What ARE Eudora's killer features?

On Oct 25, 2006, at 12:10, Chris Pepper wrote:
> It *was* an excellent feature back in the day, but doesn't
> scale or work well with signatures. My Attachments folder has over 6k
> items, many of them duplicates of each other, even more tiny
> unidentifiable signatures which are useless when disassociated with
> the original message.

But this gives you flexibility that you don't have if the attachment
is just stuck in the message until you export it. For instance, I
have a folder action script on my attachments folder that
automatically moves vcards and other commonly received junk (like
Windows executables) to the trash; this keeps me from having to deal
with such attachments either in the Finder or in the mail client. In
another case, I used to have a script that caught a file I received
monthly, parsed it and inserted its contents into a database, then
trashed the file. In still other cases, I just had the files dumped
into other locations in the file system or on a server. Once these
files are put where they should be, an extra, unnecessary copy (which
is sometimes large) isn't still hanging out in the mail database
taking up space, increasing the odds of corruption, and making
backups more difficult.

And yes, I know you can usually delete attachments from the message.
However, in the case of Mail, at least, once you delete an attachment
from a message, it seems to just be gone, with no hint that it was
ever there (except, perhaps, in the full headers). In Eudora, if the
attachment is gone, it still tells you in the message that an
attachment was there and what/where it was. This has come in handy
when I'm doing an archive search to find out when a particular
attachment was sent that was long ago deleted.


On Oct 25, 2006, at 12:10, deemery wrote:
> 3. Fast search HOWEVER (a) Spotlight and Mail.app may change this
> advantage.

They may change it in the future, but they haven't yet. At this
point, the Mail/Spotlight combination bogs down when you have
anything more than a a few thousand messages, and it becomes outright
painful when you start throwing tens of thousands of messages at it.
In contrast, Eudora searches several hundred thousand messages in
just a few seconds. Thus, for now, search speed is still a Eudora
killer feature (as is browse speed).

> 3. Ease of -maintaining- (vice creating) filters. Need a better way
> to debug filters and to consolidate and clean up old filters. 4.
> Connections between mailer and scheduler (but not the automatic
> inclusion of any arbitrary 'invite' that someone happens to email
> to me...)

Another killer feature you perhaps don't know about: if you select
any message and hold down the shift key as you open the Filters
window, Eudora will select all the filters that it would apply to
that message if it were to run through the filtering process--but
without having to actually filter anything. I've found this dry-run
feature incredibly useful in debugging filters, and wish other
clients had it. There are also the filter reports, of course.


On 25 Oct 2006, at 07:57 , Andrew Laurence wrote:
> However, I think the idea of keeping an original UNALTERED (and this
> included Eudora's header munging of incoming emails) message is a
> great idea.

I seem to remember that Eudora kept changes to messages, or at least
changes to the subject, separate from the original, and that if you
opened the mailbox file in a text editor, you could see both. I could
be misremembering, though. In any case, what you describe would
indeed be nice.


Regards,
Bob

At 5:06 AM -0700 10/25/06, Google Kreme wrote:
>> 2. Attachments stored in an easily findable folder separate from
>> the emails
>
>erm... this is not a feature, this is a bug posing as a feature.
>
>Trouble is, you can delete or move the attachment, rendering the
>original message corrupt. It also makes forwarding intact messages
>problematic.

        It doesn't really "corrupt" the original message - you just get a
"file not found" type of error if you try to do anything with the
attachment from within Eudora once the linkage has been lost. I think that
if you move the attachment from within Eudora (such as dragging the
attachment from within Eudora to somewhere else in the finder) the file is
moved from the "attachment folder" to the place you moved it to, without
"breaking" the message within Eudora. Of course once you move it from
within the finder, as Google Kreme points out, Eudora doesn't know where it
went.


