Convert Laurel/Lafite mail files to Unix mbox format

The Xerox PARC Laurel mailer stored messages in files in an idiosyncratic format. The format is discussed informally here and realized in Interlisp-D code here (search for PARSEMAILFOLDER1). There's a sample here.

The format of the stamp field of a Laurel message is stamp <c.r.> <length.of.message.in.5.ascii.chars> <length.of.stamp.in.5.ascii.chars> <the.char.U.or.D> <the.char.S.or.U> <any.char> <c.r.>

U.or.D is Undeleted or Deleted S.or.U is Seen or Unseen

The Interlisp-D Lafite mail client retained the Laurel file format.

The mbox format came later. It's widely implemented in mail clients and email archive and forensics tools like ePADD.

This software will convert Laurel files into mbox format.

To run it, you need Java (JRE) 21 or later installed.

Convert a single Laurel file to mbox format

Run the program with arguments --laurel for the Laurel file and --mbox for the output MBox file, as in this example. The Java app is in the JAR file LafiteToMBox-1.0-SNAPSHOT-fat.jar, assumed to be in the current directory.

$ java -jar LafiteToMBox-1.0-SNAPSHOT-fat.jar --laurel data/laurel/Tutorial.mail --mbox /tmp/Tutorial.mbox

You'll see output like

14:34:45.348 [main] INFO org.interlisp.lafite_to_mbox.Main -- Converting data/laurel/Tutorial.mail to /tmp/Tutorial.mbox
14:34:45.386 [main] INFO org.interlisp.lafite_to_mbox.Main -- Processed 17 message(s)

The result is written to the file /tmp/Tutorial.mbox.

Convert all Laurel files in a directory to mbox format

Run the program with arguments --indir for the directory holding the Laurel files and --outdir for the directory which is to hold the output mbox files, as in this example.

The program will attempt to convert every Laurel/Lafite file ending in '.mail' residing in data/toBeConverted into an mbox file in out/converted with the same name plus .mbox. For example, an input file data/toBeConverted/Sample.mail will be converted to out/converted/Sample.mail.mbox.

$ java -jar LafiteToMBox-1.0-SNAPSHOT-fat.jar --indir data/toBeConverted --outdir out/converted

Debugging output

You can induce the software to write low-level progress messages to the console with the --debug argument. --debug headers will log information about the message headers, --debug body will log information about message bodies, and --debug flags will log any undocumented message status flags encountered. You can combine the options, e.g., -- debug body,flags.

Building the software

Execute the Gradle fatJar task. For example:

$ ./gradlew faatJar

The result will be build/libs/LafiteToMBox-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar.