Re: Basic UI requests
Sean McBride wrote: 2) i wish there was a key to select the first unread message. (Lets say I've just tabbed to the mailboxes pane, pressed up arrow several times, and landed on the PM list mailbox, then I press tab to get into the pane with the subjects. Then I want to start reading from the newest unread post. What to do? I have to page down several times, then use the mouse to select the message.) Or the oldest unread post, in case you want to read them in chronological order. -- Raúl Vera Director Orbit 3 Pty Ltd http://orbit3.com
Re: Updating PM's UI?
Steve Abrahamson wrote: I am constantly amazed when people somehow transpose a message like this should be updated and hear please change everything so that your users completely lose all familiarity with the product. For pete's sake, when you paint your bedroom do you get lost? Ok, Steve. Tell us what you have in mind. Don't worry about what anyone knows. Just tell us what your refresh would change. Use whatever human-factors or graphic-design jargon you want. If we don't understand, we'll just ask. -- Raúl Vera Director Orbit 3 Pty Ltd http://orbit3.com
Re: Importing Exported Emails
Tom Dillon wrote: I just figured that nobody loved me anymore. :,-( In fact I had to dig out my pet rock for comfort. Only once did it ever indicate to me that it didn't love me. It climbed up onto the headboard of my bed and jumped off landing on my forehead. I think it was annoyed with my snoring. :-7 Um, Tom, I think you should get out more... -- Raúl Vera
Re: Still Love PowerMail but...
Evie Leder wrote: I don't understand what the fuss is. IF PM allowed rich text or multipart outgoing emails, those who didn't want it would not have to use it. It would widen it's base, which would be good for the company. (but, with the text-only zealots, it might be a difficult move) Perhaps it could be set up with plain text as the standard, and only by changing a preference would it allow you to send multipart emails It would be helpful when dealing with commercial clients who expect me to be able to send multipart emails and also for me to know more about sending them. For those who don't want it, well, they could turn it off. :) What you say is to some extent true. I for one wouldn't mind if PM offered HTML editing, because I would just turn it off, as you say. The point is rather whether including it would widen their base enough to justify the expenditure of resources given their target market and other features they would not be able to apply those resources to. It's a business decision, not a technical one. As I understand it, CTM has taken the position that they would rather address the kind of features that make them different from other mailers and that meet the needs of a certain kind of power user who is frustrated with the limitations of other mailers. Whether this is a successful long-term business strategy remains to be seen, as does any niche-oriented business strategy, but in my opinion, and I think that of many Powermail users, it is, as we now have FoxTrot, very flexible filtering, excellent spam control, good scriptability, multiple inbox views (the recent mail window) etc., all of which help handle large volumes of incoming mail, generally much better than the alternatives. And there are still things CTM could do, to judge from the lists of feature requests you see on this list, that many, and perhaps most, of us would like to see before HTML editing, which is big, difficult to do well, and does nothing for helping one manage lots of incoming mail efficiently. If I'm not mistaken, we text-only zealots would prefer CTM did these things, as they are useful to us, rather than put resources into something expensive that we don't care about. Does that make us zealots? I think it just means we have our interests and the pro-HTML camp has theirs. No need for name calling. After all, I could say that people who really care about outgoing HTML also probably care about mobile phones with polyphonic ring tones and multimedia messaging. Both are sexy; both are largely pointless or even obstructing when the volume of communications is the major issue. But I won't say that, as it would be name calling. :-) The real question for CTM is how providing HTML editing at cost X compares to providing something else at cost Y that helps the Mac-using professional inundated with 1000 emails a day to sort it all out and deal with it efficiently today and later on when he needs to search it. And how the numbers X, Y, the 1000 above, and the number of people getting that many mails, are likely to change in the future. At the rate the use of email is growing, I think their bet looks pretty good. They won't take over the world, but they will always have a market, and it will grow. -- Raúl Vera Director Orbit 3 Pty Ltd http://orbit3.com
Re: Turnaround time for licence?
