FEATURE REQUEST: Storage Format Change ( Updated 10/17/23)

]I'd like to see the future version of PAN change from the .mbc storage format to a format that's open and emails can be imported and exported from Pan.

Don't get me wrong, I REALLY LIKED using PAN, but I quit using Pan for that very reason when I found out that no email client could import .mbc ( Mulbury Storage Format files).

I kinda feel that its deceptive, that you're not warned up front, that once you import your emails into PAN, you're perm stuck using PAN, due to the storage format it uses. .mbc files.

I'd like to see PAN either use the .MBX extention like Eudora

Or, EVEN BETTER, have Pan use a format that one of my favorite Linux Email clients ( CLAWS MAIL ) uses, for their storage format, they use  " THE MAIL DIR FORMAT" where every email is saved as a individual .eml file,  instead of a bundled single mailbox format like .MBX where attachments etc are stored within the mailbox.

MAIL DIR has lower risk of corruption, due to your emails not being stored in a BINARY FILE like .MBX and .PST files.

WINDOWS LIVE MAIL 2012 was the last email client that used the MAIL DIR format, where each email is stored as a separate .eml file.

Chris

Specs:
(As of 9/19/23)
--------------------------
Windows 10 PRO
Local Account ( Standard User)
16 GB of Ram.
WD Blue SN570 NVMe 1000.20 GB SSD
Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-7100T CPU @ 3.40 GHz

Eudora 7.1.0.9 ( W/ Hermes)
POP3

Pandora uses standard UNIX type mailbox-format, and it's an open format, you can find more info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbox

In addition, International code pages and MIME encapsulation are fully supported. You can of course turn off MIME attachments and have Pandora store decoded attachments as files.

Corresponding mailbox-files extensions (mbc and mbi) stand for:
Mailbox Content - mbc
Mailbox Index - mbi

[Mulberry connection is incidental, despite the fact that Mulberry was using the same format (UNIX type mailboxes) as well, and was a pretty decent client as I recall.]

Mailbox file extensions are just the window dressing. You can, for example, rename any mbc file (to no extension) and move that file to your Mozilla data folder (it's something like profiles/[user name]/Mail/Local Folders/) and use it right away.

There are reasons however why different extensions are in use:
1. To indicate the source client.
2. There are minor differences in implementation. Using importers is a preferred method.
3. Legacy - Standardized, plain text and open formats are very durable. Mailboxes from say Pico and Pine, created 30 years ago are probably slightly different flavor from modern day mailboxes.

[I'll address eml-files storage in another post.]

EML-message files are in the message-realm what mbox format is in mailbox-realm so to speak. Plain text, standardized/structured and widely in use. [The same could be said for VCF-files ("Address Book realm") and HTML-format ("styled text realm").] Pandora fully supports eml files and when you hit File/Save as it's first item on the list. You can also drag and drop eml files directly from File Explorer/Desktop onto mailbox summery to import individual messages.
Message-File Viewer, DLL shipped with Pandora is dedicated (eml) message-file viewer (so when you double click on eml-file in File Explorer you have elegant one instance-one window app to view that message).

Storing source messages on bulk, as individual eml files is not very practical. Frequent read/write of enormous amount of files would raise all kinds of red flags in Windows and would slow down the process.

Here is one thing that you can do:
1. Open any mailbox, select bunch of messages.
2. Hit File/Save as, choose destination folder and hit Save.
All selected messages are saved as eml-files.