"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote:
In message , Frank Slootweg
writes:
"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote:
In message , Mayayana
writes:
"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote

| I really don't like the fact that all my emails are held in a single
| monolithic file of a bespoke proprietary format and encryption. For
| one thing, if it gets corrupted, it could prove very challenging to
| retrieve anything useful from it. For another, if you want to clean
|
| AFAIK, all - Windows, anyway - do that. (The degree of proprietariness -
| and encryption - varying.)

I have TBird and OE. Both store in a "flat file" with
minimal structure and no encryption.

It's still a single file though. Which makes me uneasy (though I'm
obviously accepting it since I have no choice).

With the 'ImportExport Tools' Extension I mentioned before, TB can
Export to individual .eml files with a - machine and human-readable -
index.html and it can Export to MBOX format, so you could - periodically
- make a safe and non-proprietary - backup.

That's post-processing, though. I don't know of any Windows email client
that _uses_ individual files for emails _instead of_ its own internal
scheme (as opposed to being able to _generate_ such files afterwards, e.
g. with an extension).

I was addressing your "Which makes me uneasy ... since I have no
choice)." comment. Being able to make backup in a reliable format can
take some of the "uneasy" bit away. It also does give you a choice.

As to a "Windows email client that _uses_ individual files for emails
_instead of_ its own internal scheme", Windows Mail and Windows Live
Mail do use individual .eml files, but dependent on your Windows
version, WM might not be available and WLM, well let's not talk about
WLM.

I don't know if there are any other Windows email clients which use
individual .eml (or mbox-per-message) files. (As I've described in
another response in this thread, I have no such need, because I can
always get .eml/mox format if the need arises.)

(Though some
emails these days are actually sent with Base-64
encoding of the text. Email clients decode that so
it's not visible in general usage. It doesn't constitute
encryption. I don't know why they do it.

Because their coders are too thick to realise they don't need to. I
genuinely can't think of any other reason.

They only should use Base-64 encoding if the text contains any 8-bit
characters. And it's indeed *encoding* (of what can not be sent
otherwise), not encryption.

Agreed. Where encoding is required, fine. But only then. (And as you say
- though Mayayana did say encoding anyway - it's encoding, not
encryption.)

But Mayayana also said "It doesn't constitute encryption.", because
earlier, you were talking about encryption.