[h-e-w] Integration of emacs and Mozilla Thunderbird

[David Vanderschel]

Has anyone achieved a graceful integration of Mozilla
Thunderbird and emacs for email?  What I seek is to be
able to reply to plain text email (or a plain-textified
version) from in emacs.  OTOH, I wish to view HTML
email in Thunderbird.  Furthermore, I would like for
mailto: links (from any client) to put me in emacs.
(I have already achieved that for IE, but it appears
that Thunderbird requires some extra code (which I do
not know how to make) to do this.)  I would also
prefer to _read_ plain text email in emacs, though
this is not a critical requirement.

If I recall correctly, Mozilla uses Unix mbox format
for its mail store and emacs can handle that format.
I suspect that it may be possible to have an
appropriate gnus backend which would allow emacs to
access Thunderbird's mail store directly.

I expect that the easiest solution would have one
starting in Thunderbird and moving to emacs for
replies, but a solution that starts in emacs would be
a plus, especially if it automatically put you in
Thunderbird on any HTML messages.

I seek illumination and, with luck, help.

Regards,
  David V.