Along with the various different programs that enable you to send and receive email, there are a number of programs that work with the client programs or your stored email to perform some specific task. I cover a few of them in this section. Unless I provide a specific URL, assume that all of the following programs are stored in:
ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/pub/tidbits/tisk/tcp/mail/
Alan Staniforth's AddMail is an odd beast, an SMTP gateway that can receive mail from an SMTP server and save it in UUCP format for use by Eudora. Why would anyone want such a thing, you ask? If, for some reason, a POP account isn't available, as it isn't for the dial-up users of Demon Internet in the United Kingdom, AddMail is perhaps the only reasonable way you can use Eudora, which otherwise requires POP at all times. LeeMail would work in this situation, but needless to say, many people prefer Eudora. So, if you're in a similarly unusual situation where you need AddMail's talents, check it out at:
ftp://ftp.demon.co.uk//pub/mac/addmail/
Signature-watching is a favorite pastime on the Internet, and the people whose signatures are the most interesting generally customize them for each message. Assuming you don't have that kind of time, a utility like David Kabal's free Autograph, which enables you to easily change your signature in Eudora, might be just the ticket. Autograph supports random signatures, multiple signatures, and multiple random signatures. It's a touch tricky to set up random signatures, and changing signatures with Autograph isn't as automated as you might like (you do have to open a document each time), but if you want the multiple random signature capability, Autograph is where it's at.
Those of you who want to run a mail server with MailShare (see MailShare listed later in this chapter) should also check out AutoShare, a free application from Mikael Hansen that adds some welcome capabilities to MailShare. AutoShare provides an auto-reply capability that can immediately return a message to any inquiries that come in to a specific address. You also can set AutoShare to reply with different responses based on the contents of the Subject line, and it can even attach a binhexed file if necessary. AutoShare also provides basic mailing list manager capabilities, and although it could use a little more of a graphical interface, it has performed like a champ for me throughout the beta testing (the release version should be out by the time you read this). You can request a copy automatically by sending email to autoshare.update@admin2.kb.bib.dk with the word Latest in the Subject line, and the AutoShare FAQ is at autoshare.faq@admin2.kb.bib.dk.
For most people, Eudora is a sufficiently good email reading and searching environment. However, Eudora's searching capabilities aren't ideal, and it has that pesky 32K text limit that splits large digests. The answer, if those two problems haunt you, is Akif Eyler's free Easy View, which uses a unique technique for viewing large text files in certain formats. Easy View creates an internal index to one or more text files and breaks them up by message, if it's a Eudora mailbox or a digest in a specific format, or by article if it's a file like an issue of TidBITS in the setext format. Easy View has excellent searching capabilities and can extract all the found items to a separate file, making it easy to create subsets of a large amount of data. With the included GetURL extension (a BBEdit extension, not a system extenion), Easy View supports Command-clicking on URLs to resolve URLs using Anarchie or MacWeb. Highly recommended.
ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/pub/tidbits/tisk/util/
Due to its flexibility, both in configuration and in scripting, a large number of scripts and plug-in settings file for Eudora have appeared on the Internet. Their functions range from increasing the chunk size in Eudora to creating droplet applications that automatically send files to pre-specified users. I couldn't hope to cover each of them, but if you want to do some exploration, check out the various listings of them at ftp.tidbits.com in the directory listed below. The files ending in "-as" are AppleScripts, and those that have "prefs" in the filename are usually plug-in files that you drop in your Eudora folder to modify one of Eudora's standard behaviors.
StarNine, one of the prominent Internet developers in the Macintosh world, is perhaps best known for its email gateway products. StarNine is currently testing a new product called ListSTAR that will provide full mailing list manager and auto-reply capabilities on the Macintosh. Although it might seem that such a product would require a dedicated Internet connection, StarNine is working on two versions of ListSTAR. One version requires a dedicated Internet connection, and another works over a SLIP or PPP connection with a standard POP mailbox like an individual user would use. It's too early to say much else about ListSTAR other than that it looks extremely promising. It should be out in mid-1995, so check StarNine's Web page for an announcement.
PGP stands for Pretty Good Privacy -- it is an encryption method that you can use to ensure that your mail is not read by anyone other than the intended recipient. The U.S. government restricts the export of PGP because cryptography, like PGP, is classified as munitions -- I won't get into the debate here other than to note that because of this getting MacPGP is a pain. Gregory Combs created the MacPGP Kit to bring together a number of the resources available to make MacPGP (once you get it) easier to use. I consider it still too difficult for standard use, but if you're seriously interested in secure email, check out the MacPGP Kit. The resources listed below should get you started with MacPGP and the various related utilities.
http://www.utexas.edu/~grgcombs/htmls/crypto.html
http://www2.hawaii.edu/~phinely/MacPGP-and-AppleScript-FAQ.html
ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/pub/tidbits/tisk/util/
Mail Processor is a good idea in need of a better program. It's a stand-alone HyperCard stack that reads in a Eudora mailbox, which you can then use to generate lists of messages that contain a certain string. I often want to find information in large mailboxes of old mail, but I encountered various errors when using Mail Processor. Because it isn't particularly quick, it probably wouldn't work well with my really large mailboxes. Although Jim Allison is distributing Mail Processor as shareware for $24, it feels much more like a tool he built for himself than for use by others. If Mail Processor sounds like something you'd use, give it a try.