 IFilters and Thunderbird support on MSN Desktop
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Jun. 10th, 2005 @ 05:07 pm 
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Two weeks ago, I said, I'm going to try to take a break from programming this kind of stuff for a few weeks, but in June will try to write a Thunderbird IFilter, such that I can move completely to Windows Desktop Search.. Betcha didn't believe me!
In the meantime I have discovered that I had lucked onto a foible or bug in getting the HTML display in MSN Desktop with Windows Search. An area P.M. at Microsoft has confirmed that all formatting is stripped of all HTML tags for security reasons. This seems to be the case after a recent update of it, leaving me back at about 1200 characters of preview, which is also confirmed by the P.M. According to him, the correct tool for this is a Protocol Handler. This makes sense; the Palm works off of databases, not files. Unlike an MP3 or application, each Palm file has many entries. So to best index them, they should be treated as many entries. Initially I had assumed IFilter would do this because it has the GetChunk() and GetText(), allowing different text to associate with different file part... but that's not how they use it. (Actually I have no idea how they do use it other than for GetValue() returns, because it seems singularly pointless to support "chunks" but not chunk the results.)
Anyhow, that said, my C# IFilter for Palm Desktop still works, but only displays the beginning of the relevant file. At least you'll know where the information is. I'll post that, with code soon.
And I'm giving up on IFilters in C#, both because GetValue() is not something I can do in C# - it requires pointers that C# protects you from, even in "unsafe" mode - and because IFilters aren't quite what I need. I'll try my hand at a Palm Protocol Handler.
Which brings us to Thunderbird. I had mentioned that I was preparing to write an IFilter for Thunderbird. Shortly after I posted that, Benoit at Citeknet sent me a preview of the new Beta Thunderbird Protocol Extractor. They seem to have run into a few of the same problems I did, but this works and works well. It detects the various Profiles and Folders more effectively than the Copernic Thunderbird handler, text is indexed, and forgiving some formatting issues, the first 1200 bytes of the message are previewed. (Same problem I ran into, which Microsoft is looking at.) Good stuff. I've been using this for well over a week now and have been delighted. No need for me to write one now!
Installing MSN Toolbar with Windows Desktop Search
This necessitated installing MSN Desktop Search on a system that had neither it nor Outlook. In the process I ran into a few issues.
If you don't have Outlook installed, it warns you... twice... that it requires Outlook and then Outlook Express if you wish to "search email messages, contacts and appointments on your computer." Of course I have solved the contacts/appointments with my Palm IFilter.
Installation resulted in an interesting error. I quote, "MSNFirstRunWiz.exe - Ordinal Not Found"; "The ordinal 198 could not be located in the dynamic link library MAPI32.dll." My guess is that they forgot that they couldn't find Outlook on my system. Silly guys! It repeated this with ordinal 49 also.
This and similar errors pop up regularly when running MSN Desktop Search. Assuming it might be because the MAPI library in place (from either Eudora or Thunderbird) doesn't match it, I disabled email searching (not the default, but easily done.) That didn't solve the problem. Nor did removing MAPI32.dll; it requires one. But restoring the original MAPI32.DLL did solve the problem
Moving the index was absolutely trivial; select the option from the option window, choose new location, and it does the rest. They all should be this easy!
I have the ability right now to compare to Copernic. Keep in mind that Copernic has broken their API, doesn't respond anymore, and despite knowing it is broken, has not released a fix in a long time. Pity because it's got a great interface and was (other than their bugs) easy to write for; it's really a great product if you can live with the stock File Filters (and most people probably can), with a great interface, good speed, wide file format support, etc. A year ago this version (1.5) would have been the clear leader. Anyhow, Copernic was still on this box for the Thunderbird support. I discovered that, at least as currently set up, MSN Desktop with Windows Search is more effective than Copernic on my system for an unexpected reason: Whatever ZIP IFilter I've installed is searching inside the Zips, where as Copernic merely indexes the existence of them. This was very helpful, because I tend to compress stuff when done with it to make moving it easier (as a single archive), and because many other servers are archived in zip format to an external drive attached to my primary system. I'm finding it ironic that initially I simply ruled Microsoft' entry out! (Even more so considering my relationship with them, not withstanding the fact that I was doing embedded Linux 24 months ago and BSD internals programming 12 months ago.)
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| From: | (Anonymous) |
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| Date: |
June 13th, 2005 06:17 am (UTC) |
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Check out the details for creating your own custom template preview
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(Link) |
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http://spaces.msn.com/members/WDSTech/Blog/cns!1p0tYOH23YIjQaVyUIcoDDIA!139.entry
| From: | ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) bloggit |
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| Date: |
June 14th, 2005 07:23 pm (UTC) |
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Re: Check out the details for creating your own custom template preview
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(Link) |
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Steve, very informative blog entry! But as you note in it, still limited to the first 1K or so of "characterization data". What I guess I need is a way to create my own previews rather than just preview templates.
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