Talk:Penelope
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### Structured Discussion ### [edit]
(Please edit in place, and keep this concise, non repeating and bullet pointed. It would be really good to have some feedback from the team.) Aberglas 01:36, 25 October 2006 (PDT) aberglas
General Project Road map, QUALCOMM [edit]
- What will the relationship between Penelope and Thunderbird actually be?
- Two heads on the same beast, OR
- Two separate project that share some code, OR
- Add best Eudroa features to Thunderbird (aberglas's prefered option)
- Roughly How long is QUALCOM realistically prepared to pay for this non-profitable project? (If only for a short time then please do not produce a dead end fork.)
- Is the existing Eudora 6.2 (and/or Eudora 7) codebase being open-sourced or abandoned?
S1dorner 15:43, 25 October 2006 (PDT):
We, the Penelope team, do not control what happens in Thunderbird. Therefore, we cannot promise to put *anything* *into* Thunderbird. That's up to Scott.
However, in principle we are much more concerned about happy Eudora users than about promoting the Eudora brand. The more Eudora features Thunderbird gets, the happier I am.
I simply cannot at this stage answer specific questions about structure of any of the releases. I don't know. If it were up to me, there'd be one mailer that was configurable by the user to whatever set of current TBird or Eudora features they liked. Whether that's called Thunderbird, Eudora, Penelope or Lord John Warfin is immaterial to me.
While any comment I might make about length of funding would be speculative and unwelcome by management, it is not in QUALCOMM's interest to lead anyone into a dead-end fork.
The existing Eudora source is unpleasant, encumbered, and not likely to be released in any wholesale way. Parts of it may be used, especially when it comes to importers & such, but if anyone is dreaming of hacking away on Eudora 7.1, give it up now.
BTW, my thanks to everyone who has contributed on this talk page, and my apologies for my tardiness in response.
Nick.brown 15:57, 9 May 2007 (PDT)
Eudora v TBird - why not Eudora OR TBird (let the customer choose)?
Ok so I’ve read posts and heard about strategy and observed the ebbing and flowing of the debate.
Ladies and Gentlemen, we simply have to face the fact that there is a massive Eudora following out there and that following wishes to persist – for reasons that go back many years and through great experience. No product is “perfect” and I have seen many posts for Eudora WIBNIs in the Penelope Project… But we have to face the fact that Eudora pretty good.
The bottom line is (although I hate to say it) that the Penelope Project is not the best way to crack the “Open Eudora” requirement. The only way, in my view, of achieving the “Open Eudora” objective is TO DO PRECISELY THAT and not “fart-about” with Tbird.
Tbird has its following. Eudora has its following. Both have benefits and problems (clearly Eudora being the better of the two – te he). It is a regret that Qualcomm want to discontinue Eudora but bless them I believe that they have stuck with it a good deal longer than some commercial organisations might – and respect and thanks are due to the Qualcomm board for agreeing to co-opt Qualcomm staff to the Penelope project.
If there are licensing issues to crack within the Eudora Source in migrating to an “Open” offering then perhaps the Penelope effort should be directed to re-writing those bits so that the new code is not licence–infringing (or even do a deal with the copyright owner, even).
My vote therefore for the Penelope project is to make this a genuine task of “Open Eudora” and not actually a bolt-on to Tbird at all.
Controversial maybe but sometimes provocation is constructive and creative.
Nick Brown
Joining the project [edit]
How do I join the team to develop the new email client? I've got some ideas for development notably a way to link thunderbird and eudora (trademark of Qualcomm)fairly rapidly, so comments and ideas can be sought before development goes ahead, and Eudora becomes Thunderbird. Thats the danger here.
Top Eudora Features not in Thunderbird -- System Structure [edit]
- The total portable nature of Eudora is a major benefit. All mailbox files and structures live in one directory with the application itself. This allows Eudora to be migrated from computer to computer by simply copying over the Eudora folder and no software installation is required. This feature makes system migration and Eudora backups EXTREMELY easy. It also allows Eudora and all files to live on a USB storage drive without ever becoming resident on a specific computer.
- The fact that attachments are external files, not in the main mailboxes. (Thunderbird mailboxes quickly become huge and unmanageable.) [Vote for 359319 if you like this feature.]
- The fact that address books are not restricted to local drives but can be put/referenced on any network share for multi-user benefits (e.g. corporate environment)[Vote for 359320 if you like this feature]
- For me, being able to have multiple users on one computer that each have their own mailbox structure AND the ability to share an address book is the main reason we use Eudora. We do not have the luxury of having only one person use one computer. We have several people on one computer (no user accounts - all use the same account) and each can have their own invocation of Eudora. Wonderful.
- Many features in Eudora are important to me, but by FAR the most important one is the transparent .mbx and .toc mailbox format. I love the fact that you can easily find, back-up and restore all your Eudora mailboxes simply by copying the .mbx and .toc files and create new mailboxes manually simply by renaming them (for example, in.mbx can easily be backed-up to in-2.mbx). I also appreciate the fact that the .mbx default format is plain text, so even in the absence of the Eudora app itself, you can open your .mbx file in any text reader and find what you're looking for. Try that with an Outlook .pst file, I dare you. .mbx files will still be readable in 50 years, whereas I don't know if proprietary formats that mash up the attachment code with the message code will be. -- Mark S.
Top Eudora Features not in Thunderbird -- Mail/Search/Filters [edit]
- The fast, integrated search.[Vote for 359331]
- Able to (optionally) group inbound and outbound mail, almost in GMail like "conversations". And displays the correct user in the Who column (unlike Outlook etc.) [Vote for 359270] In fact, Thunderbird doesn't even *have* an Out Box - what could that be about? http://kb.mozillazine.org/Outbox In some cases in Eudora, I sort the out box by recipient or subject, select messages, and transfer them to a mailbox dedicated to either a specific individual or a subject. When this is repetitive I have Eudora filters set up to do just that - as soon as I send, it's transferred to that separate mailbox. It's my local way of maintaining a database of what GMail calls 'conversations'.
- The ability to manually set server status of mail - e.g. Set up Eudora to not delete messages from the server, once mail is retrieved and you don't need to retrieve it on another email client or while away, you can then tell Eudora to delete from server from the pop up menu.
- The ability to manually filter email messages using a single keystroke, such as Apple-J on OS X version. Filters in Eudora are invoked manually or automatically or both. If manually (select messages, then filter) this must be possible with a single keystroke rather than using a menu.
- The ability to Queue rather than Send email. It is invaluable to be able to compose a message and queue it. This allows a user (me) to then realize that it needs to be modified either because of an incorrect statement, missing information, or the wrong addressee, and fix it before it is sent.
- The ability to trigger execution of a script from a Filter rule.
- Mail folders stored in plain text form.
- Attachments stored separately from body of email.
- To quote a friend, "Eudora will show me invisible chars like spaces, tabs, and hard returns. Seeing those chars provides format info on ongoing email I don't want to do without, especially when sending messages to a list of recipients."
Top Eudora Features not in Thunderbird -- UI General [edit]
- Platform-native UI
- Multiple windows rather than multiple panes for mailbox display [Vote for 359422]
- All in one window *
I perfer to write my new messages inside the Eudora main window I dont like getting extra buttons on the taskbar for each message I'm writing on.
Top Eudora Features not in Thunderbird -- Security [edit]
- Inbuilt, crude and thus (relatively) secure HTML viewer. Passing all incoming mail to a full browser is asking for trouble. (Thunderbird does have some facilities in this regard, but it still uses Gecko.) Security by design rather than by patch.
- I agree 100% with the above. Eudora's limited support of HTML was a key feature. There is no need for an email to be able to do everything a web page can do, all that does is invite email viruses that can infect your machine just by reading them. It's better to only support a safe subset of HTML and provide a menu option to "display in the browser" the way that Eudora does.
Top Eudora Feature not in Thunderbird -- Mail redirection [edit]
- Eudora allows you to redirect incoming mail to another recipient by modifying the header of the original mail. This is a wonderful feature when you are a team leader and you have to dispatch mail coming to your mailbox.
- The filter in Eudora is wonderful and I will like it in Penelope.
- The Ability to group incoming and outgoing mail in the mbox to follow the trend of a discussion.
### Post by Post discussion follows ### [edit]
More details? [edit]
Where and when will more details on planned features, and the Penelope roadmap, be available? I am especially interested in the UI plans for the Mac version of Penelope -- will a platform-native UI be provided, or will Penelope use the same kind of multiplatform (XUL?) UI that Thunderbird uses? The following thread on the Eudora forums might be of interest to Penelope developers: [1] and any responses would be welcome. Thanks for beginning this project; I'm eager to hear more information (e.g. when will a CVS repository be established, so we can see what's being developed and contribute?). -- Rbellin 11:15, 11 October 2006 (PDT)
My Want-List for (Mac/Windows)Eudora [edit]
For many years I have been looking for an e-mail client that supports or includes the following features:.
1. Compose, send and receive UTF-8 messages written in any language.
2. Compose, send and receive messages written in right-to-left langauges.
3. Compose, send and receive HTML messages.
4. Easily change the e-mail data folder without going through complex procedures or uninstalling and reinstaling the software.
5. Import and export messages from all other major e-mail clients without losing any of their properties or data.
Good luck with Penelope. --Groucho3 21:51, 20 May 2007 (PDT)
What to add: 1. A universal binary for Intel Macs (Mac) 2. Eudora badly needs to understand UTF-8 (Mac) 3. Though I always send plain text emails, Eudora badly needs to know how to render the piles of HTML emails I do receive. (Mac) 4. Add more than 2 options in the filters; add a GREP interface for filters. (Mac/Win)
What not to change: 1. No forcing me to use a triple interface. I want every mailbox to open automatically as a list in a separate windows when new emails are filtered into the boxes. (Mac)359422 2. Maintain the wonderfully complex and innumerable preferences. (Mac) 3. Maintain the Eudora Folder, so I can easily synch with multiple computers. (Mac) 4. Mailbox format. Keep the emails/boxes as simple text files. (Mac) 5. Keyboard shortcuts we've been using for a decade. apple-E to send, etc. 6. Keep the plain text MBOX format
What to delete: 1. Emoticons (who needs that?) (Win) 2. Bosswatch (no sense detected!) (Win) 3. Delete any options or change their defaults ('use microsoft viewer', 'allow executables in html-content', 'automatically download html graphics'. (Win) -- Pharao 15:07, 12 October 2006 (PDT) 4. Resource fork prefs. (Mac) -- Kernos 2:42, 11 October 2006 (CDT)
What to add: (Win) -- I'd like the attachments to travel with the email when it is moved to a different folder. (Win) -- Click on tab to folder window in main window, then press delete, folder window goes away. (Win) -- One click backup-to-zip. Click on this and your entire structure is backed up to a .zip file. Handy when changing computers, updates, etc.
What to keep: Most all of it -- especially the simplicity -- of interface, operation, use, etc.
What to remove: Bosswatch -- why is this there?? -- drb,-- 2008 (pac) 18 Nov. 2006.
Hi Good Morning:
I am looking for some features in an eMail program, I understand U are developing a new one and that U might like to hear about the features I am interested such that U might be able to incorporate them into your new eMail program.
I use eNom to send my eMail and have for a couple of years, they seem to be able to deliver only about 1/2 of my eMail and I do not get back many error messages. many of my customers (Mostly coming from eBay) do not really know of they received my eMail or not. I am trying to make a living in this way and it is very frustrating. I need better conformation information.
I need to know if a customer has received and ready my eMail, there is the traditional read receipt as a first option, but the eMail programs I have used are not sophisticated enough to attach the read receipt to the sent eMail, U therefore need to sort through them all to see if the eMail has been read. A flag on the sent eMail would be Cool
Alternatively or additionally it would be cool if a downloaded logo in an eMail could flag a sent eMail as having been read. Microsoft eMail programs always give the operator the chance to block the opening of such logos or photos but I often allow it as it makes the eMail easier to read. If U could flag the sent eMail with a LOGO opened receipt, that would be awesome, this sounds difficult but.................
With best Regards from Ross and Eye
The MOST important feature of Eudora to me (and sorely missing from Thunderbird) is the ability to check several mail accounts at once. Thunderbird can do it, but sequentially. Eudora could simultaneously log into all my accounts and retrieve all my mail at once. This makes a big difference when you have 10 or more email accounts to check.
Another Eudora feature I like is when I create a message, I can hold SHIFT while I click SEND, and it gives me a box to schedule the send for another time. I cannot find this in T-bird.
Andre
I've used eudora since the beginning. I have only one feature i care about. I'd like to be able to set a mail box to auto expire content. In other words, when the mailbox gets to be a certain size, or for messages of a certain date, I'd like the messages to delete. If it took running it as a filter or something that'd be great to.
This would allow me to better use Eudora to filter and manage mailing lists. I could dump all the mail for a mailing list to a folder, and if I didn't have time to read it the folder would clean up itself.
thanks!
rick
I'd like to see any spinoff of Eudora be able to have Eudora's stored E-mail transferred into it. I'd also like to see some support to address the new round of Eudora problems in sending E-mail through AT&T-Yahoo DSL.
PS: What's Eudora Pro 8.0? Qualcomm's website says that my prior version is the current one. RobertBurns@OBLaw.com
Heresy [edit]
Heresy! There is one Outlook feature that I would like to see in Eudora and (if it doesn't exist already) Thunderbird. When you create e-mail filters (known as "Actions" in Outlook), Outlook gives you the option not only of filtering all future mail on the basis you've chosen, it'll go back and filter all the existing mail in your In Box on the same basis. For example, if you've decided to filter all the e-mail from joe@xyz.ca into a "Joe" folder, Outlook will allow you to batch-move all the existing e-mail from Joe as well.
Mark S.
You guys are moving way too slowly. This will fail as the commercial effort to upgrade Eudora failed. Just pick one Eudora feature and release something. Stop striving for perfection.
,dave
Strongly seconded - the first thing I want is a "new" eudora that's the same as the "old" eudora, except for a new splash screen and help desk link. The Only way the new eudora will retain the current user base is if it provides (as a first step) a zero-impact migration to the new development stream. -ddyer
We don't need another Outlook clone - we'd like Eudora [edit]
The reason people buy Eudora (OK, some get it in Paid) is because they like the particular things it does.
My tuppence: HTML rendering can be handled by the HTML engines in respective OSs. Then let's keep the things that Eudora does do - mailboxes in their own windows 359422 (and remembering where they are), scriptability on Apple at least, and - oh yes - speed. Speed is the real killer bit. Speed of searching even very very big (text file) mailboxes, speed of sorting and checking.
I'd really like to be able to import messages to Eudora from Thunderbird. At the moment that is not an option. Thanks!
