Re: [Evolution] Evolution not quite Eudora yet

["Anthony E. Greene" <agreene pobox com>]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On 13-Jun-2002/19:47 +0930, Not Zed <notzed ximian com> wrote:
> > > So, saying 'just like Eudora' doesn't mean much to any of us, for the
> > > most part.
> >
> >
> > Surprising. I thought many 'power' users preferred Eudora to dreck
> > Outlook. This has never been a 'numbers game' for me.
>
> Well for starters (to people like me) ... 'power' users don't *use*
> windows or macintosh at all, at least not for 'power' uses.   I can't
> recall seeing a Unix port!
>
> I only ever used eudora lite, and well, it was pretty shit.

I used Eudora back when OE was still called MS Internet Mail and News
(note that the executable is still msimn.exe). Outlook was still on the
drawing board. There were only two really good, free, standards-compliant
mail clients for Windows: Eudora and Pegasus.

Eudora uses an INI file for configuration ands keeps mail in RFC822
formatted text files. I needed to be able to process some of my mail
using programs, so having the plain text available made that a lot easier.
It also made it easier to switch to another mailer without losing any
data or jumping through any export/import hoops. Anyone who has tried to
switch from Outlook/OE to a non-MS mailer should be able to appreciate
this.

Eudora allowed me to specify the location of the config and data files on
the command line. I used that ability to keep multiple users' data on a
Linux file server and make Eudora's shortcut look for data in
"\\linuxbox\homes\.eudora\". That allowed me to use Win9x desktops and
still have some measure of security for user mail files. That feature
could also be used to access different INI files for the same mail data,
in effect allowing multiple POP accounts.

Eudora was the first popular Windows mailer to support multiple accounts
directly (Personalities). Eudora was the first to support message
templates, redirecting (bouncing), nested aliases, multiple address books
(all plain text for easy external processing), and probably some other
features that I can't think of right now. Eudora had these features while
OE was still either on the drawing board or in beta.

Eudora allowed filters to set the font color in a message summary list.

Eudora was the first Windows mailer to offer exclusionary filters
(Recipient does not match any address in a specified list). I could filter
out my mailing lists, then have Eudora check against my alternate
addresses. Anything that didn't match was not addressed directly to me and
was probably spam. This was unique stuff on Windows in 1995/96.

Eudora also allowed me to download just the headers of messages. I could
then set a desired action for each message (download+delete on server,
delete on server, download+leave on server). On the next connection Eudora
would carry out the specified actions. On a slow dialup link this feature
came in very handy.

Eudora also supported the POPSend extension to POP3. I don't know why this
never became popular, but it allowed you to send mail over the
(authenticated) POP3 connection. SMTP AUTH is probably better designed,
but we could have prevented a lot of spam a long time ago if more mail
clients had been able to use POPSend.

Eudora was also the first mailer that you could download with a full PGP
package and a plugin. That distribution decision alone introduced PGP to
thousands of Windows users.

Some of the features I described were only available in the Pro version,
but I got enough email that paying $30 for Eudora pro was well worth it. I
really wish Qualcomm had ported it to Linux.


Tony
- -- 
Anthony E. Greene <mailto:agreene pobox com>
OpenPGP Key: 0x6C94239D/7B3D BD7D 7D91 1B44 BA26 C484 A42A 60DD 6C94 239D
AOL/Yahoo Chat: TonyG05         HomePage: <http://www.pobox.com/~agreene/>
Linux. The choice of a GNU generation <http://www.linux.org/>

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Anthony E. Greene <mailto:agreene pobox com> 0x6C94239D

iD8DBQE9CqFgpCpg3WyUI50RArd1AKDK/apsvCSvMdWhLJ7kVYttbBcLsgCfTfMy
9ed4HJGP9KJB1PPz+WepWJo=
=2SbH
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----