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Mac Forum / Applications / Eudora / March 2007Considering returning to Eudora
I used Eudora for many years on Windows machines, before abandoning it for The Bat!. Now that I've switched over to Mac (finally), I'm looking for a better app that AppleMail. I'm obviously considering returning to Eudora, but am not sure because of the references to a "global inbox". I have four addresses, and want separate inbox/sent folders for each of them. I know I can create separate inboxes using filters, but prefer a separate folder tree for each account. Is that possible now? Thanks. > I used Eudora for many years on Windows machines, before abandoning it > for The Bat!. Now that I've switched over to Mac (finally), I'm looking [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > each of them. I know I can create separate inboxes using filters, but > prefer a separate folder tree for each account. Is that possible now? Sure; set up your folder tree and use filters to sort the mail into the appropriate boxes inside the folders.  SignatureKathy - If you're reading this in your web browser from Google or similar forum, NNTP "newsreaders" are a better way to access the content. <http://www.aptalaska.net/~kmorgan/how-it-works.html> Links to NNTP newsreaders at <http://www.newsreaders.com/> > Sure; set up your folder tree and use filters to sort the mail into the > appropriate boxes inside the folders. So does that mean Eudora by default has a separate folder tree for each account, i.e., inbox and sent, and then I can set up separate folders within the tree, or do you mean I have to set up a separate inboxes and sent folders and use filters to do what I want? > > Sure; set up your folder tree and use filters to sort the mail into the > > appropriate boxes inside the folders. [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > within the tree, or do you mean I have to set up a separate inboxes and > sent folders and use filters to do what I want? The latter; you would have to set up the separate In and Out boxes within each of the folders and use filters. Alternately, you could create a Settings file for each account, and start Eudora using the Settings file for the particular account you want to check. I think that would be pretty cumbersome, though, if you use all those accounts on a regular basis. SignatureKathy - If you're reading this in your web browser from Google or similar forum, NNTP "newsreaders" are a better way to access the content. <http://www.aptalaska.net/~kmorgan/how-it-works.html> Links to NNTP newsreaders at <http://www.newsreaders.com/> > > > Sure; set up your folder tree and use filters to sort the mail into the > > > appropriate boxes inside the folders. [quoted text clipped - 11 lines] > to check. I think that would be pretty cumbersome, though, if you use > all those accounts on a regular basis. I think the key question would be whether you would ever want to have a messages open from two different accounts at the same time. If you would, then the multiple settings solution would be frustrating. If not, I think it's not much trouble to switch settings files (as Peter (?)) pointed out. Roberta SignatureRoberta Millstein usenet@spamaway.rlm.net Remove "spamaway" to reply -- Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com > I think the key question would be whether you would ever want to have a > messages open from two different accounts at the same time. If you > would, then the multiple settings solution would be frustrating. If > not, I think it's not much trouble to switch settings files (as Peter > (?)) pointed out. I would want to have all accounts available concurrently. I get mail on at least two of them on a regular basis, and would not want to have to restart with a new profile regularly to see whether I got anything work-related while I was doing something else. > > I think the key question would be whether you would ever want to have a > > messages open from two different accounts at the same time. If you [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > to restart with a new profile regularly to see whether I got anything > work-related while I was doing something else. Then Kathy's solution is probably your best bet. Roberta SignatureRoberta Millstein usenet@spamaway.rlm.net Remove "spamaway" to reply -- Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com > I would want to have all accounts available concurrently. I get mail > on at least two of them on a regular basis, and would not want to have > to restart with a new profile regularly to see whether I got anything > work-related while I was doing something else. Fine. But do remember that if you're using multimple settings files, the switch-over isn't a restart; Eudora stays up, and it takes a maximum of one or two seconds. SignaturePeter >>> Sure; set up your folder tree and use filters to sort the mail into the >>> appropriate boxes inside the folders. [quoted text clipped - 10 lines] > to check. I think that would be pretty cumbersome, though, if you use > all those accounts on a regular basis. In PMMail (which I use on this aging Win2000 machine), the left-hand pane shows all the accounts, and all the folders in each account. Each account receives mail separately. When you Fetch mail, only the account(s) set to receive mail will get any. Each in its own in-box. So to see the mail for any account, you just open that in-box. You can set each account up to get mail only when it's open and you click on Fetch. Or you can set each account to get mail when you start PMMail. Or not, just as you like. You can even set each account to check for new mail at different intervals. IOW, you have total control. FWIW, PMMail was originally written for OS/2. I still can't find Windows or Mac apps that can do what some of those OS/2 apps could do. <Big Sigh> I'm grateful that the PMMail developers ported it to Windows. Of course, PMMail won't play movies or songs or show pictures. Which is just fine with me. I don't want vinyl stickers on my car, either. Oh well, I just dropped in to find out a few things about Eudora. The problems discussed here have clinched it: I won't be using it. Bye bye. Keep well and prosper. SignatureWolf "Don't believe everything you think." (Maxine) On Fri, 16 Mar 2007 20:27:58 -0500: > Bye bye. Don't dawdle -- please hurry away! Unless I'm missing something here, I do this with endura by doubleclicking on the mail box, it will fetch mail for only that box. In the preference you can check off only those acounts you want to check on manual cjecks and if you want to aotomatically check them. If its an IMAP server, then you can pick specific mailboxes within the acount to check. You can set each account up to get mail only when it's open and you click on Fetch. Or you can set each account to get mail when you start PMMail. Or not, just as you like. You can even set each account to check for new mail at different intervals. IOW, you have total control. > Unless I'm missing something here, I do this with Eudora by doubleclicking > on the mail box, it will fetch mail for only that box. In the preference > you can check off only those accounts you want to check on manual checks and > if you want to automatically check them. OK, sounds good. > If its an IMAP server, then you can pick specific mailboxes within the > account to check. We seem to be using "mailbox" and "account" differently. For me, they are synonyms: each account has one and only one mailbox. Maybe it's the 'personalities' feature of Eudora that is causing this confusion. By "mailbox within the account" do you mean "personality?" My e-mail service provides up to six accounts for a flat rate, billed to me (the master account.) Is this what you mean by "mailboxes within an account?" My e-mail service gives me up to six accounts for single flat rate. Is this what you mean by "mailboxes within an account?" For each account, I specify the servers, identities, and passwords. In Mac's Mail, each account can be excluded from automatic mail fetch on start up, or from automatic checking, but when I manually fetch, all accounts receive mail, which is not what I want. Thanks for your help. SignatureWolf "Don't believe everything you think." (Maxine) > > Unless I'm missing something here, I do this with Eudora by doubleclicking > > on the mail box, it will fetch mail for only that box. In the preference [quoted text clipped - 10 lines] > 'personalities' feature of Eudora that is causing this confusion. By > "mailbox within the account" do you mean "personality?" No, a Eudora "personality" is just about the same thing as what you are calling an "account" in that it has distinct settings for incoming and outgoing mail servers, email address, and a long list of other tweakable settings (most of which are not presented in the UI anywhere and no one much cares about.) Eudora's local message storage is in mailboxes, including single "In," "Out," "Junk," and "Trash" mailboxes that are used for all personalities that use POP3 for incoming mail. Filters are used to sort incoming mail into any other local mailboxes that you want to have. If you really want all mail aimed at a particular address to land in its own distinct mailbox, the filter for that would be extremely simple. For personalities that use IMAP, Eudora presents a direct view of the mailboxes that exist in an IMAP account, on the IMAP server. There is a local cache of messages, but since IMAP is designed to have the server store messages, Eudora presents whatever set of mailboxes the server shows in that account. > My e-mail service provides up to six accounts for a flat rate, billed to > me (the master account.) Is this what you mean by "mailboxes within an > account?" > > My e-mail service gives me up to six accounts for single flat rate. Is > this what you mean by "mailboxes within an account?" No. IMAP supports multiple server-side mailboxes (sometimes called "folders") associated with one user account, and they get messages into them based either on server-side filtering rules applied as they arrive or due to client actions (which can be manual or programmatic.) For example, I have IMAP mailboxes for various mailing lists that I'm on, and Eudora's filters move incoming mail from the IMAP Inbox to the oher mailboxes, leaving the messages in the account so that I can also access them (sorted into their particular mailboxes) from the somewhat weaker IMAP client on my Treo. Most ISP's offer POP3 instead of IMAP, so you probably don't need to consider the concept of an account having an arbitrary multitude of mailboxes. > For each account, I specify the servers, identities, and passwords. In > Mac's Mail, each account can be excluded from automatic mail fetch on > start up, or from automatic checking, but when I manually fetch, all > accounts receive mail, which is not what I want. Each personality in Eudora has its own incoming and outgoing settings and can be independently set for its own auto-check schedule or for inclusion in the manual fetch of mail. If a personality is not set for automatic checking or manual checking, you can only get its new mail by specifically selecting it for a check in the Personalities list or holding down the option key and using the "Check Mail" command, which offers you a list of personalities to check. SignatureNow where did I hide that website... > Oh well, I just dropped in to find out a few things about Eudora. The > problems discussed here have clinched it: I won't be using it. > > Bye bye. Keep well and prosper. User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.10 (Windows/20070221) ??????? I smell a troll. SignatureFrank Taylor >> Oh well, I just dropped in to find out a few things about Eudora. The >> problems discussed here have clinched it: I won't be using it. [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > > I smell a troll. I'm using this machine because I use it for mail (PMMail) and news reading (T'bird.) If the Mac had a decent mail program, I'd be using T'bird on it instead. I can't be bothered switching to the Mac just to ask a few questions. (I have 15" Powerbook G4, if you must know. Used it for mail on a trip a year ago, as it's a chore to take a desktop on the road.;-)) I'm debating whether to replace this aging win2k machine, or do all my computing on the Powerbook. So I'm looking for an e-mail client that's more controllable than Mail. The posts on this thread and others leave me confused. From what some of you say, Eudora doesn't do what I would want it to do, and others' comments indicate it can do what I would want it to do. To simplify: a) Does Eudora fetch all mail for all accounts, as some posts have implied, or can it be set so that it fetches mail only for the account(s) specified, whether manually or automatically, as other posts have stated? b) Does Eudora support distinct accounts, each with its own settings? I gather from a couple of posts that settings are separate from the accounts they control. Eg, are the Fetch mail settings included in the account's settings, or are they external to the account? Other posts raise doubts about some of features in Eudora, so: d) Can one turn off the "personalities"? e) Can one save mail outside Eudora? The Features listed on Eudora's website include far more stuff than I want a mail program to do. I like programs that do one thing, and do it well. Just how easy is it to turn off unwanted features in Eudora? Thanks in advance. SignatureWolf "Don't believe everything you think." (Maxine) > >> Oh well, I just dropped in to find out a few things about Eudora. The > >> problems discussed here have clinched it: I won't be using it. [quoted text clipped - 32 lines] > accounts they control. Eg, are the Fetch mail settings included in the > account's settings, or are they external to the account? In case you missed my previous posts: Eudora has nothing it calls an "account" but uses the term "personality" instead, and the fetching of mail is set on a per-personality basis. It seems to me that the features you are looking for in that area are present in Eudora, and you have just been having a problem with the terminology. > Other posts raise doubts about some of features in Eudora, so: > > d) Can one turn off the "personalities"? Personalities are how distinct mail accounts are accessed by Eudora. You must have the Dominant personality defined, and you must have a Personality defined for each different place you retrieve mail from. I think the avoidance of the name "Account" was intentional, because you can actually have multiple Personalities using the same inbound