Thunderbird + lightning v Kontact?

[The Liquidator]

Hi

Since fixing a Thunderbird problem referred to elsewhere, I have installed the Lightning Extension. I had previously been unable to import a calendar but now it works, and it appears to run quite nicely too.

There is, obviously, little point in running Kontact and TBird plus lightning side by side as they will soon go out of sync of course, although the idea of e-mailing myself an appointment from work in the shape of a .ics file and dragging it into the Lightning calendar does appeal so I'm seriously considering a switch.

Is anyone using the TBird plus lightning combination full time? If so, any thoughts on how it works for you will be much appreciated. If it works I'll probably move all my contacts to the Moz address book and remove the Kontact suite altogether.

One small point: a cursory glance has not revealed any obvious location of the lightning data files. Is anyone able to tell me where they might be please?

[aged hippy]

Re: Thunderbird + lightning v Kontact?

I wasn't aware of this add-on, Thank You for mentioning it.

Having installed it, i'm quite impressed, and will probably use it in preference to KOrganiser, as i fire up Tbird at boot every day in any case. 8)

Having had a cursory look, there is a directory at: /home/malcolm/.mozilla-thunderbird/lygofted.default/extensions/{e2fda1a4-762b-4020-b5ad-a41df1933103} which contains the directories chrome, components, defaults, & js. Is this what you mean by data files?

Drag-and-drop a KOrganiser icalouts.ics will certainly work, importing all events and related alarms.


All-in-all i will probably kiss KOrganiser fare well.

[The Liquidator]

Re: Thunderbird + lightning v Kontact?

Thanks Malcolm the more I look at it the better it seems to me.

I could never get it to import a calendar before but now that I have set up a new profile to correct a print problem I gave it a go and hey presto it works.

The reason I was asking about data is that I'm trying to get all data out of the home directory into a data partition I currently have (currently FAT 32- a throwback to my dual-boot days). I'm thinking that when I install 9.04 in a few weeks I can start off with a clean home so I need to know where the data is. I am unable to find any reference to lightning within my tbird profile, although it is registered as an extension. Very odd!

[aged hippy]

Re: Thunderbird + lightning v Kontact?

If you look in: .mozilla-thunderbird/lygofted.default/extensions/ there should be a directory with lots of numbers for the name.... at least, there is on this installation.

In there (in chrome) are calendar .jar files, .js files in js, assorted .js and .xpt files in components, and so on.

Once again, Thank You for the mention of it.

[quarkslot]

Re: Thunderbird + lightning v Kontact?

Interesting discussion, I have previously looked at Thunderbird/Lightening but they never quite cut it for me because I require a PIM rather than just e-mail/calendar.

However the point you make about interoperability with other solutions (I assume you use Outlook at work?) is a good one; it's important that people can communicate regardless of the application they are running. Hopefully this is something that the developers of Kontact are working on.

[The Liquidator]

Re: Thunderbird + lightning v Kontact?

Yes I do use Outlook at work.

I suspect the Kontact suite (kmail/ kontact/korganizer) would actually do it but I'm afraid I break the chain by using thunderbird as the mailer - I have used it for years (in my windows days) and from when I dual-booted it was the only viable solution for me as I could access the same mailbox from win and Lin.

As a result of running both I have 2 contact lists (not terribly efficient).

Having consigned XP to a virtual machine now I have options and am looking to bring order. TB and lightning do look prettier and the ability to drag an ics attachment straight into the calendar is nice (although I suspect I could also do that with Kontact if I was using KMail).

Comiing back to Malcolms point, I assume you have downloaded the extension from Mozilla? There is also one in the repositories which is the one I am using. My issue with that is that the lightning extension (and the calendar.jar file which I assume contains the data?) is in /usr/lib/thunderbird so if I had to do a reinstall of the OS I think I might lose my calendar data despite backing up my home files. Or is the actual data somewhere else, I wonder?

Ian

have since ascertained that the actual data is in the storage.sdb file in the profile. Hope this helps if anyone needs it.

[The Liquidator]

Re: Thunderbird + lightning v Kontact?

One final point, you can get holiday files here:

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/holidays.html

[Fintan]

Re: Thunderbird + lightning v Kontact?

I have used thunderbird for years with lightning and the contacts sidebar on various linuxes installed on my network. I love it because I can centralize all of my mails into one place and all the thunderbirds will read from the same place. This works for lighting as well but not for contacts. when I install a new TB I just copy / paste ~.mozilla-thunderbird over to the new install.

I also like the way TB deals with various mail accounts in separate profiles. Kmail doesn't do that like I would like it to.

I have been using Kontact lately and am growing to like it a lot. Especially the time management features.

I can centralize my contacts and calendars but not my mail. Once I have figured that out I will probably change over completely unless TB 3 comes out with some real killer new stuff.

For me they both positives and a few minor negatives. A matter of choice I guess.

[marek_online]

Re: Thunderbird + lightning v Kontact?


You can tell Kontact/kmail where to look for mail by setting the folders option in .kde/share/config/kmailrc

In the [General] section, either edit or add the line:

folders=$HOME/wherever/you/want/

I currently have kmail reading mail out of a folder in my Dropbox, so that my off-line mail folders stay synced in both my laptop and netbook. It's made my travelling life a heck of lot simpler.

If you have your mail stored on a network drive, it should be a piece of cake to get kmail on various machines pointed at the same folder.

[Fintan]

Re: Thunderbird + lightning v Kontact?

Thank you Marek, I didn't think of that one. I got a working solution from here:
http://forum.kde.org/solved-kmail-on...l-t-34007.html

It would be nice to have a TB solution where you can just point the mail folder anywhere in the settings panel.

[The Liquidator]

Re: Thunderbird + lightning v Kontact?

Sorry if I've read it wrong but do you mean you want to put the mail folders anywhere you want, Fintan?

If so, you can under account settings/ server settings of of an individual account tell TBird the local directory where you want the mail folder to go. For existing installations you copy (or move) your existing mail folders to your desired location and then tell TBird where the folders are

Great for dual booters and, I suspect, if you have a couple of networked machines that need to access the same mail folders. It's OS agnostic too.

Ian