techblog @ razal.de
Tue, 10 Jul 2007
a friend of mine told me that thunderbird 2 supposedly supports os x spotlight feature. so i did a google search and found a few instructions here (german) on how to get it up and running.
first: you need to get the spotlight importer from this bugreport (download attachment from comment #109) and put it in ~/Library/Spotlight/ or /Library/Spotlight/ (create if necessary).
second: in thunderbird preferences go to config editor (tab advanced) and set mail.spotlight.enable to true. thunderbird needs to be restarted after this. then it begins to index all mails (this will take a while), which effectively means that it generates a .mozeml file for spotlight for each mail in your mailbox. this is because thunderbird saves it's mails internally as mbox files which are unsuitable for spotlight.
third: check with /usr/bin/mdimport -L if the thunderbird importer was found and reindex your spotlight database with sudo /usr/bin/mdutil -E /. (i don't know if a reboot is necessary)
[update]
there was one little drawback with the importer as noted here. messages showed in category Documents rather then Mail messages. but with help from the spotlight-dev mailing list i found a solution.
you need to edit Info.plist located in Thunderbird.mdimporter (ctrl-click -> Show Package Contents). you can use any editor you like but the safest bet is to use the Property List Editor (i killed my Info.plist with TextEdit!).
to check if everything went alright locate a .mozeml file (usually under ~/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/...) and call mdls with it. you are good to go if anything like this shows up.
[update 2]
KAMiKAZOW has build a new version (universal binary) of Thunderbird.mdimporter incorporating the Info.plist change and attached it to the bugreport. so no more Info.plist editing.
[update 3]
from the amount of 19k mails 10k have been converted. 9k to go. took a day so far...
first: you need to get the spotlight importer from this bugreport (download attachment from comment #109) and put it in ~/Library/Spotlight/ or /Library/Spotlight/ (create if necessary).
second: in thunderbird preferences go to config editor (tab advanced) and set mail.spotlight.enable to true. thunderbird needs to be restarted after this. then it begins to index all mails (this will take a while), which effectively means that it generates a .mozeml file for spotlight for each mail in your mailbox. this is because thunderbird saves it's mails internally as mbox files which are unsuitable for spotlight.
third: check with /usr/bin/mdimport -L if the thunderbird importer was found and reindex your spotlight database with sudo /usr/bin/mdutil -E /. (i don't know if a reboot is necessary)
[update]
there was one little drawback with the importer as noted here. messages showed in category Documents rather then Mail messages. but with help from the spotlight-dev mailing list i found a solution.
you need to edit Info.plist located in Thunderbird.mdimporter (ctrl-click -> Show Package Contents). you can use any editor you like but the safest bet is to use the Property List Editor (i killed my Info.plist with TextEdit!).
<key>UTTypeConformsTo</key>
<array>
<string>public.data</string>
<string>public.content</string>
<string>public.email-message</string> <-- add this line
</array>
i don't know how to convince spotlight to reload its plugins so reboot please. reindex your spotlight now.to check if everything went alright locate a .mozeml file (usually under ~/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/...) and call mdls with it. you are good to go if anything like this shows up.
kMDItemContentType = "com.mozilla.thunderbird.mozeml"
kMDItemContentTypeTree = (
"com.mozilla.thunderbird.mozeml",
"public.data",
"public.item",
"public.content",
"public.email-message",
"public.message"
)
screenshot
[update 2]
KAMiKAZOW has build a new version (universal binary) of Thunderbird.mdimporter incorporating the Info.plist change and attached it to the bugreport. so no more Info.plist editing.
[update 3]
from the amount of 19k mails 10k have been converted. 9k to go. took a day so far...
posted at: 16:05 | path: /mac
