Add-on Software to Complement Eudora

• Use Eudora with Netscape
• Eudora and PGP (Pretty Good Privacy)
• e-Mail Notify
• MailAlert
• Newman's Trombone
• ShareBox
• Spell-Checking
  • Non-English Dictionaries for Eudora Pro Spell Checking
  • Third-party spell-checkers for Eudora Light

Eudora Mailto Watcher

Qualcomm has released the program Mailto Watcher. Now you can browse the WWW using Netscape, and when you select a "mailto:" URL, Eudora will be called up instead of Netscape's mail program. The To: line will be filled in for you with the address in the mailto: URL. This is very convenient for keeping copies of email messages you send while web browsing with the rest of your outgoing messages in Eudora. The Help menu in the Mailto.exe program should tell you all you need to use it. Please note that (a) the Mailto: Watcher program only works with Eudora Pro 2.2 and higher, or Eudora Light 1.5.4 and higher, and (b) something very close to this feature is built-in to Eudora Pro 3.x and Eudora Light 3.x.

PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) and Eudora

• At long last, there is a "native" solution to integrating Eudora and PGP, with the release of the plug-in for PGP for Personal Privacy from PGP, Inc.. Here are the details

• PGPmail is a PGP plug-in for Eudora 3.0 and later (both Eudora Pro and Eudora Light), and also works with Netscape's mail client. At present it is only available for Windows 95 and Windows NT platforms; they suggest using the versions from ViaCrypt for DOS, Unix, and Macintosh platforms. PGPmail is a product of Pretty Good Privacy, Inc., whose founder, Chairman of the Board, and Chief Technology Officer is Phil Zimmerman, the father of PGP. Nothing quite like getting it straight from the source. The upgrade for current PGP users is US$29.95. For first time users the full version is US$149.95. As long as you have a copy of the freeware version of PGP (2.6.2 from the MIT site), you qualify for the upgrade price -- this is supposedly a limited-time offer.

• PGPEudra, written by Comerwell Software, aka Hans Bausewein, fully integrates PGP with Eudora. There are several released versions -- some are freeware and some are shareware. Some are designed as Eudora 3.0 plug-ins, others change the executable file you run. The best way to get the latest is to visit the PGPEudra Home Page.

• EPPI is a Eudora/PGP Plug-In for Eudora 3.0 that uses EMS API. It is freeware from Damon Jakob Gallaty, and comes in 16-bit and 32-bit versions. (The URL for this software seems to change daily, so good luck!)

• WPGP by Jack Gostl is a general-purpose PGP front-end utility for MS Windows. WPGP is shareware; the registration fee is US$ 35 via check or money order, or US$ 40 via credit card or Compuserve SWREG.

• PGPn123 which comes in both freeware and shareware versions.

• Mollusc is shareware that supports only a limited set of mail clients, including some versions of Eudora, Pegasus, Netscape, and others -- follow the link for the latest details from them. Their web page doesn't say what the registration fee is (always a negative in my book), and I didn't feel like downloading a program I couldn't use to find out, but feel free to do so yourself.

e-Mail Notify

e-Mail Notify is a program that allows you to check your POP3 mailbox without launching Eudora. It will tell you if you have new mail, download mail headers, and even allow you to peek at your mail contents without downloading the mail. This may be especially useful to users who need to monitor incoming mail but don't have a lot of free computing resources, since e-Mail Notify requires much less Windows memory, GDI resources, and User resources than Eudora. The Win 3.x version is freeware, and the versions for Win95 and Win NT are very cheap at US$5.00. I don't go for all of the bells and whistles like Voice E-mail for Eudora and Graphic E-mail, but I think this is one useful little program.

MailAlert

According to the authors, MailAlert "is a convenient utility for Microsoft Windows 95 and Windows NT operating systems that notifies you when you have received electronic mail. It works with a variety of commercially available mail systems, and has the advantage of taking up very little memory when in use."

"MailAlert displays an icon in the notification area of your Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0 task bar. When you receive new mail, the icon will change to show that you have new mail, and will slowly flash until you click on the icon to acknowledge the new mail. You can configure MailAlert to beep, play a sound or video, show a picture, or run any program or document when you receive new mail. You can also have a message box displayed with the Envelope information (author, subject, and date) of any new messages displayed. You can customize MailAlert to notify you differently based on the message author or subject."

