How does Eudora seperate messages in mailbox file?

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wookiee - 07 Jul 2008 14:18 GMT

Since the upgrade to 10.5, my mailboxes have gotten all screwed up.

Well actually the display has. The messages in the mailboxes seem ok.

But when opening mail, sometimes, instead of showing the complete
message, it shows parts of the previous message first.

Looking at the file with bbedit, the messages seem intact. So how does
Eudora keep track of where the beginning and end of the messages are?

I can't see anything that would indicate the beginning or end of any of
the text emails. Html seem to end in </x-html>

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J.P. Kuypers - 07 Jul 2008 14:35 GMT

> ... how does Eudora keep track of where the beginning and end of the
> messages are?

Messages are beginning with a line beginning with "From ", i.e. the
word "From" at the beginning of the line followed by one space.

The end of a message is just before the beginning of the next one.

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Jean-Pierre Kuypers

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wookiee - 07 Jul 2008 19:42 GMT

> > ... how does Eudora keep track of where the beginning and end of the
> > messages are?
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
>
> The end of a message is just before the beginning of the next one.

OK, as simple as that. Removing the toc seemed to work. But now, I'll
search for "From " to help straighten any files totally screwed up

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J.P. Kuypers - 08 Jul 2008 08:37 GMT

> > Messages are beginning with a line beginning with "From ", i.e. the
> > word "From" at the beginning of the line followed by one space.
>
> ... now, I'll search for "From " to help straighten any files
> totally screwed up

The format of the beginning "From " line in Eudora mailboxes is as:

From ???@??? Day MMM DD HH:MM:SS Year
From ???@??? Mon Feb 16 09:27:41 2004

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Jean-Pierre Kuypers

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John H Meyers - 07 Jul 2008 17:58 GMT

> Since the upgrade to 10.5, my mailboxes have gotten all screwed up.
> Well actually the display has. The messages in the mailboxes seem ok.
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
> Looking at the file with bbedit, the messages seem intact. So how does
> Eudora keep track of where the beginning and end of the messages are?

It builds a "table of contents" (TOC), which also includes
all the information shown in a mailbox window (list of messages);
when that gets out of sync with the mailbox,
Eudora "loses its place" when opening individual messages,
and exhibits just the sort of problems you are describing.

If a mailbox gets "compacted" while its TOC is out of sync,
some damage to (or loss of) pre-existing messages is likely,
and may be permanent.

TOCs can be stored either as separate files
or in the "Resource forks" of mailbox files;
the latter (now the default, unless reversed)
is said to be less reliable, by some Leopard users
(of course not by universal agreeement),
one possible reason being that for Eudora to even detect
the loss of sync, it may want to compare the "last update"
time stamps of both the main mailbox file and the TOC,
an ability which might possibly be lost when resource forks are used
(has anyone some definitive info about this detail?)

If a TOC is deleted (intentionally, so that it can be rebuilt),
only then does Eudora look for the special initial lines
which indicate the beginning of each new message,
creating a new TOC entry for each one found
(even for messages or drafts previously deleted or replaced);
otherwise it assumes the TOC to be correct,
causing the discrepancies which you have observed.

--

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Mac Forum / Applications / Eudora / July 2008

How does Eudora seperate messages in mailbox file?