Eudora @ replacement [Mac]

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Frank Hoffmann
Posts: 18
Joined: May 7th, 2012, 9:21 am

Eudora @ replacement [Mac]

Unread post by Frank Hoffmann »

   
Sinéad O'Connor is right on: "Nothing Compares 2 U." Those where the 90s. Shaved head or not, Eudora hardly left anything open to be desired as an email client. I used Eudora for 19 years, managing several email accounts simultaneously. Qualcomm stopped any development of the email client in 2006. Seems it still runs on Windows systems though. For Mac, however, it stops working with OS X version 10.7 (Lion, released in July of last year). Eudora is a PowerPC application; it thus requires 'Rosetta' to run on OS X versions 10.4.4 (Tiger) and higher on Intel-based processors, and Lion comes without Rosetta.

In order to shift to another Mac email client one should do so before upgrading from OSX 10.6 to 10.7 (or to the forthcoming 10.8 version, Mountain Lion)! This also applies to the replacement process of many other PPC applications that require Rosetta.

What are the options to replace Eudora?
The Eudora user community has discussed this extensively at various forums, and the reason for this extensive and long lasting discussion is simple: there is indeed hardly any email client that is as good now than Eudora was twenty years ago. How sad! Of course, if you only manage one or two email accounts, then you might be fine with almost any email application, including web solutions such as Gmail (which is a good one).
The often mentioned replacements for Eudora are:
- EudoraOSE (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Eudora_Releases)
- MailForge (http://www.infinitydatasystems.com/products/mailforge/)
- GyazMail (http://gyazsquare.com/gyazmail/)

"EudoraOSE" is supposed to look like the old Eudora and to have the same functionality. EudoraOSE is based on an older version of Thunderbird. The first release (version 1.0) in December 2010 was a big disappointment, and no further version has been released, which speaks for itself. It seems most users have either switched back to the old Eudora (if they don't run Lion yet) or moved to another solution.

"MailForge" is the email client I was waiting for. Versions 1 and 2 were extremely buggy, so much so that they could not actually be used in any real world work environment. After a very long wait version 3 was finally released end of May this year. But this version turns out to be just as disappointing, nothing that would decently take care of even the most essential tasks an email program should handle. Also, my impression is that this is a one man show, and the developer of this commercial product seems usually 'on the hide,' is not offering helpful suggestions in his product related forums (http://www.infinitydatasystems.com/forums/) and seems also not to be reacting to customer emails.

"GyazMail" is less often being mentioned as a possible Eudora replacement. Since I finally gave up any hope for "EudoraOSE" or "MailForge" to become functional and stable programs, I now decided to go with this one. GyazMail has been around for several years, is actively being developed by a single programmer, Mr. Goichi Hirakawa. Special care has been given to the handling of East Asian encoding, also as regards to receiving now outside of Asia non-standard (non-UTF-8) encoded mails. That is certainly a big plus. It is relatively simple to set up, far simpler than e.g. Apple's "Mail" client or many other email programs. It costs only $18, is very stable, has a low-memory-footprint (you can very well leave it open to run in the background at all times, if you want), and it has received countless favorable reviews--see e.g. here: http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/8758/gyazmail. I had a few questions to the developer, and he replied to my mails within a few hours, answering all questions. The only real drawback, the only limitation I found is the fact that you cannot send formatted emails--no bold, no Italics, no pink love letters via email, etc. GyazMail reads formatted emails we receive just fine, but it does not allow us to send formatted mails. Another, less imprortant limitation: Spotlight (the built-in Mac search tool) does not work with GyazMail, so you cannot use Spotlight or another Spotlight-based search tool to find messages or mail attachments, you will have to use the search tool built into GyazMail. (Spotlight compatibility is a feature that's already announced for a future release.) Otherwise, it is a nice fast program that allows us to set up many email accounts all in one program, in one window. The interface is pleasing enough (especially after choosing the right fonts), arranged like a triptych. The left panel lists the email accounts with its sub-folders (and you can add as many sub-folders as you need), then the center panel with the list of messages of whatever folder you have chosen in the left panel, and then the right panel showing a preview of whatever specific email has been clicked on in the email list in the middle. This preview is actually good enough to read the mail ... I see hardly any reason to 'open' that in a separate window, which is possible, especially since you can also hit the 'Reply' without having to 'open' each mail. Especially useful: you can create your own key shortcuts for any tasks! GyazMail has all the other expected features that mail programs have these days--and it also allows us to integrate "SpamSieve" (http://c-command.com/spamsieve/, $30), the best anti-Spam program for the Mac.


TRANSFER of old email messages from Eudora:

Yes, it is possible to seemlessly import all your old mails to GyazMail, if you need or want to do that. Before describing the basics here, let me note that there is another alternative solution: "Mail Archiver X" (http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/13724/mail-archiver-x), $34.95. The program works just great, allows you to import and store a huge number of emails with attachments into a single database, which you can then search as you would within Eudora. The interface to that database via "Mail Archiver X" looks just like an email program.

But say you want to import all Eudora mail boxes (resp. messages) to GyazMail ... here is what worked fine for me:
Do not use the "Import" function in GyazMail itself to import messages directly from Eudora folders. That may work from some other email programs, but to tranfer mails from Eudora at least 30% of messages that I transferred this way ended up as blank messages or had other problems. Instead, download the free application "Eudora Mailbox Cleaner" (http://homepage.mac.com/aamann/Eudora_M ... eaner.html). Put the main application "Eudora Mailbox Cleaner" with its folder anywhere onto your Mac; it does not have to be in the Applications folder. Now find the mail boxes you want to transfer (or whose content you want to transfer) ... for example the "In" box, and drop them onto the "Eudora Mailbox Cleaner" application.
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That will convert the folder or the folders to the same format that Apple's Mail program also uses.
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Now you can go to GyazMail (where the email account has already been set up--that is a pre-condition). Go to 'File' --> 'Import' --> 'Mail' and import the thus converted mail boxes (which you find at /Users/[USERNAME]/Library/Mail/Mailboxes/Import/...).
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Five final suggestions:

1. It is strongly recommended to buy a "SpamSieve" license to integrate SpamSieve (see above).
2. If you have many email accounts, ten or more, you may want to change the structure of folders ... to make "Sent" and other folders sub-folders of the "Inbox" folder of each email account, as to save space in the left-hand panel, so you can watch every single mail account to look for incoming messages. See below:
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As shown with the first email account in the list, you can now just display the main INBOX--and look at others only when and if needed.
3. Make sure to pick a font for the display of messages and folders (of course to be set in the program's "Preferences") that actually shows 'unread' new messages in bold ... many fonts do not do that in this program--LucidaGrande size 11 works nicely to display folders and the message list. It will make your life easier.
4. Same as in many other Mac applications, you can right-click on the program's toolbar and customize what icons (and thereby functions) and what size of icons you want there. E.g., you can add--I did that--icons such as 'Print,' 'Junk,' or 'Show All Headers' for fast access to those functions, and you can also reduce the icon size.
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5. In case you have a website and use the popular "FormMail" script for your contact or other submission form, the rewritten version by TECTITE (http://www.tectite.com), make sure to upgrade it to version 8.34 (here: http://www.tectite.com/wizards/fmupg.php). I noticed an encryption problem in that script that shows if the receiving email client is GyazMail, and the FormMail programmer was so kind to fix that immediately.


Best,
Frank :thumbup: