Eudora 8? Penelope?

On 7-Sep-2007, at 17:25, John C. Welch wrote:
>> I know it's a tired response, but.... Mailsmith.
>>
>> I'm sure there will be plenty of people to correct me, but there
>> are only two things Mailsmith *doesn't* do that I've seen in
>> *every* other email client; HTML and IMAP.

Aye, and there's the rub. I have no problem with the lack of html
(hey, that's a FEATURE), but the lack of IMAP makes mailsmith a
complete non-starter.

> Did you use manual-trigger filters? How do you intend to replace
> their functionality?

Mail Act-On, as Johan and Enrico and Nik and Lee suggested. It's how
I've implemented my reconstituted AppleScripts (took some debugging,
those) as well.

With Mail Act-On you can stack rules behind a single key, if you
choose, or fan rules out to different keyboard shortcuts. Seems
pretty clever. I only have two rules right now: file and "print
attachments if they're PDFs".

I haven't added MailTags yet but suspect I will shortly.

> Wow. Jason and I were among the highest-profile holdouts. Now it's
> just me. :-)

Yeah... I was going to wait till Leopard as well, and maybe till
Office 2008, to do the Entourage v. Mail deathmatch. But a mail
server switch at work, and my increasing interest in the Inbox Zero
concept, made me make the leap. Something Merlin Mann said that
really struck me: I was still using a mail approach that made perfect
sense in 1993, but didn't make sense in 2007. Eudora's general lack
of the equivalent of "smart mailboxes" really hurt. (And yes, I've
been using the same "saved search" workaround, but it's just not the
same...)

--
Jason Snell / VP and Editorial Director, Macworld / jsnellmacworld.com
(415) 868-4341 / AIM/iChat: MW jsnell

I'm also chopped liver.

I'm sticking with Eudora6 until I see something better.

Didn't expect a first beta to be either feature complete or bug free. In my case, it wouldn't even try to import my settings file.

Eudora has a long way to go before a comparison to classic Eudora is fair. After all, the copyright notice shows work between 1988 and 2006 on Eudora6. We don't want to wait 18 years for Eudora 8 to mature but they did jump start the update by gaining HTML, better IMAP, UTF8 and Universal Binary.

Will still take awhile to see to get the best of Eudora in and then it will be fair to compare. Current is first baby step.

--Jim

> Did you use manual-trigger filters?

As others have pointed out, Mail Act-On is the way to go. A _very_
handy trick to keep in mind is that you can define multiple rules for
each trigger key, so that a single key-stroke will trigger different
actions for each selected message based on the conditions defined in
each rule.

As a simple example, you could define two rules for trigger key "a"
for archiving:

-----
Description: Act-On:a|Archive Personal

If (any) of the following conditions are met:

from - contains - <personal domain>.com
any recipient - contains - <personal domain>.com

Perform the following actions:

Move Message - to mailbox: - "Archive - Personal"
-----

-----
Description: Act-On:a|Archive Business

If (any) of the following conditions are met:

from - contains - <business domain>.de
any recipient - contains - <business domain>.de

Perform the following actions:

Move Message - to mailbox: - "Archive - Business"
-----

Hit #-a, and Mail will move the messages to the proper folders.


> I have dozens of filters and mailboxes for authors or vendors.
>

That is sooo 20th century. ;-D

<http://www.43folders.com/2007/08/16/one-mail-archive/>


With MailTags and/or Mail's built-in search, you might as well dump
all messages into a single archive file. To be honest, that was not
an easy step to do: "What, I should throw all those tediously sorted
emails from my well-maintained folder structure into a single
folders? Woah!" But when I realized how rarely I go back to those
emails in the first place, and how surprisingly successful Mail's
search works on my email archive, I went for it. Now I wonder what
took me so long. ;)

If, however, you feel more comfortable sticking with your archive
folder structure structure (for now...) to get your work done, give
earthlingsoft's Mailboxer a try. This little utility will create
smart folders for contacts in your Address Book, so that all your
mail to and from a person will show up in that folder.

