Talk:Penelope

Structured Discussion

(Please edit in place, and keep this concise, non repeating and bullet pointed. It would be really good to have some feedback from the team.) Aberglas 01:36, 25 October 2006 (PDT) aberglas

General Road map, QUALCOM

• What will the relationship between Penelope and Thunderbird actually be?
  • Two heads on the same beast, OR
  • Two separate project that share some code, OR
  • Add best Eudroa features to Thunderbird (aberglas's prefered option)

• Roughly How long is QUALCOM realistically prepared to pay for this non-profitable project? (If only for a short time then please do not produce a dead end fork.)

Top Eudora Features not in Thunderbird -- System Structure

• The fact that attachements are external files, not in the main mailboxes. (Thunderbird mailboxes quickly become huge and unmanageable.)

More details?

Where and when will more details on planned features, and the Penelope roadmap, be available? I am especially interested in the UI plans for the Mac version of Penelope -- will a platform-native UI be provided, or will Penelope use the same kind of multiplatform (XUL?) UI that Thunderbird uses? The following thread on the Eudora forums might be of interest to Penelope developers: [1] and any responses would be welcome. Thanks for beginning this project; I'm eager to hear more information (e.g. when will a CVS repository be established, so we can see what's being developed and contribute?). -- Rbellin 11:15, 11 October 2006 (PDT)

My Want-List for (Mac/Windows)Eudora

What to add: 1. A universal binary for Intel Macs (Mac) 2. Eudora badly needs to understand UTF-8 (Mac) 3. Though I always send plain text emails, Eudora badly needs to know how to render the piles of HTML emails I do receive. (Mac) 4. Add more than 2 options in the filters; add a GREP interface for filters. (Mac/Win)

What not to change: 1. No forcing me to use a triple interface. I want every mailbox to open automatically as a list in a separate windows when new emails are filtered into the boxes. (Mac) 2. Maintain the wonderfully complex and innumerable preferences. (Mac) 3. Maintain the Eudora Folder, so I can easily synch with multiple computers. (Mac) 4. Keep the emails/boxes as simple text files. (Mac) 5. Zap the resource fork prefs. (Mac) -- Kernos 2:42, 11 October 2006 (CDT)

What to delete: 1. Emoticons (who needs that?) (Win) 2. Bosswatch (no sense detected!) (Win) 2. Delete any options or change their defaults ('use microsoft viewer', 'allow executables in html-content', 'automatically download html graphics'. (Win) -- Pharao 15:07, 12 October 2006 (PDT)

We don't need another Outlook clone - we'd like Eudora

The reason people buy Eudora (OK, some get it in Paid) is because they like the particular things it does.

My tuppence: HTML rendering can be handled by the HTML engines in respective OSs. Then let's keep the things that Eudora does do - mailboxes in their own windows (and remembering where they are), scriptability on Apple at least, and - oh yes - speed. Speed is the real killer bit. Speed of searching even very very big (text file) mailboxes, speed of sorting and checking.

Eudora + Threading = Good

That is the feature at the top of my list that I'd like to see added to Eudora. Despite many requests for from many people over the years, it just never seemed to be a priority before. We got features like MoodWatch instead (eww). Beyond that, I'd like to see Eudora continue to be the excellent email client it has always been. --Hapster 14:16, 11 October 2006 (PDT)

How about Linux?

One major reason I'm running Windows emulation on my Linux box is so I can keep running Eudora. I've been waiting for Eudora or Linux for years. I haven't ported to a Linux mail client because I've got dozens of folders and hundreds of mailbox files and addressbook stuff that got mangled the only time I did a serious try at changing over.

If "Eudora" in future is going to be a shell or other sort of extension running over Thunderbird, can that shell/extension be ported to Linux?

Eudora features that matter to me

Here are some of the things that make me stick with Eudora:

• Ability to display mailboxes in individual windows. Ability to set mailboxes to open when new messages filter into them.

• Option-click grouping. The ability to rapidly group all messages in a thread, or all messages from a particular author, comes in handy all the time.

• AppleScript scriptability. (I know, I know... getting that supported in Thunderbird will be really rough, but without it, things will not be good.)

• Keyboard shortcut to move to the next message in the stack while a current message is open. This behavior is something I've come to rely on in Eudora, and it drives me up a tree that Apple Mail doesn't do it. (Yes, I prefer to read my messages in separate windows, not in a preview pane.) Jsnell 16:39, 11 October 2006 (PDT)

Please Keep Mailbox File Structure

Though I love many things about the Eudora interface, the most important reason I have never moved to Outlook is the terrible way Outlook has of saving your entire email archive in a single, gigantic file.

I've had that single gigantic file get corrupted at various jobs I've worked where they forced me to use Outlook. It's also a tremendous pain to back it up.

Please keep Eudora's mailbox file structure.

Feature request

Something I've always wanted in Eudora: checkboxes in the dropdown recipient list.

By recipient list I mean the list that drops down when you do Message | New Message To or Edit | Insert Recipient

Right now if I want to CC an email to ten people I need laboriously Insert each Recipient seperately.

I've wanted a checkoff list for as long as I've used the program.

Priorities & Philosophy

I think that it would be good to know & discuss the priorities & philosophy for development work. The initial Roadmap is vague, though understandably at this time. I look at this primarily from a Mac OS X viewpoint, looking at 3.0a1.

For priorities, many of us have supported Eudora on both Mac and PC platforms for many years. Over the years, users have drifted to other clients for a variety of reasons. #1 priority for me, on a tech support level, would be a way to bring back users from other clients in a reliable and functional way. This may necessitate a stand alone converter/translator similar to Emailchemy. All other email clients to Eudora, Mac or PC. Maintain attachment and inline graphic information and location.

Next priority would be to tie into existing OS X technologies, similarly to Mail. Support for live Address Book access and updating (not a one time import feature), iCal events, etc. Build for new Leopard technologies in this area.

Allow multiple prefs.js files to open separate groups of identities. I currently use multiple Eudora folders, each with multiple personalities, each accessed via alias to Eudora Settings file. This could be accomplished using multiple Profile folders and a Profile Manager.

Philosophically, what will the look and feel be like? Tri-panel is very restrictive, and too much like Outlook. Allow for more windowing flexibility like Eudora Mac currently has. Multiple open mailboxes unbound from the tri-panel. Drag and drop messages between mailboxes and to the desktop. Don't confuse mailboxes with folders. Eudora does it right by allowing a folder that you put mailboxes in. A folder with both email and another folder is too confusing for many.

Use Mac UI similarly to the way Camino departs from Firefox and Mozilla, yielding a better user experience. Need to explicitly line out the differences between the existing Thunderbird project and Penelope. i.e is Penelope superseding Thunderbird? Is it parallel development, so both clients survive? Will Eudora 7 PC code and Mac Eudora 7 UB code (if existent) be combined to a common source base and then integrated with Thunderbird? Or will it be all new development, just bringing the "look and feel" and some features of Eudora to Thunderbird via extensions and themes?

Jim

Features Discussion

I have over 200,000 messages in my assorted mailboxes, so the search and filter functionality is key to me. I've got over 100 filters (and many more that have been retired), so they need to keep current functionality, stay fast, and improve: more than two criteria would cut down the number I need.

I like the Windows indexed search, but I'd like Spotlight integration as well/better, as long as it's fast. I agree with the commenter who wanted to use system-wide functions when possible.

I use less than 10 personalities, and managing that seems easy.

As a long-time Eudora user with way too much mail to consider migrating, I'd like to see a feature comparison or gap analysis so I know what good things are coming from T-Bird that I just never bothered to find out about.

Also, I'd prefer if it used the system rendering engine so it wasn't extra-bulky. WebKit on MacOSX, please.

My $0.02, Michael Croft

Suggestions

While I love Eudora & have used it since 2.x but I also would love to see a Calendar feature such as Lightning & some improvements in the address book as far as contacts are concerned & in this way I finally can get rid of Outhouse.

For the most part tho I would take great care not to change too much with the existing program as you wouldn't want to alienate the existing user base.

I belong to an Eudora 4 Windows email list & I hope that continues as I much prefer that to online forums altho those aren't as bad as they use to be since more & more people are acquiring hispeed access but email lists cater better to those who as stuck with dialup.

Thank You for listening to my requests.

WaViJo

Unicode: sine qua non

One reason people like me stick with Eudora and don't move to Mail or Thunderbird is that we rely on Eudora's simplicity and functionality. A lot of that has to do with keyboard navigation through messages and mailboxes. I see that "remapping of accelerator keys" is one of the things scheduled for Release 0.1. I hope that this does not change navigation behaviour too much, but I am not sure what "accelerator" means here.

Another reason is that Eudora is simple but powerful enough to manage our e-mail. I have 21,000 items in my In box, 69MB, some going back as far as 1995. I do use other mailboxes, and am not a mindless packrat -- but my In box is large, and serves as my file-cabinet. My Out box too is large, 26,000 items, only 34MB. I don't know about Thunderbird, but Apple's Mail can't handle this at all as far as I can see.

There is only one area in which Eudora is actually broken, and I would like to beg the team to make fixing this their priority. The essence of e-mail is plain-text communication. Not spam protection, or fancy filtering, or scripting, or HTML. But plain old text in languages that people want to use. And that's were Eudora fails us: The text engine has not been updated to enable processing of UTF-8 text both in and out. Evertype 03:09, 12 October 2006 (PDT)

Mailbox structure

I agree with everyone else about leaving the mail boxes as text files, but I can see lots of room for improvement there also.

