Closed Bug 360975 Opened 18 years ago Closed 6 years ago

Message Handling: Add ability to 'Pencil Edit' received messages

Categories

(Penelope Graveyard :: Mail Window, enhancement, P3)

Product:
Penelope Graveyard
Component:
Mail Window
Type:
enhancement

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
RESOLVED WONTFIX

People

(Reporter: mdudziak, Assigned: beckley)

References

(Depends on 1 open bug,
URL
)

Details

(Whiteboard: [gs]) 

Eudora allows users to edit incoming messages (for various reasons). Eudora calls this 'Pencil Edit'. Penelope should allow users to pencil edit messages as well. If you agree, vote for this bug.
Very useful for people who forget to put "http://" in front of their URLs, or whose messages are so hard to read that they need to be reformatted.
I receive email lists of activities from several organizations.  Using "pencil edit," I select activities in which I am interested and change the color to red or blue.  This effectively highlights the sections of the email in which I am interested.
(In reply to comment #2)
> I receive email lists of activities from several organizations.  Using "pencil
> edit," I select activities in which I am interested and change the color to red
> or blue.  This effectively highlights the sections of the email in which I am
> interested.
> 

I think that it would be useful to add in the header a field that shows that message has been modified, just to distinguish it from "original" contents that remained untouched.
(In reply to comment #3)
> 
> I think that it would be useful to add in the header a field that shows that
> message has been modified, just to distinguish it from "original" contents that
> remained untouched.

I'd like to see that be an OPTION.

(From Penelope Talk; partially in reply to comment #3 )

It would be always nice to know what was exactly in the original mail.

Here proposal how to have your cake and eat it, too: Editing a mail creates a copy of it. Just a line is added to header of the original mail, looking like "X-Penelope-EditedCopy: location=XYZ". In the mail browser, you may select between the original and the edited copy. The same mailbox would be a reasonable place to keep the edited copy.

Now, you see that technically, the edited copy is just some text linked to the original message. In the same way, it should be possible to attach any text to the message: that is, notes.
Core bug 254739 i believe.
Depends on: 254739
I don't use this, but I vote for any and all existing Eudora features. While I do believe there should some way to preserve the original and any modified messages should marked as modified; if Eudora doesn't currently behave that way, that can be additional functionality added later.  
I use this feature extensively. I vote that it be included. 
I use the ability to edit messages quite a bit to annotate, add information to, or correct the original message and would miss this functionality, so I have voted for this.

Editing a message to add short note (frequently just a word or two) seems so much simpler compared to composing a reply, sending it to myself, receiving it, and then filing it in the same folder.

The implementation is up to the folks doing the actual work but I would encourage them to keep it as simple as possible for the first release.

I think the idea of adding some additional header information that indicates the message was edited has merit and may be something simple to add. Perhaps it could store the date the message was changed, the "personality" of the editor, etc.

Adding a "notes" attachment to a message (as suggested by Ben Elkin) would simply be a type of change to the message. Eudora has a function to open a "New File" that Thunderbird seems to lack, so I'm not sure adding a "note" (as opposed to an arbitrary attachment) would be as easy as it might initially appear. Adding attachments to an existing message might better be tracked as a request for a new feature.

For those folks that would like to preserve the original message without changes, I like the idea that you could make a copy of a message (either in the same folder or in another folder) but that sounds like a request for a new feature, too.
> I like the idea that you could make a copy of a message (either 
> in the same folder or in another folder)

Yes, I know about the function in the context menu. I'd like something less complex.
Assignee: mozilla-bugs → beckley
Status: NEW → ASSIGNED
this is very important to me.  i was surprised to find many other email programs do not allow for this.  so after 10 plus years, i'm still an eudora user.  please keep this.
Assignee: beckley → mozilla-bugs
Status: ASSIGNED → NEW
An essential tool for me. I frequently receive journal tables of contents which I scan and choose only these articles I need to download later in full text. making them red, bold or highliting them in any other way right in the body of a message saves a lot of time.

