Win 7 Pro

Ver 78.

Security camera has 30,000 emils.
Tried to shift-delete 10,000.
Thunderbird when white.

Upgraded to latest version Thunderbird just now downloaded.

Tried to shift-delete 10,000
Thunderbird when white.

Now what ?

Have emails in GMail account
InBox
AllMail
SentMail.

All go white when attempt to shift-delete 10,000 emails.

Do not what regular delete to trash.

What is up with that Gurus ? Any solutions ?

Why can't Thunderbird programmers fix this after so many versions ?
Don't they care ?
Rant over.

On 10/17/2021 5:09 PM, XMark wrote:
> Win 7 Pro
>
> Ver 78.
>
> Security camera has 30,000 emils.
> Tried to shift-delete 10,000.
> Thunderbird when white.
>
> Upgraded to latest version Thunderbird just now downloaded.
>
> Tried to shift-delete 10,000
> Thunderbird when white.
>
> Now what ?
>
> Have emails in GMail account
> InBox
> AllMail
> SentMail.
>
> All go white when attempt to shift-delete 10,000 emails.
>
> Do not what regular delete to trash.
>
> What is up with that Gurus ? Any solutions ?
>
>
> Why can't Thunderbird programmers fix this after so many versions ?
> Don't they care ?
> Rant over.
>

Try asking at alt.comp.software.thunderbird.

--
David E. Ross
"A Message to Those Who Are Not Vaccinated"
See my <http://www.rossde.com/index.html#vaccine>.

On 10/17/2021 8:09 PM, XMark wrote:
> Win 7 Pro
>
> Ver 78.
>
> Security camera has 30,000 emils.
> Tried to shift-delete 10,000.
> Thunderbird when white.
>
> Upgraded to latest version Thunderbird just now downloaded.
>
> Tried to shift-delete 10,000
> Thunderbird when white.
>
> Now what ?
>
> Have emails in GMail account
> InBox
> AllMail
> SentMail.
>
> All go white when attempt to shift-delete 10,000 emails.
>
> Do not what regular delete to trash.
>
> What is up with that Gurus ?  Any solutions ?
>
>
> Why can't Thunderbird programmers fix this after so many versions ?
> Don't they care ?
> Rant over.

So what's happening, is the operation is batched up.

What are the advantages ?

By turning the screen white, the screen does not update
as each file is deleted. It's not the time savings we care
about, it's "not having to watch the screen jump around
in real time for all 10000 deletes" that we want. That
would suck!

If you "interleave" the shift-delete(10000) operation, it's
true the tool becomes "more responsive" but...

The Inbox display jumps around while you're trying to work.
You want to click the next message and read it, but
a shift-delete status change makes the screen scroll point
jump around.

That would not be very nice. You would be as angry as hell
if that happened.

There's a design choice, and the alternative results in
a "living hell of a GUI".

What you really want, is for the updating of Inbox MBOX
and inbox.msf to speed up. And that's just not going to
happen. Inbox.msf is a terrible format. Cranmer at
Mozilla understands it, few others do. They wrote some
code called MorkReader for verification purposes, but
source and binary are not available. The developers refer
to it, but it's not available to the great unwashed. The
Mork database originated at Netscape (the providers of
the code Thunderbird is based upon).

*******

Backgrounder:

Inbox MBOX text format, messages tip to toe, in order received on a pull
Inbox.msf Mork database has metadata representation of MBOX content.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mork_%28file_format%29 # History of Mork

Some people work through, how it works...

"Help please! Shift-deleted my entire inbox! " <=== No, you didn't...
<=== compact, deletes
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=1208955

We get some exposure to the mechanism there. And this table,
helps decode X-Mozilla-Status and X-Mozilla-Status2 lines.

"X-Mozilla-Status explained"

https://web.archive.org/web/20170619105411/http://www.eyrich-net.org/mozilla/X-Mozilla-Status.html?en

"MSG_FLAG_EXPUNGED 0x0008

Since actually removing a message from a folder
is a semi-expensive operation, <=================== Hmmm.
we tend to delay it; messages
with this bit set will be removed the next time
folder compaction is done. Once this bit is set,
it never gets un-set.
"

Sorry, but I can't think of an optimization you can do here,
which is faster. Shift-delete is going to make the screen white
in any case. It's the expensive part. Hand-editing the
Inbox file, deleting inbox.msf, having Thunderbird
regenerate inbox.msf (causes implicit compact() as well),
is nuts. You could easily write a script for part of it,
but you need a means to list the message numbers out of the
tool to do that. Which is not going to happen.

Really, you want a mode of operation, where Inbox.msf is
abandoned, Inbox MBOX status lines are updated, Inbox.msf is
deleted, Inbox.msf is regenerated. That's a feature request,
not a bug. I'm pretty sure that more than half the delay,
is caused by Mork, not MBOX.

Paul

On Sun, 17 Oct 2021 17:09:24 -0700, XMark wrote:

> Win 7 Pro
>
> Ver 78.
>
> Security camera has 30,000 emils.
> Tried to shift-delete 10,000.
> Thunderbird when white.
>
> Upgraded to latest version Thunderbird just now downloaded.
>
> Tried to shift-delete 10,000
> Thunderbird when white.
>
> Now what ?