--
* Johann Beda - contact link: <http://xri.net/=j-beda> *
* Johann's MostlyMac Computer Consulting - <http://mmcc.beda.ca/> *

Good morning,

On 23/10/06 at 2:34 AM -0700, Andrew Laurence
<atlaurenes.nacs.uci.edu> wrote:

>For me, it's really the first one. Eudora remains the *only* client
>of which I am aware which can run a filter on messages:

I'm really surprised at the lack of people including Mailsmith
in the feature comparisons. Mailsmith has the best filtering of
any mail client I have ever seen, period.

Unless the filtering in Eudora has been completely revamped in
the past couple of years, it doesn't even compare to the
filtering available in Mailsmith.

And the only other feature I've seen mentioned in this thread
that Mailsmith doesn't have is option-click sorting. And I have
to agree that I do miss that (I used Eudora for almost 10 years,
before I found the excellence that is Mailsmith).

Charlie

--
    Charlie Garrison <garrisonzeta.org.au>
    PO Box 141, Windsor, NSW 2756, Australia

Good morning,

On 23/10/06 at 2:34 AM -0700, Alexander Hoffman
<ahoffmanAleDev.com> wrote:

>1) Eudora's has three sets of rules/filtering. There are outgoing,
>incoming and manual filters. I don't use outgoing filters, but I do
>use both incoming and manual. Does any other mail client have BOTH
>incoming and manual filters?

Mailsmith!

I don't recall whether the default keyboard shortcut in
Mailsmith for applying filters is Cmd-J, but that's what I used
in Eudora so that's how I now have it set in Mailsmith. Of
course, complete menu shortcut customising is just one of the
many features that makes Mailsmith the best mail program I have
seen (on any platform).


Charlie

--
    Charlie Garrison <garrisonzeta.org.au>
    PO Box 141, Windsor, NSW 2756, Australia

On 10/26/06 15:14, "Bob Williams" <bobtrivectus.com> wrote:

>> 3. Fast search HOWEVER (a) Spotlight and Mail.app may change this
>> advantage.
>
> They may change it in the future, but they haven't yet. At this
> point, the Mail/Spotlight combination bogs down when you have
> anything more than a a few thousand messages, and it becomes outright
> painful when you start throwing tens of thousands of messages at it.
> In contrast, Eudora searches several hundred thousand messages in
> just a few seconds. Thus, for now, search speed is still a Eudora
> killer feature (as is browse speed).

I wonder if that's not just a problem with Mail's spotlight integration. I
know that with Entourage, the spotlight searches are not boggy at all, and
I've far too many messages to even think about, saved over the last ten
years or so

--
John C. Welch Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com Mac and other opinions
jwelchbynkii.com

At 1:14 PM -0700 10/26/06, Andrew Laurence wrote:
>That works fine when you're digging around in the file system. When
>you open old messages whose attachments' filenames collide with
>others, you always get the most recent file.ext.

I get plenty of duplicate file names, but I've never seen that.

>This last couple of weeks I've been getting a lot of price quotes
>from a reseller who uses an HP Digital Sender; it's basically a
>scanner/fax that emails a pdf. For some reason the ones I get only
>have eight-character file names: quote123.pdf. This is a bit of a
>problem when they start becoming "revised_.pdf"; when I open a
>message from two weeks ago to find that particular quote, I get the
>revised_.pdf I received yesterday. I have to dig into the file
>system, open all the "revised_ *.pdf" files, in order to find that
>the one I want is "revised_ 6.pdf".

Odd. When that sort of situation arises for me, the message from two
weeks ago actually displays as "revised_ 6.pdf", and no digging
through the file system is required. I wonder why there is such a
difference between your Eudora's behavior and mine.

--
Mark Williamson

[OK, enough on this branch. -Adam]

On 10/26/06 2:17 PM, "Charlie Garrison" <garrisonzeta.org.au> wrote:

> > On 23/10/06 at 2:34 AM -0700, Alexander Hoffman
> <ahoffmanAleDev.com> wrote:
>
>>Does any other mail client have BOTH
>> incoming and manual filters?
>
> Mailsmith!

Microsoft Entourage does as well. While you can't define a filter
specifically as a manual-only filter, you can easily keep it from triggering
unless you manually apply it.

