Penelope

Penelope is an open source extension to the Mozilla Thunderbird mail application.

Qualcomm's intention with the Penelope 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.

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

The latest beta release of Eudora, version 8.0.0b2, is on the Eudora Releases page. If you just want the latest Penelope extension without Eudora, you can get it on the Penelope Extensions page.

The Thunderbird importers for Eudora are rough, especially for MacOS users. It may be worth waiting to try to import your mail until we make more improvements to the importers.

You can view a list of all the bugs and feature requests currently assigned to the Penelope project, in the Bugzilla database. Search in Bugzilla, or use a pre-defined search for Penelope bugs:

All bugs sorted by Priority

All bugs sorted by Bug Number

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 version is at Penelope Extensions. The beta version of Eudora 8.0 itself is at Eudora 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

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