Comments on: Podcast: MacNotables email client shoot-out

By: David Dunham

David Dunham — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 01:54:22 +0000

Jeff: While the mail is readable with a text editor, it’s not strictly text. The .emlx looks like it begins with a character count, then the message, then XML. So any editing would require revising the count, which would be a huge pain.

Dan: I was sorta worried that a Microsoft product would turn out to be what I’m looking for… I don’t know if I’m ready for that.

By: Dan Frakes

Dan Frakes — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 01:29:17 +0000

“So as soon as another app lets me edit, Iâ€™ll consider leaving Eudora.”

Entourage also lets you edit incoming messages (Message -> Edit Message).

P.S. Found this discussion via MacNotables Web search RSS from Google ;-)

By: Jeff Flowers

Jeff Flowers — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 22:51:08 +0000

In regards to editing incoming emails, I understand that in Tiger Mail, each email is simply an individual text file, somewhat did Maildir is. Certainly, you could editing the message with a plain text editor outside of Mail, if nothing else (although if you messed with it’s headers, you would probably need to rebuild Mail’s database).

By: Tim

Tim — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 08:27:01 +0000

No worries. It is usually my fault afterall ;-)

By: sjk

sjk — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 08:17:24 +0000

That link’s working okay here now, too. Pretty sure I first tried opening it in NetNewsWire, where I’ve occasionally noticed temporary “not found” errors with other links as recently as earlier today. Sorry for the false alarm; I’ll be sure to double-check if/when it happens again.

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 22:12:43 +0000

How weird. The link is working fine for me.

By: sjk

sjk — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 21:54:22 +0000

Oh, now I see Message > Redirect mentioned in a comment Tim linked to (broken link, btw).

I’ll listen to the MacNotables podcast later, although it’ll be disappointing if Mulberry and mutt are overlooked while “even Elm” gets mentioned. ;-)

By: sjk

sjk — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 21:44:48 +0000

Iâ€™m a big fan of it because itâ€™s the only client I know of that lets me edit incoming mail.

Emacs-based mail clients have that capability.

I typically get them in digest form (lots of messages compiled into one e-mail).

I’d really like an “undigestify message” commandÂ in Apple Mail. Kind of surprised no one’s written a plugin for that by now.

I just want a Message > Edit command.

In the mean time, you could use Message > Redirect [shift-commmand-E], edit content (including the Subject), send that editing message to desired recipient(s), and delete the original. That’ll add a some Resent-* and envelope headers to the new message but replies will honor the original sender/recipient(s) headers. And you can set up rules that match those redirected messages.

I prefer that method of editing messages to directly modifying the originals, although I don’t even remember the last time I’ve done it. I could easily be wasting too much time trimming excess noise from archived mail. Instead, I’d rather save plain text versions in a DEVONthink database (and elsewhere) for editing/archival outside the mail system.

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 18:03:47 +0000

Fair enough. I tried.

By: David Dunham

David Dunham — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 18:02:28 +0000

I had seen that, and it looked awkward and treacherous. I guess Redirect will sort of keep the original “From” though it adds a Resent-To — and in my case also signed and encrypted it (making a test message about 9x larger!). It also changes the date.

I just want a Message > Edit command.