MacMail is a simple program designed to convert a unix-style mail file to a series of text files. Each message is written to a file, with the letter's subject becoming its file name.
MacMail is shareware; if you use it more than once, you have to send $5.00 to:
Paul Lambert
340 North Burrowes Road
State College, PA 16801
International users send a postcard instead.
To use MacMail, first you need to download your unix account's mail spool file. This will usually be in the directory /usr/spool/mail and will have the same name as your login id, i.e. if you are plambert@cse.psu.edu your mail file will be /usr/spool/mail/plambert
Then, run MacMail and open this file with it. You will be presented with a Save⦠dialog box for each message that appears in your mail file. The suggested name is taken from the Subject: line of your letter and then truncated if necessary. Also, colons are removed from the name as they will cause problems. Each resulting file will be a TeachText file, but can be opened in nearly any word processor.
Options
Choose filenames: Disabling this item will skip the save dialog boxes for each message; the files will be placed in the same folder as the original file. Please note that if any messages have identical subject lines, the later files will overwrite the earlier ones, so if this might happen, you should probably check this option. This will be fixed in a future version; I do want to just append the messages into the same file (though I could allow that as an option) but think it would be more useful to make a unique name for each.
Features to be added soon:
Drag&Drop support for System 7.x users. A seperate "viewer" utility to view the messages in a reasonably straightforward format. A feature to allow new messages to be written to a file which would be processed by a unix shell script.
I'm looking for a good idea for an icon for MacMail, too. If you have one, let me know!
Send bug reports, praise, complaints, jokes, and other correspondence to plambert@cse.psu.edu.