1. Move the location of the mailboxes away from the application directory. 2. Don't throw all attachments and embedded content into one directory. Have an attachment directory and an embedded directory for each mailbox. This will make it easy to archive mailboxes by copying the mailboxes and the related directories.

What makes Eudora the best

1/ The Filter system. This is far superior to any I have seen in other email clients. I am particularly fond of "intersects address book" and "matches regexp" without which I would find life very difficult.

2/ The file system. i.e. the fact that all important Eudora files, including address books and mailboxes, are in plain text format.

3/ Stationery. Speaks for itself.

4/ The Junk mail system. Works fine for me most of the time.

5/ Compared to Outlook, Outlook Express and others, it is relatively safe from attack by viruses etc.

6/ The look and feel. I (have to) use Outlook at work and its just not in the same league as Eudora which I find friendlier, easier and faster to use.

I'd like to see the folder structure come through this intact

I've got 3.5G in various Eudora mailboxes and folders. (I've been using Eudora since 1999.

I use Eudora e-mails to myself as pointers to my reference collection.

I'd also like to see the internal message search engine improved. . . (I'm using Lite). . . a search box with free-text entry of Boolean operators (AND OR NOT NEAR DATE) would be really, really nice.

There really isn't any real reason once basic functionality is achieved, that the UI can't be improved to the point where Eudora becomes the mail client of choice for power users again.

Effective work with large mailboxes

People's mailboxes are getting bigger and bigger, often containing gigabytes of data and hundreds of thousands of messages. Web mail providers nowadays offer gigabytes of space with very good browsing and search capabilities. But a lot of desktop email clients (at least Thunderbird) still don't work well with such large amounts of mail, and almost none of them (except Eudora) has a fast search feature. This is where I think Eudora, with its good handling of large mailboxes and its Ultra-Fast Search, can contribute the most to Thunderbird.

Really, every mail client can read and send email, but it's handling large amounts of data that separates serious production-quality products from toys. Please take this into consideration during development of Thunderbird and Penelope if you want serious people to use them. And if T. and/or P. also had a fast search feature, that would mean a great competitive advantage and would make it one the best email clients.

The Search is the thing!

I'm a Mac user.

The thing I MOST NEED is the Boolean Search! Why Apple hasn't seen fit to include this, despite the fact that they implemented it at the Finder level is beyond me. (Try CMD-F from the Finder and wonder for yourself why you can't do that in Mail.app!) And don't anyone even START on the use of "Smart Folders" as a workaround. It's not even CLOSE to being the same! Thunderbird seems to lack this functionalty as well, which is why I haven' switched to it already. I NEED to be able to find all messages, for example, from "greg" sent in march of 2005 with the word "server" in the subject and the word "crash" in the body. Oh yeah, and these messages could be in any number of mailboxes, so I should be able to define WHICH mailboxes get searched! This is CAKE in Eudora!

I'll also need the ability to change Thunderbird's Command Keys to what Eudora's used to be. I'm stuck on CMD-M to manually check mail, CMD-R, CMD-OPT-R, CMD-J, CMD-F, CMD-Y... I use them without thinking!

Eudora's stats are fun.

The chili peppers are cool too, and I have saved my own butt more than once because of Eudora's "wait-10-minutes-before-sending-a-hot-message" thing.

I'm sure I'll think of more, but the search really is the big thing.

What I'd like to see...

I'm not a power user, but I've been using Eudora/Mac for about eleven years now. I really want to see the individual windows for different mailboxes and messages maintained; the three-pane interface that so many email clients use just doesn't cut it for me. Judging from the other posts here, I'm not alone.

In addition, the search feature is terrific, and I'd like to see that continued, as well as the excellent junk mail filter. Like others, though, I'd also like to see more than two arguments possible for any given filter. I love the way I can make Eudora do what I want it to do via its multiple prefs, though, and I sincerely hope that Penelope will be as "friendly" an application. At present, Eudora can be as simple or as complex as we users want it to be -- and that's the way a good application *should* be.

Making Penelope capable of interacting with iCal and Address Book would be a definite plus. It's awkward having to maintain two address books, since the import of Address Book into Eudora at the moment isn't a dynamically updated one.

What's important to me ...

from http://emperor.tidbits.com/webx/?50@382.uFgFba7FrRQ@.3c804d7a - "Steve Dorner admits he doesn't know which parts of Eudora are most useful to its proponents" - so, since I've been using Eudora for 11 years, and since I got burned dabbling with other email clients, here are my votes:

OVERALL

... it is Speed, Reliability, Flexibility that keeps me using Eudora ...