WELL.... actually... [edit]
What i'd love, is if we could have an acutal replacement for Outlook. A lot of us have to use it for work, becuase of one feature or another that our bosses require. I'd love to see the Lightning project (fully working, able to synch with PDA's, &c) incorporated into this, or at least as an option. I, for one, have been DYING to get out from Outlook, but there still isn't an option.
No Outlook! [edit]
I have to say that the problem with Thunderbird and many other programs is that they are based on the model of Outlook which is a crappy program but if you are always trying to catch up with that then you will make Outlook be the better option. I wish Mozilla had tried to emulate Eudora from the start. Obviously Qualcomm keeping the code of Eudora closed for so long was a mistake that almost killed it - even though it has always been the Superior Email client. But Eudora can still make it big! THE superior email client is a big deal. That's bigger than Thunderbird. That's almost bigger than Firefox as a browser (in terms of how important this technology could be). Email is still the standard personal communication for the internet. The wallowing of Eudora vs. Outlook is a great example about how the free market does NOT favour the best by itself. It takes us doing work!
How about Linux? [edit]
One major reason I'm running Windows emulation on my Linux box is so I can keep running Eudora. I've been waiting for Eudora or Linux for years. I haven't ported to a Linux mail client because I've got dozens of folders and hundreds of mailbox files and addressbook stuff that got mangled the only time I did a serious try at changing over.
If "Eudora" in future is going to be a shell or other sort of extension running over Thunderbird, can that shell/extension be ported to Linux?
Yes, please [edit]
I support this very strongly! I'm also just keeping a partition with Windows in order to be able to use Eudora. When Penelope would run under Linux I finally could make the move away from Windows.
Another Yes, please [edit]
I'm keen to make the switch to Linux. Eudora is one of the few things that's keeping my Windoze alive
Linux via Java? [edit]
Would it make sense to develop Penelope in Java for cross-platform support (Linux, Mac, Win, ...)? --BobK 16:41, 12 February 2007 (PST)
= Another Yes, please [edit]
The lack of Eudora for Linux is the only reason why I haven't made the clean break away from Windows.
The ONE thing that Eudora has that no other email client has, is the ability to delay the sending of messages until a certain time at a certain date. This is incredibly handy for me (and I'm sure for others if they stop to think about it), and is a feature that I sincerely hope remains in the client.
Yesssss! [edit]
I was so happy to hear about this project because I've been running eudora4.2 in wine for ages now and its starting to fall apart. For a while it would not just crash but cause a kernel bug that I couldn't fix without rebooting if I tried to attach anything. Fortunately future versions of WINE eventually solved that but still. It doesn't cut and paste properly and the fonts suck. So I want a new Eudora that is native to Linux! I had basically given up reading a few years ago that there was never going to be a Linux Eudora... And I was literally researching Thunderbird vs. Evolution so that I could migrate... then I saw that THERE IS HOPE FOR US EUDORA ADDICTS.
And migration is no easy task. I've got email from 1997 and hundreds of folders. I agree with a lot of people - no bells and whistles are required - just get it working compatible with as it was before. Eudora users stuck with Eudora because they liked the stability and elegance. We've avoided gimmicks for this long so don't wreak this now by going that direction. Things can come later.
I do want to say that while the idea of having a multiplatform java version makes sense in that it would be as universal as java... it would still have to be java. That is like Azureous or OpenOffice for Linux. Slow and bloated, used only due to lack of alternatives. A depressing direction for Free software to take and also... java isn't really free anyways! So do not port it all into java - please! Keep it small and fast! Python would be better than java, but really it should be native.
Thank you for providing me with hope Penelope project. I will contribute as best I can. I am so delighted to hear about this.
Now my even more insane wish to have an Amipro in combination with Abiword is not so unlikely after all!
Eudora features that matter to me [edit]
Here are some of the things that make me stick with Eudora:
- Ability to display mailboxes in individual windows.[359422] Ability to set mailboxes to open when new messages filter into them.
- Option-click grouping. The ability to rapidly group all messages in a thread, or all messages from a particular author, comes in handy all the time.[Vote for 359267]
- AppleScript scriptability. (I know, I know... getting that supported in Thunderbird will be really rough, but without it, things will not be good.)[Vote for 360939]
- Keyboard shortcut to move to the next message in the stack while a current message is open. This behavior is something I've come to rely on in Eudora, and it drives me up a tree that Apple Mail doesn't do it. (Yes, I prefer to read my messages in separate windows, not in a preview pane.) Jsnell 16:39, 11 October 2006 (PDT)
- Customizable labels on Toolbar with Customizable colors -- this is one of Eudora's best features others don't have, with the only problem being that one is currently limited to 7 colors/labels. Kei
- Related to labels is the ability to sort by multiple columns. I like to sort by label, then by date, but TB does not allow for this. Ccajohnson1
- The way Eudora immediately expands mailing list nicknames into their component addresses after I tab to the next field. This allows me to edit the alias and remove recipients that I don't want to send a message to.
- The 'Clear Formatting' feature in the message composition window. I suppose bandwidth is cheap, but I receive many emails filled with gif's, colorful fonts, and doodads. This allows me to remove all of this stuff in one stroke (two, actually) when replying to such a message.
- Being able to 'Send Again' a received message. Without this, I must edit the message to remove the forwarding header before I send it.
- Unique ability to automatically detach Attachment from mailbox to specified folder.
- The big one of me (and my father-in-law) is the automatic extraction of attachments. This is HUGE, and I (and others) have posted this as a request on Thunderbird but have been ignored. It's been what's kept me a paying customer for the last six years. But there's a lot that could be added to it, too; like a tighter coupling with the parent message (when it gets deleted, ensure the attachment is too).--End-user
- ability to have mailboxes with hundreds of thousands of emails with no significant slowdown in opening a mailbox or the interface in general and almost zero increase of memory footprint. No other mail client can offer this until today. (Personally i have my mails back until 1996 in Eudora)
- ability to open mailboxes outside of the common mailbox location. I currently archive my Eudora messages and keep them in a folder outside of my Eudora Folder where my current mail is located. With Eudora for Macintosh, I am able to open a mailbox from my archives and move messages from my current mail into them. This cannot be done on any other mail client out there.
- A couple years ago I tried to switch to TB from Eudora, but the ability to mark a message to automatically send at a specific time and date has been too vital. If not yet present, this function is vital to me.
- The "Move To" right click context feature has taken a step back in time. After 11 years of Eudora use this is frustrating. I have a hundred-thousand plus mails going back over 11 years and almost 300 folders in various structures. Sorting out mails is critical on a RIGHT CLICK. I am running Vista and now the menu has gone back to "bad" old days of, if there are too many items in the folder you have to scroll an arrow up or down on the screen...the last version (7) had the folders fly out to the right and it was a breeze to just navigate to the needed folder and drop the mail(s) into that area. It save multiple clicks by having to drag open folders on the left and then drag and drop. Other than NOT converting the OUT boxes (true!)...Penelope looks awesome so far!
- Our workflow heavily depends on ESP (Eudora sharing protocol) and this is THE killer feature that prevents us from switching to Mail.app or TB. Its benefit would be even larger, if it supported long file names. So, Penelope without ESP functionality would be a no-option!
Please Keep Mailbox File Structure [edit]
Though I love many things about the Eudora interface, the most important reason I have never moved to Outlook is the terrible way Outlook has of saving your entire email archive in a single, gigantic file.
I've had that single gigantic file get corrupted at various jobs I've worked where they forced me to use Outlook. It's also a tremendous pain to back it up.
Please keep Eudora's mailbox file structure.
I SECOND THIS! The above hits my primary love of Eudora on the head! - arfon
I THIRD this. The reason I have not switched to any other email software is the wonderful mbox structure. - Dave Barnes (dave@marketingtactics.com)
Totally agree. Outlook has hosed my mailboxes on several sites, and it is a serious pain to recover. The simple mbox format is much safer.
YES YES YES!!! This is by far the most important reason I use Eudora. -CharlesS
I agree the basic structure shouldn't be radically altered, however, my only bugger with the format as are three fold. a) the mbox format is formatted as a Mac OS 9 format, so to recover it using any unix tools you must reconvert the mailbox to unix line endings. b) there should be a unique begin message/end message 'marker' ... ok I say this, because once I got screwed by Eudora's auto-mailbox-recovery..and had to try manipulating things using csplit. c) the mailbox should be allowed to grow way past 32,000 messages...doubly so if it auto-mailbox-recoveries...now, if due to uncompressed mailboxes, you go over the 32,000 message hard-limit, it will recover your messages -- but your mailbox can't be opened.
I'd like to see bigger (MAYBE INFINITELY) mailboxes. -dfass
I think the .mbx/.toc pairing is one of eudora's strong features, which contributes a lot to its ability to move and group messages fast. Unless there is good reason, I would prefer the mbx structure was left as is and new features were added by improving the .toc format -tropos
I think one of the major goals of Eudora is the Find gui. With those beautiful combos to filter the search, you can find anything in a second.
I tried out Thunderbird and thought it was great. But the one big mailbox structure, and how it was stored, killed it for me. With Eudora I keep my mailboxes in an encrypted partition (Truecrypt), the program elsewhere. Thunderbird put it all in an unlterable default in my C: drive.
I also like the mbx/toc pairing. The directory structure works very well, don't mess with it.
Switched to Eudora 4-5 years ago when Outlook and it's files were corrupted by a windows zero-day breach. Microsoft DID try to step through me through several recovery attempts but even re-installing OS couldn't get it to re-read original files. Eudora actually read and imported those same files that Outlook itself couldn't read. The simple file structure is beautiful. Give me plain text readable by any word processor ANY DAY over "time-bomb" proprietary formats no matter how "cool" they are.
Another "yes" vote -- primarily because of mail-store *size* issues. There have been dark days in Eudora's past where I've considered (gasp!) migrating away. But the importers all choke on my huge historical pile o'mail.
Yet another reason to leave the file structure intact is just how darn simple it is to manipulate. I like the ability to tinker with the store myself with nothing more than a text editor.
Another vote for the current structure (as opposed to the "single large file" method).
One thing I haven't seen mentioned before: it's crucial that the importers retain state that lives in the .toc files. Message status, labels, and any edits to the subject line of received messages. In Eudora right now, AFAIK, there's no way to get this info to transfer between Mac/Win versions, and 10 years of subject annotations are pretty much the only thing keeping me from moving back from PC to Mac.
I Nth this request. Good ol' plain-text mbox, please.
A (minor) request would be to put each mailbox's mbox, toc, attachments (optionally), and perhaps persistent settings, into an OS X .pkg (or just a directory on other platforms).
N+1th .. I also like the plain text mailboxes and the folder structure that uses the operating system's own file system. --BobK 16:46, 12 February 2007 (PST)
I tried out Thunderbird and found it stuffed everything in one huge mailbox, almost exactly the way Microsoft's email client does. This just isn't acceptable since I now have over 500 mailboxes in Eudora. I keep all email from each author supplier, etc. in a separate mailbox and keep all mailboxes on a separate drive. Any change in this approach just wouldn't work for me - I've tried it. - Shad
The mailbox feature is absolutely required. Performing backups and restores is made so much simpler. - Peter
The mailbox structure, with its ease of interaction, is the number one reason I have stayed with Eudora. Admittedly, I am required to use Entourage (Mac version of Outlook) and Outlook for my job (it's a Microsoft-centric shop). Like some of the others here, my Entourage/Outlook database has become corrupted a couple times, and it is a substantial inconvenience (at minimum) when that happens. That said, all of my personal email is in Eudora. In addition to the mailbox structure, I also love the ease of smoothly transferring both sent and received messages directly into a folder structure, including the real-time and smooth creation of new folders on the fly. Yes, one can implement a semblance of "folders" in Entourage/Outlook but the process seems to be at least 300% more time consuming, and the resultant "folders" are still all glommed into one vulnerable (and massive) database. I cannot imagine being content with a Eudora successor that does not retain the elegance of the mailbox structure and its amazing ease of interaction. - dsmith
One huge db glob for all messages & attachments is just asking for trouble. People who get a lot of attachments quickly hit a 2 GB limit. ThunderBird has this limit per folder, and many other mail apps have this limit for the entire db - including attachments! No good! I've had to help several people migrate away from Apple Mail & TBird when they hit 1.98gb.
Plus, as someone else pointed out; backups are sooo much easier when you don't have to re-back up the entire huge db (with attachments) after receiving one email. A text-editor friendly format is a wonderful thing as well. If there is a very good reason to keep all messages in one db, please at least split off the attachments and store them separately. Email apps have become important filing systems of our daily communications. We need to create them to be sturdy enough to handle the load.
DaveNathanson
Absolutely please keep the current mailbox structure. Monolithic structures are insane and simply a disaster waiting to happen. The ability to process a mailbox with ordinary text tools in an emergency is invaluable.
Martin Kirk
I completely agree. I haven't changed completely to linux because I have my mails since 1996 in Eudora format and no other mail client I tried works this way. Everybody told me about all the good Thunderbird stuff, but when I realized it saved all mail in one huge file, as Outlook, I just didn't want to give it a try anymore. Please, take notice of this thread. - Juanfer
I agree! Just downloaded the beta version and it looks like any other email program where everything is in one window! Please do not drop multiple windows for each mail box and saving everything in separate text files, That is a MUST HAVE in Eudora otherwise I might as well use Mail.
Yes, keep the file/window structure the same and keep the application portable on removable media.
Ch. Servais
In addition to seconding the "keep mbox file structure" request, I also strongly second the request to keep the Find GUI similar to Eudora. Specifically, the ability to select multiple arbitrary mailboxes (folders) to search is a crucial feature not present in Mozilla releases. (I use Seamonkey and find Seamonkey's Find UI extremely frustrating.)
Feature request [edit]
Save a string of messages into one text/word file. This used to be one of the best features of Eudora, but for unaccountable reasons it was dropped.
Subject header at bottom of message, not at top. Then users might actually use a meaningful header! This is radical, and might vastly improve email communication; wont know till we try.
The ability to cc: without Attachment (e.g. ccw/oA: ) so one can send the primary recipient an attachment but not saddle the cc recipients with the attachment. I've been requesting this for years and would probably switch to whatever mailer implemented it (except Outlook of course).
john coleman [359426]
Something I've always wanted in Eudora: checkboxes in the dropdown recipient list.
By recipient list I mean the list that drops down when you do Message | New Message To or Edit | Insert Recipient
Right now if I want to CC an email to ten people I need laboriously Insert each Recipient seperately.
I've wanted a checkoff list for as long as I've used the program.
- I have always wanted a basic calendar. Nothing fancy, just something simple like the Palm Desktop calendar. -CharlesS
- The address book is clunky. It would be great to rethink this and make it more user friendly. -CharlesS
- I have always wanted a way to archive old messages into a folder of its own so I can get them offline! This should include the attachments and embedding. -MISchwartz [359427]
---
PRUNE - I have asked several times for the "Prune" command. "Prune" allows one to select a date and delete all messages in a folder with a dat equal to or prior to the date entered. This feature would be particularly helpful in the trash folder where I would like to keep only the last 2 months deletions. - Kernel
Kernel -- But, you can save a search to do your PRUNE-ing... e.g. Search Trash with criteria Date before xxxx, then, run, select all, and delete. -dfass --- Sound - From time to time I receive a message with an imbeded graphic that includes sound. At present, the sound is lost if the message is forwarded. I'd like to see this corrected. - Kernel
The 'attach file' window is no longer sizable under ver. 7.1 with Windows XP. Please bring it back.
-rcommage
I just checked in Statistics, my total e-mail tally is 1.205.011. The mbox structure, in sigle files (with attachments being actual files), is the main reason I stick with Eudora. That and the lightning fast search.
My request is to get rid of the 32K messages per mailbox limit.
didonini
Maybe it's there already, but I haven't found it - a function that deletes embedded graphics when an e-mail is put into the trash box. (Yes, it has to do with getting rid of all the spam post garbage.)
jib
... an e-mail is put into the junk box. (Sorry for the mistake)
Jib
ARCHIVING: I manage to keep my email between 80-100,000 messages in 450-500 folders, but cutting messages down is difficult. I'd love to have the ability to archive chunks into offline folders that I could subsequently access through Eudora. For example, I get lots of professional e-newsletters. The bulk on these things can be huge, but saving off a couple years of old newsletters into a text file seems to be a one-way trip: I lose the ability to access them again or forward relevant pieces when a discussion might come around to a topic that was covered previously. Externally, this feature would look somewhat similar to the dread "archive to .pst file" feature in Outlook, but be better structured internally.
FILTERS: I would love a clean way to manage my filters. The Eudora 6 interface lets you move one filter at a time and there is no way to place a filter at the BOF or EOF without tedious scrolling. There is also no way to select a group of filters, sort, filters, or do a global change (although with some veeeeeery careful jiggery-pokery, I can import the FILTERS.PCE file into Word or a spreadsheet and massage the filters that way). What if there were a way to massage filters similar to the current Bookmark Organizer in Firefox? I'm sure that 1/4 to 1/3 of the 414 filters I have in place now could be deleted--they were there for dealing with old types of spam that doesn't come in anymore--but sifting them is just too darned much work.
As I write this, I also thought of a "find dupe filters" function: I can have filters that all deal with one mailbox and that may or may not overlap. Finding all the filters that point to one mailbox or have some other filter feature in common would be good for trimming.
Other filter features:
- The current filter execution order is serial: they show up in the list wherever they do and they get processed in that order. How about a filter priority setting from 0 to 999 that could be used to sort filters by? Filters would then be processed serially but you'd have been able to set up standing criteria using the priorities ("I want to always check for the newsletters before individual email so email from Fred to the newsletter list doesn't get misdirected to his personal folder").
- What about filter categories (also a sort criterion)? A lot of stuff would get labeled as a SPAM filters, other standard categories could include NEWSLETTERS, PERSONAL, WORK, and FUN. There'd be a couple dozen user-definable categories as well. If I wanted to make a change to all my WORK filters, I could find/sort them easily. This would probably be a keyword entry, with the possibility of several different keywords (WORK + NEWSLETTERS, FUN + PERSONAL).
- Group editing of filters: I want to find all filters that are currently sorting to one personal box and change them so they go to another personal mailbox. The organization that I get newsletters from has changed their listserv program so I now have to update all the newsletter filters to recognize that newsletters coming from majordomo@this.org now come from majordomo@that. I want to delete any of the filters that I'd previous set up to look for the name Phred Pheeney.
PRUNING BASED ON DATE: Gawd, yes.... :)
ATTACHMENT FINDING: How about some way of getting an optional attachment report as part of the really wonderful Eudora Find UI that would give a report of the emails and the attachment names associated with them. For example, suppose I'm looking for a particular proposal document in my Work mailbox. I might have a couple hundred documents, spreadsheets, notes, VCFs, even signature graphics attached to email. Searching for "Attachment count > 0" won't work, as I'll get everything with any attachment at all. But if the find had a "Show attachment detail?" option, it could come back with the filenames as well:
Mailbox Who Date Subject
In Phred Pheeney 11:29PM 03/21/2007 Ruling the universe * PLAN1.DOC 08:01AM 03/15/2007 15KB * PLAN2.DOC 08:19AM 03/15/2007 32KB * HOWTODOIT.PPT 02:55PM 03/16/2007 359KB
With this, I could easily see what I was looking and not have to open a zillion emails whose only attachment was some miserable signature graphic or VCF. :)
FOLDERS/MAILBOXES IN PREFERENCE ORDER: Not a big deal, really, but it might be nice to be able to drag-and-drop folders or mailboxes so they appear on the nav list in the order I want rather than only the default of alpha order. I have my folder of personal mailboxes named "Z-Personal" just so that it goes to the bottom of the list, but it's a little inelegant. Again, not a big one and it may be far more trouble than it's worth to do something like this.
I agree with Charles S: a simple calendar that reminds me of appts, dates, and so on would be heavenly. (No, don't need workgroup software a la Outlook; just a basic day planner sort of feature.) And yes, the address book UI could be improved to allow group selection/edits and other features.
Yours truly,
John Hedtke john@hedtke.com
And, speaking of filter options, I'd like to add an ability to simply strip out certain kinds of files (accept the message, drop the attachment). Or direct them somewhere else: another folder, another address, etc.
I vote against calendars, though. Doesn't belong in my email program; I have separate applications for that. Let's focus on making the best mail client we can.
I completely second the filter management, though. That's VERY lacking. I used to create dummy filters that acted as labels so I could group the filters. I don't know whether it's been mentioned, but it'd be nice to be able to make hierarchical filters - make a branch of filters dependent on passing certain others. --End-user
A calendar utility is very important to me. And not just a basic one- One that handles the functionality of Exchange/Outlook appointments, and reports back to the Exchange server that these invitations have been accepted, denied, canceled, etc. My office (like many others) uses Exchange/Outhouse and shared calendars for its email/calendar standards. While I'm happy with using Thunderbird and Palm Desktop for myself, my coworkers frequently complain that they can't see my calendar.
It'd also be useful if the calendar functions would synchronize with my Palm Desktop, and in turn, synchronize those with the Exchange server.
Scenario 1: I create an appointment on my Palm. I sync it with the laptop. Penelope/Eudora/Thunderbird then syncs it to the Exchange server, for all to see.
Scenario 2: A coworker sends me an appointment invitation through the Exchange server. I accept it, and it's shown on my local calendar as well as being visible to all other users via the server, and it's also synced to my Palm desktop. Once I sync my palm again, it's all on my handheld as well.
(let's not go into the discussion of how stupid my office is for requiring exchange/outhouse in the first place- It's a battle I've lost, and the company is way too big to change its decision)
Many offices use the MS products for its integrated mail/calendaring features. Providing this here would give a choice to those who don't want to use Outlook.
Thanks much,
Kelly Cash
Priorities & Philosophy [edit]
I think that it would be good to know & discuss the priorities & philosophy for development work. The initial Roadmap is vague, though understandably at this time. I look at this primarily from a Mac OS X viewpoint, looking at 3.0a1.