Try deleting 5.000 two times?

--
s|b

XMark <XMark@xmark.com> wrote:
> Win 7 Pro
>
> Ver 78.
>
> Security camera has 30,000 emils.
> Tried to shift-delete 10,000.
> Thunderbird when white.
>
> Upgraded to latest version Thunderbird just now downloaded.
>
> Tried to shift-delete 10,000
> Thunderbird when white.
>
> Now what ?
>
> Have emails in GMail account
> InBox
> AllMail
> SentMail.
>
> All go white when attempt to shift-delete 10,000 emails.
>
> Do not what regular delete to trash.
>
> What is up with that Gurus ? Any solutions ?
>
>
> Why can't Thunderbird programmers fix this after so many versions ?
> Don't they care ?
> Rant over.

You can try to start two copies of Thunderbird and see if one of them
does not hang, while the other one 'hangs' deleting the messages.

Of course when doing this, you should not handle the same folder(s) in
the two copies at the same time, i.e. if you're deleting messages from
Inbox in one copy of Thuderbird, don't touch Inbox in the other copy.

On 20/10/2021 15:36, Frank Slootweg wrote:
> XMark <XMark@xmark.com> wrote:
>>
>> [snip problem description]
>>
>> Why can't Thunderbird programmers fix this after so many versions ?
>> Don't they care ?
>> Rant over.
>
> You can try to start two copies of Thunderbird and see if one of them
> does not hang, while the other one 'hangs' deleting the messages.

IMO, not good advice, see below for why ...

> Of course when doing this, you should not handle the same folder(s) in
> the two copies at the same time, i.e. if you're deleting messages from
> Inbox in one copy of Thuderbird, don't touch Inbox in the other copy.

Exactly, so why suggest such a potentially dangerous procedure? But I'm
sceptical that it would work anyway ...

:-( Even though you may think you are launching two copies of the
program because there are two windows, by default they will use the same
memory and thread space, unless you launch both with the correct
command-line options, see below.

:-( The first one running should lock the files anyway, thus preventing
access to them by the second, so you will probably receive a message
like 'Thunderbird is already running, do you want to close the previous
instance of it and launch this instance instead?" [or words to that effect].

To the OP: Last thing at night, select a reasonable number to delete at
one go - 5,000? 10,000? I have no experience to suggest what is a
reasonable number - and leave it running overnight. By morning time
you should find it's all happened.

How to launch two copies of Thunderbird:

This only makes sense if you want to access two different profiles from
two different instances of the program from two different windows
simultaneously. I do this to keep my mail and news separate, so that I
can be certain not to send a private email mistakenly to the entire
world as a usenet post, which sometimes I have seen done by others!

In the program folder on the system drive, I have two links to the
program file as follows ...
thunderbird.exe Actual program file
thunderbird_mail.exe Symlink to above
thunderbird_news.exe Ditto
.... the purpose of which is to have two Start Menu options with the
relevant command-line options, because Windows 7 won't let you have two
different Start Menu options pointing to the same program, even if the
command-line options are different - Duh! The idiot that programmed
*that* should be taken out and shot.

In the Start Menu, I have two different options with the following
command-lines:

Prog: <path>\Thunderbird\thunderbird_mail.exe -no-remote -P Mail
Start: <path>\Thunderbird\Mail

Prog: <path>\Thunderbird\thunderbird_news.exe -no-remote -P News
Start: <path>\Thunderbird\News

Note the '-no-remote' option, this is what forces the two copies to run
in different memory and thread spaces, while of course the '-P' option
chooses the correct profile.

Of course you have to create the second profile for the news, which then
you adapt by deleting all the mail accounts and creating all the news
accounts. You can do this by editing ...
C:\Users\<UNAME>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\profiles.ini
.... to duplicate the profile entries, and while you're about it you
might as well give them meaningful names such as the above as well, and
duplicate and rename the actual profile directories to match how you
edited profiles.ini

--

Fake news kills!

I may be contacted via the contact address given on my website:
www.macfh.co.uk

Java Jive <java@evij.com.invalid> wrote:
> On 20/10/2021 15:36, Frank Slootweg wrote:
> > XMark <XMark@xmark.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> [snip problem description]
> >>
> >> Why can't Thunderbird programmers fix this after so many versions ?
> >> Don't they care ?
> >> Rant over.
> >
> > You can try to start two copies of Thunderbird and see if one of them
> > does not hang, while the other one 'hangs' deleting the messages.
>
> IMO, not good advice, see below for why ...

Thanks for the warning and explanations.

FWIW, I sometimes accidentily started two copies - trigger finger on
the 'mouse' - and saw no ill effect or lock out.

But you're right, it's dangerous and probably doesn't work anyway, so
thanks again for educating me. (If you want stupid advice, you can call
me any time! :-))

BUT, ...

<Alan>

You're wrong!

</Alan>

Sorry, I couldn't resist! :-)

[Rest of advice deleted]