What would a new Eudora look like?

[David Morrison]

Many of Eudora's features that make it attractive to me do not align with current practices. For example, modern apps tend to use a single window for everything, and split it into panes. This is a problem if you want to look at things side-by-side.

I love the fact that Eudora uses windows and that I can have multiple windows open at the same time. I love that when messages are filtered into a mailbox, the mailbox window opens automatically so I can see that there are new messages there. I can leave it open as a reminder until I have time to read the messages, eg, a mailing list. If there are some I don't want to read, I can just close the window.

I *do not* like Apple Mail and Thunderbird's technique of having a huge list of mailboxes down the side with numbers of unread messages. Firstly, I have to scroll down through the mailbox list to see what is there. Secondly, I have to mark every single message as read to allow it to show when new messages have been moved into the folder.

So a big question about a future Eudora is whether it will look like a 1980s app, or a modern, barely-functional one? :-)

David

[Matt Simpson]

On 2018-06-11 12:20:21 +0000, David Morrison said:

> So a big question about a future Eudora is whether it will look like a
> 1980s app, or a modern, barely-functional one? :

I've been using Apple Mail for many years now; I forget how long ago I
was forced to switch because it wasn't possible to run Mac Eudora on
new software/hardware and I didn't want to mess around with a
Windows/VM solution.

In the subsequent years, I still find myself missing features in Eudora
that don't exist in Apple Mail. On the other hand, I don't think I've
ever found something neat in Apple Mail that makes me like it better
than Eudora. So I would vote for a future Eudora looking much like the
1980s one. I'm sure there are some things that could be improved, but
I really think Eudora had an elegant design that withstood the test of
time.

[conclusi...@gmail.com]

On Monday, June 11, 2018 at 8:20:22 AM UTC-4, David Morrison wrote:

> I love the fact that Eudora uses windows and that I can have multiple windows open at the same time. I love that when messages are filtered into a mailbox, the mailbox window opens automatically so I can see that there are new messages there. I can leave it open as a reminder until I have time to read the messages, eg, a mailing list. If there are some I don't want to read, I can just close the window.

>I *do not* like Apple Mail and Thunderbird's technique of having a huge list of mailboxes down the side with numbers of unread messages. Firstly, I have to scroll down through the mailbox list to see what is there. Secondly, I have to mark every single message as read to allow it to show when new messages have been moved into the folder.

David,

I would marry you, if (a) I weren't already married; (b) I weren't straight; and (c) I knew you. THIS x 1,000,000. I do not understand why so few people realize how much better this user interface is than the ubiquitous three-pane Outlook/Apple Mail/etc. interface. The latter is fine if one gets a handful of messages, reads them in the inbox, and then sorts them away. But if one gets a high volume of email, including from mailing lists, the old Eudora one-mailbox-per-window, automatically opening approach is infinitely superior, for exactly the reasons you say.

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

David, the way I see it is that having a lot of windows tends to get disorganised very fast. On the other hand, I don't like T-Bird's three-pane, single-document interface either. I liked a middle-ground between the two: a tabbed interface, like Windows Eudora and now HERMES Mail has. To open the In box, you (double)click on its entry in the Folder pane; now, if you want to open the Out box, you do the same, and the two boxes open in separate tabs so that you can switch back and forth at will.

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

Matt, I think everyone hates the three-pane interface. Really, the choice is not between 1980s and to-day; the choice is between Win Eudora (tabbed window) and Mac Eudora (multi-window single-document interface).

[russt]

Agree strongly, except that modern apps do in fact use multiple windows, including word, excel, Terminal, Finder, all modern browsers, etc. I imagine that a new Eudora might take advantage of tabs in some useful way, like most of these apps do, with keyboard shortcuts to flip between windows or tab-panes.

For people that don't use filters, (I use them extensively), they basically get a one window interface. The way I've always used eudora (on the mac), is to use the filter report for a quick summary of new mail, and that becomes an index of mailboxes I can visit or not. I keep another window open with all my mailboxes. I quickly move thru the open windows reviewing and closing them using the CMD-W keyboard shortcut.

I never liked the single window interface. I want to use the screen space to actually read the mail or work within a single mailbox with minimal distractions.

BTW, been using Eudora in a fusion (vmware) VM for many years; the only trick is to get a copy of MacOS server 10.6.8, which is probably pretty hard to come by now. It works fine and has very little impact.. I even set my wife up the same way and she has not complained at all. you can copy/paste anything so it is just another application. Plus you can use VM snapshots for backups and/or copy the entire VM around. I'm running with the latest version of Fusion; no upgrade issues so far.

Eudora has some distinct advantages for tracing spam address, using the "Blah Blah Blah" button. Also, you can usually get a decent browser rendering even in the old version of Safari. I'm surprised how well Eudora can render modern email - given how old it is. The standards have not changed that much.