ESSENTIAL TO THE EUDORA EXPERIENCE (on a MAC):

1. The speed of mailbox search : the trust that comes of knowing that I can find anything from my 11 years worth of email in seconds or less (please forget Spotlight integration if this would mean changing the mailbox structure in a way that might compromise reliabilty - Eudora search is fast enough)

2. The Eudora Folder : the simplicity of being able to move the Folder over from computer to computer knowing that Eudora will open exactly as I left it the previous session on a different machine - so so useful in many situations: back-up, losing a machine to maintainance, lending/borrowing computers

3. Separate attachment folder: having the choice of moving the entire mailbox structure over to a new computer quickly (for emergency situations) knowing that you can come back to pick up the attachments later - a big time saver

(((I suspect that these three points are interrelated - I should add that I have NEVER experienced corrupted or lost data in Eudora)))

4. Configurablity - compared to anything else, Eudora seems almost infinitely configurable - from simple to complex

5. UI choice - separate windows for mailboxes - vertical or horizontal toolbar - abilty to add many different commands to toolbar - for me the UI, despite looking uglier every day, is nonetheless flexible enough to be usefully rearranged for working on anything from a tiny laptop screen to a huge desktop monitor

6. Filters and Spam Filtering that just work

ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT FOR MAC OS (in no particular order)

1. Unicode support

2. HTML rendering

3. Ctrl-clicking bringing up contextual menus

4. OS X Address Book and iCal integration

5. IMAP support

UI SUGGESTIONS

1. for the power email user - create a infinitely configurable UI that allows you to arrange your desktop email experience as you like - I imagine something like a pro-design app feel a la Photoshop, Dreamweaver, etc that makes use of a vertical/horizontal toolbar that you can customise with just about any command, and dockable panels for things like mailboxes, signatures, settings etc

2. for Grandma!!! - an optional 3-pane view - so she gets the fast search and reliablity, without having to confront the power user interface

... why not have the best of both worlds, including an ability to display in 3-pane mode is absolutely consistent with one of Eudora's fundamental propositions - choice!

WHAT NOW?

I wait. Eudora 6.2.4 serves me well enough. I'd like more from my Eudora experience but fundamentally I'm not prepared to move on, and undergo the mail/filters import pain, while there's still some hope that I could have a new app that will leave my Eudora folder intact. I'm not moving to Thunderbird as it exists now

Why I use Eudora - key features

1. Ease of handling many email accounts from a simple single interface.

2. Ease of creating complex filter rules for organizing incoming email by source, topic, email account, etc.

3. Rapid search by header only, receipients, From, To and entire body of All Mail Folders or just a subset.

4. Ability to turn off viewing Images and HTML in email. Keep this as an option. {I may be one of the few that do not want integrated HTML rendering. 95% of HTML messages are JUNK and for the few I want to see, Open in Browser works great.}

5. Simple visual interface for determining which Mail Folders contain unread messages.

6. Drag & Drop or transfer of messages between mailboxes.

7. Uncluttered interface that lets me keep several frequently used Mail Folders open and easily accessable.

8. SPAM Watch is a great tool. I get 300-350 messages a day filtered into the Junk Folder, which I keep sorted by Junk Score. This lets me quickly scan the low junk score messages for false positives and/or search on key Subject words that I want to move out of Junk. There are still 15-20 JUNK messages left each day in my IN box, so any improvement in the filtering is always welcome.

9. Filter Report is very useful.

10. The ability to REDIRECT an email comes in handy when that is what you really want to do instead of a FORWARD.

11. Abilty to be able to pick which headers get displayed is great.

12. Nickname expansion and auto complete are very handy.

13. Spell Check(along with it's feature options) works very nicely and is an important feature, as is the ability to warn if you forget to include a Subject.

14. The toolbar is handy as it is and would be even better if there was some support for simple scripting to allow something like Move to Folder, Mark Read, Set Label to...; all from one button.

15. Being able to set POP settings by Personality comes in handy occasionally.

16. Being able to set the Moving Around options to fit how you work is nice.

17. The simple folder structure for storing email is much better for backing up and moving to another computer (even Mac to Win) than the single file approach taken by many.

18. Option-Click Sorting on Who & Subject is something I use at least once a day, usually followed by a scan of the messages using Splat-DownArrow to open the messages in order to review an email exchange.

19. Reply Quoted Section (select, shift-Reply) is something I use all the time to keep replys short. Ability to select disjoint text (maybe auto add <<snip>> in the gaps) and to do this when Forwarding a message would be a welcome improvement..