Jan: don't remove other people from the cc list!
Status: NEW → ASSIGNED
Priority: -- → P3
I too am a 10+ year user of Eudora. My interpretation of this topic is, "the Pencil Edit function of Eudora is missing from Penelope". This is not an enhancement. It is an existing function of Eudora that is not supported. I use the Pencil Edit feature (and the ability to change subjects directly in the subject area) every day for all the same reasons and in the same way mentioned in prior comments. In addition I use the feature to note and track date and time of receipt on shipments or orders. None of the various enhancements to or modifications of the existing Eudora feature proposed above are important to me. Though not the only reason at this time, I couldn't consider moving to Penelope unless Eudora-equivalent Pencil Edit function is provided. 
I endorse inclusion of the 'pencil edit' functionality in the "new" Eudora...

Incidentally, I don't understand the need to keep polling Eudora users as to favorite functions and features. This strongly implies the intention of excluding features if they're simply not popular enough.

This is a ridiculous way to re-create an incredibly popular product. It shows the thinking is, as usual, being done by engineers, not marketers. Engineers understand machines and code. Marketers understand people.

People use Eudora and made it popular.

I've been using it since 1994 on the Mac. I was anxious to see a new version past 6.2.4 that corrected the problems inherent in it, especially the inability to deal with HTML or MIME coded emails. The long promised upgrade was to use the Apple Web Kit. That would have been enough for me to pay the upgrade fee. Correcting all the other deficiencies would have enhanced the value, but the point remains.

What we need is an upgraded Eudora for the Mac, not Thunderbird retrofitted to work and look like Eudora with the 100 most popular features of the "old" Eudora. I don't care how it's done (I'm not a technician, and what's under the hood bores the **** out of me). Start putting yourselves in the consumer's shoes and see how where they hurt your feet. It will make you better engineers, and you will make untold thousands of Eudora users very happy.


Speaking both as a software developer, I would suggest that the Penelope/Eudora team keep going about the process the way they are, contrary to comment #15.  I've also been using Eudora since the mid-90s, and yes, there's a reason I'm still using it today.  However, "do what the old system did" is not a plan which can be put into place -- that would mean 100 different things to 100 different people.  

The current approach makes sense, especially with what I assume are the limited resources at hand.  And some day, maybe, I'll find myself switching away from Eudora to something better.
Exactly, and the power of solipsism at work. Asking people for their favorite features (and then deciding which actually to implement -- a function of manpower vs. scope of work) is beautifully well-expressed as 100 things to a 100 different people. But you're right. I've asked developers to be developers, and they want to be philosophers.

Qualcomm threw up their hands at upgrading Eudora because (it doesn't take a genius to infer) they couldn't make money with the resources required to accomplish the task -- after leaving their public, some paying, most not, dangling with promises for almost two years.

So they deal with it by the moral equivalent of having the Red Chinese produce a "BMW" by basing it on their most popular native brand car, Red Flag... This despite the fact they've got already got a deal with BMW jointly to make the real thing already, and by the way, they're producing three completely new models of BMW produced entirely in China, the BS6, BS4, and BS3, to be sold in Europe... And they'll have the BMW brand, and they will be BMWs.

I didn't start using Eudora and continue doing so because of three or four "greatest, most favorite functions." A product is a totality. Yet we, the consumers, are supposed to strain ourselves to nominate a function, or six, AND provide a rationale for its value to justify to the team they should devote their limited resources to their development. The users didn't limit the resources. Qualcomm did.

I already use Thunderbird, at the expense of Eudora, because Eudora finally is just too damn tired and old and troublesome. And even though, by comparison, Thunderbird is sadly lacking in functionality in its totality. And yes, there's the possibility something else will come along for me to switch to. I hope it's in 13+ years. This switching around of a fundamental computer application is a pain in the ass.

