*** Perfect Thunderbird Configuration ***

This tutorial is written for Google IMAP users and Open Source developers.

Thunderbird is a good mail client with good IMAP support, but the default
configuration leaves something to be desired.
This tutorial guides you through few simple steps necessary to allow you to use
Thunderbird to send patches to developing mailing lists such as linux-kernel.
Nothing you cannot find elsewhere really, but I felt the need to write this down
anyway, mainly for myself.

At the time of writing this, my Thunderbird versions is 2.0.0.14.


1) disable flowed plaintext
go to preferences -> Advanced -> Config Editor and set
mailnews.send_plaintext_flowed = false



2) don't wrap lines
Thunderbird wraps lines longer than 72 chars by default. This is usually OK
when you write an email, but it is definitely not OK if you want to paste a
patch into you message to send it to a mailing list.
You could just go to the Config Editor and set mailnews.wraplength to 0,
and when you are done, set it back to 72, but it is annoying.
To work around this, I installed the keyconfig extension, added a new
shortcut with this code:

GetCurrentEditor().wrapWidth = 0

and applied the key F1.
Then I created another shortcut with this code:

GetCurrentEditor().wrapWidth = 72

and applied Shift-F1.
Remember to set both shortcuts to global in the kerconfig editor.
Now you can switch between wrap == 0 and wrap == 72 using F1 and S-F1.



3) using an external editor
if you often write emails with patches inline, you could find that having to
paste the patch into the editor every time is annoying and error prone.
A better way would be to use the same editor you normally use to write code to
write emails too.
You can do this installing the exteditor extension, my command line for the
external editor is:

/usr/bin/konsole --noframe --nomenubar --noscrollbar --notabbar --vt_sz=90x40 -e /usr/bin/vim



4) a better configuration for Google IMAP
if you use Google IMAP with Thunderbird, and the first time you configured
Thunderbird for that you though you were too smart to read the FAQ, you may
have missed the following suggestions:

browser.cache.memory.capacity = 31457280
set mail.server.default.fetch_by_chunks = false



5) your sent mail into the mailing list folder it belongs to
if you often send emails to mailing lists you probably have already figured out
that GMail doesn't show your sent mail message in your mailing list folder you
sent it to, not even after you receive it.
To work around this you need the "Copy Sent to Current" extension, that allows
you to save a copy of your message wherever you want.



6) crappy MS emails
sometimes emails received from crappy MS clients don't show correctly, what you
see is an empty email with an unreadable attachment.
Fortunately exists an extension called "LookOut" that is able to decode
correctly this kind of messages.


Happy hacking,

Stefano Stabellini