For priorities, many of us have supported Eudora on both Mac and PC platforms for many years. Over the years, users have drifted to other clients for a variety of reasons. #1 priority for me, on a tech support level, would be a way to bring back users from other clients in a reliable and functional way. This may necessitate a stand alone converter/translator similar to Emailchemy. All other email clients to Eudora, Mac or PC. Maintain attachment and inline graphic information and location.
Next priority would be to tie into existing OS X technologies, similarly to Mail. Support for live Address Book access and updating (not a one time import feature)[359277], iCal events, etc. Build for new Leopard technologies in this area.
Comment: As a Windows user, I might suggest a more open basis for Address Book access. Consider the vCard[2] format for exchange of address information. - Kernel
Allow multiple prefs.js files to open separate groups of identities. I currently use multiple Eudora folders, each with multiple personalities, each accessed via alias to Eudora Settings file. This could be accomplished using multiple Profile folders and a Profile Manager.
Philosophically, what will the look and feel be like? Tri-panel is very restrictive, and too much like Outlook. Allow for more windowing flexibility like Eudora Mac currently has.[359422] Multiple open mailboxes unbound from the tri-panel. Drag and drop messages between mailboxes and to the desktop. Don't confuse mailboxes with folders. Eudora does it right by allowing a folder that you put mailboxes in. A folder with both email and another folder is too confusing for many.
Use Mac UI similarly to the way Camino departs from Firefox and Mozilla, yielding a better user experience. Need to explicitly line out the differences between the existing Thunderbird project and Penelope. i.e is Penelope superseding Thunderbird? Is it parallel development, so both clients survive? Will Eudora 7 PC code and Mac Eudora 7 UB code (if existent) be combined to a common source base and then integrated with Thunderbird? Or will it be all new development, just bringing the "look and feel" and some features of Eudora to Thunderbird via extensions and themes?
Jim
Features Discussion [edit]
I have over 200,000 messages in my assorted mailboxes, so the search and filter functionality is key to me. I've got over 100 filters (and many more that have been retired), so they need to keep current functionality, stay fast, and improve: more than two criteria would cut down the number I need.
I like the Windows indexed search, but I'd like Spotlight integration as well/better, as long as it's fast. I agree with the commenter who wanted to use system-wide functions when possible.
I use less than 10 personalities, and managing that seems easy.
As a long-time Eudora user with way too much mail to consider migrating, I'd like to see a feature comparison or gap analysis so I know what good things are coming from T-Bird that I just never bothered to find out about.
Also, I'd prefer if it used the system rendering engine so it wasn't extra-bulky. WebKit on MacOSX, please.
My $0.02, Michael Croft
I have gigantic mail boxes as well, and many times a day sort them (by name, by date, by subject) in order to find something in my "filing system". I stayed with an old version of Eudora (5.2) because when I switched to 6 I found that sorting took an interminable amount of time, where 5.2 sorted with lightning speed.
Valerie
I'd like to put in a request to have a couple of features from Eudora added to Thunderbird. They're not as technically sophisticated as some of the other requests here, but their absence is driving me nuts. Without them, I'd actually rather stick to Eudora 6.2.4 than move to the 8.0 beta. 1) In the old versions of Eudora, you could select multiple items at a time just by clicking and dragging. In Tbird and the Eudora beta, I have to cmd-click each individual item. This is absurd. 2) Because this feature doesn't exist, removing junk mail icons from individual e-mails becomes tedious--instead of highlighting all of the "junk" mail at once and removing the junk mail icon, I have to do it for each e-mail. Maybe I'm missing something (i.e. the ability to in fact highlight multiple messages at once without selecting ALL of them or an easier way to remove junk icons), but the lack of the click/drag selection option is by far what irks me most and is the main reason I haven't switched over.
3) When sending/receiving mail or moving e-mails from one folder to another, please include an option to cancel the action once it has started.
Thanks!
SG
- * * *
Please keep the following features from Eudora: 1) The ability to "Redirect" email in addition to Send, Forward, Reply, etc. 2) Editing feature - don't take away the ability to edit emails which have been received.
Of course, plz make sure that the ability to create and manage mailboxes remains as easy as it currently is in v6.2.X. I've been using Eudora since January 1993 and I don't want to change. If the new version isn't quite right, I'll stick to v6.2.X so long as it continues to work with OS X.
-- doctormac
Incoming messages filters Import [edit]
Please can anyone confirm that, when i install Eudora 8.0.0b3 over onto the existing Eudora 7.x, all Filters will work without problems?
suwa
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Suggestions [edit]
While I love Eudora & have used it since 2.x but I also would love to see a Calendar feature such as Lightning & some improvements in the address book as far as contacts are concerned & in this way I finally can get rid of Outhouse.
For the most part tho I would take great care not to change too much with the existing program as you wouldn't want to alienate the existing user base.
I belong to an Eudora 4 Windows email list & I hope that continues as I much prefer that to online forums altho those aren't as bad as they use to be since more & more people are acquiring hispeed access but email lists cater better to those who as stuck with dialup.
Thank You for listening to my requests.
WaViJo
I would like a non-blocking-gui find. But don't touch anything else in the find window!!
Flagos.
I agree with WaViJo, a good calendar would be very useful -especially something with a office calendar share that would easily trump Microsoft Outlook. In regards to eudora 6, 7 more work needs to be done regarding opening mail over the network from different clients accessing the same shared email folder which is something worth considering!
George.
Unicode: sine qua non [edit]
One reason people like me stick with Eudora and don't move to Mail or Thunderbird is that we rely on Eudora's simplicity and functionality. A lot of that has to do with keyboard navigation through messages and mailboxes. I see that "remapping of accelerator keys" is one of the things scheduled for Release 0.1. I hope that this does not change navigation behaviour too much, but I am not sure what "accelerator" means here.
Another reason is that Eudora is simple but powerful enough to manage our e-mail. I have 21,000 items in my In box, 69MB, some going back as far as 1995. I do use other mailboxes, and am not a mindless packrat -- but my In box is large, and serves as my file-cabinet. My Out box too is large, 26,000 items, only 34MB. I don't know about Thunderbird, but Apple's Mail can't handle this at all as far as I can see.
There is only one area in which Eudora is actually broken, and I would like to beg the team to make fixing this their priority. The essence of e-mail is plain-text communication. Not spam protection, or fancy filtering, or scripting, or HTML. But plain old text in languages that people want to use. And that's were Eudora fails us: The text engine has not been updated to enable processing of UTF-8 text both in and out. Evertype 03:09, 12 October 2006 (PDT)
More on Unicode support as priority.
Demographic reasons (priority as importance): Without unicode support, Penelope would be just as useless for the majority of potential users as Eudora is useless now. I use Eudora at work (though it sometimes has problems even with the diacritics of the "Western" charset), but have to use Thunderbird at home for my private mails in Russian. And yes, people wanting to communicate (also) in other languages than English constitute the majority of the Internet users, though for obvious reasons they may be under-represented in this forum.
Technical reasons (priority meaning doing it first): It should be much easier to have the software treating every text as a unicode text than to decide every time which encoding is it now. Convert e-mails to unicode on arrival, then forget about the encodings. --Funfilder 11:41, 11 November 2006 (PST)
'Not only Unicode'
If there is one thing painfully missing from Eudora for all its life so far, that is support for Right-To-Left writing languages, including Hebrew. Eudora is barely able to read Hebrew coded messages, and totally unable to write. I know there are some work-arounds on the Mac (for reading, as the Mac itself is as bad with writing from the other side of the page). There are many users who simply cannot work with this wonderful program because of this 'small' limitation. Furthermore, as opposed to Outlook, and in addition to what has already been written above, I think that the ability to choose encoding should be very easy to find (and not deeply hidden) as well as the ability to set default encodings, just as in any web browser, but no current email program. Finally, the message should be able to be saved with that encoding for any future viewing. Adrian 11-11-2006
Comment by Wataru: The ability to set default encodings is in "no current email program"? If I understand correctly, this ability is already in Thunderbird, which even lets you set it on a per-folder basis and per-account basis; and it is implemented in many other email programs I use as well. I agree entirely that Penelope needs to have full international language support to be meaningful.
