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All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

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Mail::Box needs feedback 8 Comments More | Login | Reply /

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  • I had a quick look at the docs and this looks like a very interesting project.

    Speaking as someone trying to move away from Win2K+Outlook to something more open, a series of modules that could read (and later write, or use as transport) to Outlook 2000 under Windows would be a great help (I think you'd have to use OLE Automation calls as the PST file format isn't documented). This would be great for opening up a very common but surprisingly closed mail system (Outlook talking to Exchange is another similar extension). And it would make it very easy to write a utility to export Outlook folders to other formats.

    The other (probably larger) thing to address in mailbox handling is the idea of an address-book: I know mail folders and the like don't store address-books, but if you could get standardised address-book handling (say, all the addresses used in messages within a folder), then the ability to sit over a mail system that does hold a seperate address-book would be greatly enhanced.

    --
    T

    • I agree. Mail::Box is a lot like DBI, in that it supports a lot of formats. The documentation seems to be very heavy on reading/grepping but doesn't say much about how to translate from any given format into another. How about providing one turn-key solution in the documentation showing how to do that?
      • Probably because it is too simple that you didn;t see it. The differences between folder types are hidden for the user by "automatic coercions". For example:

          # prepare
          my $mgr = Mail::Box::Manager->new;
          my $pop = $mgr->open(type => 'pop3', ...);
          my $inbox = $mgr->open('=InBox');

          # examples implicit conversions
          $pop->copyTo($inbox, delete_copied => 1);
          $inbox->addMessage($pop->message(0));

    • I do have some Outlook processing code, but it is far from complete. It is (as usual for M$) hard to get the real details about the format. Besides, I never use windows myself and want to keep it that way. It makes the development of Mail::Box dependent on other Perl hackers which do use Windows, and those people are very rare. (volunteers?)

      Address-book handing is certainly not something Mail::Box should do, although the Mail::Address object (from MailTools) which it uses can be improved a lot. In my e

      • Thanks for the reply.

        I understand the reticence to get on to Windows, but I think it might prove worthwhile if you want a larger audience (try floating the idea on the ActiveState Perl-Win32 mailing lists and see the response you get). Does your existing code use the MAPI interface, or OLE Automation to Outlook, or trying to read the PST file directly ? A (non-perl) mate recommends the MAPI approach. I'm not in a position to volunteer directly, but I will try and find some time to look at this over the nex
      • Hello. I have a class that reads Outlook Express dbx mail folders. It has had limited testing. I developed it based on Walther Estergaard's documentation. Any use?
    • I think you'd have to use OLE Automation calls as the PST file format isn't documented

      One project which you might want to have a look at is the conversion of Outlook and Outlook Express data files to the MBOX format - The flagship of this project is LibPST which provides direct access to Outlook PST files (without the requirement for OLE automation).

      The sourceforge page for this project is http://sourceforge.net/projects/ol2mbox [sourceforge.net]

      • One project which you might want to have a look at is the conversion of Outlook

        Cheers, I've been looking at this [active-com.de] program written by a German bloke that does a nice UI for exporting Outlook messages to folders, but I'll certainly have a look at the other one you mention too.

        --
        T
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