--Nik

At 13:14 -0700 UTC, on 2006-10-26, Johann Beda wrote:
> I think that if you move the attachment [...] from
> within the finder, as Google Kreme points out, Eudora doesn't know where it
> went.

Actually, it does. Eudora uses aliases, not dumb hard-coded ones. So as long
as the file isn't moved to another volume, you can move it anywehere through
any method you like. Eudora still finds it.

My "(Provided you haven't moved the attachment)", earlier in this thread, was
incorrect. Dunno what I was smoking when I wrote that,

Multi-column sort (i.e., sort by name AND subject, etc)


[Or no sort at all, at which point incoming messages are just shown in order, no matter how munged their dates may be. -Adam]


--
Lorin Rivers
Mosasaur: Killer Technical Marketing <http://www.mosasaur.com>
<mailto:lriversmosasaur.com>
512/203.3198 (m)

On 27 Oct 2006, at 19:04 , John C. Welch wrote:
> I wonder if that's not just a problem with Mail's spotlight
> integration. I
> know that with Entourage, the spotlight searches are not boggy at
> all, and
> I've far too many messages to even think about, saved over the last
> ten
> years or so

Yeah, I've never understood people whining abut the speed of
spotlight searches. I can search 3GB of mailspool very very quickly.

Now, if the search options were BETTER, I'd be happier. I am still
annoyed that "Entire Message" means "message body" and NOT "entire
message" for example.

So, it is impossible to find a message in Mail/Spotlight by Message-
ID, for example.


--
Eyes the shady night has shut/Cannot see the record cut
And silence sounds no worse than cheers/After earth has stopped the
ears.

On 10/28/06 11:51, "Google Kreme" <gkremegmail.com> wrote:

>> I wonder if that's not just a problem with Mail's spotlight
>> integration. I
>> know that with Entourage, the spotlight searches are not boggy at
>> all, and
>> I've far too many messages to even think about, saved over the last
>> ten
>> years or so
>
> Yeah, I've never understood people whining abut the speed of
> spotlight searches. I can search 3GB of mailspool very very quickly.
>
> Now, if the search options were BETTER, I'd be happier. I am still
> annoyed that "Entire Message" means "message body" and NOT "entire
> message" for example.
>
> So, it is impossible to find a message in Mail/Spotlight by Message-
> ID, for example.

Talk to the vendor about adding that into their spotlight plugins.

--
John C. Welch Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com Mac and other opinions
jwelchbynkii.com

One distinctive and killer Eudora feature is the ability to queue a message to be sent at a future date and time. My Out Box currently has a few dozen messages addressed to myself, queued for times ranging from a few hours from now (remember to look for a certain receipt when I get home from work), to a year from now (remember to go to a certain art festival when it comes around again next year).

On 30 Oct 2006, at 20:46 , John C. Welch wrote:
> On 10/28/06 11:51, "Google Kreme" <gkremegmail.com> wrote:
>>> I wonder if that's not just a problem with Mail's spotlight
>>> integration.

>> So, it is impossible to find a message in Mail/Spotlight by Message-
>> ID, for example.
>
> Talk to the vendor about adding that into their spotlight plugins.

The vendor is Apple. The bug I submitted on this was closed as a
duplicate well over a year ago (I believe it was submitted with 10.2,
but not sure).


--
Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards for they are subtle and quick
to anger.

On 30 Oct 2006, at 20:46 , tkpublic wrote:
> One distinctive and killer Eudora feature is the ability to queue a
> message to be sent at a future date and time. My Out Box currently
> has a few dozen messages addressed to myself, queued for times
> ranging from a few hours from now (remember to look for a certain
> receipt when I get home from work), to a year from now (remember to
> go to a certain art festival when it comes around again next year).

Ah, yes, that was a rather nifty feature of Eudora, but it's been
supplanted with iCal. Simply set an event in iCal and have it email
you 15 minutes or 15 days or whatever ahead of time. I use this all
the time.

