[lmi] gmail + POP3 + thunderbird

[Greg Chicares]

Although I eventually did work through the problems with my ISP's email,
and might hope that it'll work for another two decades without any further
change, I did also get gmail working with POP3 and thunderbird, which was
tricky enough that I'll post some notes here in case they ever help someone.

First, close thunderbird; set some absurdly low DPI like 96; and then reopen
thunderbird. The dialogs will still be too tall, but with luck you'll be
able to resize them so that crucial information won't be unviewable.

Now follow google's instructions for using gmail with POP3. They'll probably
have changed by the time you read this, as gmail is mutable, but google does
seem to keep its documentation valid and current. (I chose to leave copies
of all messages on the server even after they've been accessed with POP,
which seems like a good safeguard.)

Now, configure thunderbird. It will offer a choice between POP and IMAP. The
default is IMAP. If you want POP instead, you must select that when you
create the new thunderbird account--it cannot be changed later. And if you
were using 192 DPI, you might not know that you have a choice, or that the
initial choice is irrevocable. (You can delete thunderbird's IMAP account
for gmail and start all over again.)

Thunderbird will tell you that it knows all about gmail and will make the
right choices for you, but don't trust it. If it tells you it wants to
use port 993 for incoming, that's wrong for POP: you want 995. For SMTP,
you want port 465. The transport and authentication options are also
likely to default to unworkable choices. Here's what works for me:
  POP3: SSL/TLS; OAuth2
  SMTP: SSL/TLS; OAuth2
Try it that way--that way works. I found those settings by random
experimentation; other settings didn't work for me, though YMMV. Once I
had found those settings to be workable, gmail stopped working for a
while, but after a number of hours, it started working again, and
twenty-four hours later it's still working.

Then, of course, close thunderbird and switch back to a usable 192 DPI.