That way, you may be able to re-create something similar to your
current folder structure, but without the hassle of re-creating all
those archive routing rules in Mail.app. As a neat side-effect, since
Mailboxer relies on _smart_ mailboxes, emails with multiple
recipients will even show up in multiple "personal folders."

You can test-drive Mailboxer with your existing folder structure in
place, so it's a no-risk trial.

<http://earthlingsoft.net/Mailboxer/>


Regards,

Jochen.


--
Jochen Wolters
jochenpolytropia.com | http://polytropia.com | jochenwolters (Skype)

> Mail.app's rules apply to all incoming AND outgoing messages. Set
> up the rules appropriately, and you'll get your outgoing filters, too.
>

If, by "outgoing messages" you mean "messages to be sent out," than
your above assumption is incorrect. Mail will automatically apply
rules to incoming messages; to apply them to any other messages, you
have to use the "Apply Rules" command found in the Messages menu. In
that case, however, the rules are applied to all messages in the
currently selected folder, regardless of whether you sent them or
received them.


> I have incoming mail filters act on what address mail is or is not
> explicitly addressed TO, and mail was
> applying those to my outgoing mail.
>

Could you share with us the exact rule and the location of the
messages that it is applied to? Maybe there's a way to add another
condition, or two, to make sure that the rule only operates on
received messages.


Regards,

Jochen.


--
Jochen Wolters
jochenpolytropia.com | http://polytropia.com | jochenwolters (Skype)

On 8-Sep-2007, at 07:03, Miraz Jordan wrote:
>> Suffice it to say, the release of Eudora 8.0.0b1 has not made me
>> concerned that I made the wrong decision....
>
> I had a bit of a look at the new Eudora and was not very impressed.
> For me,
> being able to get rid of the stupid two-and three-pane windows is a
> biggie.

I looked at the new Eudora for about 15 minutes. That's how long it
took me to hit the 'vanishing subject' bug that has been in
Thunderbird since before it was called thunderbird.

It's easy to hit. Just find a message thred with at least 30 or 40
posts in it and try to read it. As you do, the subject will 'march'
off the right side of the window as Thunderbird uses up a LOT of
space showing the thread outline.

Now, I love threaded view more than most people, but this kind of
carelessness in displaying something as simple as the Subject of the
email is, frankly, embarrassing.

At 10:14 AM -0700 9/8/07, Jochen Wolters wrote:
>With MailTags and/or Mail's built-in search, you might as well dump
>all messages into a single archive file.

Great, so I can copy all those messages every time I back up mail
files? No thanks.

--Mark

On 2007-09-09, at 05:14, Jochen Wolters wrote:

> you
> have to use the "Apply Rules" command found in the Messages menu. In
> that case, however, the rules are applied to all messages in the
> currently selected folder

Or right-click on an individual message (or a selection) and select
Apply Rules...

>As someone who has held on to many things way past the time to
>switch, some of it even software, I'm reminded of the old joke:
>Patient: "It hurts when I hit my head with a hammer"
>Doctor: ...
>
>Well, we know the punch line. :)

Yes, of course. But that's the problem. Using Eudora currently
doesn't hurt, much as I can wish for the possibility of new features.
Using any other client does.

cheers... -Adam

At 6:03 AM -0700 9/8/07, Jason Snell wrote:
>Eudora's general lack
>of the equivalent of "smart mailboxes" really hurt. (And yes, I've
>been using the same "saved search" workaround, but it's just not the
>same...)

I'm curious, Jason, about the ways you see Mail's smart mailboxes
being better than Eudora's saved searches. When I've played with
Mail, I've found the smart mailboxes a bit confusing, and I read the
vast majority of mail through a saved search in Eudora now, so I'm
not seeing big problems there.

cheers... -Adam

>> dump all messages into a single archive file.

I'm afraid my choice of words was a bit misleading: Mail.app stores
each email message in a separate file on disk, so I should rather
have said "into a single _folder_."


> Great, so I can copy all those messages every time I back up mail
> files? No thanks.
>

Umh, how do you back up your email files: by manually copying via the
Finder? If so, what folder structure do you use to separate already-
backed-up from still-to-be-backed-up files?