You can even, if you don't like iCal, use Google's (or Yahoo's I
expect) Calendars to do the same thing.

--
It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all
and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought...should be literally
unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words.

At 23:39 on 30-10-2006, Google Kreme wrote:
> On 30 Oct 2006, at 20:46 , tkpublic wrote:
>> One distinctive and killer Eudora feature is the ability to queue a
>> message to be sent at a future date and time. My Out Box currently
>> has a few dozen messages addressed to myself, queued for times
>> ranging from a few hours from now (remember to look for a certain
>> receipt when I get home from work), to a year from now (remember to
>> go to a certain art festival when it comes around again next year).
>
> Ah, yes, that was a rather nifty feature of Eudora, but it's been
> supplanted with iCal. Simply set an event in iCal and have it email
> you 15 minutes or 15 days or whatever ahead of time.

But this Eudora feature is actually very useful for actual email. I
use it all the time to queue messages that I want to send (to other
people) tomorrow or the next day. The most extreme I have is an email
to my brother that is queued, waiting to be sent, for June 2007!

_________________
=> Jolin Warren, Edinburgh, Scotland

On 31 Oct 2006, at 15:33 , Jolin M Warren wrote:
> At 23:39 on 30-10-2006, Google Kreme wrote:
>> On 30 Oct 2006, at 20:46 , tkpublic wrote:
>>> One distinctive and killer Eudora feature is the ability to queue a
>>> message
>>
>> Ah, yes, that was a rather nifty feature of Eudora, but it's been
>> supplanted with iCal.
>
> But this Eudora feature is actually very useful for actual email.

Granted, that can be useful at times. I was only responding to the
'reminder' type of queue, which in my experience is mostly what
people used that feature for. That is, sending themselves a reminder
note. For that, a calendar is better.


--
Spontaneity has its time and place.

A feature of Eudora that's easy to overlook is the way it ages
messages such that if you leave messages sitting around in a mailbox
unread for a prolonged period of time (I think the default is about a
month), it stops including those messages in the unread count for the
mailbox, although it does keep the messages themselves marked unread.
Do any other clients have this feature?

-Bob

[Moving to this thread, since Steve Dorner's comments definitely count as a killer feature for many of us. :-) -Adam]

Quote Steve Dorner:

"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."

Now THAT was funny :-D

Source: <http://wiki.mozilla.org/Talk:Penelope>

At 4:58 AM -0800 2006/11/07, Bob Williams wrote:
>A feature of Eudora that's easy to overlook is the way it ages
>messages such that if you leave messages sitting around in a mailbox
>unread for a prolonged period of time (I think the default is about a
>month), it stops including those messages in the unread count for the
>mailbox, although it does keep the messages themselves marked unread.
>Do any other clients have this feature?

        I believe it's 7 days, and never saw another client with this
feature. Actually, the messages themselves are unaffected, it's just
that the *mailbox* 'unread' indicator actually means: contains unread
mail dated within the last week.


                                                Chris
--
Chris Pepper: <http://www.reppep.com/~pepper/>
                             <http://www.reppep.com/weblog/pepper/>
Rockefeller University: <http://www.rockefeller.edu/>

On 10/21/06, mare <marepeghole.com> wrote:

> But I don't know why people are so upset about the demise of Eudora? If the
> new version based on Thunderbird is not good, the current version of the
> application still works, and will continue to work unless the email
> standard will be changed drastically. Eudora might not be a Universal
> Binary, but it's probably not exactly dog slow on Intel Macs either.

For one, the usual concern that a system update may cause Eudora to be
unstable.

In the extreme case, Eudora fans could find themselves in the same
position as Acta fans: who run Classic just to run their favourite
outliner program -- another software-type that ocassionally has rabid
fanbases. (Insert reference to Opal here).

With Eudora being opensource, this becomes less likely.

Just as an aside: you know that some time has passed, when Eudora gets
another long thread in Tidbits Talk. I'm nostalgic, but glad I left.
My weapons of choice are now Mail.app & gmail webmail.