Newman's Trombone

Newman's Trombone is a shareware program (US$ 15 registration fee, two week free trial period) that allows a user to delete messages from the POP3 server based upon user-specified criteria, without having to download the messages first. Criteria may include a sender's email address or a particular subject line. Like e-Mail Notify, you can also configure Newman's Trombone to alert you to new mail, download the first few lines of a message, download an entire message, or launch Eudora or another mail client. The newest version of the program (2.0), adds features such as auto-replying, forwarding and redirecting, as well as new filtering options such as filter by date and size, and more. Note that Newman's Trombone does not require Eudora to work -- it is a completely independent program, but it is not a full-fledged mail client, so you will want some additional program to read, organize, compose, and send mail.

The program name appears to come from the Seinfeld character of the same name (played by Wayne Knight), and fans of the show might like the two .wav files that come with the program, including Jerry's famous "Hello, Newman" (10KB .wav file) and some long (80KB .wav file) frantic monologue by Newman himself that plays everytime the program finds new mail on your server. I strongly suspect that they would get old pretty fast (especially the latter), but in version 2.0 you can select whatever .wav file you want, or have no audible notification at all. Since Eudora Pro 3.0 includes all of the features of Newman's Trombone, plus more extensive filtering options, it looks as if this software will appeal mostly to Eudora Light users who are willing to pay US$15 for a little extra functionality.

ShareBox

[Quoted from the ShareBox web page] ShareBox is a simple application enabling multiple users to share a single mail application on a computer to get their e-mail, without changing settings, by simply choosing their name from a list. ShareBox creates a list of users, each having their password protected, personal mailbox. To define a new user, after launching ShareBox, a user needs only to fill-in the requested fields in a dialog box. To access their personal mailbox, users simply select their name from the list of registered users, then type the required password. ShareBox lauches Eudora automatically, ready to use. ShareBox is shareware (registration fee $19.95 - not sure if that's US or Canadian) and is compatible with Eudora Light and Eudora Pro; there are versions for MS Windows and the Macintosh.

Spell-Checking

Non-English Dictionaries for Eudora Pro Spell Checking

Eudora Pro version 3.0.1 and later

• French
• Spanish
• German
• Italian
• Portuguese
• US English
• UK English

Eudora Pro version 3.0 and earlier

• French
• German
• Italian
• Spanish

To configure Eudora to use any directory other than US English one needs to edit the Eudora.ini file, adding or modifying the entries for LexPath= and MainLexFiles=. This is discussed in the Eudora Pro Help file (under Help / Topics / Using EUDORA.INI / Settings). You should change them to the following (or see my tips about how to change Eudora dictionaries on-the-fly):

LexPath=wherever you put the dictionary files, eg, c:\eudora\
MainLexFiles=the names of the dictionary files you want Eudora to use

For example, use the following:

French:
For Eudora Pro version 3.0.1 and later:
MainLexFiles=french.tlx,french.clx

For Eudora Pro versions up to and including Eudora Pro 3.0:
MainLexFiles=sscefrc.tlx,sscefrm.clx

UK English:
For Eudora Pro version 3.0.1 and later:
MainLexFiles=british.tlx,british.clx

For Eudora Pro versions up to and including Eudora Pro 3.0:
MainLexFiles=sscebrc.tlx,sscebrm.clx

US English AND UK English:
For Eudora Pro version 3.0.1 and later:
MainLexFiles=american.tlx,american.clx,british.tlx,british.clx

For Eudora Pro versions up to and including Eudora Pro 3.0:
MainLexFiles=ssceamc.tlx,ssceamm.clx,sscebrc.tlx,sscebrm.clx

US English AND French (so you can send email in Franglais)
For Eudora Pro version 3.0.1 and later:
MainLexFiles=american.tlx,american.clx,sscefrc.tlx,sscefrm.clx

For Eudora Pro versions up to and including Eudora Pro 3.0:
MainLexFiles=ssceamc.tlx,ssceamm.clx,sscefrc.tlx,sscefrm.clx
etc.

Third-party spell-checkers for Eudora Light

Eudora Light users, and Eudora Pro users who for some reason do not like the speller that comes with Eudora, can use third-party spell-checking programs. One that has been recommended to me is Spell Check for Windows edit boxes. The current version (as of October 30, 1996) is 3.00, and is free for private use. The author, Brian Quinion, reports that subsequent versions will be shareware for everyone. I have not used it, but you might find it worth a look.

Another third-party spell-check utility is Spell-Checking for Eudora Light from Internet Software Technologies. It costs $14.95, although it is not clear if that is US or Canadian dollars.

This page written by Ken Simler on April 26, 1996.
Last updated on February 19, 1998.
HTML source copyright © Kenneth Simler, 1996 1997 1998.
Comments and suggestions for new links welcomed.