and outbound servers and POP3 or IMAP accounts, or none at all. For example, most of my "Personalities" have mail retrieval completely shut off because they only exist to provide a specific address on outbound mail, particularly on replies to mail that my filters assign to that personality. There is no distinct "account" related to the addresses, which all are alternative addresses for the same account on the same machine. > e) Can one save mail outside Eudora? Yes, with caveats. Eudora decodes attachments and embedded non-text inline parts of complex MIME messages and saves them apart from text components of mail, which it stores in its own slightly idiosyncratic mbox-format files. If you save messages out as text files from Eudora, you have a number of options for tweaking what you get, but you will never get attachments re-encoded and you will lose the text/plain part of multipart/alternative messages that have text/rich or text/html parts. > The Features listed on Eudora's website include far more stuff than I > want a mail program to do. I like programs that do one thing, and do it > well. Just how easy is it to turn off unwanted features in Eudora? There's a very deep Settings interface with a reasonable design, and for the hundreds of other settings that are not directly accessible (see http://www.eudora.com/techsupport/mac/download/X-Eudora-Settings.txt) you can get to them by putting 'x-eudora-setting:$NUMBER' into any message or text file window in Eudora and clicking it like an URL. If you want very simple mail on MacOS, you can go the route of fetchmail and mailx, mutt, pine, or just about any other open source Unix mailer. > Thanks in advance. SignatureNow where did I hide that website... [...] > To simplify: > > a) Does Eudora fetch all mail for all accounts, as some posts have > implied, or can it be set so that it fetches mail only for the > account(s) specified, whether manually or automatically, as other posts > have stated? It can do either. You can define per personality whether mail must be fetched/sent when Eudora fetches/sends mail. That's how you define the default behaviour you want. You can then always override thet with Cmd-Option-M, which gives a dialog in which you can select which "personalities" you want to send/fetch mail for. > b) Does Eudora support distinct accounts, each with its own settings? Yes, they're called "personalities". > I > gather from a couple of posts that settings are separate from the > accounts they control. By default, yes. But you can change those settings on a per-personality basis, if you want to. > Eg, are the Fetch mail settings included in the > account's settings, or are they external to the account? They are part of the "personality" (what you call "account"). One reason "account" is not the proper name for this, is that, as Bill Cole explained, Eudora's "personalities" can be used for other things than "accounts" as well. (With emphasis on "can* -- Eudora is quite good at offering flexibility without requiring you to understand or even notice each and every option when you don't need it.) [...] > d) Can one turn off the "personalities"? No. But by defaut you aren't confronted with the concept. If you have only one 'account', you enter its settings (POP, smtp host, etc.) as 'the' account. Only once you add accounts do you need to realize that you do so by adding a "personality". If however by "turn off personalities" you mean "can a personality be set to not fetch/send mail", then yes, it can. > e) Can one save mail outside Eudora? Not entirely sure what you mean by that. Mail is stored in mboxes. There are multiple ways to 'export' mail from there. (For instance, drag an open message's proxy icon to the Desktop.) > The Features listed on Eudora's website include far more stuff than I > want a mail program to do. I like programs that do one thing, and do it > well. We all do, and we all define "well" somewhat differently ;) Thus the only way you can get it is [1] to go the unix way: use you own combination of MTA, MUA and editor. or [2] through an application that can do all you want, but does provide some options you are not interested in, and/or defaults to some behaviours that you want to change. Eudora offers enormous configurability, and IMO a good balance of easy access to what most people may need to change/configure and somewhat hidden access to everything else (x-eudora-settings). SignatureSander Tekelenburg, <http://www.euronet.nl/~tekelenb/> Mac user: "Macs only have 40 viruses, tops!" PC user: "SEE! Not even the virus writers support Macs!" >> I used Eudora for many years on Windows machines, before abandoning it >> for The Bat!. Now that I've switched over to Mac (finally), I'm looking [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > Sure; set up your folder tree and use filters to sort the mail into the > appropriate boxes inside the folders. Good grief! I posted a message asking about whether Eudora could fetch mail only for the currently open account. I see that it can't. It appears it fetches all the mail, for all accounts. And you have to set up filters to direct it into the appropriate in-boxes. That's one of most astonishing design flaws I've ever heard of. Many, many thanks for your information, it's saved me a lot of time. Bye. SignatureWolf "Don't believe everything you think." (Maxine) > >> I used Eudora for many years on Windows machines, before abandoning it > >> for The Bat!. Now that I've switched over to Mac (finally), I'm looking [quoted text clipped - 15 lines] > > That's one of most astonishing design flaws I've ever heard of. You haven't explained what you mean by "Currently open acct". I have about 60 mailboxes - which contain mail related to specific matters. E.g I have one name "Family", another named "Paypal" The "Sent Items" folder is called "Out", by the way. I am puzzled as to why you think filtering into various boxes is such a bad idea. Do you leave all your mail in your inbox? Do you have no other mailboxes? (NB mailbox is NOT equal to account/personality) I couldn't possible function that way. How would you ever sort through for a specific topic? >>>> I used Eudora for many years on Windows machines, before abandoning it >>>> for The Bat!. Now that I've switched over to Mac (finally), I'm looking [quoted text clipped - 18 lines] > about 60 mailboxes - which contain mail related to specific matters. E.g > I have one name "Family", another named "Paypal" The currently open account is the one whose name in the folder tree I've highlighted by single clicking. At present, I have 3 accounts. All are handled by PMMail. Each has its own in-box. I don't understand what you mean by 60 mailboxes. If you mean folders into which you sort the mail, well, I see no advantage in directing incoming mail to different folders before I've read it. > The "Sent Items" folder is called "Out", by the way. PMMail has an Out folder for queued mail, and a Sent folder for sent mail. > I am puzzled as to why you think filtering into various boxes is such a > bad idea. Do you leave all your mail in your inbox? No, I read it, and deal with it. Most is deleted after reading, the rest is answered, some answered mail is kept. On any given day, I delete about half of incoming mail, not counting spam. Some kept mail is deleted later, when the