I'm sure I've missed something important, but I think this is a fairly complete list of what I find most useful and why I stick with Eudora. Mood Watch, Content Concentrator and Scam Watch have not been useful to me and I have then all turned off. ScamWatch might be handy if I could "turn-it-on" only when I wanted with say a CTRL-MouseClick over a suspicious link. I don't use the Preview Pane as I prefer to use the Splat-DownArrow to move through messages I am reading, which is why Content Concentrator has never been useful.

-Landy

What an odd combination

Thunderbird and Eudora are certainly odd bed-creatures. Their interfaces are quite different, both for mail operations and for setting preferences. What kind of interface will Penelope have? Is Penelope going to be close to Eudora, with Thunderbird existing separately?

From my standpoint, each program has its own strengths and weaknesses,in addition to which there are some important features that neither has.

Eudora's biggest advantage is the rules-defining interface, which lets us define many different rules and actions easily. Thunderbird's strengths are its excellent IMAP4 support, language and character set support (an area where Eudora falls down badly), ability to read all unread messages with the spacebar alone across all folders and accounts, and the popup notifications.

Both programs have heavy footprints and use too much memory. Their biggest weaknesses, though, are the poverty of template variables, and inability to assign templates to folders and/or contacts (see The Bat! for an example of both). Those of us who use the same email client for friends, mailing lists, and business really need to have this functionality. (Eudora by default uses the "On [date], you wrote" template, which can be switched only in the prefs file, and is universal for all folders and accounts. This is unacceptably poor. Thunderbird is only marginally better.)

So what will Penelope strive to be?

Please see also http://wiki.mozilla.org/User_talk:Wataru for more details.

My fav Eudora features

I've been using Eudora (paid) since it was originally introduced on the Mac, although for the last decade or so I've been on the PC version due to workplace constaints (no Macs allowed). You can imagine how much mail I've accumulated in all that time. Anyway, I want to take this opportunity to thank Steve for such a quality product.

That said, these are the features I absolutely need to see on the new version (in no particular order):

- Being able to migrate my existing filters. I love Eudora's filtering, and not only do I need to keep the same capabilities, but I don't want to have to recreate my list of filters.

- The indexed search is awesome, including the updates for 7.1. It's made me happy that I chose to never delete any email - searching is now a joy rather than a pain.

- Personalities, and the relay personality.

- Thanks for accommodating gmail's weird servers, and please keep that new feature as well.

- Drop and drag attachments.

- As has been mentioned many times, the folder setup with a private folder per user and a separate attachment folder, and text mail files.

- Autocompletion when typing email addresses.

- Easily removing all formatting so you know when a message will be sent in unadorned ASCII, on a per-message basis.

- Ability to edit the from email address on outgoing email (in addition to defining a new personality for well-used email addresses)

- Plugins for removing quotes, unwrapping text, changing capitalization, etc.

- Spell checking.

- Customizable toolbar, with just about every capability being available as an icon

- Options to leave mail on server or not, individually download complete messages, delete from server, etc.

- Junk filter.

- Contextual menus.

Thanks again for a great product over the years.

Andy Malis amalis@gmail.com

Another voice...

While I've removed the icon from Eudora from my desktop and am trying to exclusively utilize T'bird, the things I miss are:

Search. Yup - Eudora rocked for searches.

Filters. Seemed solid in Eudora, could just be growing pains for me w/ regards to getting used to T'bird's.

What I'd like? The ability to easily edit and/or delete addresses from the autofill information that Eudora stored. Again, maybe it's user stupidity but after several years of using Eudora, I could never intuitively find how to do this.

Thanks!

Plain Text Mailbox Structure, Filters, Searchability

The number one thing that has kept me using and returning to Eudora since 1993 (?) is the simplicity of the mailbox structure, which uses plain ASCII text files. I have never lost nor known anyone to lose a single message in Eudora, and plain ASCII text is a huge part of this. Plain ASCII also makes the search function faster and I *love* the power of filters when combined with search.

Please maintain the current plain-text mailbox structure, separate folder for decoded attachments and default behavior to place everything in the one "Eudora Folder." Thank you thank you thank you for having been there all these many years. I adore Eudora!

Just in case...

Looking at the commentaries so far, it's almost unnecessary to add my opinion... But you did ask for "user input". Eudora's mail store is fantastic: Single and simple (text) files per mailbox, clear hierarchy, easily movable, and, most importantly, easy to backup and restore. Entourage/Outlook and any other program that uses a single file for storing mail are unusable for me: The nightmare of having to back up a 5GB file just because a single 1K message was added...

Pretty much second on my list is the "Who" column, since I'm usually aware of who I am; an excellent way to save space on the screen.

Thanks for keeping Eudora alive!

Labels

One feature I'd really like to see retained is the ability to color messages through the use of labels. I have several filters setup to change the color on a message based on recipient fields (red if I'm the To: recipient, blue if CC'ed, green if sent to a mailing list, etc). Makes it very easy to quickly scan your inbox and decide which messages to read first based on their color.

