76852 - [RFE] support for compressed mail folders

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(MailNews Core :: Backend, enhancement)

Description

[Rohinton Kazak]

I would like to be able to store my mail in compressed format
eg zip files and still reference then from the mail utility.
I would also like to be able to transfer these zip files around
and so make my mail archives transportable and thus importable/
accessiable on another mail client.

We have a limit of 40Mb on our IMAP server. I would like to
archive my mail say by month and have them accessiable easily
so I could for example store them on zip drives and then when
I needed to reference them, simply connecting to the zip archive
thru the mail interface would accomplish this.  I guess this is
a smarter export/import process?

Comment 1

[Rohinton Kazak]

This would effect other mail components, Front End and Database...

Comment 2

[Henrik Gemal]

I dont think this is gonna happen before Mozilla 70.0...:)

Comment 3

[Helge Hielscher]

KMail Bug + Discussion about compressing Mail Folders:
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=79357

Comment 4

[Helge Hielscher]

Ximian Discussion about compressing archives
http://bugzilla.ximian.com/show_bug.cgi?id=23621

Comment 5

[Eyal Rozenberg]

This bug should be split in two: A bug about supporting compressed mail folders, and a bug about 'dynamically adding references' to mail folders which exist on some removable storage. As this bug is inactive, I'll presume to choose the first issue for this bug, change the subject accordingly and ask the reporter to open another bug for the second issue which doesn't really seem to have anything to do with compression.

Comment 6

[Russell East]

I keep a lot of very old mail folders around, and very occasionally I need to search them.  Would be very useful to be able to compress some or all of the old folders!

Comment 7

[Russell East]

It would also be really useful if we can search packed folders.  

Ideally for me, there would be something like a "Pack" option available in the context menu for every folder.  If checked by end-user, the folder becomes compressed, but usable in all the usual ways, for example searching - though clearly it would be much slower to use.  An "Unpack" would also be available.

With this design, there is no need to have an overall "archive" schema for Thunderbird - it is just another folder properties option.   Nor is there any need for "dynamic folder references", which seem a bit dodgey to me.

Comment 10

[dE]

(In reply to Henrik Gemal from comment #2)
> I dont think this is gonna happen before Mozilla 70.0...:)

+1

Comment 12

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

This is not a complication we're going to support.

Comment 13

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

The space saving aspects are similar to the rationale for Bug 381575 - Ability to store email and folder outside of profile

But the ability to compress files based on directory settings exists in modern file systems (NTFS, BTRFS, etc) - which is part of the reason for not enabling such capability in the Thunderbird UI.