matter under discussion had been dealt with. I delete about 80% of incoming mail within a week of its arrival. I go through the Sent mail every week or two, and delete over half of it. If I need a paper trail, I print whatever's relevant, then delete it. > Do you have no other > mailboxes? I see, what you call a mail box I call a folder. The folder tree for my account contains about 40 folders at present. My wife's has about a dozen. The business account has about two dozen. To me, a mailbox is a synonym for account. Eg, I have two accounts (two distinct e-mail addresses) which I use for different purposes. My wife has one. > (NB mailbox is NOT equal to account/personality) I couldn't > possible function that way. How would you ever sort through for a > specific topic? Any mail I want to keep I Move to a folder. The rest is deleted. Much of the stuff in folders is deleted too, eventually. I delete whole folders from time to time. Most e-mail loses relevance quite quickly. I understand what Eudora enables you to do with "mailboxes." In fact, PMMail has the same ability, I've just never used it. I've never seen an advantage in sorting incoming mail into folders before I've read it. Different way of working than yours, is all. As for sorting for a specific topic, PMMail has a fairly good Search function if I've neglected to create a suitable folder. As it happens I've seldom had any occasion to use it. I create and delete folders whenever it seems expedient to do so. SignatureWolf "Don't believe everything you think." (Maxine) > >>>> I used Eudora for many years on Windows machines, before abandoning it > >>>> for The Bat!. Now that I've switched over to Mac (finally), I'm looking [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > >>> Sure; set up your folder tree and use filters to sort the mail into the > >>> appropriate boxes inside the folders. [...] > I don't understand what you mean by 60 mailboxes. If you mean folders > into which you sort the mail, well, I see no advantage in directing > incoming mail to different folders before I've read it. Eudora has always called them mailboxes. Above, you claim to have used Eudora for many years on a WIndows machine. How come, then, that you don't know what a mailbox is? At work I receive tickets from our NOC. Quite rarely, I need to read these. Since I normally don't, it save enormous work just to filter them automatically into a mailbox and set their status to "Read". Equally, there is a cron job which e-mails us router configuration changes. They also get filtered into their own mailbox. There are plenty of reasons for doing such filtering. >>>>>> I used Eudora for many years on Windows machines, before abandoning it >>>>>> for The Bat!. Now that I've switched over to Mac (finally), I'm looking [quoted text clipped - 15 lines] > Eudora for many years on a WIndows machine. How come, then, that you > don't know what a mailbox is? No, I (wolf) didn't claim to have used Eudora. OP (Richard) did. If you want to figure out why I joined this particular thread, read on. In any case, Live Long and Prosper! Extraneous material follows: I use PMMail. Have done since I switched from Win3x to OS/2. Didn't switch to W2K until PMMail was ported to Windows. Nicest thing about it is that it doesn't display the cutesy cartoons and movies embedded in HTML mails that my nearest and dearest insist on sending me on account of they think I don't have enough amusements in my life. Turns them all into attachments (in a separate pane) that I can choose not to open. Wonderful! :-) FWIW, I did try Eudora about two years ago, because my brother uses it on his Mac. It didn't behave as I expected it to behave, and I couldn't be bothered finding out how to set it up so it would behave the way I wanted to to. Sorry, but that's the way it was. Now that I'm considering switching to the Mac, I'm looking for an e-mail client that will behave as closely as possible as PMMail. Apparently, I can set up Eudora to do just that, with a bit of work. However, Eudora for the Mac is said to be moribund, so there seems little point in using it. Leastways not unless I don't find an equally malleable client elsewhere. But I've downloaded the *.dmg onto my Powerbook, just in case. :-) Re snipped part of your post: I can see where filtering inbound mail to specified folders makes eminent sense for you. In your place, I'd do the same - PMMail can do it, too. (Though why Eudora calls folders mailboxes I do not see. Must've been some programmer's late-night, caffeine-triggered, sugar-fuelled brain glitch.) SignatureWolf "Don't believe everything you think." (Maxine) > Re snipped part of your post: I can see where filtering inbound mail to > specified folders makes eminent sense for you. In your place, I'd do the > same - PMMail can do it, too. (Though why Eudora calls folders mailboxes > I do not see. Must've been some programmer's late-night, > caffeine-triggered, sugar-fuelled brain glitch.) Eudora's heritage goes back to the mostly-Unix Internet of the 80's, where the standard mail storage format was the mbox or mailbox text file. Like all other mailers of that era, Eudora calls distinct sets of messages stored in distinct mbox files "mailboxes" just as virtually all Unix mailers do, and as many other personal computer mailers do. The "folder" terminology is a product of personal computer mailers developed by and aimed at people whose primary experience is in the desktop GUI world. It is arguably a better metaphor, but it is by no means universal. SignatureNow where did I hide that website... > > Eudora has always called them mailboxes. Above, you claim to have used > > Eudora for many years on a WIndows machine. How come, then, that you > > don't know what a mailbox is? > > No, I (wolf) didn't claim to have used Eudora. OP (Richard) did. Right, sorry about that. > If you want to figure out why I joined this particular thread, read on. > [quoted text clipped - 30 lines] > I do not see. Must've been some programmer's late-night, > caffeine-triggered, sugar-fuelled brain glitch.) Well, you can group collections of mailboxes into - guess what - a folder :-) which I also do a lot. Eudora might be moribund, but it's essentially free now, and it has a lot of features, several of which I consider to be essential and which I struggle to find in other mailers. I'm keeping a close eye on the Thunderbird/Penelope project meanwhile. > >>>>>> I used Eudora for many years on Windows machines, before abandoning it > >>>>>> for The Bat!. Now that I've switched over to Mac (finally), I'm looking [quoted text clipped - 52 lines] > I do not see. Must've been some programmer's late-night, > caffeine-triggered, sugar-fuelled brain glitch.) Most of what needs to be said about Eudora has already been said, but here's my two cents worth. I like Eudora because you can access all "accounts" (personalities) at all times. You don't have to "change account" (essentially, blocking access to the other "accounts"--aka personalities) like in Outlook Express *and* the Windows version of Eudora. If the original poster is basing his opinion of Eudora on his Windows experience of it, he should think twice. Eudora on a Mac is light years ahead of Eudora on Windows, IMO. [...] > Most of what needs to be said about Eudora has already been said, but > here's