[X4U] Backing up Apple Mail in Leopard

[Ed Gould]

On Sep 30, 2008, at 4:35 AM, David Ledger wrote:

>> From: Ed Gould <edgould1948 at comcast.net>
>> On Sep 28, 2008, at 3:57 AM, David Ledger wrote:
>>
>>>>  From: Ed Gould <edgould1948 at comcast.net>
>>>>  Do you know of anyone that is offering PGP for mail.app ? I tried
>>>>  Google and the only thing that came up was some hack and it was  
>>>> out
>>>>  of europe (IIRC).
>>>
>>>  What do you mean by being a 'hack'?
>>
>> I mean that it is the author states it will only work with version
>> x.x and it may have issues with newer versions.
>
> If you mean 'only work with version x.x' of the mailer, then either  
> it will or won't work with your emailer - the PGP side should be  
> pretty universal.

This is getting a little tiresome and probably a little anal for me,  
my memory (which can't be trusted but is somewhat spotty) the author  
stated this product was a hack and he has versions of his program for  
10.4 and 10.5 of mail. I am too tired to worry about this at this  
time. The number of people who (rightfully IMO) have issues with  
hacks on here is not small lets say. Since it looks like they are  
dependent on the version of mail any update that occurs looks like it  
*MAYBE* possible to break mail. If mail stops working (which is  
unacceptable to me). That means to me that if you have an hacks on  
mail and it breaks Apple can (and will walk away from the issue,  
which is a valid thing to do, IMO). Meanwhile if mail stops working  
you must have another email program waiting in the wings just in case  
or somehow back out the update from Apple to get you back to a  
working version. I do have issues with my reasoning ability due to a  
stroke and really do not find going out of my way to fix something  
that (IMO) should not break base code. I do not remember if the  
author indicated that the email was stored in plain text on the  
computer or not. I would guess that it would pretty well defeat PGP  
if it did. BUT I do not remember specifically (and I am too tired to  
go look) about any more specifics and I am not going to publish the  
URL for a "hack" as it rewards  such authors.
what reasonably is needed is that apple provide the necessary API's  
to mail to use PGP or Apple its self provides PGP support. That is  
why I think that it is up to AAPPLE to provide.

I *think* that at one time another email program called EUDORA was on  
the verge of supporting PGP but it went to a yearly subscription base  
and besides various system lock outs I quit using EUDORA forever. I  
lost track of the product so I do not know if they ever did or not.  
But daily locking up of the computer(read crashing) took a toll on my  
health so I will never look at it again.

>
> If you mean 'version x.x' of PGP then it's a limited version and  
> you'd be right to avoid it (unless it's only the very old versions  
> it's not compatible with).
>
>> Sometimes you can say
>> who cares but with PGP the data is encrypted and if can't be
>> unencrypted because of a version change you are pretty well sunk. ALL
>> mail that is encrypted is essentially lost. That is what I am
>> concerned about.
>
> You'd normally only use PGP for the transmission of email, not the  
> storage on your computer - you might use an encrypted disc image  
> for that. So the mail isn't lost if there's a PGP compatibility  
> issue, just not readable by the recipient.
>
>> By buying that product you can only hope that the
>> author will forever support the product. There are no guarantees in
>> computer world and this is a BIG issue. I cannot afford to loose any
>> email.
>
> The open version - GPG - won't have this issue because there will  
> always be enthusiasts. The downside is that it's not (AFAIK)  
> interfaced to Mail and you have to do things to use it.
>
> David
>
>
> -- 
> David Ledger - Freelance Unix Sysadmin in the UK.
> HP-UX specialist of hpUG technical user group (www.hpug.org.uk)
> david.ledger at ivdcs.co.uk
> www.ivdcs.co.uk
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