Maybe Qualcomm should have just turned over the code to the Chinese. It would be better than this kind of solipsistic thinking. And they wouldn't have lost a penny more than they were afraid of doing.
As I see it, there are two choices here: sit around wishing that things weren't as they are - "if only Qualcomm thought that a full new version of Eudora would be commercially worthwhile... or failing that, why can't they become a charitable institution?" - or we can get on with making the most of the situation in which we find ourselves.  Given the choice of either (a) Eudora is completely abandoned or (b) the Penelope project, I'd prefer (b), and I expect that's how most people participating in this forum feel.  The idea is - in the end - to create something that has all the existing features of Eudora.  The voting system is a way of determining which features to work on first.

I agree: in a perfect world, we'd already have version 7 of Eudora for Mac, and Qualcomm would be well known throughout the computer world as makers of the very best e-mail app.  In a perfect world, half the world wouldn't be at war.  In a perfect world, someone who could out-think peat moss would be president.  In a perfect world... but it isn't one.  So let's get on with the job at hand.
(In reply to comment #17)

Leaving aside the misuse of the word solipsism, which actually applies to Howard's comments, he seems to forget that he is paying exactly nothing for the product, which rather makes him seem ungrateful.  Yes, if Qualcomm were doing this development, it would make sense to criticize them for the way they were handling it.  But Qualcomm isn't doing it anymore.  They've abandoned it.  Our choice is between this approach or nothing.  Criticizing the developers of a free product for not jumping through your hoops is pretty obnoxious.

(And even with a commercial product, it makes perfect sense to find out which features of a product people actually use, and want in the next version.)

If you feel put upon by being asked for your input, don't provide it.  But whining about the fact that they're actually asking what you want?

----

And, it goes without saying, I think pencil edit is important.  It's one of the many Eudora features I use that Eudora and no other email program does.
We're in the land of really wasting time with these side matters that are bordering dangerously on the ad hominem (I'll be happy to explain my understanding of the applicability of "solipsistic" to Michael's argument, but offline, where it belongs). I'm sorry now I offered my point of view.

My references to Qualcomm are qualified by the bona fides of the Penelope team as it's named and defined on the main page describing the project (http://wiki.mozilla.org/Penelope): they're all implicated in the development of Eudora and all still receive mail at the Qualcomm server; in some way, however indirectly, Qualcomm is subsidizing this effort. I am nevertheless by no means grateful to Qualcomm (who let me and a lot of other loyal paying customers down), but I am to the team members. Immeasurably grateful.

That the product is free does not render me (or anyone who receives such a "gift," if that's what it is) susceptible to ingratitude if I question the mode or the form of the free product. Eudora was "free" also, if you wanted it that way. I always paid for it, except in the earliest days, before Qualcomm bought the license. I see no reason to be grateful, aside from the generosity of the developers in giving their talent and time, if there are aspects to this that render it less than desirable. The economic truth, there's no such thing as a free lunch applies here too. The value (never mind the utility) is diminished by the wait...

I'm on this specific Bug item thread because I wanted to record my vote in favor of the function in question (pencil edit). To vote was the first thing I did, or that anyone should do.

Then the development team can skip all the irrelevant rigmarole to follow (even from me). Nevertheless, I think it a mistake (and revelatory of the process and those carrying it out) to call this particular function, and many others, an "enhancement."

At a certain point, strip out enough Eudora features and it's no longer Eudora.

Robin hit it on the nose. This voting system determines which features to work on first. I'm just trying to say, work on enough of them (whether the set is 50 or 100 I couldn't say, but I've already asserted it's likely a higher number of features, or it simply won't be Eudora) before saying version 1.0 is gold. You may think I use the language incorrectly. May be, but also irrelevant. I haven't missed the point, however, that this is still v.0.1, which means a long way to go, and the wait for Eudora 7, now deceased, (at least in part from this same team) has conditioned my expectation and my fear that this too is a long march to Moscow, and eventually winter will come...
Assignee: mozilla-bugs → beckley
Status: ASSIGNED → NEW
I use pencil edit every day to note follow up actions in response to emails. Please keep this feature.
I strongly support this feature.  I would also like to see pencil edit available for copies of one's sent messages (see enhancement request #394637).
I also use it.  But mainly altering the SUBJECT.  Not sure if this has been sugested yet.

when mails come in from say paypal, I mark them as dispatched in the subject..