Tenga Wataru
Mailbox structure [edit]
I agree with everyone else about leaving the mail boxes as text files, but I can see lots of room for improvement there also.
- Move the location of the mailboxes away from the application directory.
- Don't throw all attachments and embedded content into one directory. Have an attachment directory and an embedded directory for each mailbox. This will make it easy to archive mailboxes by copying the mailboxes and the related directories.
- Allow different attachment directories for each mailbox
(I can only speak for the windows version, but I've been doing this (1) for ten years now. Just pass the location of eudora.in as a parameter to eudora exe it will use that location as the mailbox directory. -tropos)
It would be nice to have an email program that holds 10-20 "Filing Cabinets" Each would be a separate email account, with in/out/junk mailboxes. I have to monitor and send from 11 email accounts most days and have to do this one by one. I use Eudora 6.2 (11 times) If the Norton Internet Security 2007 integrated as well (Only Outlook at the moment) this would be a plus.
Actually, the ability to control where mailboxes are placed is one of the major reasons I use Eudora! I NEVER want to see any application store its data in the system partition. It so much more useful to be able to do a re-installation of Windows without having to restore all my user data (which is always in the D: partition). Eudora is invariably the first application up and running after a restore precisely because I only need to do the program load and just point it at my mail directory.
That said, it would be a significant improvement if attachments pathnames were relative to the Eudora data directory. Having the drive letter hard-coded makes it very difficult to relocate the mail directory to another drive without orphaning all the attachments, and when there are 10,000 of them dating back to 1993, this is a major issue.
Martin Kirk
What makes Eudora the best [edit]
1/ The Filter system. This is far superior to any I have seen in other email clients. I am particularly fond of "intersects address book" and "matches regexp" without which I would find life very difficult.
2/ The file system. i.e. the fact that all important Eudora files, including address books and mailboxes, are in plain text format.
3/ Stationery. Speaks for itself.
4/ The Junk mail system. Works fine for me most of the time.
5/ Compared to Outlook, Outlook Express and others, it is relatively safe from attack by viruses etc.
6/ The look and feel. I (have to) use Outlook at work and its just not in the same league as Eudora which I find friendlier, easier and faster to use.
I'd like to see the folder structure come through this intact [edit]
I've got 3.5G in various Eudora mailboxes and folders. (I've been using Eudora since 1999.
I use Eudora e-mails to myself as pointers to my reference collection.
I'd also like to see the internal message search engine improved. . . (I'm using Lite). . . a search box with free-text entry of Boolean operators (AND OR NOT NEAR DATE) would be really, really nice.
There really isn't any real reason once basic functionality is achieved, that the UI can't be improved to the point where Eudora becomes the mail client of choice for power users again.
Effective work with large mailboxes [edit]
People's mailboxes are getting bigger and bigger, often containing gigabytes of data and hundreds of thousands of messages. Web mail providers nowadays offer gigabytes of space with very good browsing and search capabilities. But a lot of desktop email clients (at least Thunderbird) still don't work well with such large amounts of mail, and almost none of them (except Eudora) has a fast search feature. This is where I think Eudora, with its good handling of large mailboxes and its Ultra-Fast Search, can contribute the most to Thunderbird.
Really, every mail client can read and send email, but it's handling large amounts of data that separates serious production-quality products from toys. Please take this into consideration during development of Thunderbird and Penelope if you want serious people to use them. And if T. and/or P. also had a fast search feature, that would mean a great competitive advantage and would make it one the best email clients.
The Search is the thing! [edit]
I'm a Mac user.
The thing I MOST NEED is the Boolean Search! Why Apple hasn't seen fit to include this, despite the fact that they implemented it at the Finder level is beyond me. (Try CMD-F from the Finder and wonder for yourself why you can't do that in Mail.app!) And don't anyone even START on the use of "Smart Folders" as a workaround. It's not even CLOSE to being the same! Thunderbird seems to lack this functionalty as well, which is why I haven' switched to it already. I NEED to be able to find all messages, for example, from "greg" sent in march of 2005 with the word "server" in the subject and the word "crash" in the body. Oh yeah, and these messages could be in any number of mailboxes, so I should be able to define WHICH mailboxes get searched! This is CAKE in Eudora!
I'll also need the ability to change Thunderbird's Command Keys to what Eudora's used to be. I'm stuck on CMD-M to manually check mail, CMD-R, CMD-OPT-R, CMD-J, CMD-F, CMD-Y... I use them without thinking!
Eudora's stats are fun.
The chili peppers are cool too, and I have saved my own butt more than once because of Eudora's "wait-10-minutes-before-sending-a-hot-message" thing.
I'm sure I'll think of more, but the search really is the big thing.
Second that! (I posted a request to keep the Find GUI similar to previous Eudora versions above as well.) I wanted to make sure the ability to search across arbitrary mailboxes was retained (through the checkbox interface), and yes, the Boolean search is equally crucial. The search IS the thing :)
What I'd like to see... [edit]
I'm not a power user, but I've been using Eudora/Mac for about eleven years now. I really want to see the individual windows for different mailboxes and messages maintained; the three-pane interface that so many email clients use just doesn't cut it for me. Judging from the other posts here, I'm not alone.[ Vote for 359442]
In addition, the search feature is terrific, and I'd like to see that continued, as well as the excellent junk mail filter. Like others, though, I'd also like to see more than two arguments possible for any given filter. I love the way I can make Eudora do what I want it to do via its multiple prefs, though, and I sincerely hope that Penelope will be as "friendly" an application. At present, Eudora can be as simple or as complex as we users want it to be -- and that's the way a good application *should* be.
Making Penelope capable of interacting with iCal and Address Book 359277 would be a definite plus. It's awkward having to maintain two address books, since the import of Address Book into Eudora at the moment isn't a dynamically updated one.
What's important to me ... [edit]
from http://emperor.tidbits.com/webx/?50@382.uFgFba7FrRQ@.3c804d7a - "Steve Dorner admits he doesn't know which parts of Eudora are most useful to its proponents" - so, since I've been using Eudora for 11 years, and since I got burned dabbling with other email clients, here are my votes:
OVERALL
... it is Speed, Reliability, Flexibility that keeps me using Eudora ...
