[OS X TeX] OT: Choice between Panther and Tiger

[Bruno Voisin]

Thinking about all the things that've been said about Tiger in a  
week, the pros and cons, and about the people that may be wondering  
whether it's worth to upgrade: one very important thing to realize is  
that, as far as email is concerned, the change is irreversible.

When loading Mail in Tiger for the first time, you will be asked  
whether you allow your mailboxes to be converted for use in Tiger.  
The conversion is actually not trivial: for compatibility with  
SpotLight, your mailboxes, which were all kept in Unix-compatible  
format, as a mbox file inside a .mbox bundle, will be separated into  
a multitude of .emlx files, one per message. The new organisation of  
a mailbox will be, for example:

OS X TeX.mbox:
     Info.plist
     Messages
         15752.emlx
         15753.emlx
         ...
     content_index
     mbox
     mbox.SKindex
     mbox.SKindex.isValid
     table_of_contents

As new messages come in, the original mbox file won't be updated,  
neither will be the accompanying files table_of_contents etc.;  
instead, the new messages will all be added as individual .emlx files  
inside the Messages subfolder.

This means that it won't be possible to easily import your mailboxes  
in Mozilla or Thunderbird say, should you consider later to switch  
emailer or change platform.

Bruno Voisin



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