MailConverter is a utility which converts mail and mail-like files of various sorts into Eudora mailboxes.
MailConverter works on several kinds of input files: babyl. mmdf, LeeMail, MacEMail, America Online, eWorld, cc:Mail (limited support), VMS mail (limited support), Ricemail, Pine (Unix and DOS) and Elm mail files; files saved from several news programs (NewsWatcher, nn, gnus); files saved from Eudora; and any other text files that have typical mail headers at the beginning. Folders of files (recursively) can also be converted. Files which appear to be digests will automatically be burst. See "Description" for all the details of using MailConverter.
MailConverter does not handle the following formats: QuickMail and CompuServe mail, and no doubt many others I've never heard of.
MailConverter is freeware — please distribute it! But include all descriptive text files when you do.
Freeware Eudora vs Commercial Eudora:
MailConverter works by constructing new mailboxes, or by appending to old ones. Freeware Eudora and commercial Eudora differ in their ability to deal with this.
Commercial Eudora is generally happy to accept new mailboxes, wherever they live and whenever they're made: just double-click on the file, or use the "Other…" menu choice in the Mailbox menu., or let MailConverter launch the file.
Freeware Eudora, at least as of version 1.4, is less friendly. In this case, the mailbox must reside in your Eudora folder, and it must be there at the time Eudora is started. Double-clicking on a mailbox in freeware Eudora will only work once its corresponding table-of-contents file has been generated by selecting it from the Eudora mailbox menu.
File Format Warning
MailConverter generally figures out what kind of file it's been presented with by looking at the header. If it sees something legal, it expects the rest of the file to be legal too, in whatever format the header implies. If the header looks like good Babyl, for example, but the rest of the file isn't, don't expect the converter to work.
Digests
MailConverter will burst digests into a mailbox of separate messages. Digests, as typically delivered by mailing lists, come in two general flavors: either they follow the official rfc digest structure, or they don't. If you want to burst a digest you've received as a message, you need to know which is which, because you'll want to follow a slightly different procedure in the two cases. Official digests should be saved without headers; casual digests, which are really just a variant of the "generic" format (see the documentation file by that name) should be saved with headers. Digests in true rfc format will have a line something like this at or near the top of the message: ------- start of digest (x messages) (RFC 934 encapsulation) ------- where x is the number of messages in the digest.
Settings Warning for conversion of America Online, eWorld and MacEMail files
One of the settings in MailConverter is "Allow only TEXT files as input". For most kinds of source files, this is the right choice. America Online mail files are not text (in general), so this setting must be unchecked if you want to convert those. Likewise eWorld files -- those are usually text but not always. In MacEMail, unread message files are not tagged as text files, while message files which have been read are tagged as text files. In this case too you should keep the the TEXT-only setting off (unless you don't want to convert unread messages). The TEXT-only setting is off by default (in earlier releases of MailConverter it was on by default).
Converting files with attachments and/or large messages
Eudora only checks for attachments on incoming mail from the POP server or local spool file. If you wish to convert a mail file with attachments in it, you must use the spool-file option on the resulting, converted file if you want to get at the attachment.
Similarly, Eudora only breaks up large messages on incoming mail from the POP server or local spool file. While MailConverter does have an option to do this break-up itself, I recommend that you use Eudora's own hack instead. Soon enough, Eudora will handle large messages in a more reasonable fashion anyway, so you might just as well keep your mail files intact.
Memory Warning
MailConverter uses buffers for the conversion, since direct file manipulation is painfully slow. That means it needs an input buffer and an output buffer allocated at the same time, each of which will be about as large as the file being converted. (plus a few extra k-bytes, since the resulting Eudora mailbox is typically somewhat bigger than the input file). That means that the largest file it can convert will be about half the size of whatever memory allocation you give the program to run with. The default is 384k (CodeWarrior's default). If you see an Alert saying "Insufficient memory", just quit, increase the allocation, and start again.
IMPORTANT NOTE FOR AOL/eWorld CONVERSION: Because some AOL and eWorld files are binary-encoded, a second buffering pass is necessary to do proper conversion. In other words, instead of two buffers per message/file, there are three, which means the largest file it can convert will be about 1/3 the size of whatever memory allocation you give the program to run with, plus a few k-bytes.
Finder Note
You can drag one or more files or folders onto the MailConverter icon and convert that way. This does not depend at all on the presence of the Drag Manager.
Drag & Drop
If you're running 7.0 or 7.1, you can get still get access to MailConverter's Drag&Drop support. Pick up Macintosh Drag And Drop 1.1 from ftp://ftp.apple.com/dts/mac/sys.soft/extensions. Last time I checked, this package did not include a drag-aware Finder, so you won't be able to drag to or from the Finder in the new Drag Manager style (eg, dragging files from the Finder to one of MailConverter's windows). But other inter- and intra-application drags should be fine, in particular dragging from Anarchie or NewsWatcher to MailConverter. A drag-aware Finder for 7.1 is available from eWorld and also comes with AppleScript 1.1 and CodeWarrior 4.0.
The Drag Manager is included with 7.5 - no further extensions need to be, or should be, loaded. System 7.5 comes with a drag-aware Finder.
System Limitations
MailConverter does not run under System 6 (or anything earlier)! Don't even bother trying.
Comments, Suggestions, and Bug Reports
Send any and all comments, positive or negative, to rshapiro@bbn.com. Bug reports are especially welcome. If you find a reproducible bug, it would be very convenient if you could send me the mail files that are causing the trouble. Please send them as attachements, in some compressed format (eg .sit or .sea).
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Matti Haveri for organizing and cleaning up the documentation files, and adding the nice graphics!
Usual disclaimer
MailConverter is solely my responsibility. BBN has nothing to do with it, Qualcomm has nothing to do with it. On the other hand, the responsibility for *using* this program is yours and yours alone.