Regards,

Jochen.


--
Jochen Wolters
jochenpolytropia.com | http://polytropia.com | jochenwolters (Skype)

At 4:24 AM -0700 9/10/07, Jochen Wolters wrote:
>>>dump all messages into a single archive file.
>
>I'm afraid my choice of words was a bit misleading: Mail.app stores
>each email message in a separate file on disk, so I should rather
>have said "into a single _folder_."

Well, I'm mostly a Eudora user, so I accepted your use of the word
"file" after looking at my test Mail.app mailboxes and seeing some
composite "mbox" files with multiple messages. On re-examination, it
appears that Mail.app did change to a file-per-message storage
technique at some point after my initial testing. Sorry for
misremembering which was current behavior and which was past.

>>Great, so I can copy all those messages every time I back up mail
>>files? No thanks.
>
>Umh, how do you back up your email files: by manually copying via the
>Finder? If so, what folder structure do you use to separate already-
>backed-up from still-to-be-backed-up files?

I use Retrospect. It knows which files changed since the last backup
to a particular backup set, but it does not try to see how they
changed, so it backs up the whole file if any part changed. That
leads to an interesting tradeoff between the time needed to scan many
separate files and the space (and time) needed to back up the
unchanged part of cumulative files, which leads in turn to my habit
of rolling, say, each calendar quarter of TidBITS Talk to a separate
file (which then likely never changes again). Not a perfect
solution, admittedly.

If I switched to any mail program that stored one message per file, I
would be free of the necessity of rearranging messages into monthly
or quarterly mailboxes to save space, but I would also have to move
Retrospect to a faster machine.

--Mark

> I'm curious, Jason, about the ways you see Mail's smart mailboxes
> being better than Eudora's saved searches.

I found them unreliable (they would often lose my mailbox settings)
and of course you have to press the button to re-search when there's
an update. And it's a hack, not really as well integrated into the UI
as I'd like. They were better than nothing -- I'd have switched from
Eudora sooner if it weren't for saved searches -- but ultimately I
had enough issues with them that I realized I wasn't using them as
much as I should.

--
Jason Snell / VP and Editorial Director, Macworld / jsnellmacworld.com
(415) 868-4341 / AIM/iChat: MW jsnell

At 3:06 AM -0700 9/12/07, Jason Snell wrote:
>>I'm curious, Jason, about the ways you see Mail's smart mailboxes
>>being better than Eudora's saved searches.
>
>I found them unreliable (they would often lose my mailbox settings)
>and of course you have to press the button to re-search when there's
>an update.

Interesting. I've found only two notable bugs with saved searches in
Eudora Classic, and although they're along the lines of what you
report, they're extremely specific and certainly nothing that anyone
would hit regularly.

* If you move your Eudora folder to a new machine, you must reselect
mailboxes in the saved search. This is annoying, and was especially
so until I collected all the mailboxes I wanted to search into a few
folders. Now I just select those folders to select their contents
quickly. Otherwise, I've never found them to lose any mailbox
settings.

* If you have a saved search open, quit Eudora, and relaunch Eudora,
the contents of the saved search window will be wildly wrong, and you
do have to click Search again to refresh it. Aside from this, I've
never had to press the Search button to re-run the search when
there's an update - if I have my Unread Mail saved search open and I
check mail, new messages into the searched mailboxes automatically
appear in it. Messages that I've read (and thus no longer match the
search) don't disappear automatically, but I think that's generally a
feature - I don't think I'd want a read message to disappear from the
saved search window just because I'd read it.

cheers... -Adam

On 07/09/2007 07:28, "John C. Welch" <jwelchbynkii.com> wrote:

> IMAP users ran screaming from Eudora years ago. So did sane applescripters.
> Or sober ones.

Hey that's not fair! I used to do a _lot_ of applescripting for Eudora, and
achieved pretty much anything I wanted to do (more than can be done in
Entourage, at times).

Oh, wait - I see you specified _sane_ scripters - OK then, objection over.