Basheera - To answer your question about license turnaround time: We've seen everywhere from overnight to a week. Mine took a week. CTM is a small company. Raúl Basheera Khan wrote: Hi all, I am a new PowerMail user, as well as a new subscriber to the list - so, howdy. :-) I have a question regarding the turnaround time in acquiring a PowerMail registration code. I made my licensing payment yesterday afternoon, and thoroughly expected to hear from the PowerMail crowd by this morning at the latest. However, nothing doing. In your collective experience, is this normal? I have sent a follow-up email to [EMAIL PROTECTED], but have received no response. While I'm at it, I noticed in my trial version of the software that there appears to be no way to sort messages by thread. Is this the case, or am I missing something very obvious? All tips and advice much appreciated. Many thanks, Basheera (in my personal capacity) -- Basheera Khan Editor: Ping Wales | Welsh IT News Online | www.pingwales.co.uk tel: +44 (0) 1792 429 835 | mobile: +44 (0) 7787 535 269 | skype: basheerakhan jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | msn: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Ping Wales is the proud media sponsor of Technology Wales 2005, Wales' largest IT trade show. For free entrance to the exhibition and seminars, register today at www.technologywales.co.uk -- Raúl Vera Director Orbit 3 Pty Ltd http://orbit3.com
Re: Still Love PowerMail but...
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I did not realize when I purchased PW that it had such an anti-HTML following/agenda. Must ask them! Perhaps I have erred in my purchase... You must be joking! CTM bills PM (not PW) quite clearly as a text- centric emailer for power email users, which they define as people who need to handle hundreds if not thousands of messages a day in a mission- critical capacity. CTM takes the position that a significant majority of such people prefer text-only, simply because it requires less bandwidth, both communications and cognitive. CTM and PM have quite consciously not gone down the same road Mail and others have followed, in order to better serve their chosen market. If you didn't realise this and find that you aren't part of their target market, then perhaps you didn't read their marketing materials closely enough. Maybe it was the lack of typographical oomph? -- Raúl Vera Director Orbit 3 Pty Ltd http://orbit3.com
Re: 05/03/07-RC (PM ARCHIVE AND PM USER'S OS/PM VERSION)
Rein Ciarfella wrote: 2-Some individuals have given their input (Thanks!) on their OS, PM version, etc., but quite a few members have not responded, which makes me wonder whether they are receiving the List as a digest and how often/when that goes out (?) or whether my question is just being viewed as coming from a goofy newbie and not worth wasting time on. There are other reasons one might not respond to such a request. In any sort of public forum, not every question gets an answer, and nobody is obligated to answer any question. Some resist answering such questions simply because they are a bit nosy. Raúl -- Raúl Vera Director Orbit 3 Pty Ltd http://orbit3.com
Re: SpamSieve whitelist/PM whitelist
It sounds like one of your earlier filters is acting as a catch-all, preventing all subsequent filters from ever getting to it. Try moving your spam filters to the top of the list. If SpamSieve gets invoked, move them down one, stop SpamSieve, and try again. Keep going until you find the filter that is turning off all subsequent ones when it shouldn't. Of course, this is easier said than done, as it requires you to wait for spam to arrive then stop SpamSieve on each iteration. Alternatively, wait till you get a single spam that isn't processed properly (these days, shouldn't be very long), pull it up in a window, then just look at the filters one by one, in order, thinking through exactly what it would do with that message. This is less empirical but works if you understand your filters well and can read them without making assumptions (ruthless empiricism is the key to debugging). Raul [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The problem is I don't think this is a SpamSieve issue. I say this because the application never get's launched at startup. It's like PM has decided that none of my email needs to be checked. I know from re-reading my archives that somebody had a very similar issue, so I was kind of hoping that they would chime in with the way to fix this. Wayne -Original Message- From: Andy Fragen [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Dec 15, 2004 1:53 PM To: PowerMail List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: SpamSieve whitelist/PM whitelist From SS select View Show Whitelist. From there you can add or delete entries. -- Andy Fragen -- Raúl Vera Director Orbit 3 Pty Ltd 8 Coneill Place NSW 2037 Australia http://orbit3.com