my two cents worth. I like Eudora because you can access all [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > Windows experience of it, he should think twice. Eudora on a Mac is > light years ahead of Eudora on Windows, IMO. Thanks, that's good to know. It's the way PMMail works, too: you see all accounts at all times, and open any one of them by clicking on any of the folders set up for it. Each account is configured as a tree, with the account's name as the root. PMMail sets up five directories by default, you add whatever your needs or whims dictate. (You also configure the Fetch mail behaviour of each account within its settings. The few global settings have to do with the appearance of the message list/mail display, hooks to outside programs, and such.) I don't use OE. PS: I use "account" to refer to the service provided by the ISP. Sympatico's base-rate service provides up to six accounts all billed to the master account (which is also the one through which you set up those additional accounts.) It has nothing to do with the e-mail client. I'm puzzled by some comments about "personalities": it seems that they are in fact aliases you set up within Eudora. Is that so? Thanks to all who replied. It's been a most instructive and interesting discussion. The most instructive aspect is the way we assume we all know what we're talking about because we use the same words. :-) SignatureWolf "Don't believe everything you think." (Maxine) > I'm puzzled by some comments about "personalities": it seems that they are > in fact aliases you set up within Eudora. Is that so? Not exactly. They can be, but they can also represent mail accounts, too. For example, I have a POP account at Spamcop and one with my ISP, used to have a couple of different accounts at NewsGuy and until recently I had another at cssu. I set up a personality for each account, with server information (username, authentication method), and another account for Newsreaders.com, where I don't have an account but I do have an address. For the accounts that include an SMTP server, the personality also has username & authentication information for sending mail. For each personality, I set whether or not mail should be sent or checked for on routine checks. Since some accounts don't include an SMTP server, I can set those accounts to use a "relay personality" for sending mail. When I check mail, Eudora fetches all incoming mail into the Inbox. I regard some mail as having higher priority than other mail, so I have Eudora automatically sort the incoming mail into various mailboxes using filters. If my time is short, I only look at the mail in the higher priority mailboxes. It happens that some of the mailboxes are sorted into folders that contain several mailboxes and that only one of them has a name that matches one of the personality names. SignatureKathy - If you're reading this in your web browser from Google or similar forum, NNTP "newsreaders" are a better way to access the content. <http://www.aptalaska.net/~kmorgan/how-it-works.html> Links to NNTP newsreaders at <http://www.newsreaders.com/> > > I'm puzzled by some comments about "personalities": it seems that they are > > in fact aliases you set up within Eudora. Is that so? [quoted text clipped - 20 lines] > into folders that contain several mailboxes and that only one of them > has a name that matches one of the personality names. The above is why I like Eudora--it's so flexible. I've tried to like other mail clients, but always come back to Eudora, even if people say it's ugly! I just wish the Windows version was as nice as the Mac version, because my husband would like to use it at work (on a PC), but we tried it and it's like a whole different application on a PC. > I like Eudora because you can access all > "accounts" (personalities) at all times. You don't have to "change [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > Windows experience of it, he should think twice. Eudora on a Mac is > light years ahead of Eudora on Windows, IMO. I've been using Windows Eudora for a long time, and I have no such need to "change account" to access all personalities at any time, nor am I "blocked" from accessing anything, at any time, so I am quite perplexed how you came to this conclusion. Not only can I have all personalities within one top-level mail data folder available all the time, but I can also, if I desire, maintain completely separate, unrelated additional top-level folders, and open those all at once as well, which I understand may not be as available in Mac versions. A comparison of the Eudora manuals might be helpful, if one can't actually extensively use the current product on each platform. As to other flexibility, the fact that all Windows X-Eudora-Options (corresponding to X-Eudora-Settings on Mac) are plainly named, rather than cryptically numbered, and are completely accessible in an editable plain text file, rather than in a resource fork, makes the Windows version far more manageable in some respects, including the fact that it's very easy to forever keep any older version working in Sponsored mode, without reverting to Light mode, via automatic (even scripted) editing of the settings file, which I have heard to be more difficult (if even possible) for Mac versions. There needn't be a "who's better" competion, and most people can't choose between the two, being users of just one OS or the other, but I think there was a mistake in statement of fact which could use this additional information to round out, and I'll look for any further clarification of what the original statement meant, if it can be supported. -[ ]- Re magdalena's comment of Sun, 18 Mar 2007 12:43:54 -0500 on Outlook Express (assuming Windows): OE (Windows) has two different levels of multiple "accounts"; the level that's actually called "Accounts" is similar to Eudora's "Personalities," and shares one common mail "folder tree," while another level called "Identities" involves a complete switch, like closing Eudora for one user and starting Eudora for a different user's main Eudora folder, having nothing at all in common with the first user. OE supports attending to only one "Identity" at a time, and this mode of switching does closely correspond to the description that was given. Different OE "Identities" are similar to having different main Eudora mail folders, but in Windows Eudora, multiple main folders can be opened at the same time for different users (running more than one Eudora main window at the same time), so that there can be completely parallel access, not only to all personalities defined within one main tree, but even to multiple independent main trees at the same time. -[ ]- > why Eudora calls folders mailboxes I do not see. For the same reason that operating systems call things "files," even if they are entire databases in one file, reserving the term "folder" for a container that can hold more of everything else (mailboxes, files, or even more folders). Thunderbird is the only client I've ever used which can appear to do both things with one named object (although the underlying file/folder structure in the operating system is more complicated, to support that illusion in the mail client). > Must've been some programmer's late-night, > caffeine-triggered, sugar-fuelled brain glitch. Speak for