AppleScript

Keep the AppleScript-ability please! I have a set of about 20+ scripts that I use all the time, partly triggered with key shortcuts, helping me deal with my email. AppleScript makes Eudora infinitely extensible, just like current day plug-in mechanisms, only that this one has been available for ~ 15 years.

Feature Requests

...from another one who's been using Eudora since the internet only consisted of 2 guys with a stick...

1) I want to be able to take my current personalities, mail folders, preferences and plugins with me, seamlessly, when I upgrade to the new open source version.

2) send html e-mails

2a) Send html web pages I create in another appplication such as GoLive or Dreamweaver.

3) receive and display properly html e-mails (duh)

4) Seamless Address book integration. Right now Eudora is my main contacts manager...but more and more apps use Apple's Address book integration to function so I find I have to transfer contacts from Eudora into Address book just to use this other app. I don't like having 2 address books to manage the same info. I also don't like not being able to sync my phone or other devices directly with Eudora. I'd like to, within Eudora, be able to write and edit addresses directly within Apple's Address book.

5) I can't emphasize # 1 enough. I've got a thousand years worth of e-mail in Eudora and I want it to seamlessly import or be utilized by the new app.

6) Keep the super-fast searching.

7) Double clicking on a mail field such as name or subject causes all of the messages with the same name or subject to group together. Love that. Keep that.

8) Send all current Eudora users $100. (Hey this is a wish list)

My opinions

I tried switching to Thunderbird but immediately gave up on it because it has no option I could find corresponding to 'Open in Browser'. I don't want my mail client automatically rendering HTML. I want to send selected messages to my browser of choice (Safari) where I can use the full features of the browser including saving in webarchive format.

I want to keep the ability of opening non-HTML messages in a separate window with a button I can click to increase the font size. A major improvement in this area would be to have more than just the two sizes - either separate buttons for increasing/decreasing the font size or a drop down list.

Contextual menus would be a great addition. I'd like to option-click on a message and get a menu with items such as 'Open in Browser' for example.

I'd also like the return of a feature that was lost somewhere along the way. When I click 'Check for Messages'. I'd like the program to tell me explicity when I have no new messages so I know when it is finished checking. If this is a problem for scripts or other mechanisms that implement an auto-check feature, perhaps the 'no mail' notification could be a user-selectable option.

I definitely want to retain the ability to specify the e-mail address that recipients of outgoing mail see as my address since I have my incoming mail re-routed to my "real" e-mail address which might change from time to time.

eudora 7.1 user waiting for Penelope....

Well I suspected Qualcomm wanted to dump Eudora (the little stepchild). It is a great product and I have been using it daily since 1998 along side firefox since 0.8. I have done some beta testing and would consider myself an advanced user with 450 mail boxes, 85,000 messages, about 15 personalities, 100 filters and tons of stationery and signatures. I really do promote eudora and having so much invested in it I did not want to risk loosing the format of massages that I have compiled since 1998. What is nice is that even the 7.1 version of eudora is fully compatible with messages created in 1998.

So is the idea to make an open source Eudora called Penelope or to incorporate the best features of Thunderird and Eudora and make one email product.

Here is what I use daily and how I would like to tweak it. Some of these suggestions I have made before to the eudora team but they never when anywhere

I really like the personality change feature and really like the ability to edit the outgoing address on the fly

I really need the relay ability as verizon does not let me use other email severs to send out my domain mail.

I really love the faster eudora X1 searching and note that my stand alone x1 search interface will work with eudora but I still use the eudora interface. Perhaps those need to be melded together better

I need the ability to group filters into folders and I have many filters for one client that has many associated subjects (like the third party filter editor out there )

Stationery and signatures work fine but I would like to imbed images into a signature

Embedding photos into eudora works fine, but sometimes stuff imbedded into outlook and sent to me does not work. The viewer should be based on Firefox 2.0 and not IE

One huge pet peeve is that when I send HTML mgs to Older Lotus Notes users they cannot see any text or attachments unless I send it in plain text to all recipients

Another note. You need to incorporate all the best features out of the outlook address book into eudora and make it more compatible with systems that use outlook address books so that I could use the address book more. I use excell databases for long email lists so I can sort them better. May want to look into that. Like complex sorting, such as sorting by interests or job categories or zip codes. In other words full database functionality for usefulness beyond eudora. Perhaps some open source stuff from mozilla can be plugged in. I do like the way you can freely paste many addresses into the address book at once and also paste email addresses from excell into the bcc or to field in eudora. A nice feature outlook used was a plain text check box for address book recipients that can only see plain text. The boss watch check box is a nice touch in eudora.

