Hidden Settings

In keeping with the classic Eudora tradition of hidden settings, Eudora OSE continues to offer users the ability to control some of the more obscure and esoteric aspects of the program’s behavior. These settings may be accessed in [Options/Prefs window] > Advanced > General : Config Editor.

NOTE: If changing hidden preferences or creating custom ones is all new and mysterious, it is highly advisable to read through the following reference pages:

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/About:config
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Modify_Thunderbird_settings

If you spend a lot of time exploring or tweaking hidden settings, the ViewAbout extension might also be useful. It adds a quick access toolbar button and opens in a tab instead of a separate window.

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This page is organized alphabetically.

penelope.attachments.alwaysShowAttachBox

• Default: true
• In a normal compose message window, the message header fields take up the entire horizontal width. If you want to add an attachment, you can drag it onto the header bar and a container box will open up reducing the available header width and listing the attached files. Because this “initially hidden” state is in no way intuitive, because the horizontal space is wasted on vertically placed addresses, and because this box will appear anyway when attachments are added, the box is shown by default.

penelope.copyFullAddresses

• Default: true
• If you right-click on an email address in a message, there is an option to Copy Email Address. By default, the function copies the associated name along with the address: Name <foo@bar.com>.
• Using SHIFT+ toggles the behavior to copy only foo@bar.com.
• If the preference is set to OFF, the behavior is reversed.

penelope.mailbox.fixIconColumns

• Default: true

penelope.mailbox.fixIconColumns.width

• Default: 24
• These preferences apply to columns whose status data is represented by icons only. By default, these columns are fixed width and centered: Status, Priority, Attachment, Thread, Starred, Read, Junk Status.

The first preference controls whether or not the columns are fixed or adjustable. As there is little reason to adjust their widths since they only ever display icons of a single specific size, the width has been preset and locked to prevent accidental modification. If, however, you wish to set the widths some something personal, simply set the first preference to false and drag the column separator in the usual fashion.

The second preference contains the pixel width of the fixed width icon columns. Should you wish to alter the width of all the columns, simply change it to the desired number of pixels.

penelope.mailbox.ignoreJunkColumnClick
penelope.mailbox.ignoreReadColumnClick
penelope.mailbox.ignoreStarColumnClick

• These columns contain icons that are actually buttons as well as indicators. It’s quite easy to click into a mailbox window (e.g. to activate it) and accidentally change things, so these settings are intended to add some security to the interface.
• Junk Status default: ON. This disables the button functionality, insuring that you won’t inadvertently junk messages you want to keep. There are numerous ways besides the column icon to designate mail as junk (or not). You can use the toolbar button, the context menu’s Mark controls, Cmd/Ctrl+J, or Message > Junk.
• Star and Unread default: OFF. Since nothing destructive can result from accidentally clicking these icons, these settings are not disabled by default. If the preference is set to ON, the message status can still be adjusted via the context menu’s Mark controls.

penelope.mailbox.showLines.color

• Default: #C0C0C0
• This preference controls the color of the mailbox lines in a mailbox table of contents.
• Named HTML colors can also be used.
• Trivia: the default color is the same as it was in classic Eudora.

Special Column Formatting

A mailbox table of contents is comprised of rows and columns of data, much like a spreadsheet. Traditionally, users are required to adjust the columns so that data in one column doesn’t butt directly against the data in the adjoining column and create a giant unreadable mess of the layout.

The Subject column includes a few pixels of extra space at the front because it uses the area to display a status icon. This space creates a convenient offset to improve legibility, so the same technique has been applied to other columns as well (without the icon). While most of the mailbox columns are left justified, several columns feature right justified text and a tad of padding is required to keep the data off of the lines separating the columns (should you be using that feature). The rest of the columns are fixed width and centered, and contain only icons so they should readable under any circumstances.

The list of padded columns can be founded in the following preferences:

• penelope.mailbox.columnsToPadLeft
• penelope.mailbox.columnsToPadRight

The corresponding offset dimensions, given in pixels, are contained in:

penelope.mailbox.columnPadLeft

• Default: 20

penelope.mailbox.columnPadRight

• Default: 3

The left-aligned columns have their contents padded so that they line up with the text in the header. To achieve that same effect with the Subject column and maintain visual consistency across the UI, it is necessary to add just a skosh more padding to that column.

penelope.mailbox.columnPadLeft.subjectCol

• Default: 3

If, for issues of personal taste, there are other columns you’d like to pad independently of the master list, you will need to create your own preferences and their values. The format for the preference names is:

penelope.mailbox.columnPadLeft.[column name]

A complete list of interface-adjustable columns and their names is provided in the following crossreference chart:

Chooser Label	Internal Name	Column Chooser
Thread	threadCol
Starred	flaggedCol
Received	receivedCol
Account	accountCol
Unread	unreadCol
Total	totalCol
Status	statusCol
Read	unreadButtonColHeader
Priority	priorityCol
Attachments	attachmentCol
Label	tagsCol
From	senderCol
Recipient	recipientCol
Who	whoCol
Date	dateCol
Size	sizeCol
Junk Status	junkStatusCol
Order Received	idCol
Location	locationCol

• The message Subject column does not appear in the chart because it cannot be deactivated in the chooser. Its internal name is subjectCol.