MailForge vs. Eudora

If you don't mind, send us an email at devinfinitydatasystems.com with more information. This is the first case we've heard of this behavior. In our tests, as well as reports from our testers, its saving people's preferences just fine. I'm definitely curious as to why your setup isn't working quite right.

-- Matt Milano IDS Project Manager

I am still using Eudora 6.2.4 and it is still going strong under Leopard. I hope that we see a successor soon, I dread each update to OS X as I know that one day it will likely not work, let's see what happens with Snow Leopard.

My Eudora folder is over 1GB (over 20 years of email!). I did try importing my messages into Mail a year or so ago but Mail did not seem comfortable handling a large database and was painfully slow.

I am still puzzled as to why a replacement for Eudora has taken so long to appear, I have not seen an email client that comes close to it.....

On Sat, Apr 11, 2009 at 1:01 AM, antony <antonydemanuele.net> wrote:

> I am still puzzled as to why a replacement for Eudora has taken so long to appear, I have not seen an email client that comes close to it.....

"It" below refers to a mail client which could be a Eudora replacement.

1. It's hard. It would be lots easier if all the servers a user might
ask it to talk to followed standards (and if one only wanted POP3, but
that's quite old and to me uninteresting).

2. It will have to be a labor of love, as it is not commercially viable.

  --John (Eudora user [not exclusively] from about 1992 until mid-2008
[last three years only for sending stationery-based plain text test
and announcement messages], and I would not likely use a replacement.)

>I am still using Eudora 6.2.4 and it is still going strong under
>Leopard. I hope that we see a successor soon, I dread each update to
>OS X as I know that one day it will likely not work, let's see what
>happens with Snow Leopard.
>
>My Eudora folder is over 1GB (over 20 years of email!). I did try
>importing my messages into Mail a year or so ago but Mail did not
>seem comfortable handling a large database and was painfully slow.
>
>I am still puzzled as to why a replacement for Eudora has taken so
>long to appear, I have not seen an email client that comes close to
>it.....


I agree with Antony's comments 100%. I am amazed how that old war
horse works so smoothly under OS `0.5.6 on my quad Mac Pro. A new
version emulating Eudora will have to at least meet the current
Eudora's capabilities and in addition add a few things I would lie to
see such as being able to archive e-mails for a given mailbox and an
increase in the allowed size of an attachment (perhaps that is a
function of your ISP).

At 3:48 AM -0700 4/12/09, Thomas N. Casselman wrote:
>I agree with Antony's comments 100%. I am amazed how that old war
>horse works so smoothly under OS `0.5.6 on my quad Mac Pro. A new
>version emulating Eudora will have to at least meet the current
>Eudora's capabilities and in addition add a few things I would lie to
>see such as being able to archive e-mails for a given mailbox and an
>increase in the allowed size of an attachment (perhaps that is a
>function of your ISP).

Is there any realistic chance that Eudora will suddenly stop working
anytime soon? I think not. Certainly it will continue working until
OSX is replaced, but there is no reason to expect problems even then
because Eudora would be in the same situation as lots of other
software. Apple has always provided a transition platform, such as
when we moved from OS9, and when we moved to Intel processors. So
don't worry about it. Continue to enjoy the superior performance of
"the old war horse" for as long as she lasts. No reason to put her
down prematurely.

On Sun, 12 Apr 2009 03:48:56 -0700, Thomas N. Casselman wrote:
> A new
> version emulating Eudora will have to at least meet the current
> Eudora's capabilities and in addition add a few things I would lie to
> see such as <snip> an increase in the allowed size of an attachment
> (perhaps that is a function of your ISP).

That is entirely a function of your ISP.

As for a Eudora replacement, I highly suggest trying Gyazmail.
<http://www.gyazsquare.com/gyazmail/>

I've been using it since October, and it was a very easy transition for me.
It is not a completely transparent "Eudora Replacement" as some UI bits are
a tad different, and it is missing a couple of things I loved in Eudora
(Stationery, plug-ins) but it DOES allow complete keystroke assignments, so
I've mapped the "Eudora" commands that are embedded in my muscle memory to
work they way I expect them.

I committed to blogging the transition for the sake of other Eudora users,
but have mostly failed at that so far, as I've only written two articles:

<http://chuck.goolsbee.org/archives/category/technology/gyazmail-from-eudora>

(sorry) Though the second one goes pretty in-depth on just configuration.

