• OT: Mail archives

    From Don Y@21:1/5 to All on Sat Oct 12 05:06:37 2024
    Lawyer asked me to dig up some email correspondence from
    ~20 years back. Of course, any MUA under windows -- in
    that era -- likely stored mail in a proprietary format.

    In my case, OE used dbx files which are tedious, at best,
    to parse with a hex editor. :<

    <http://www.mitec.cz/mailview.html> seems to do the trick
    (though the UI is a bit cumbersome).

    I'll have to poke around their site to see if there are other
    useful "goodies"...

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Martin Rid@21:1/5 to Don Y on Sun Oct 13 11:38:05 2024
    Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> Wrote in message:r
    Lawyer asked me to dig up some email correspondence from~20 years back. Of course, any MUA under windows -- inthat era -- likely stored mail in a proprietary format.In my case, OE used dbx files which are tedious, at best,to parse with a hex editor. :
    <<http://www.mitec.cz/mailview.html> seems to do the trick(though the UI is a bit cumbersome).I'll have to poke around their site to see if there are otheruseful "goodies"...

    There's OEClassic that is supposed to import that format.

    Cheers
    --


    ----Android NewsGroup Reader---- https://piaohong.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/usenet/index.html

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Don Y@21:1/5 to Martin Rid on Sun Oct 13 11:36:13 2024
    On 10/13/2024 8:38 AM, Martin Rid wrote:
    Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> Wrote in message:r
    Lawyer asked me to dig up some email correspondence from~20 years back. Of course,

    There's OEClassic that is supposed to import that format.

    MailView's appeal was that it didn't need to be *installed*;
    I could just run it as a static binary off my desktop, etc.
    As it isn't an MUA (no need to deal with network traffic),
    it just needed to be able to parse the format of the .dbx
    files and present their contents.

    So, I could locate the messages of interest and extract
    them from the archive into individual .EML files.

    Then, simply erase the MailView executable from my desktop!

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Carlos E.R.@21:1/5 to Don Y on Sun Oct 13 22:13:06 2024
    On 2024-10-12 14:06, Don Y wrote:
    Lawyer asked me to dig up some email correspondence from
    ~20 years back.  Of course, any MUA under windows -- in
    that era -- likely stored mail in a proprietary format.

    In my case, OE used dbx files which are tedious, at best,
    to parse with a hex editor.  :<

    <http://www.mitec.cz/mailview.html> seems to do the trick
    (though the UI is a bit cumbersome).

    I'll have to poke around their site to see if there are other
    useful "goodies"...

    The best way to export/import mail from/to different mail clients, is:

    - the source mails need to be on a MUA that supports IMAP.
    - copy the mail to a folder on any IMAP server available (it can be
    local to you, not internet).
    - on destination machine, copy the mail from the imap server to
    wherever you want it.

    No need for translation or special import/export functions. Caveat: both originator and destinator softwares need to support IMAP, and you need
    an intermediate IMAP server.

    --
    Cheers, Carlos.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Don Y@21:1/5 to Carlos E.R. on Sun Oct 13 14:58:31 2024
    On 10/13/2024 1:13 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
    On 2024-10-12 14:06, Don Y wrote:
    Lawyer asked me to dig up some email correspondence from
    ~20 years back.  Of course, any MUA under windows -- in
    that era -- likely stored mail in a proprietary format.

    In my case, OE used dbx files which are tedious, at best,
    to parse with a hex editor.  :<

    <http://www.mitec.cz/mailview.html> seems to do the trick
    (though the UI is a bit cumbersome).

    I'll have to poke around their site to see if there are other
    useful "goodies"...

    The best way to export/import mail from/to different mail clients, is:

      - the source mails need to be on a MUA that supports IMAP.
      - copy the mail to a folder on any IMAP server available (it can be local to
    you, not internet).
      - on destination machine, copy the mail from the imap server to wherever you
    want it.

    No need for translation or special import/export functions. Caveat: both originator and destinator softwares need to support IMAP, and you need an intermediate IMAP server.

    What you need is something that can *read* the local archive of the messages (given that the original mail account is often defunct so accessing the messages on a server is not possible). No use trying to connect to
    an IMAP server unless you have an MUA that can process the local copy
    of the archive!

    If folks didn't create arbitrary file formats and, instead, stuck with traditional formats, then one could write a script in a text editor to
    just parse the *text* file as necessary.

    Software vendors keep wanting to "improve upon" mechanisms
    that already work -- injecting their own bugs and idiosyncracies
    in the process.

    Ventura Publisher used to have a delightful *text* (SGML-ish)
    format. So, if the application didn't have a feature you wanted
    (e.g., replace all figure numbers with text of the form:
    Figure <chapter>-<number>), you could implement it outside of
    the application and then let the application re-parse the
    file to incorporate your changes.

    But, Corel decided to buy VP and "improve upon" this simple
    representation (for negligible efficiency -- time *or* space -- gains)
    and cut off these wonderful back doors that THEY wouldn't have time
    to implement. Solution: stick with older versions.

    As annoying as Adobe can be, one can usually access their
    files with a text/hex editor and a bit of commonsense.

    [E.g., I use Illustrator to "draw" the paths for the various
    gestures that I recognize. Then, open the .AI file and extract
    the few lines of PostScript code that represent the essence of
    the gesture and paste those into my "gesture database". So,
    *I* don't have to design a tool to build gestures, graphically,
    but can rely on an existing tool to do so on my behalf!]

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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