[Users] Saving Messages Outside of Claws Mail

[Dustin Miller]

On Thu, 15 Jul 2021 15:10:02 +0200
Milan Obuch <claws-mail-users at dino.sk> wrote:

> On Thu, 15 Jul 2021 18:37:51 +0600, Dustin Miller <dustbiz at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
> > I'm looking for an efficient way to save email messages outside of
> > Claws Mail that will be readable by a text editor or web browser
> > without a lot of extra noise (i.e. headers, HTML tags, etc.).
> >  
> 
> Mail headers are easy, just couple of lines at athe message file
> begin.
> 
DM: Thanks for your various replies, Milan. For me, when I do a simple
save of a message, it creates a text file that has quite a bit more
than a couple of lines for the various header info. Usually I have to
go down at least a page or so to see what I'm actually interested in,
the email itself.
> 
> For HTML tags, some filter is necessary to throw them away and
> rewrite some tokens.
> 
DM: Makes sense, but not sure I'm ready to put the time into figuring
out how to do this. It is possible to save the HTML part of a message as
an HTML file that opens correctly in a browser, but this doesn't
include the basic header info that can be nice to have, although I
guess this could just be included in the file name. If I do a simple
save of a message with HTML and add '.html' to the end of the file, it
will open in my browser but just as text, not as HTML. And with either
approach, I'm still limited to doing one email at a time, rather than
batches.
> 
> > Thus far, the best solution I have found is to view the message part
> > that has the basic header info (From, To, Subject, Date, etc.) and
> > the message body, and then select its contents, copy, and paste
> > into a new text file I've created for it. This works, but isn't
> > very efficient. 
> 
> If you have some manual method how to do what you need, most probably
> there is a way to automate that.
> 
DM: Yes, that's probably true.
> 
> > I thought maybe the 'Mail Archiver' plugin would do what I want, but
> > it's not currently loadable, so I'm guessing I was missing one or
> > more dependencies during the build. Does anyone know if this plugin
> > has a chance of doing something like I want it to? If so, do you
> > know offhand what dependencies it has?
> 
> Could you look at ./configure output? You should see there what is
> missing for some plugin to be built.
> 
DM: Yes, I had thought of that, as it's what I needed to do (with a bit
of trial and error) to get the 'Network Manager' feature enabled
recently. I'll check it out next time I build.
> 
> > Is there another solution anyone knows of for this that you think
> > would be better/best?
> >  
> 
> Scripting. Either use some action with script attached to it or use
> scripting plugin (in current Claws sources, Python plugin is included,
> or <shameless advertisement>my Lua plugin is under active development
> and works well (for my needs)</shameless advertisement>.
> 
DM: Yes, I figured that could be a solution; I'll have to decide
whether I am willing/able to put the time into learning how to do it.
> 
> > The basic idea of what I'm aiming for is to 'convert' a lot of
> > emails from a status of being Claws Mail messages to a status of
> > being 'regular' files on my computer that can be opened for easy
> > reference without needing an email client to open them.
> > 
> > (As an example, I used a Thunderbird plugin that did batch exporting
> > to various formats and automatically saved them with a filename that
> > included the date at the beginning so that the files would be
> > sortable chronologically. This worked well for me, since for many
> > emails I could just select a bunch of them, choose the file format,
> > and point the tool to the folder I wanted them in, and then move on
> > to the next batch.)
> >  
> 
> For actions, look in menu Configuration->Actions. Some important items
> are under 'Infomation' button. For scripting plugin, look at official
> web site, https://www.claws-mail.org/plugin.php?plugin=python for
> Python plugin, or google for some examples. If you'd like to try
> experimental Lua scripting plugin (I am biased, I consider this one
> the best... *grin*), drop me a line - maybe privately if you choose
> so.
> 
DM: Thanks again; I'll keep this post on hand and be in touch if I have
anymore questions. I appreciate you raising awareness about Lua and the
related plugin you're developing; don't know much about it, but I'm
assuming that having another option to the Python plugin will be a
positive thing overall. :) Cheers, ---Dustin