash USB drive.
When upgrading to Penelope this trick no longer seems to work...
And this was the main advantage of Eudora for me...

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install Penelope
2. Edit the desktop shortcut
3. Point to an eudora mail folder
Actual Results:  
It doesn't "go" there, recognize the eudora.ini inside and work from there.

Expected Results:  
Ask me in the instalation where I want my mail folder to be.
If I point to an existing eudora mail folder, recognize it and work from there with all the settings, filters, messages, signatures already integrated.
Allow for duplicating the desktop shortcut, edit the target and allow for a different person to work from her own folder.

This is a VERY important feature of Eudora that should NOT be lost!

Comment 1

[Matt Dudziak]

Penelope supports 'profiles', but I gather that is not what you want as 2 'profiles' cannot be running at the same time.

I have the feeling that, due to the Mozilla structure, this will be difficult to implement in Penelope, but will assign the bug.

Comment 2

[Ingmar Hosenfeld]

Looks to me like another request for what's asked for in Bug 394936 – "No Custom Data Folder option in installer"

Comment 3

[Fulano]

(In reply to comment #1)
> Penelope supports 'profiles', but I gather that is not what you want as 2
> 'profiles' cannot be running at the same time.

I don't want "at the same time" but in the same machine!
Mostly I want Penelope to recognize an "eudora.ini" containing folder/directory as a possible startup folder! And keep all the necessary settings and mail inside that same folder! And have as many as needed folders like that in the same machine.
Some of these folders can be on USB drives and carried to different machines with all mail always in order no matter in what machine they are used/updated!
Each eudora.ini folder is a set of different personalities/email accounts. 
Should we call this set a "profile"? Or a "profile" is what I call "personality"?
As english is not my native language perhaps I'm not making myself clear on all this... Please excuse me!

Comment 4

[Matt Dudziak]

I think Profiles are what you want. See http://www.mozilla.org/support/thunderbird/profile for an explanation. Basically what they do is allow you to select which data folder you want to use when you launch Eudora (Thunderbird). Unfortunately, there is no UI to enable profiles the first time, but the first time you launch the profile manager (see the instructions at the link above) you can set it such that every time you launch Eudora a dialog appears asking you which profile you want to use.

Let me know if that is what you are looking for.

Matt

Comment 5

[Ingmar Hosenfeld]

Hi Matt,

I think profiles are pretty close, giving most of the Eudora functionality, but not quite and not as smooth'n'easy. 
What I see as remaining differences are:
1. Eudora does indeed allow you to run several instances with different data locations (or profiles) at the same time (I keep work and private mails strictly seperated and therefore actually have 2 instances of Eudora running simultaneosly on one machine quite frequently). But at least to me, that is not a real necessity, just something nice to have.
2. No need to edit around an .ini-file within the application folder to point Eudora to a different profile, just start it with a call to Eudora.exe adding the path to the data/profile location (if i bring my eudora data folder on an usb-drive to a friend, that also has eudora installed, in order to use it all I have to do is start "his" Eudora pointing to my data folder). For me this is by great lenghts smoother in Eudora, but functionality-wise TB seems to allow what's needed.

Comment 6

[Fulano]

(In reply to comment #4)
> I think Profiles are what you want. 
> every time you launch Eudora a dialog appears asking you which profile you 
> want to use.

I do not want the installed program -- Penelope -- to be aware of any profiles I might have!
I don't want to be at my workstation with my boss over my shoulder, opening the mail program to look for an urgent email and have a splash menu asking if I want to go for my "normal" profile or for my sex mail profile!
I have Eudora "profiles" in sub-sub-subfolders with the edited shortcut inside so that only someone -- me -- who knows what and where to look for can launch it!
And when it launches that folder is all there is for that session!
Can't you see the enormous advantage of such behavior?

Comment 7

[Matt Dudziak]

(In reply to comment #6)
> (In reply to comment #4)
> > I think Profiles are what you want. 
> > every time you launch Eudora a dialog appears asking you which profile you 
> > want to use.
> 
> I do not want the installed program -- Penelope -- to be aware of any profiles
> I might have!
> I don't want to be at my workstation with my boss over my shoulder, opening the
> mail program to look for an urgent email and have a splash menu asking if I
> want to go for my "normal" profile or for my sex mail profile!
> I have Eudora "profiles" in sub-sub-subfolders with the edited shortcut inside
> so that only someone -- me -- who knows what and where to look for can launch
> it!
> And when it launches that folder is all there is for that session!
> Can't you see the enormous advantage of such behavior?
> 

You can also launch various profiles from the command-line, so that, as you say, there is no dialog asking which profile to use. I'd suggest you search the Thunderbird help pages for info about Profiles and how to use them.


We will, of course, leave this bug open, and if it receives sufficient votes to move it toward the top of the list, will look at it. As this is an open-source project, others are more than welcome to add this feature as well.

Matt

Comment 8

[Jeff Beckley]

You can use the "-profile" command-line argument to specify a particular directory as the profile directory.  See <https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Command_Line_Options> for details on that option and others.

No, it's not quite as easy as Classic Eudora as you have to add "-profile" before the path to the directory, but I think this is good enough.