A significant challenge in my migration is moving my email from Eudora 5.1. Eudora has served me well for many years. Currently I continue to use Eudora in NT4 in a VirtualBox environment. Cool, yes, but I want to migrate my email.

I need to have separate directories for my various purposes. Notice I use the word purpose and not user.

As a KDE user I am leaning toward using KMail, but I need three different kmailrc files, much like in Eudora where I have different eudora.ini files.

Within that context, I'm asking for ideas to maintain three different kmailrc configuration files.

Background:

Eudora allows me to start the application with startup switches pointing to different storage directories. Within each storage directory is a separate and unique eudora.ini configuration file. Therefore I keep my personal mail separate from business. I also help another person with email (charitable organization) and I keep those mails separate too. With this feature I never worry about intermingling emails based upon purpose.

My new email client must provide me the same functionality.

Initially, Thunderbird seems ideal because of the support for profiles. Profiles would allow me to maintain separate directories. I could use the same command line switch technique to start with a different profile. Additionally, Thunderbird fully supports HTML mail. (This thread is not open to discussing the topic of HTML mail --- I need that for business. Fact of life.) However, despite having new hardware with plenty of muscle, I am not fond of XUL. XUL is slow. I use Firefox but am not entirely pleased. Even on my new box Firefox requires six seconds to start. Further, I have tinkered lightly with Thunderbird and, well, I simply feel uncomfortable with that product. I also dislike GTK dialog boxes.

KMail seems the best bet for a KDE user like me. I also like the look and feel of KMail and the product seems similar to Eudora.

Two caveats for me. One, KDE does not fully support HTML, although sending and receiving HTML is supported. KMail does not support HTML when including message snippets in a response. Probably not a killer although annoying. I think I can live with this shortcoming.

The more important caveat is the challenge of maintaining separate directories for my three different purposes. I do not want to (and cannot) intermix the different environments.

KMail supports multiple identities and multiple accounts. Technically, my personal, business, and third party mail would be maintained separately if I configure my folder scheme correctly, but the problem is human --- me! I do not want to take the chance of sending a business mail and forget to change the default identity. Or worse, send an email for the person I help and again forget to change the default identity before sending the message.

Of course, I could create two additional user accounts for the sole purpose of email, log into each account, and then each mail environment is physically separate. I'm hoping for more elegant suggestions.

Thanks.

What you want can be achieved in TB a lot easier than you think.
With filters you can get the mails in all the different subfolders you want.
Of cours you can create different profiles for the different accounts, but that is not so user friendly IMHO.

If FF is too slow, try FF 3.0b5, it's a lot faster (make sure you first create a new profile though).

Thanks for trying adriv, but I wrote an entire paragraph to let readers know that Thunderbird is NOT my first choice. Hence the longer post about trying to configure KMail as I described.

Anybody else have ideas?

Did you made any progress, Woodsman ?

My situation is not exactly the same as yours, as I can afford (and want) to mix my environments.

But I have the same concern about sending mail with an inappropriate "from:" header.

The problem is solved for replies, since Kmail is able to choose the replying identity.

It remains the problem of new mails. My best solution so far is to define a bogus default identity which is bounced by my MTA. Not very elegant.

BTW, why don't you like the multi-account solution ? If I wanted to keep a clear separation between my environments, I'd be happy with 3 desktops, using ALT-? to switch between them.

You can create different mail folders in KMail. You can use filters to store incoming mail in those folders based on the destination address. In addition, if you right-click on a folder and choose "Properties", you can change the default identity when creating a new message from that folder, and choose to keep replies in the same folder, as well as activate the threaded view for comfortability (Folder > Thread Messages). If you don't want to keep the replies in the same folder and use the threaded view, you could still keep the different messages sent with each identity in different folders. This is configured in the "Advanced" tab when creating or editing an identity. I guess these settings would solve 99% of your problems. You only need to be in the right folder when clicking the "New Message" button, and you can still change it while compositing the message.

I know that technically you could still make a mistake and send an email to someone with the wrong identity, but this minimizes the chances. Also, when replying, KMail will (or can) use the identity belonging to the address they used when sending you the message. I can't locate if this is configurable and, if it is, where the setting is, but I have several identities and I just tested, and it uses the right one.

As a personal note, I've been using KMail with multiple identities more or less as you describe in the OP, and I haven't made a mistake that I know of. Simply, when compositing a new message I check the identify, From header, To header and Subject header. It has become something intuitive as I got used to it, like checking if you should attach some file before sending the message, so I don't think it's a big issue.

Totally agree with your explanation RG3.

Unfortunately ....

... this is too counterintuitive for me.

Until I become as disciplined as you are, I need an option like "Ask identity for new messages".

I haven't pursued the problem further. Sometimes I let things simmer in the back of my mind before proceeding. I will be migrating my own email addresses to KMail. I haven't yet decided what to do about the addresses that are not mine. I haven't yet converted my personal addresses and mail boxes yet because I need to test some of the various scripts that help convert Eudora email to KMail. I want to convert everything into the same folder and box structure if possible, not just a bulk conversion.

I did not write that I did not like the idea. Only that I preferred something more elegant. To keep my personal mail truly separate from the other mail I monitor I likely will go with logging in as another user and use that account to manage those emails. Perhaps the kdesu command will allow me to check KMail as another user without toggling to another console session and logging in. On the other hand I check those emails only once a day at most. Not drama queen inconvenient, but also not what I am accustomed to with Eudora.

Your approach probably would work. But as careful as I am, I know I'm fallible, especially as I age. Been there done that.

Thunderbird's profiles would simulate exactly how I use Eudora, but I just don't care for XUL or GTK file picker dialog boxes. I'm not going down that road unless I have to. I likely will post something here or on my web site when I finally resolve the issue.

Thanks for asking.

Although this thread is a few months in age, I want to provide interested folks an update. The short answer is I found the KMail solutions I sought.

If you are interested in the entire conversion effort, including the challenges of converting my old Eudora mail and avoiding a default address when using multiple address, then please read the four-part story starting here:

Converting Email - Part I

If you are interested only in how I solved the problem of not wanting to mix mail purposes, then read my solution here:

Converting Email - Part IV

I hope you enjoy the story and find the solutions useful.

Thanks everybody for helping and suggesting ideas.