Don't know if all the folks sugesting they want to vote have actualy added a vote to the vote system, but putting it in the threads, will just get lost!!!
Status: NEW → ASSIGNED
I've just moved to Eudora 8, and am finding some of beloved features missing.  This feature is incredibly helpful.  I don't know how I would get along without it.  Please ad it back into the software as soon as possible.  Best Regards.
I use this for many things, but most commonly to permanently correct malformed URLs in emails I want to keep. To do this also requires use of the Blah Blah Blah button to see the source text in $@*^# HTML emails. 


After having moved from Eudora 7.1.0.9 to Eudora 8.0.0b3, I am really missing the possibility to edit both text and subject (to indicate that the text was modified). Please re-install this most useful possibility. 
I love this feature, and use it regularly.  Although I use it for annotating sections of messages, I use it most often to create hyperlinks to documents I've moved from the attachments directory.  Thus when I go into the message again, I can click on the link and it opens the file, rather than having to search for it within my semi-convoluted filing system.

I'm not sure I agree that we need a string indicating that the file has been edited, though.  One of the reasons I like the pencil edit is that I can stream-line the look of a message.  Extra text would be counter-productive in such a case.  When I make the decision to use this feature, I either make a note (by different coloured text or some other means) or leave it be (if it doesn't matter that I've edited the text).
As a Eudora Mac user since 1994, I also depend on pencil editing in both subject and body, and the few times I thought about switching email clients, this one feature drew me immediately back to Eudora. 

I like editing the subject for sorting and identifying reasons, and for noting if the mail contains login info, serial number,  phone numbers or the like; also for mailing list digests, if the digest contains a notable message within. Really, this ability alone is worth the price of admission (yes, I always paid for Eudora). 

This is a must-have.
I echo Comment #28 verbatim (including the year I started using Eudora and paying for it!) I certainly use the facility to amend the Subject much more than Body.
This must be a Mac thing, I've always had to forward it to myself with changes in it to do what you guys make sound so simple. I want the pencil edit too!
I endorse the pencil edit function as well.  in fact, i will keep using Eudora 7 until 1) pencil edit and 2) the ability to add and subtract quotes in messages is added to Eudora 8.
I may have been the first vote on this, at least my address is first, and it has now been more than three years. My greatly appreciated Eudora is becoming more and more difficult to use, with its lack of utf-8 support, and I am just waiting for this pencil edit to switch. I like the idea of putting the edits in a copy, so long as one can if wished delete the original and retain the copy. It would be nice if the development team could give us a time frame for completion of this functionality. Thanks and best regards, John
Losing unique features like pencil edit make this just another email client; ho hum. PLEASE keep this. I am still hanging on, even though I have the occasional crash and corruption (Time Machine to the rescue).
I could wait no longer to upgrade from classic Eudora (because of its lack of utf-8 support), and am now a regular user of Eudora 8. I am generally very pleased with it (the development team has done a really fine job), but the lack of pencil edit is causing me a very hard time. Could the specialist responsible for this upgrade give us an idea of when it will be ready? Thanks and best regards, John
I'd definitely like to see this option & soon.  I'm still using cE for message editing tasks or editing Eudora OSE's mailbox files in a text editor.  I'd also like the ability to edit the subject line as most of the subject lines in e-mailis I receive aren't very useful for keeping track of issues.
I have been militating for this upgrade for a long time (see above) and note that it has a very large number of votes (61). Now that Eudora OSE is stablized and in pretty good overall shape, I feel it would be a mistake to give priority to continuing to fix relative minor bugs/requests if that means leaving aside this critical advantage of classic Eudora (for many it was the defining advantage). As an initial measure I agree with David that subject line editing would help quite a bit, but that is not enough. The prior suggestion to base the pencil edit on a copy of the message concerned, and not on the original, would seem to simplify the task. If there are facets of Thunderbird which prevent going ahead with development in Eudora, then I would propose that the Eudora team contact the Thunderbird team to see if a joint development approach is possible. In any case I do feel that it is reasonsable to fix a time line for inclusion of the subject line editing and pencil editing features. Thanks again to our great Eudora development team!
I keep hanging in their with Eudora 7 because of the lack of this feature in Eudora OSE and the lack of being able to edit subject lines.

