Penelope
Qualcomm's intention with the Penelope (huh?) project is to join the Eudora® user experience with the Mozilla platform. We intend to produce a version of Eudora that is open source and based on Mozilla and Thunderbird. It's *not* our intention to compete with Thunderbird; rather, we want to complement it.
Qualcomm is committed to both preserving the Eudora user experience and to maintaining maximum compatibility, for both developers and users, with Thunderbird. It is our goal to build a single development community around Thunderbird and Eudora, so that both mailers advance faster than they previously have.
Contents
Roadmap
Our roadmap is as yet fairly indefinite. Part of the reason for that is we want feedback from you, the user community, on just what Eudora features are a priority for you. We will have two feedback releases before we make the first release intended for general use.
Current Status
UPDATE (8/31/07): OK, so it took a bit longer than expected, but the first beta release is now available. See the Penelope Releases page.
The team is currently working on an extension that remaps keys and provides some other UI functionality. The current version is available on the Penelope Extensions page.
Note that if you are a current Eudora user who wishes to give Thunderbird a try, the Thunderbird importers for Eudora are a bit rough, especially for MacOS users. It may be worth waiting to try to import your mail until we make some improvements to the importers.
You can also view a list of all the bugs and feature requests currently assigned to the Penelope project. These are in the Bugzilla Database. You can perform your own search in Bugzilla, or use a pre-defined search for Penelope bugs:
All bugs with at least one vote, sorted by bug number
All bugs with at least one vote, sorted by votes (most to least)
Release 0.1
- Importers for your mail store and contacts
- Remapping of accelerator keys
- Basic settings and personalities
We expect this release to provide a bare minimum for Eudora users to feel comfortable, so that they can provide feedback and get involved in development.
The Penelope extension provides new icons and sound files as well as familiar key mapping, icons, toolbar layout and column layout; the most recent patch is at http://wiki.mozilla.org/Penelope_Extensions. The beta version of Eudora 8.0 itself is at Penelope Releases.
See the Documentation Project for documentation on the features in version 0.1.
Release 0.5
- Filter importing
- Major UI Elements
- Unique Eudora message handling operations
We expect this release to be usable by the most adventurous Eudora users.
Release 1.0
- Stationery
- Import for all Settings
- Minor UI elements
We expect this release to be comfortable for the vast majority of Eudora users.
The Future
Once we finish version 1.0, we will divide our attention between bringing over some of the more obscure Eudora features and customizations, and doing new work. We expect to track the Thunderbird roadmap, including calendar integration, and also to bring new ideas and capabilities to both mailers. We will flesh out this section of the roadmap based on user input from earlier in the process.
Team Members
The core members of the Penelope project are currently:
- Steve Dorner, QUALCOMM®, original author of Eudora for Macintosh
- Jeff Beckley, QUALCOMM, original co-author of Eudora for Windows
- Dale Wiggins, QUALCOMM, longtime Eudora developer
- Geoffrey Wenger, QUALCOMM, longtime Eudora developer
- Matt Dudziak, QUALCOMM, longtime Eudora project manager
- Mark Charlebois, QUALCOMM, Linux developer and Thunderbird user
Get Involved
The Penelope project is in its infancy, so please be patient while we get our act together.
If you'd like to be a tester of Penelope, please watch this page; we'll be sure to let you know when we have something worth trying
If you'd like to help develop Penelope, either watch this page or send one of the team members an email.
We are currently in the process of entering all our feature plans, as well as requests and comments from the Discussion page into the Penelope Bugzilla Database. Please take the time to look through the list of features and changes already planned.
If you would like to comment about how a feature is implemented, or about other details of the feature, feel free to add a comment to the bug.
If you like a feature, but do not have a comment about it, please avoid 'Me too!' or 'I agree' comments. Instead, please VOTE for the feature. (The voting option appears just above the 'Additional Comments' section when you are viewing a bug).
Note: in order to comment on, or vote for bugs, you will need to have a Bugzilla Account.
For Developers
If you are a developer and want to get involved, see the Penelope Developer Page
Group communication
To discuss Penelope, see the Discussion tab above, the Penelope Section of the Eudora Forums or the unofficial newsgroup emailman.software.clients.eudora.penelope. The latter is accessible via web or newsreader.
- Core team members hang out in the IRC channel '#penelope' on irc.mozilla.org'. For basic information on getting started with IRC, see the Penelope IRC page.
- The Penelope Section of the Eudora Forums provides a forum for discussing ideas, making suggestions, etc..
QUALCOMM Involvement
Eudora has been a QUALCOMM product for many years. QUALCOMM continues to have a keen interest in the users of Eudora, and is being kind enough to donate the time of the above staff members to the Penelope project.
Trademarks Detailing
QUALCOMM and Eudora are registered trademarks of QUALCOMM Incorporated