yourself. -[ ]- >> why Eudora calls folders mailboxes I do not see. > > For the same reason that operating systems call things "files," > even if they are entire databases in one file, > reserving the term "folder" for a container that can hold > more of everything else (mailboxes, files, or even more folders). Um, er, John, I was using "folder" exactly as you indicate. So I conclude that in Eudora a "mailbox" is a file, not a folder. Is that so? I'm used to PMMail, as I've indicated. In PMMail, an account is a folder, with a collection of files and folders in it. PMMail creates some folders 9eg, inbox) by default, and the user can create as many others as (s)he wishes. To several levels, in fact. > Thunderbird is the only client I've ever used > which can appear to do both things with one named object [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > > Speak for yourself. Um, er, John, I was making a joke. Sorry if I couldn't gauge your sense of humour before meeting you. If the designer of Eudora did in fact design a "mailbox" as a file, then I think it was an odd thing to do. It doesn't seem to have any obvious advantage, and at least one IMO major disadvantage, namely that you have to start Eudora to retrieve a mail. SignatureWolf "Don't believe everything you think." (Maxine) > >> why Eudora calls folders mailboxes I do not see. > > [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > Um, er, John, I was using "folder" exactly as you indicate. So I > conclude that in Eudora a "mailbox" is a file, not a folder. Is that so? Yes. > I'm used to PMMail, as I've indicated. In PMMail, an account is a > folder, with a collection of files and folders in it. PMMail creates [quoted text clipped - 19 lines] > advantage, and at least one IMO major disadvantage, namely that you have > to start Eudora to retrieve a mail. Well, there is the fact that the mailbox file is just a text file with, as I understand it, a similar format to unix mail files. This means one can close Eudora and open the file with an editor (e.g. TextWrangler) when it looks like the mailbox is screwed up. Then you might edit out the offending sh.t and continue. This has saved my bacon occasionally. > If the designer of Eudora did in fact design a "mailbox" as a file, then > I think it was an odd thing to do. Strictly speaking it's not a file. Originally, it would contain the text, which is one file, and a table of contents, which is another file. Recently (a few years ago) Eudora was set up to store the .toc in the resource fork of the mailbox file. I never did that, stayed with my original setup (because it worked so why change it?) and still have two files in each mailbox. But the reason for the name (I am told) is that the mail is held in the Unix 'mbox' format. This means plain ASCII text, and you can read the content of a mailbox file with any text editor. Since firing up Eudora in OS10 takes no time at all (I don't quit it, I hide it) there's no point in doing such a quaint thing, but it could be useful if some corruption makes it unreadable in Eudora. This is, however, jolly rare. I've never had to do it. SignaturePeter > Um, er, I was using "folder" exactly as you indicate. So I > conclude that in Eudora a "mailbox" is a file, not a folder. > Is that so? Yes, as described in: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbox [mentions Eudora] http://www.qmail.org/man/man5/mbox.html The "Table of contents" (a direct index, and repository for the additional Eudora "summary" and status info, seen when a mailbox's contents are listed) can be built at any time from the original "mbox" file, which is one way in which importation from some other clients is achieved, as well as what has to be done when a "toc" gets corrupted. > If the designer of Eudora did in fact design a "mailbox" as a file, > then I think it was an odd thing to do. Then OE, Netscape, Mozilla, Thunderbird etc. are just as odd (TB's mailbox is almost identical to Eudora's, as well as to all its "Mozilla" evolutionary cousins), as well as many other clients, generally any client which has a "compact mailbox" function built in. > It doesn't seem to have any obvious advantage One file stores all the messages in the mailbox, rather than perhaps thousands of individual files, depending on how many messages in each mailbox; new messages are simply appended, deletions are by simply marking the "TOC," and from time to time, per suitable criteria, the mailbox is "compacted" by copying all currently active messages to a new file, which replaces the original. If you drop more MBX files into a folder (with or without corresponding TOC files), Eudora will see them upon its next startup, and thus will automatically "import" them, building a TOC for them if necessary (thus overcoming a major pain in OE, which won't do any of that). > and at least one IMO major disadvantage, namely that > you have to start Eudora to retrieve a mail. Is there some client that you don't have to start, in order to use it at all? The existence of the "TOC" means that no startup time is spent re-scanning mailbox contents -- the time stamps on "MBX" and "TOC" files are compared as a precaution to detect possible incompatible versions of each MBX&TOC pair, and repair is by discarding the TOC and rebuilding it to match the actual content in the MBX. -[ ]- >> Um, er, I was using "folder" exactly as you indicate. So I >> conclude that in Eudora a "mailbox" is a file, not a folder. [quoted text clipped - 10 lines] > in which importation from some other clients is achieved, > as well as what has to be done when a "toc" gets corrupted. OK, I see. >> If the designer of Eudora did in fact design a "mailbox" as a file, >> then I think it was an odd thing to do. [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > as well as many other clients, generally any client > which has a "compact mailbox" function built in. Yes, I've noticed that: T'bird stores all my posts in one humungous file. I find it a RPITA to find whatever post I'm looking for. And a worse pain to delete posts that I don't want to store (which is most of them actually: like this one, they have a short useful life, right?) I don't like this, BTW - it isn't the way I work. I like to organise my data in directory trees, with a fair bit of redundancy built in, so that I work only on copies of original or archived files. That may reflect my early experience with DOS and Windows -- I lost some data, and have been paranoid about controlling it my way ever since. (It's the reason I switched to OS/2 - it not only allowed, it encouraged that kind of control.) >> It doesn't seem to have any obvious advantage > [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > by copying all currently active messages to a new file, > which replaces the original. Well, different strokes for different folks. I prefer to have individual files, and I prefer to Move them to suitable named folders in a suitably organised tree. Most messages aren't worth keeping, actually, so I don't accumulate thousands of files. > If you drop more MBX files into a folder > (with or without corresponding TOC files), [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > Is there some client that you don't have to start, > in order to use it at all? True enough, but that's not what I intended. I was