--chuck

--On Monday, April 13, 2009 5:43 AM -0700 Hudson Barton
<hhbvglimfeather.com> wrote:

> Is there any realistic chance that Eudora will suddenly stop working
> anytime soon? I think not. Certainly it will continue working until
> OSX is replaced, but there is no reason to expect problems even then
> because Eudora would be in the same situation as lots of other
> software. Apple has always provided a transition platform, such as
> when we moved from OS9, and when we moved to Intel processors. So
> don't worry about it. Continue to enjoy the superior performance of
> "the old war horse" for as long as she lasts. No reason to put her
> down prematurely.

We're already on the transition platform-- Rosetta-- and have been since
the move to Intel chips some years ago. Eudora is a PPC app. How long until
Apple drops Rosetta? Not anytime soon, probably, but that was the same
thing we all said about Classic. It was true to a point, but "not anytime
soon" becomes "right around the corner" "before you know it".

A search of the list archives will tell you I've been as big a Eudora
advocate as anyone here, but I've got to say I've been using Mail.app more
and more often lately and I've just about come to accept the fact that
Eudora's days are numbered and there will not be a comparable successor,
ever. I hate to switch horses in the middle of the stream but I don't want
to wait until I'm under the gun, either, so I think that Eudora will soon
become water under the bridge for me.

Apologies for getting carried away with the well-worn expressions.

Greg Sigman

On 13-Apr-2009, at 06:43, Hudson Barton wrote:
> Is there any realistic chance that Eudora will suddenly stop working
> anytime soon?

There are problems with Eudora with OS X 10.5. Also, as far as I know,
Eudora still uses PPC code and needs Rosetta (it is not a universal
application). Rumor has it that Rosetta will either not be included in
Snow Leopard, or will not be included by default.

> I think not. Certainly it will continue working until
> OSX is replaced,

Oh, I would not rely on that at all. Even if Rosetta is part of 10.6,
it will almost certainly be gone by 10.7, at which point Eudora will
no longer even launch.

At 11:15 -0700 13/4/09, LuKreme wrote:
>On 13-Apr-2009, at 06:43, Hudson Barton wrote:
>>Is there any realistic chance that Eudora will suddenly stop
>>working anytime soon?
>
>There are problems with Eudora with OS X 10.5.

There may be, but like many others here, I have not experienced them.
The rest of your points (below) probably still stand however.....

> Also, as far as I know, Eudora still uses PPC code and needs
>Rosetta (it is not a universal application). Rumor has it that
>Rosetta will either not be included in Snow Leopard, or will not be
>included by default.
>
>>I think not. Certainly it will continue working until OSX is replaced,
>
>Oh, I would not rely on that at all. Even if Rosetta is part of
>10.6, it will almost certainly be gone by 10.7, at which point
>Eudora will no longer even launch.


Dan Hinckley

I am also an old Eudora user. I tried Mail and found it buggy and awkward. I tried Penelope and it's not worth talking about. I probably would be on GyazMail now but MailForge is offering a way out.

MailForge is still in what I would call beta, and the developers optimistically call RC, territory. However, it is definitely making progress. I'm going to stick with the "old war horse" until IMF is ready, and then make what I hope will be a "relatively" easy switch.

I am running Eudora 6.2.4 on my Mac, which is running 10.5.7. I just ran software update today, and Eudora crashed the first two times I tried to run it, but thank God it's working OK now.

Is there any way someone here would be interested in setting up an early-warning system for the awful day when Eudora no longer works, presumably due to an OS upgrade?

In the meantime, is there anything anyone here can recommend -- perhaps Mr. Milano? -- to preserve one's archive of Eudora emails? Mine is more than a dozen years' worth, and well over a gigabyte. I would HATE to lose it!

Perhaps the answer is simply to back it up, which I have assuredly done, but what I am worried about is that even a backup will not work, i.e., new OS update occurs, and suddenly one cannot open Eudora, and if MailForge is not working yet either, one is up the creek.

(BTW, I did fork over $20 today for the Odysseus / MailForge beta, on the Infinity Data Systems web site, but have yet to get my registration activated so that I can download the sofware).

On Tue, 19 May 2009 00:54:40 -0700, sfgumshoe wrote:
> In the meantime, is there anything anyone here can recommend -- perhaps
> Mr. Milano? -- to preserve one's archive of Eudora emails? Mine is more
> than a dozen years' worth, and well over a gigabyte. I would HATE to lose
> it!

Eudora mailboxes are saved in a standard unix mbox text file format, so are
rather universally readable by any mail client that can read them.