The address book auto completion drop down list is also a keeper

I like composing off line and like how it can send under multiple address simultaneously

I like the small size of the program and the files as it allows me to easily synchronize may lap top and back up hard drives quickly and easily

Things I would like to see:

Why dont you add a feature that will allow you to store attachments in a directory path you choose for messages filtered to a specific mailbox. Each mailbox would get its own attachment folder wherever you want to put it. I have hundreds of mailboxes and it is very hard to keep track of thousands of attachments in one single file. I guess the attachments could work under the filter list. All incoming attachments that go with messages into the smith eudora folder will automatically go into C:/mydocuments/smith file/ or what ever path you select. Sort of like how outgoing attachments are handles now. Maybe you could do the same thing for the messages themselves. Allow each to sort to a folder in a specific place on your hard drive.

I would like to see more useful/helpful descriptions on how to fix problems once errors arise on sending or receiving etc.

Here is a list of things I could do without:

Moodwatch ESP Stats Pure voice

Let us know when there is al alpha out there to test and I will duplicate my eudora in another folder and see how the conversion process works

Two Login Names

I agree with all the requests to keep the email file structure, which I have found very easy to work with for filing emails and to move to new accounts.

My suggestion, which I have not seen mentioned, is to implement separate Login names for receiving and sending mail. Although virtually all mail account providers make using Eudora in POP3 mode simple, most do not provide sendmail capability or require the use of the account login name to send emails. My DSL connections will not send mail unless sent with the DSL login. My current email host, GoDaddy, requires that Login to the POP account be accessed with the entire email address (ecgomez@domain.com) rather than just the user name; so does my current DSL provider (ecgomez@sbcglobal.net) and the two requirements are incompatible.

Having a separate Login name for sending and receiving would solve this problem and avoid switching personalities, etc. If one has one's own domain, a simple user name such as "Ed" can be used, but such a name is not available on a large domain, such as sbcglobal.net, which one would use to send emails.

I can think of no obvious disadvantage to the separate Login names except the trivial requirement that they both be filled in, even if they are the same.

Ed Gomez

Screen real estate

Besides all the good points that have already been made here I would like to add:

Screen real estate

One of the things I have always loved about Eudora is the amount of emails I can squeeze into a smallish screen (In my case a PowerBook 15.4"). Eudora is one of the few applications that is still very conservative when it comes to screen real estate. The listings are so compact that you get a really get a good overview of the contents of your inbox. I love it!

Okey, screen resolutions are getting better and better and pixel dimensions larger and larger. But I would like to use those extra pixels to display even more emails and not to display fancy anti-aliased text.

Given that a lot of people here seem to use Eudora to handle large amounts of email I think this is critical. The choice of typeface and the legibility in small sizes of that typeface is definently going to affect my choice of email client for the coming years.

Sent Attachments and Images

This is a feature request. It concerns retention of sent attachments and embedded images. I often grab a portion of my screen as a png or jpg to include in an email when reporting bugs and such to various software vendors.

With Eudora, when I send an email with embedded or attached images (or attached files) I often want to se what I sent to someone but the embedded images, for whatever reason, are not retained. When I later open one of these sent emails, it may display the sent images but mostly it does not. I have no way to review what I sent. The outgoing email contains a broken image tag and revealing the source shows: <img src="x-eudora-file:P574EFFD9"> or similar. This makes it impossible to see what it was that I sent.

In Penelope, I'd like to see a folder just for keeping archival copies of attached/embedded content such that I can open a sent email later and see the images I sent.

Sometimes embedded images are dragged to the message composition window from whatever folder contains them, other times, they are just pasted in from the clipboard. Either way, Penelope should retain a copy somewhere so that I have a record of what I sent.

For content that is dragged to the composition window, Penelope can remember the path to the content or (optionally) make a copy of that content. Perhaps an X-penelope-setting can determine which. For pasted-in content, however, Penelope should save a copy of it somewhere permanently (until the original sent email is deleted).

BLAH BLAH/Editing, Plain Text/HTML

BLAH BLAH/Editing Penelope needs to retain the BLAH BLAH button for viewing message source and also the pencil button to be able to edit the content of received emails. I use these features A LOT in order to trim messages for archiving. I keep a lot of list postings and such for later reference and the quick availability of editing is crucial. Some mailers hide the ability to view the source where it is not convenient. I don't know if other mailers allow the ability to edit received content, but this is something I'd definitely like to see retained.

Along the same lines, the ability to edit the message subject as it appears in the mailbox window is also essential. Definitely keep this Eudora feature.

Web Bugs/JavaScript Retain also the option to NOT automatically download images from the web! These are often web bugs and I like to remove these using the ability to edit messages before I use the Open In Browser function in the current Eudora.