asking, Can you see any given mail without starting Eudora? Yes -- if you are willing to search through what could become a very large file, if I understand the mailbox construct correctly. If I wanted to, I could see any of the mails saved in PMMail by navigating to the folder in which I've stored them, and opening them in any text editor, word processor, or browser. Not that I do this: if I decide I want to keep a mail permanently, I Save it into one of my non-mail data folders, outside PMMail, under suitable filename. > The existence of the "TOC" means that no startup time > is spent re-scanning mailbox contents -- the time stamps [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > > -[ ]- I don't understand the acronym TOC. PMMail has a "bag" for each folder, which contains the information you've specified to be displayed in the mail list (eg, read/attachment/date/subject/from/from-address). It's updated as you add/delete mails from folders. PMMail doesn't rescan mails, it just displays the data stored in the *.bag. From your description, this is functionally equivalent to TOC. Thanks for your patience in explaining how Eudora works. It's interesting. What's most interesting is how very early decisions about program (and OS) design become unquestioned ways of doing certain things. We Yoomans sure do like Tradition, don't we? :-) That's true of GUIs, too, which IMO have a long way to go be as user friendly as they should be. One small gripe: there's no reason, other than vacuous "intellectual property" claims, or more likely the vanity of the OS owners, that all windowed GUIs shouldn't have the same layout. If you think I should know more, please continue. SignatureWolf "Don't believe everything you think." (Maxine) On Tue, 20 Mar 2007 20:14:09 -0500, Wolf invited "more input" (like in the "Short Circuit" movies :) > T'bird stores all my posts in one humungous file. > I find it a RPITA to find whatever post I'm looking for. Isn't the Table of Contents (TOC) -- or another words, the list of messages in a mailbox/mailfolder -- useful for that, as well as the built-in "search"? (plus all the pretty instant message list sorting options) The built-in search is plenty fast enough for me, but Windows Eudora v7 now comes, in paid mode, with an "Ultra-fast search" that claims blazingly instant results on huge message collections; the very same (Windows) client is actually also now available free, from X1.com (of course it's at the expense of a lot of indexing, but that's supposed to be done in the "background," LOL). > And a worse pain to delete posts that I don't want to store (which is > most of them actually: like this one, they have a short useful life, right?) Don't you have to tell your other favorite client which messages to delete? Isn't it equally easy to tell Eudora which messages to delete? (with the usual "select by range" plus "individual" selections from the entire message list) -- GUI-wise, the messages are gone at the moment you delete them; periodic "compact mailbox" operations are either automatic (when percentage deleted space exceeds a threshhold) or can be initiated at any time, either per individual mailbox (one click on message list window) or "compact all" (which goes pretty fast, even on my 75MB collection, mainly because it's mostly "In" and "Out" that need compacting, other mailboxes being generally just appended to). BTW, since Eudora doesn't do NNTP, it isn't used much with newsgroups :) > I don't like this, BTW - it isn't the way I work. I like to organise my > data in directory trees, with a fair bit of redundancy built in, so that > I work only on copies of original or archived files. What does "work on" mean? Do you "work on" (edit?) message contents, or do you mean attachments? If you mean attachments, Eudora extracts them up front (somewhat opposite to many other clients), into an "attachments" folder, keeping only the viewable text (or HTML) in the "mailbox" file. If you like to edit message texts, Eudora can edit messages -- it actually appends the edited version to the end of the mailbox when saved, marking the original as "deleted," yet that original still exists until the mailbox is next compacted. If you want to save any message as a separate OS file, that, too is a standard ability. > That may reflect my early experience with DOS and Windows -- > I lost some data, and have been paranoid about controlling it my way > ever since. (It's the reason I switched to OS/2 - it not only allowed, > it encouraged that kind of control.) I believe that Eudora has a very good track record in this regard; the only time I've ever lost messages is when an innocent-looking update to "Zone Alarm" corrupted Windows file modification times, upon which Eudora relies for some integrity checks (but since I'm also "paranoid," I just recovered my backed up mail and combined it with the recent new mail, and then threw out Zone Alarm, losing nothing in the end). > Well, different strokes for different folks. I prefer to have individual > files, and I prefer to Move them to suitable named folders in a suitably > organised tree. Most messages aren't worth keeping, actually, so I don't > accumulate thousands of files. Perhaps you'd like Opera's integrated email client (part of its multi-platform browser/email/news/RSS/chat suite), which stores all messages individually -- however, file name "52589.mbs" doesn't really tell me much about a message, and I still have to rely on the GUI (and contents lists) to manage those messages, so the underlying physical storage system remains a bit out of sight in all the clients I've ever used, ranging from Outlook (one file contains all, and if it gets corrupted or full, you're SOL) to Eudora (most flexible thing I've ever used, where I can do a lot informally "off-line" that can be accomplished in no other client I know of), to Opera (where 25,000 RSS feed messages occupy 25,000 individual OS files, in an account-year-month-date folder tree, wasting 95% of the disk space, and take an hour to delete). > I was asking, Can you see any given mail without starting Eudora? > Yes -- if you are willing to search through what could become a very > large file, if I understand the mailbox construct correctly. How do you _find_ "any given mail" to begin with? If I used Opera I could browse among hordes of individual files named "52589.mbs" to look for one containing what I want; using Eudora I can open one mailbox and do one "find" (for Subject, From, Date, text content, whatever). But I don't, of course -- I use the email client's abilities. > If I wanted to, I could see any of the mails saved in PMMail > by navigating to the folder in which I've stored them, and > opening them in any text editor, word processor, or browser. As I can do by opening one mailbox file (not folder) in any text editor, word processor, or browser, and doing one "find." Does every message saved by PMMail get automatically saved in some memorable file name which tells you all about what it contains? Do you spend time storing every individual message under such a memorable name yourself, so that you can recognize the one you want later? If not, how do you later find the one you want to open and read? Does any OS automatically sort into file folders by selected content? -- i.e. using "filters" By the way, you