ESSENTIAL TO THE EUDORA EXPERIENCE (on a MAC):
1. The speed of mailbox search : the trust that comes of knowing that I can find anything from my 11 years worth of email in seconds or less (please forget Spotlight integration if this would mean changing the mailbox structure in a way that might compromise reliabilty - Eudora search is fast enough)359311
2. The Eudora Folder : the simplicity of being able to move the Folder over from computer to computer knowing that Eudora will open exactly as I left it the previous session on a different machine - so so useful in many situations: back-up, losing a machine to maintainance, lending/borrowing computers
[davidmorr: It is not entirely true that you can just move the Eudora Folder to other machines. On Mac Eudora, if you have filtered attachments into different folders, Eudora can only find them again if they are put back in the Attachments folder. The filter definitions also lose track of the folder you wanted them to go to. Hopefully, Penelope will deal with this issue. ]
3. Separate attachment folder: having the choice of moving the entire mailbox structure over to a new computer quickly (for emergency situations) knowing that you can come back to pick up the attachments later - a big time saver 359319
(((I suspect that these three points are interrelated - I should add that I have NEVER experienced corrupted or lost data in Eudora)))
4. Configurablity - compared to anything else, Eudora seems almost infinitely configurable - from simple to complex
5. UI choice - separate windows for mailboxes 359422 - vertical or horizontal toolbar[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=359276 59276] - abilty to add many different commands to toolbar 359274 - for me the UI, despite looking uglier every day, is nonetheless flexible enough to be usefully rearranged for working on anything from a tiny laptop screen to a huge desktop monitor
6. Filters and Spam Filtering that just work
ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT FOR MAC OS (in no particular order)
1. Unicode support
2. HTML rendering
3. Ctrl-clicking bringing up contextual menus
4. OS X Address Book and iCal integration
5. IMAP support
UI SUGGESTIONS
1. for the power email user - create a infinitely configurable UI that allows you to arrange your desktop email experience as you like - I imagine something like a pro-design app feel a la Photoshop, Dreamweaver, etc that makes use of a vertical/horizontal toolbar that you can customise with just about any command, and dockable panels for things like mailboxes, signatures, settings etc
2. for Grandma!!! - an optional 3-pane view - so she gets the fast search and reliablity, without having to confront the power user interface
... why not have the best of both worlds, including an ability to display in 3-pane mode is absolutely consistent with one of Eudora's fundamental propositions - choice!
WHAT NOW?
I wait. Eudora 6.2.4 serves me well enough. I'd like more from my Eudora experience but fundamentally I'm not prepared to move on, and undergo the mail/filters import pain, while there's still some hope that I could have a new app that will leave my Eudora folder intact. I'm not moving to Thunderbird as it exists now
Why I use Eudora - key features [edit]
1. Ease of handling many email accounts from a simple single interface.
2. Ease of creating complex filter rules for organizing incoming email by source, topic, email account, etc.
3. Rapid search by header only, receipients, From, To and entire body of All Mail Folders or just a subset.
4. Ability to turn off viewing Images and HTML in email. Keep this as an option. {I may be one of the few that do not want integrated HTML rendering. 95% of HTML messages are JUNK and for the few I want to see, Open in Browser works great.}
5. Simple visual interface for determining which Mail Folders contain unread messages.
6. Drag & Drop or transfer of messages between mailboxes.
7. Uncluttered interface that lets me keep several frequently used Mail Folders open and easily accessable.
8. SPAM Watch is a great tool. I get 300-350 messages a day filtered into the Junk Folder, which I keep sorted by Junk Score. This lets me quickly scan the low junk score messages for false positives and/or search on key Subject words that I want to move out of Junk. There are still 15-20 JUNK messages left each day in my IN box, so any improvement in the filtering is always welcome.
9. Filter Report is very useful.
10. The ability to REDIRECT an email comes in handy when that is what you really want to do instead of a FORWARD.
11. Abilty to be able to pick which headers get displayed is great.
12. Nickname expansion and auto complete are very handy.
13. Spell Check(along with it's feature options) works very nicely and is an important feature, as is the ability to warn if you forget to include a Subject.
14. The toolbar is handy as it is and would be even better if there was some support for simple scripting to allow something like Move to Folder, Mark Read, Set Label to...; all from one button.
15. Being able to set POP settings by Personality comes in handy occasionally.
16. Being able to set the Moving Around options to fit how you work is nice.
17. The simple folder structure for storing email is much better for backing up and moving to another computer (even Mac to Win) than the single file approach taken by many.
18. Option-Click Sorting on Who & Subject is something I use at least once a day, usually followed by a scan of the messages using Splat-DownArrow to open the messages in order to review an email exchange.
19. Reply Quoted Section (select, shift-Reply) is something I use all the time to keep replys short. Ability to select disjoint text (maybe auto add <<snip>> in the gaps) and to do this when Forwarding a message would be a welcome improvement..
I'm sure I've missed something important, but I think this is a fairly complete list of what I find most useful and why I stick with Eudora. Mood Watch, Content Concentrator and Scam Watch have not been useful to me and I have then all turned off. ScamWatch might be handy if I could "turn-it-on" only when I wanted with say a CTRL-MouseClick over a suspicious link. I don't use the Preview Pane as I prefer to use the Splat-DownArrow to move through messages I am reading, which is why Content Concentrator has never been useful.
-Landy
What an odd combination [edit]
Thunderbird and Eudora are certainly odd bed-creatures. Their interfaces are quite different, both for mail operations and for setting preferences. What kind of interface will Penelope have? Is Penelope going to be close to Eudora, with Thunderbird existing separately?
From my standpoint, each program has its own strengths and weaknesses,in addition to which there are some important features that neither has.
Eudora's biggest advantage is the rules-defining interface, which lets us define many different rules and actions easily. Thunderbird's strengths are its excellent IMAP4 support, language and character set support (an area where Eudora falls down badly), ability to read all unread messages with the spacebar alone across all folders and accounts, and the popup notifications.
Both programs have heavy footprints and use too much memory. Their biggest weaknesses, though, are the poverty of template variables, and inability to assign templates to folders and/or contacts (see The Bat! for an example of both). Those of us who use the same email client for friends, mailing lists, and business really need to have this functionality. (Eudora by default uses the "On [date], you wrote" template, which can be switched only in the prefs file, and is universal for all folders and accounts. This is unacceptably poor. Thunderbird is only marginally better.)
So what will Penelope strive to be?
Please see also http://wiki.mozilla.org/User_talk:Wataru for more details.
My fav Eudora features [edit]
I've been using Eudora (paid) since it was originally introduced on the Mac, although for the last decade or so I've been on the PC version due to workplace constaints (no Macs allowed). You can imagine how much mail I've accumulated in all that time. Anyway, I want to take this opportunity to thank Steve for such a quality product.
That said, these are the features I absolutely need to see on the new version (in no particular order):
- Being able to migrate my existing filters. I love Eudora's filtering, and not only do I need to keep the same capabilities, but I don't want to have to recreate my list of filters.
- The indexed search is awesome, including the updates for 7.1. It's made me happy that I chose to never delete any email - searching is now a joy rather than a pain.
- Personalities, and the relay personality.
- Thanks for accommodating gmail's weird servers, and please keep that new feature as well.
- Drop and drag attachments.
- As has been mentioned many times, the folder setup with a private folder per user and a separate attachment folder, and text mail files.
- Autocompletion when typing email addresses.
- Easily removing all formatting so you know when a message will be sent in unadorned ASCII, on a per-message basis.
- Ability to edit the from email address on outgoing email (in addition to defining a new personality for well-used email addresses)
- Plugins for removing quotes, unwrapping text, changing capitalization, etc.
- Spell checking.
- Customizable toolbar359274and359276, with just about every capability being available as an icon
- Options to leave mail on server or not, individually download complete messages, delete from server, etc.360963
- Junk filter.
- Contextual menus.
Thanks again for a great product over the years.
Andy Malis amalis@gmail.com
Another voice... [edit]
While I've removed the icon from Eudora from my desktop and am trying to exclusively utilize T'bird, the things I miss are:
Search. Yup - Eudora rocked for searches.
Filters. Seemed solid in Eudora, could just be growing pains for me w/ regards to getting used to T'bird's.
What I'd like? The ability to easily edit and/or delete addresses from the autofi