Eudora 8.0.0b1: First Impressions - OS X Odyssey 886
The first BETA release of Penelope (Eudora 8.0.0b1) was released over the long weekend and is now available for download, and I wasted no time bringing down a copy to check out. Another thing that's huge; the size of this application - nearly 20 MB for the compressed disk image and more than 50 MB when expanded. That compares with just 9.1 MB for the last Classic Eudora 6.2.4 disk image, and a svelte 11.3 MB for the expanded Eudora 6.2.4 application folder. I don't think we're in Kansas any more, Toto.
Any doubt about that was removed upon opening Eudora 8.0.0b1 for the first time, and being greeted with what is essentially a Mozilla Thunderbird user interface with Eudora icons grafted on.
Now, if you like the Thunderbird/OS X Mail/MS Outlook/Entourage type email client interface, this will not be a problem, but I don't care for the three-pane motif. THe Classic Eudora user interface, which some declared "antiquated" is one of the things I like best about the original Eudora, and was instrumental to my choosing it over, say, Apple's Claris Emailer back when I came up the Information Highway on-ramp.
The Penelope folks say: "We are committed to both preserving the Eudora user experience and to maintaining maximum compatibility, for both developers and users, with Thunderbird." The problem is, I'm not sure that objective is going to be achievable in a really coherent sense. The thing is, what I love about the classic Eudora user experience, along with its speed, kick-ass search engine, and rock-solid reliability, is that the Eudora interface is a "non-interface" - I couldn't care less about the toolbar, which I've always kept turned off. The Mailbox menu is the core central element of classic Eudora for me, and I manage virtually everything from mailbox and message document windows. No central application window at all.
Over the years I've tried using all of the email clients cited in the first sentence of the previous paragraph, as well as a number of others, but none for very long, save for the quirky but dependable Nisus Email, which also has a minimalist non-interface, and I continue to keep it around for it's quick message-sending facility. I digress.
However, it's going to take a lot more than Thunderbird with a few Eudora icons and menu category names tacked on to make me a willing adopter of Eudora 8 and beyond. However, it's early days yet, and I'm trying to not be too negative, so here are a few good things about Eudora 8.0.0b1.
It works (with some qualifications - see below). In exploring the program and experimenting with it, albeit for a short period of time so far, I haven't encountered any noticeable bugginess in the basic program functions. That said, I did not yet attempt to import my Eudora Classic mail archives and settings. My Eudora folder, which contains the bulk of my entire email history back to 1997 when Internet access finally reached this neck of the woods, is still an astonishingly svelte 486 MB, but I expect it would swell substantially in the conversion to Thunderbird-style file and interface conventions. I currently have 21 separate email accounts and 65 separate mailboxes configured in Eudora 6.2.4 (the whole works in that 486 MB Eudora folder). Classic Eudora handles all that gracefully and efficiently. I'm apprehensive that it's not going to transfer well to the way Eudora 8 handles account information and files.
The Penelope project warns:
"Note that if you are a current Eudora user who wishes to give Thunderbird a try, the Thunderbird importers for Eudora are a bit rough, especially for MacOS users. It may be worth waiting to try to import your mail until we make some improvements to the importer."
I'll take their word for it for now, and figured I can give the program a fairer trial by moving in incrementally rather than swamping it with my convoluted and complex Classic Eudora setup.
Consequently, I dipped my feet in these unfamiliar waters by just configuring a couple of accounts for starters, and that went OK, sort of. I am especially impressed by the Gmail account setup wizard, which required me to just enter my account username in a text field and Eudora 8.0.0b1 did the rest of the account configuration quickly and automatically. I also set up one non-Gmail account.
The Gmail account works fine, but I ran into a familiar Thunderbird Achilles' Heel with the other account, namely T-Bird's clunky and obtuse support of different outgoing SMTP server configurations for separate email accounts. As noted, I have 21 accounts configured in Eudora 6.2.4, with a bunch of different SMTP server configurations respectively. This all works smoothly and unproblematically with classic Eudora, but I have been unsuccessful so far in getting it to work with even just two different accounts configured in Eudora 8.0.0b1. I have the alternate server address for the second account entered and selected, but I just get a cryptic message dialog telling me that the server may be unavailable or is not accepting messages. Neither is true. I can send messages through it just fine with Eudora 6.2.4. Boo, hiss. They actually warn about this being a potential problem, so why not just fix it?
And where's my Task Progress dialog? Eudora 8.0.1's progress feedback is lame and vestigial by comparison.
I'm also skeptical that Eudora 8's Search/Find function is going to hold a candle to classic Eudora's fast and powerful search engine, but I don't have enough content accumulated yet to give it a meaningful test.
Anyway, that's pretty much it so far. Eudora 8.0.0b1 is a start, but it has a very long way to go yet if it's even going to come close to being a halfway-satisfactory replacement for classic Eudora.
System requirements Mac:
Operating Systems
- Mac OS X 10.2.x and later
Minimum Hardware
- Macintosh computer with an Intel x86 or PowerPC G3, G4, or G5 processor
- 128 MB RAM (Recommended: 256 MB RAM or greater)
- 200 MB hard drive space
For more information, visit:
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Penelope_Releases
Eudora 8.0.0b1 Release Notes
Installation Mac
1. After downloading the disk image, in the Finder go to the folder
where you saved the disk image and launch it. Some web browsers
automatically launch disk images after they are fully downloaded.
2. Read the Software License Agreement, and if you agree to the
terms, click on the Accept button.
3. Drag the Eudora icon in to your Applications folder.
4. Eject the "Eudora" volume.
5. After installation is complete, we recommend that you read the
Readme.txt file (this file) in the package contents of the Eudora
application.
Changes In 8.0.0b1
------------------
Includes Penelope version 0.1a21.
Synced to the THUNDERBIRD_2_0_0_6_RELEASE code branch:
http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird/2.0.0.6/releasenotes/
New Features
------------
- Toolbar icons (and a few other icons) from the original Eudora were moved
to Penelope.
- Keyboard shortcuts from the original Eudora were moved to Penelope. You
can configure whether these shortcuts in Penelope or the original
Thunderbird ones are used in the Penelope panel of the Options/Preferences
dialog.
- The menu structure of original Eudora has been copied to a great extent
in Penelope.
- Added the ability to display the list of mailboxes in a separate window
from the mailboxes themselves, which was similar to the original Eudora.
This can be configured in the Penelope panel of the Options/Preferences
dialog. Mailboxes opened in a separate window have their size/position
remembered and restored when opened up next.
- Double-clicking or hitting Enter/Return on a mailbox in the folders list
now opens up the mailbox in a separate window.
- The toolbar customization dialog was modified to be similar to the way it
was implemented in original Eudora.
- Modified the mailbox column headers to look like original Eudora's.
- The "Sender" column has been relabeled as "Who", and outgoing messages
display the name of the recipient there. This feature can be controlled by
the hidden pref "mail.useWhoColumn".
- You can quickly find messages in a mailbox by typing text in the list of
messages. As you type the selection in the mailbox will change based on
matching text in the Who and Subject fields. After finding a match you can
use the period key to find subsequent matches in the mailbox (and
Shift+period to find previous matches).
- Added the Group Select feature from original Eudora where if you hold down
the Alt key (option for Mac) and click the left mouse button down on an item
in the mailbox it will select all messages that have the same value as the
item clicked on, and all of those selected messages will be grouped together.
For example, Alt/option-clicking on the name of a sender of a message will
select all of the messages in that mailbox sent by that person, and move
the messages together. Note that the moving of messages in the mailbox list
will break the current sort of the mailbox. The Shift key can be used as a
modifier to make the selected messages remain in their original positions in
the mailbox list, and thus retain the current sort order.
- Importing mailboxes and messages from the original Eudora in to the new
Eudora has been substantially improved under Windows. Import times are now 5
times shorter. Basic message attributes and status are now maintained
(read/unread, priority, label). Inline images in messages now get moved over.
Includes fixes to the following bugs:
301188: "Import Eudora mail fails to find attachments in other directories"
368360: "Importer (Win Eudora, Mail) does not import mailboxes with unusual leading characters"
380408: "Mail Import Crashes with Divide by Zero"
- Now filters can be imported from original Eudora to the new Eudora. There
is not a one-to-one match up of original Eudora's filtering capabilities and
those found in Thunderbird, so not all filters will move over exactly.
Filters imported that will lose some capabilities will be warned about in a
list after the entire filter import process is complete. Also added was the
"Stop Filter Execution" action. This is the equivalent to original Eudora's
"Skip Rest" action which causes the filtering process to end for messages
that match the criteria in the filter with this action.
- Improvements to the importing of original Eudora Windows Address Books have
been made.
Includes fixes to the following bugs:
368626: "Importer (Win Eudora, Address Book). Mailing list nickname not assigned to 'nickname' in Penelope"
368630: "Importer (Win Eudora, Address Book). Variouos fields not mapped to Penelope Address Book fields"
368634: "Importer (Win Eudora, Address Book). Unable to import if Eudora is using '.nnt' format"
377816: "Importer (Win Eudora, Address Book) incorrectly adds additional entries when resolving nicknames in mailing lists"
377821: "Importer (Win Eudora, Address Book) fails to resolve nicknames with spaces when importing a mailing list"
377945: "Importer (Win Eudora, Address Book) misses information when importing an alias (mailing list with one entry)"
- Importing on the Mac now looks for a Eudora folder in the user's document
folder (i.e. ~/Documents) in addition to the System Folder and the System
Documents Folder.
- Added original Eudora-like IMAP auto-expunge behavior. This is controlled
by the hidden pref "mail.imap.expunge_option". It can have values for if
auto-expunging should occur never (0), always (1), or on a threshold (2). If
on a threshold is set, then auto-expunge will occur when there are at least
20 messages waiting to be expunged. The number of messages for that threshold
is actually controlled by the hidden pref "mail.imap.expunge_threshold_number".
- Added a "Refresh Folder List" item to the context menu for IMAP folders which
gets the current list of folders/mailboxes from the IMAP server and updates the
folder tree for that IMAP account.
- Added support for viewing only messages that are not deleted in IMAP
mailboxes. Use the "Not Deleted" item in the View->Messages menu or the
Mail Views control on the toolbar.
- New mail sound copied from original Eudora.
- Added "Make Address Book Entry" functionality (in Tools menu).
- Added the "SelectedTextURL" feature from original Windows Eudora, which allows
selected text to easily be inserted in to a URL and launched. Menu items for
them are located in the Tools menu, and they also get keyboard shortcuts
associated with them as well. Use the hidden prefs "penelope.selectedTextURL#",
where # is an increasing number in sequence. Here's the default values:
pref("penelope.selectedTextURL1", "Google,http://www.google.com/search?q=%s");
pref("penelope.selectedTextURL2", "Dictionary,http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=%s");
pref("penelope.selectedTextURL3", "Thesaurus,http://www.thesaurus.com/cgi-bin/search?config=roget&words=%s");
Miscellaneous
-------------
- Fixed "Bug 161775 - Reply shouldn't quote inline attachments":
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=161775
Charles W. Moore