can edit the "Subject" of incoming Eudora messages in the mailbox summary listing, without affecting the stored message (I've never seen such a handy thing anywhere else, as is also the case with a rather large number of extremely handy little features, often undiscovered even by long-time users). > Not that I do this: if I decide I want to keep a mail permanently, > I Save it into one of my non-mail data folders, outside PMMail, > under suitable filename. You can do exactly the same with Eudora, so what then would be the practical difference between using one or the other? Personally, I continually create all sorts of memos and lists and notes, but instead of organizing them as individual OS files distributed among OS folders, I've always happened to prefer oganizing them as individual email messages, grouped into mailboxes! The list of messages (Who, Subject, Date) gives me a lot more to look at than an OS file list, any message can be instantly opened and read; several can be opened at a time (with buttons to switch between them), quick "search" is always there, so as far as I'm concerned, the world within the email client is a slightly better and more navigable world for my organizing such stuff than the OS world is for me -- oh, one last neat thing: I can continually hit "send" to fire off instant simultaneous backups of these just-composed things to all of my handy and redundant off-site incremental, secure backup media (otherwise known as Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail :) > PMMail has a "bag" for each folder, > which contains the information you've specified to be displayed > in the mail list (eg, read/attachment/date/subject/from/from-address). > It's updated as you add/delete mails from folders. PMMail doesn't > rescan mails, it just displays the data stored in the *.bag. > From your description, this is functionally equivalent to TOC. Sounds like it. > How Eudora works is interesting. What's most interesting is > how very early decisions about program (and OS) design > become unquestioned ways of doing certain things. Any mail client with its GUI, however, can serve as somewhat an "abstraction" layer, making the distinction between one humongous PST file (Outlook), one file per mailbox/mailfolder (Eudora, Thunderbird), or one file per message (Opera, PMMail?) fade somewhat into the background, until Outlook crashes (at which time one can curse Microsoft's proprietary database), or other "outside of the box" need arises (e.g. combining originally separate accounts, recovering after crashes, remailing all of someone's saved mail to Yahoo), for which I've found Eudora generally more amenable to an easy solution than any other client. > If you think I should know more, please continue. You probably know everything, but I accept any excuse to write :) "Need more *input*!" http://imdb.com/title/tt0091949/ http://imdb.com/title/tt0096101/ -[ ]- > On Tue, 20 Mar 2007 20:14:09 -0500, Wolf invited "more input" [...] > You probably know everything, but I accept any excuse to write :) > [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > > -[ ]- I wish I did know more. I'm at the stage where I know enough to recognise differences among mail clients, but not enough to decide. Ah well, that's life. :-) Anyhow, Eudora looks like a good candidate. Thanks. SignatureWolf "Don't believe everything you think." (Maxine) > I used Eudora for many years on Windows machines, before abandoning it > for The Bat!. Now that I've switched over to Mac (finally), I'm looking [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > each of them. I know I can create separate inboxes using filters, but > prefer a separate folder tree for each account. Is that possible now? You _could_ totally separate unrelated accounts by treating them as if they were for different users, using entirely independent mail data folders. Page 413 of the Eudora user guide for Mac version 6.2.4 says: Putting Multiple Users on One Macintosh If you wish to check multiple mail accounts for different users and do not wish to use Mac OS X's built in user switching, you can set up Eudora: o If you want more than one user on a single Macintosh. o If you have multiple email accounts, but you don't want to have alternate personalities set up and use the same set of mailboxes. [that's you :] o If you want to store your mail in a folder other than your Documents Folder. [instructions then follow] It also unfortunately says: You need to quit and restart Eudora to switch users. As a former Windows user, you may know that "quitting/restarting" is quite unnecessary on Windows, where multiple instances of Eudora can be simultaneously open for independent mail folders (isn't that possible in OS X?) As an alternative, note that Eudora does provide for a "folder tree" in which you can create subfolders, so it should be possible to create a subfolder for each essentially separate personality, and then filter incoming mail into an "Inbox" that is under the appropriate sub-folder; this can give a total picture that resembles a set of completely independent accounts, each with its own "folder tree," although all of these trees will still be under one "super-node." -[ ]- > It also unfortunately says: > > You need to quit and restart Eudora to switch users. > > As a former Windows user, you may know that "quitting/restarting" > is quite unnecessary on Windows It's just as unnecessary on the Mac. The way I do it is to have an alternative set of 'Eudora Settings'. With Eudora running, if I double click on the alternate set it changes over instantly. Then create setttings that use your alternative personality. There's probably a quicker way but I am using Eudora in Light mode, so have steered clear of Personalities altogether. In my case I am using the alternative settings to switch to a different ISP. SignaturePeter > It's just as unnecessary on the Mac. The way I do it is to have an > alternative set of 'Eudora Settings'. With Eudora running, if I double [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > have steered clear of Personalities altogether. In my case I am using > the alternative settings to switch to a different ISP. I have two addresses with one (older) ISP, and use them for totally different purposes (one work-related and one personal), a second ISP that's my current broadband ISP, and a .Mac account, which is an IMAP account. So I want to treat them as if they were totally different users. I used different personalities with Eudora years ago, but now want (and need) separate folder trees for each account. > I have two addresses with one (older) ISP, and use them for totally > different purposes (one work-related and one personal), a second ISP > that's my current broadband ISP, and a .Mac account, which is an IMAP > account. So I want to treat them as if they were totally different > users. I used different personalities with Eudora years ago, but now > want (and need) separate folder trees for each account. My personal preference would be to create a separate Eudora Folder for your different ISPs. You'd then have a different folder tree for each. Have different Settings files in Eudora, which point at different Eudora Folders. Choose by starting up the settings you want. SignaturePeter |
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