--
Barry

At 09:34 -0700 UTC, on 2007-09-13, Adam C. Engst wrote:

[... Saved Search bugs]

> Messages that I've read (and thus no longer match the
> search) don't disappear automatically, but I think that's generally a
> feature - I don't think I'd want a read message to disappear from the
> saved search window just because I'd read it.

While I can imagine it should be a user-configurable option, I certainly do
want the read message to disappear. (In fact, Steve Dorner at one time said
that that was planned.)


--
Sander Tekelenburg, <http://www.euronet.nl/~tekelenb/>

At 2:41 AM -0700 9/14/07, Sander Tekelenburg wrote:
> > Messages that I've read (and thus no longer match the
>> search) don't disappear automatically, but I think that's generally a
>> feature - I don't think I'd want a read message to disappear from the
>> saved search window just because I'd read it.
>
>While I can imagine it should be a user-configurable option, I certainly do
>want the read message to disappear. (In fact, Steve Dorner at one time said
>that that was planned.)

Sure, an option would be reasonable (and especially in Eudora's
approach). The reason I don't want those messages to disappear is
that I'll often read a message, but not want to reply instantly.
Since it doesn't disappear, I can still access the message in the
saved search mailbox until such time as I close it, after which I
have go find it in the real mailbox

cheers... -Adam

--
Check out the major TidBITS redesign at the first link below!
_____________________________________________________________________
Adam C. Engst: I publish TidBITS and Take Control, write books,
acetidbits.com and make useful introductions in the Mac industry.
My work: http://www.tidbits.com/ and http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/

At 13:26 -0700 UTC, on 2007-09-14, Adam C. Engst wrote:

[... have Eudora Saved Searches do live updates]

> Sure, an option would be reasonable (and especially in Eudora's
> approach). The reason I don't want those messages to disappear is
> that I'll often read a message, but not want to reply instantly.

Yes, same here. But I find this approach too unreliable. If you accidentally
close the Saved Search window for example, there is no way to retrieve those
read-but-still-to-be-responded-to messages except by going by memory. What I
do instead is label such messages. (My Saved Search matches anything in a
couple of mailboxes that is either unread, or has that label set.) If for
some reason I need to start the Saved Search anew, I can rely on it finding
what I expect.


--
Sander Tekelenburg, <http://www.euronet.nl/~tekelenb/>

A few people have recommend some add-ons to bring better filtering
and mail management to Mail. However, I'm always leery of using third-
party products like that to provide features that are fundamental to
the operation of a program. And, for something I use as much as my e-
mail program, I'm *particularly* leery. unfortunately, the news
reports I see occasionally on the Mac news sites about MailTags and
others breaking reinforce to me that this is the right way to think;
the last thing I need is a minor Mail update breaking functionality
that I've come to be completely reliant on. Apple's good enough about
doing that on their own (witness my webcam's lack of sound input...)
without needing third-parties' help. Yes, there may be backup to go
to, but it's still a time killer, and it may very well be that you
*need* that update for some reason, and then what?


Regards,
Bob

On 9/16/2007 4:33 AM, "Bob Williams" wrote:
> A few people have recommend some add-ons to bring better filtering
> and mail management to Mail. However, I'm always leery of using third-
> party products like that to provide features that are fundamental to
> the operation of a program. And, for something I use as much as my e-
> mail program, I'm *particularly* leery. unfortunately, the news
> reports I see occasionally on the Mac news sites about MailTags and
> others breaking reinforce to me that this is the right way to think;
> the last thing I need is a minor Mail update breaking functionality
> that I've come to be completely reliant on. Apple's good enough about
> doing that on their own (witness my webcam's lack of sound input...)
> without needing third-parties' help. Yes, there may be backup to go
> to, but it's still a time killer, and it may very well be that you
> *need* that update for some reason, and then what?

Personally, I'd rather get more out of Mail until an update breaks
third-party functionality, dealing with Mail's shortcomings then, than to
suffer with those shortcomings from the start ;-)

(And, to be fair, MailTags and Mail Act-On have been regularly updated for
new versions of Mail for a while now.)