To illustrate how important this is to me, I choose this feature over the ability to render in-line attachments that my clients send me so often from Outlook. For those, I have to go to a web-based email client, download the attachment, then redirect the original email with the attachment re-attached and coded in a manner that Eudora 7 can handle -- a real pain, but it's a trade-off I keep making to keep the pencil edit feature!

Please, please please. Thanks!
URL: http://gsfn.us/t/r1ps
Whiteboard: [gs]
I just added my vote for this very useful feature. I was still using Eudora 7.1 until yesterday when I finally had to switch to Eudora OSE because of continuous crash of 7.1 which I could not solve this time. I find OSE to be be much faster in email download, but I am already missing the edit function. Although I understand why some comments ask to keep a copy of the modified email, for my purpose I do not wish to keep one, in fact I want the edit to replace the original.
As a work around I could edit, using Notepad+, the OSE file containing the concerned email. But this is not a long term solution.
As previously asked by others, please let us know when this feature as a chance to be added in OSE.
Yes. The pencil edit must be  mandatory! The only reason I stick with Eudora, besides the blah, blah, blah, and color coding the text in the subject rather than the whole bar (that makes the text unreadable).
I was glad to see Eudora OSE and looked forward to installing it on my new
hard drive. 
But after loading, no pencil edit, so sorry to say it gets trashed, and I will limp along on my old faithful Eudora.
You eliminated, to me, the most utilitarian item of the app.
Regards, Alan
I endorse all those asking vociferously for this function as I did 3 years ago. I too am limping on with Real Eudora (on 10.6.6) although the limp is barely noticeable. I've tried Eudora OSE several times but to me it still doesn't have the feel of Real Eudora. I will persevere as clearly I will have to migrate eventually. I just hope it is not too soon.

Could Jeff Buckley, or anyone else in the team, indicate what present intentions are?
I cannot abandon my beloved Eudora without this feature.  Period.
I don't see any valid reason why this feature should not be implemented. Actually I don't see any valid reason at all why a lot of other feature have not been implemented since a long time ago. 

Can maybe anyone explain to me why is seems to be sooooo difficult to just bring Eudora up to the standard that had already been achieved and by which it outcompeted for manz years any eMail-program that Microsoft tried to push into the market? I can't believe these are just technical difficulties. Yes, Eudora OSE has some users, but it just doesn't hold the position it used to hold - and as far as I am concerned this is because some of the key-features which made Eudora unique (the pencil is one of them) are not being implemented.
I've been a paying customer for 13 years. For me, this is by far the most important missing feature.
I receive messages with a blank Subject line quite frequently. How else, other than filling in the missing descriptors, could I later get such messages properly listed in Subject searches?

Some vendor only put a reference number, PO number, customer number, etc. in the Subject line. Without the ability to add an item name or keyword it can get very time-consuming to find a message later if one can't remember the exact name or description of the part used by the vendor.

Unfortunately, ignorant/undisciplined/lazy email users abound today who in responding, don't properly quote just the pertinent phrase or sentence on which they comment, but include entire huge message threads with each response of a few words.   If I can't delete all that unneeded garbage from the message -- particularly if I already have all the past messages of the thread -- my archives grow in size far too rapidly. That slows down searches and greatly increases the number of false or redundant positives returned by most Body content searches
Penelope didn't see any activity in the vcs for the last 8 years, closing.
Status: ASSIGNED → RESOLVED
Closed: 6 years ago
Resolution: --- → WONTFIX
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