This was one of the reasons why I chose Gyazmail as a replacement for
Eudora:

<http://www.gyazsquare.com/gyazmail/>
<http://chuck.goolsbee.org/archives/category/technology/gyazmail-from-eudora>

Gyazmail uses the same format, and seamlessly was able to impart and use
all my old Eudora mail files. One minor Eudora annoyance that is gone
however is the 32,000 message limit of a mailbox. I'm on several
high-volume technical mailing lists and try to maintain a personal archive
of them. With Eudora I had to break them up my year (or sometimes several
per-year) to deal with this limitation. No such issue in Gyazmail.

I've often wondered what was the source of that Eudora limitation. I have
suspicions but would love to hear from somebody that know why.

--chuck
<http://chuck.goolsbee.org>

 

On 19-May-2009, at 15:40, chuck goolsbee wrote:
> I've often wondered what was the source of that Eudora limitation. I
> have
> suspicions but would love to hear from somebody that know why.

The message count in the index file (or index field in the resource
fork) was stored as an INT. However, I thought this was fixed in
Eudora 6.x to use a LONG_INT?

At 5/19/2009 02:40 PM -0700, chuck goolsbee wrote:
>Eudora mailboxes are saved in a standard unix mbox text file format, so are
>rather universally readable by any mail client that can read them.

Approximately. I was surprised when the MailForge folks started
pointing out that Eudora does a number of non-standard things with the mbox:

http://www.infinitydatasystems.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=223&start=70#p2694

and nearby messages. Eudora separates the attachment. Sent messages
do not have a date header. (I knew about both of those.) For
multi-part (plain text and HTML) messages, one part gets discarded.
There may by other differences.

Edward
--
Art works by Melynda Reid: http://paleo.org

On 21-May-2009, at 00:56, Edward Reid wrote:
> At 5/19/2009 02:40 PM -0700, chuck goolsbee wrote:
>> Eudora mailboxes are saved in a standard unix mbox text file
>> format, so are
>> rather universally readable by any mail client that can read them.
>
> Approximately. I was surprised when the MailForge folks started
> pointing out that Eudora does a number of non-standard things with
> the mbox:

This is the primary reason I moved away from Eudora as soon as OS X
was out. Especially the stripping attachments part, but others as well.

MailForge 1.0 was released June 6, 2009.

See Infinity Data System's blog for details:

http://www.infinitydatasystems.com/blog/files/category-mailforge.html

I have come late to this discussion. Have used Eudora for over a decade. The main reason I have stuck with it is its unique stationery which includes email addresses, return receipt, and anything else you want to put into an ordinary email.

Other so-called email stationery in other apps only allows the title and text to be included.

Mail Forge hasn't got around to making its stationery identical to Eudora's so I am sticking with Eudora (which thankfully is still working in Leopard, except for a crash at a certain point when creating a new personality - which is fixed upon restarting).

Not worried about losing my email archive as it can be opened easily in TextEdit.

Does anyone else know of other apps which have Eudora-style stationery?

Have tried Mailsmith as I prefer plain text emailing but it is very slow in searches. Eudora is still super fast. Also Mailsmith does not have return receipt afaik (haven't used it for a long, long time). Mail is a totally hopeless app; have tried Thunderbird but do not like it much.

If MailForge does not become equivalent to (and better than!) Eudora, and I cannot find a suitable replacement app, then I guess I can create my own email app in FileMaker Pro, though not sure about getting return receipt, etc.

On Wed, 8 Jul 2009 02:50:08 -0700, merry wrote:
> Does anyone else know of other apps which have Eudora-style stationery?

I loved and used Eudora's stationery extensively in my 18 year relationship with the application.

GyazMail, the mail app I've switched to, can do this via what it calls "templates" which, while not as streamlined as Eudora's stationery, does the job quite well. I've considered writing up a note to GyazMail's developer with some suggestions for improving this functionality.

<http://www.gyazsquare.com/gyazmail/>

--chuck

my 2 cents--just got forced to give up eudora 6.2.4 because it cannot download mail from the imap (exchange) server. i've tried entourage, mac mail, and thunderbird and all pale in comparison to the conveniences of eudora. my pet peeve is that none of these programs offer the convenience of the mailbox function in eudora (pop-up feature combined with drop down menu listing). the other clients want to consume my entire desktop with the 67 folders that i had set in eudora. the cumbersomeness of filters is right behind the mailbox issue in terms of convenience followed by the address book. in fact i find no aspects of these others programs that approaches eudora. wishing all the developers of eudora-like clients the best.

I just tested Mailforge. In terms of features and speed, it is a
whole lot better than the last time I tested, which was maybe six
months ago. It also feels a lot like Eudora, which is a very good
thing.

The problem is that Mailforge crashed over and over again and
sometimes would not collect my email from POP. So I'll wait another
6 months and give it another try.


H.