Would love to see a desktop email as good as Eudora, but it is a daunting development effort.. remember that Eudora was a pretty big engineering team in its heyday. I admire some of the folks that have tried, but it needs to be a more substantial effort. It seems odd to me that Apple has not made a better effort, but to be honest, I think that email is more or less dying out among the younger generations. I usually get grunts or one-line replies these days. :)

cheers.
/r

P.S. proud Eudora user since 1993; before that, used ucb "mail" command on unix.

[alle...@gmail.com]

{Raises hand} Another current Eudora user (since the early 1990's) here. I'm setting up a new email account, and was going to use Thunderbird, since it's still supported - BUT I too hate being pigeon-holed into a single window - I LOVE being able to see the messages in all my custom folders ("reply-to", "plans", etc.) at a glance, and there apparently is no other email software out there to do this.

The one thing driving me to finally get away from Eudora is the apparent lack of unicode (?) support - I frequently get messages with line breaks rendered as "Â" and apostrophes rendered as "’" - if I could fix that, maybe I'd even stick with Eudora for a while longer...

[Patty Winter]

In article <a832c9ab-2742-4bed...@googlegroups.com>,

<alle...@gmail.com> wrote:
>{Raises hand} Another current Eudora user (since the early 1990's) here.
>

>The one thing driving me to finally get away from Eudora is the apparent
>lack of unicode (?) support - I frequently get messages with line breaks
>rendered as "Â" and apostrophes rendered as "’" - if I could fix
>that, maybe I'd even stick with Eudora for a while longer...

I finally abandoned 10.6.8--and hence Eudora--less than two years ago,
and although I miss many aspects of Eudora, it is nice to be able to
read all the heavily formatted messages one gets these days.


Patty

[David Morrison]

On Wednesday, 19 December 2018 05:06:03 UTC+11, russt wrote:
> Agree strongly, except that modern apps do in fact use multiple windows, including word, excel, Terminal, Finder, all modern browsers, etc. I imagine that a new Eudora might take advantage of tabs in some useful way, like most of these apps do, with keyboard shortcuts to flip between windows or tab-panes.

Which comes down to my original question: is it Eudora if it does not operate like Eudora? Just because it is called Eudora does not make it so. Nor the fact that it uses some Eudora code. Nor even that it operates like Windows Eudora for Mac users.

> For people that don't use filters, (I use them extensively), they basically get a one window interface. The way I've always used eudora (on the mac), is to use the filter report for a quick summary of new mail, and that becomes an index of mailboxes I can visit or not. I keep another window open with all my mailboxes. I quickly move thru the open windows reviewing and closing them using the CMD-W keyboard shortcut.

Exactly!

> BTW, been using Eudora in a fusion (vmware) VM for many years; the only trick is to get a copy of MacOS server 10.6.8, which is probably pretty hard to come by now. It works fine and has very little impact.. I even set my wife up the same way and she has not complained at all. you can copy/paste anything so it is just another application. Plus you can use VM snapshots for backups and/or copy the entire VM around. I'm running with the latest version of Fusion; no upgrade issues so far.

I have been using Parallels to run Eudora ever since OS X stopped supporting Eudora. It is a bit clunky but it *is* Eudora!

> Would love to see a desktop email as good as Eudora, but it is a daunting development effort.. remember that Eudora was a pretty big engineering team in its heyday. I admire some of the folks that have tried, but it needs to be a more substantial effort. It seems odd to me that Apple has not made a better effort, but to be honest, I think that email is more or less dying out among the younger generations. I usually get grunts or one-line replies these days. :)

Apple would prefer us to use their proprietary systems, like Messages, iCloud, etc. Microsoft and Google are doing the same. A major new version of IMAP is almost released. Any new e-mail client will have to implement this too.

Cheers

David

[Nick Werner-Matavka]

On Friday, 21 December 2018 05:38:57 UTC-5, David Morrison wrote:
> On Wednesday, 19 December 2018 05:06:03 UTC+11, russt wrote:
> > Agree strongly, except that modern apps do in fact use multiple windows, including word, excel, Terminal, Finder, all modern browsers, etc. I imagine that a new Eudora might take advantage of tabs in some useful way, like most of these apps do, with keyboard shortcuts to flip between windows or tab-panes.
>
> Which comes down to my original question: is it Eudora if it does not operate like Eudora? Just because it is called Eudora does not make it so. Nor the fact that it uses some Eudora code. Nor even that it operates like Windows Eudora for Mac users.

That last sentence is the key. You seem to be a big fan of the user interface of Eudora *for Mac*, so something that operates like Eudora for Windows on Mac wouldn't cut it for you.

This is an important question; some people like the Windows UI (i.e. designed by Gehlhaar et al.) and would like it on Mac, some like the Mac UI (designed by Dorner) and would like it on Windows.