I'm guessing that at some point Penelope will not use the 'Open in Browser' function to view html messages. I hope that when it does the rendering itself, we'll retain the ability to NOT download content that's out on the Internet. Perhaps there could be a button in the message window to display such content, if the option to not display it automatically has been set.

Perhaps there needs to be an option to not execute JavaScript code in html messages as well.

Plain Text/HTML I'd like to see a setting which allows the user to choose which content to display when a message arrives with both plain text and html. Currently, most mailers discard the less sophisticated content (the plain text version) and display the html version. I would prefer the ability to view the plain text version rather than the html version when a message arrives with both types. Currently, Eudora discards the plain text version of the message. I'd like this to be a user-set option so that those of us who prefer plain text can view email that way whenever possible.

The wish list of a 12 years user of Eudora

I'm a Mac user using Eudora since 1994. Here is the list of the features I especially appreciate and need in this software:

1. The quick search filter is a key component. I have about 16'000 e-mails stored since 1994 and the rapid finding of any of them with the Boolean search tool is essential.

2. The personality system is very neat (including the relay personality).

3. The look and feel (compared to other e-mail softwares)

4. The format of the e-mail boxes (as simple text files!). This helped me a lot when I crashed my HD last year. I retrieved my recent e-mail messages with a forensic software scanning for text-files and just had to cut and paste this messages in the Eudora box files I had backuped the week before.

5. Ability to display every mailboxes and messages in separate windows.

6. The ability to "redirect" instead of "forwarding" e-mails.

7. The spell checker.

8. The Nicknames expansion.

9. The simple visual interface to determine which boxes contains unread messages (by underlining the name).

10. The very complete settings panes.

11. The possibility to edit every message (even the ones in the Inbox !) with the "pen" tool.

12. The easy way to see every details of a message with the "BLAH BLAH" icon.

13. The "chili pepper" system is useful, especially when sending e-mails.

14. The Junk system is easy to use and works fine.

15. The stats system is fun.

Moreover, here are just the additional features that could be useful in Penelope from my point of view (for Mac users):

1. Better HTML rendering (using the built in features of OS X).

2. Unicode support.

3. Possibility of starting Penelope with various "profiles". I have indeed two Eudora folders: one with my various private e-mails accounts (various "personalities") and one with my work e-mails. I want them to be totally separated, but a profile manager would be great to choose between "private" and "work" when launching the program.

4. OS X Address book total integration.

5. Universal binary.

Thanks! Nic (Nwidmer 10:48, 24 October 2006 (PDT); http://www.nwidmer.ch/)

Release 0.1: Please let Penelope import itself, too

With Release 0.1, where importers are created - presumably for Eudora and Thunderbird, in addition to other email programs - it would be great if Penelope could import its own mail and other data that it has previously stored.

This would make it very easy for me to migrate all my stored mails and adresses from my old to my new computer, without having to know all the details on where this data is actually hiding. For example, I could connect my old machine (with Penelope and its data installed on it) to the Intranet and open its partitions for reading. Then install Penelope on the new machine and simply Import my data from the old machine, by clicking on the "File>Import..." menu option and selecting "Penelope" from the list of email programs. Ideally, Penelope on my new machine would then go out and quickly find my old data and copy it into an "Old" folder in its database.

Since Penelope knows itself better than it knows other email programs and data formats, this might be fairly straightforward to implement.

PS: Thanks Eudora!

A couple of thoughts

1) UTF-8 -> it NEEDS to be done and it needs to be on top of the list!

2) Keep the independent addressbook-location(s) We have Eudora with a centrally administered address book on the server. This is missing in TB. On the other hand: Improve the handling of changed address books. If I change a central address book, Those Eudoras that are already open will allways get "confused" and display a erroneous addressbook.

3) It may be needed to display Full HTML (with the security options like no downloading from the web, no javascript/active content) but please let us choose the engine. It shouldn't be only MSIE!

3b) Not every HTML content is supposed/wanted to be displayed. Instead of an all-or nothing approach, there could be a button in each mail to display html version when text-only obiously is incomplete or whatever. Also, why not make it a Mailbox-based option. One can use filters (please keep!) to have those mails KNOWN to be HTML and trustworthy (certain newsletters) moved into a mailbox which has standard option "display HTML".

4) How about multiple attachment folders? Something like one default and (if set) one for each mailbox or at least mail folder). Also, the attachment folders should be allowed to be anywhere (same as with the address books)

5) Data: Please keep it simple. Right now, even from win 2K to XP or Win98 to XP I only have to copy (yes, COPY) the Eudora-Folder to the new system (and maybe network-folders/address books if any). No installation, no import, no hassles!

6) Built-in (or plugin) support to decode the abymsal winmail.dat often sent by incompetent Outlook-Users