Eudora source code released

[davidmor...@gmail.com]

Qualcomm has handed ownership of the Eudora source code to the Computer History Museum. With the exception of certain proprietary code, the entire source code is available to do whatever you might want to do with it. There are suggestions that the Windows version does not need much work to fix a few bugs under Windows 10. The Mac version ofc is way out of date and would need to be pretty much rewritten.

http://www.computerhistory.org/_static/atchm/the-eudora-email-client-source-code/

[Patty Winter]

In article <7d19fce3-4baf-49a5...@googlegroups.com>,

That's an interesting development. I skimmed the background discussion,
which provided a great overview of Eudora's history.

I am now curious what the "bad words" were that were removed before CHM
posted the code. :-)

I was one of the holdouts; I only abandoned Eudora a little over a year
ago.


Patty

[a.p.g.r...@gmail.com]

> I was one of the holdouts; I only abandoned Eudora a little over a year
> ago.

I'm still using it - never managed to find anything else nearly as good, although it is a real pain using one computer for mail and another for everything else!

Now I am hoping that someone with the appropriate programming skillset might migrate the source code to the current OS!

[Hauke Fath]

<a.p.g.r...@gmail.com> wrote:

> > I was one of the holdouts; I only abandoned Eudora a little over a year
> > ago.
>
> I'm still using it - never managed to find anything else nearly as good,
> although it is a real pain using one computer for mail and another for
> everything else!

I found Gyazmail a surprisingly good replacement on ~current MacOS
versions. But at home, on my tried and trusted Quadra 650, it is Eudora
3.1, still. Pity they did not release a repository - I would be
interested in rebuilding 3.1, tweaking a few things that keep annoying
me.

> Now I am hoping that someone with the appropriate programming skillset
> might migrate the source code to the current OS!

Tough one. For all I know, Carbon is dead[1], and Eudora would have to
be re-written for Cocoa.

Cheerio,
hauke


[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_(API)#Deprecation>

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[Hauke Fath]

Hauke Fath <dont.spa...@googlemail.com> wrote:

> > Now I am hoping that someone with the appropriate programming skillset
> > might migrate the source code to the current OS!
>
> Tough one. For all I know, Carbon is dead[1], and Eudora would have to
> be re-written for Cocoa.

Thinking about it, what should be well in reach[1] is an x86 build,
which would make Eudora usable on Mac OS X 10.7-13.

Cheerio,
hauke


[1] modulo dealing with removal of proprietary code

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[davidmor...@gmail.com]

On Friday, 25 May 2018 17:09:55 UTC+10, Hauke Fath wrote:
> Hauke Fath <dont.spa...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> > > Now I am hoping that someone with the appropriate programming skillset
> > > might migrate the source code to the current OS!
> >
> > Tough one. For all I know, Carbon is dead[1], and Eudora would have to
> > be re-written for Cocoa.
>
> Thinking about it, what should be well in reach[1] is an x86 build,
> which would make Eudora usable on Mac OS X 10.7-13.

One of the questions is which development system did they use to build it all. Would it have been xcode or something from an earlier period?

[Hauke Fath]

<davidmor...@gmail.com> wrote:

> > Thinking about it, what should be well in reach[1] is an x86 build,
> > which would make Eudora usable on Mac OS X 10.7-13.
>
> One of the questions is which development system did they use to build it
> all. Would it have been xcode or something from an earlier period?

CodeWarrior Pro 6, I think it said somewhere. Which of course predates
x86, Metrowerks having been bought out by Motorola^WFreescale.

So the first effort will be indeed to convert the buuild to XCode.

Cheerio,
hauke


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[Laurie Spiegel]

Carbon appears to still be supported though the current 10.12. Probably too much old code still relies on Carbon routines for it to be deprecated yet.

The problem, the reason Eudora was obsoleted, is whatever was in the Rosetta PowerPC emulator that it requires. It’s hard to believe that there isn’t some workaround.

That being said, I haven’t downloaded and looked at the source code yet. It might be anything from simple driver replacement to nigh unto impossible.

- Laurie

[Laurie Spiegel]

Or if anyone still has an old Mac set up with CodeWarrior 6 maybe a version could be compiled that doesn’t require an PowerPC code.

[Laurie Spiegel]

Everyone interested please fill out the survey linked to via the URL above so that the holders of the source code can see that there’s still considerable interest in reviving Eudora.

I have an archive of messages going back to about 1990 in Eudora format and I maintain an older Mac in Snow Leopard to be able to continue to use it. I have had to resort to more recent MacOS in order to use newer software, but my levels of efficiency and organization are considerably less when I’m using other email clients.

Let’s hope for an updated version,

- Laurie

[Hauke Fath]

Laurie Spiegel <laurie....@gmail.com> wrote:

> Carbon appears to still be supported though the current 10.12. Probably
too much old code still relies on Carbon routines for it to be
deprecated yet.

The Carbon API is 32 bit only, and Apple has announced that future Mac
OS releases will drop suppoort for 32 bit applications.

[Hauke Fath]

Laurie Spiegel <laurie....@gmail.com> wrote:

> Or if anyone still has an old Mac set up with CodeWarrior 6 maybe a
> version could be compiled that doesn't require an PowerPC code.

Well, there's the transition to the Carbon API, for one. The last
version to come with m68k support was 4.x, the last version to support
Traditional MacOS was 6.1.1 (according to
<https://web.archive.org/web/20140703145116/http://www.eudora.com/techsu
pport/kb/2350hq.html/>). You would have to undo the Carbon changes, and
cut out use of any apis not avilable in System 8 (or, preferably, 7.1).

And, of course, there is SSL support. While there are Open Source SSL
libraries for embedded use, building one on System 7 is a project in
itself.

So, not for the faint of heart. ;)

[Hauke Fath]

Laurie Spiegel <laurie....@gmail.com> wrote:
> Everyone interested please fill out the survey linked to via the URL above
> so that the holders of the source code can see that there's still
> considerable interest in reviving Eudora.

Done that. We'll see what comes of it.

[Hauke Fath]

Hauke Fath <dont.spa...@googlemail.com> wrote:

> The last version to come with m68k support was 4.x

Does anybody, btw., know of a mirror for
<ftp://ftp.qualcomm.com/eudora/>? The KB page I linked to goes back to
Eudora 4.3.3, but that may not even have 68k support any more. Anything
older was available through ftp, and while ftp.qualcomm.com still
resolves, it does not run an ftp server.

[n.theodore.m...@gmail.com]

Laurie, I'm just now rolling out the HERMES Mail/X project, so that work on the Mac version of Eudora^WHERMES can proceed in earnest. We're just now within sight of the finish line for Windows.

You commented on our Kickstarter, didn't you? If you're up for helping us with HERMES Mail/X, please drop me a line, you'd be a good addition to the Mac team, whether in actual programming or simply support (you've got a good grasp on Mac history—better than me!)