Re: PowerMail Spam Filter and SpamSieve
Giovanni Andreani wrote: I was wondering if SpamSieve works filtering messages before PowerMail does. For example, let's say I've created a filter where Mr. White's mails are considered as spam and therefore immediately deleted. Once SpamSieve is trained to recognize the same incoming messages as spam is it going to act before PowerMail's filters and, if so, is there any sense in keeping these filters active? SpamSieve is actually invoked via the SpamSieve:evaluate and SpamSieve: actions filters, which you can place anywhere you want in your filter list. One reason you might want to keep your own filters and apply them before SpamSieve is that they can reduce the number of messages you need to check for false positives. As a Bayesian filter, SpamSieve cannot guarantee that it will not declare a valid message to be spam (a false positive), so you need to check messages that it has declared to be spam for false positives and mark them as good so it can learn. As I receive several hundred messages per day, of which 90% are spam, I would spend way too much time checking them all for false positives. Instead, I have my own set of filters that find messages that for one reason or another I know are spam (e.g. they are addressed to my ISP login rather than my domain). Then I let SpamSieve have a crack at the rest, then I delete those that SpamSieve gave a spam rating higher than 90%, under the presumption that no false positives will look quite that much like spam (this may not be strictly true, but so far I'm not aware of any exceptions). With this system I don't need to even glance at more than one or two dozen potential false positives, while filtering out on the order of 200 spams, per day. At this point SpamSieve is so well trained that its accuracy is now running at 99.0%. I've had one false positive is many months, and only one or two false negatives (spams that SpamSieve thinks are real mail), every few weeks. I figure I'm doing about as well as can be expected until ISP start charging postage, as this is th -- Raúl Vera Director Orbit 3 Pty Ltd 8 Coneill Place NSW 2037 Australia http://orbit3.com
Re: SpamSieve not found
Thanks Andy- I tried each of these things, carefully testing each one by quitting both PM and SS, firing up PM, sending myself a message from another account on another machine, then checking mail in PM. Nothing worked. In fact at one point ScriptEditor itself asked where SpamSieve was, confirming that the issue is an Applescript problem rather than a PM problem. However, after one of these experiments I left PM running, though not SpamSieve, and while I was doing something else PM got some spam and flawlessly fired up SS! I quickly set up the same experiment and confirmed that the problem has gone away. All of which points to a subtle Applescript problem with the mechanism for finding apps on disk. Oh joy. OnyX I don't think has anything to do with it, as I downloaded OnyX only _after_ I had the problem, because running it was one of the suggestions for fixing it. Matthias Schmidt suggested deleting SpamSieve preferences. I didn't try this, as these preferences are used by SpamSieve, not by the system trying to find SpamSieve. I would be very surprised to find this relevant at all. Thanks for all the quick replies, and thanks to CTM for fixing whatever was making all my attempts to send to the list bounce. Raúl Andy Fragen wrote: *This message was transferred with a trial version of CommuniGate(tm) Pro* Here's what I did to get it to work. Some of it is a bit of voodoo because I'm not sure exactly how it worked. 1. I opened the script in Script Editor. Selected a message and ran the script. While SpamSieve was not open. 2. Log out, log in. 3. Open SpamSieve in Get Info and change the name to SpamSieve.app. Even if it already says this. I have a sneaking suspicion that it might be an AppleScript problem. I did many of these things several times. I don't know what worked, specifically, but it worked. Bottom line. This problem only occurred for me after deleting System cache from Onyx. -- Andy Fragen On Mon, Jul 12, 2004, Matthias Schmidt said: Did you trash the Spam Sieve preferences as someone suggested ? All the best Matthias --- schmidt-systemdevelopment http://www.schmidt-system.com iChat/AIM: MatKoyasan Tel. +31-736-56-3905 --- Am/On Mon, 12 Jul 2004 06:54:09 +0200 schrieb/wrote Raul Vera: Hi Karsten- I just moved to a new machine, running Panther instead of Jaguar, and now I have this problem. I have run OnyX, asking it to do most everything it does, but nothing has helped. Does anyone else have any insight into how to fix this? Raúl Vera Karsten Liere wrote: Hi Oliver, Had the same problem couple of days ago. What actually helped was using Onyx to delete whatever Cache files exist. In addition I ran the maintenance cron scripts. Whatever was the reason, PM is now happy again finding SpamSieve. Btw, a workaround is to first start SpamSieve before starting PM... HTH. Cheers, Karsten Ok. It works after moving into Application Folder - even without question, for SpamSieve. Sorry, after restarting my iBook today, he ask again for SpamSieve. It's surely a Bug in PM 5.01 or a broken Link in any Preference-File. Oliver -- Raúl Vera Director Orbit 3 Pty Ltd 8 Coneill Place NSW 2037 Australia http://orbit3.com -- Raúl Vera Director Orbit 3 Pty Ltd 8 Coneill Place NSW 2037 Australia http://orbit3.com
Re: Broken URL strings
Raul Vera wrote: Word wrapping cannot be disabled. [...] See RFC 822 [...] [...] RFC 822 [...] says that long _header_ lines _may_ be folded, but explicitly says that the format of the _content_ of a message is not covered. [...] Of course, a more recent RFC might have something else to say (822 is from 1982). The relevant RFC is actually 2822, which is intended to supercede 822 but is still a proposed internet standard, not a standard. It states that content lines SHOULD (their caps) be wrapped at 78 characters, to avoid display problems. This strikes me as wrong, as it is automatic wrapping that often _causes_ display problems. I much prefer the approach in RFC 2646 (also a proposed internet standard), which adds a completely backward-compatible format=flowed parameter to the text/plain MIME type, inserting soft wrapping that looks like hard wrapping to non-conforming clients but allows conforming clients to rewrap on display. Among its wrapping-for-display rules it suggests that single words that exceed the wrapping length _not_ be cut. This would seem to be a much more appropriate policy for a URL, even while hard wrapping per RFC 2822. So I would request that CTM do the following: -) Never wrap except at white space, even if single words exceed 78 characters, because wrapping isn't required and is done only for display reasons. Cutting long words, which are almost invariably URLs, doesn't improve their display, and usually breaks them. This will fix most, but not all, URLs broken by wrapping. -) Allow user control over wrapping, with separate controls over typed text, forwards, and quotations. The defaults would reflect the current behaviour. -) Implement RFC 2646. In fact, given that Powermail is attempting to avoid multi-media bloat and remain a really fast and lightweight plain-text mailer, I think it is particularly important that the handling of plain text be as powerful as possible. RFC 2646 looks to me to be a very good fit. Raúl P.S. www.rfc-editor.org is the official RFC site. -- Raúl Vera Director Orbit 3 Pty Ltd 8 Coneill Place NSW 2037 Australia
Re: Broken URL strings
I guess the poor folks who see this topic go by every few months when new users come on and try to sort out this topic must be getting a bit tired of not having a searchable archive that they can point people to. However, I have something to add to what's been said: Well... but does Outlook merely undo the breaks behind the scenes and give you an appearance of having control over it? I checked, and the only actual setting I could find in Outlook was to set wrapping of outgoing messages. Maybe it was Netscape that allowed me to set wrapping of incoming messages? It's still on this machine, so let me see... Yes, Netscape Communicator 4.75 lets me toggle wrapping incoming messages to the window width, and requires that I set a value for wrapping outgoing messages, though this can be anything greater than 1, it seems (it accepted 999). The following was the message I was thinking of (Dan Webb, line width limit): - Run some tests with other clients. I think you'll be surprised at how many mail relays have 78 as a hard limit, thus you never see what you intended the input to be. I would find it very unusual that a mail _relay_ would do anything to the content of an email message at all. The headers, sure, but not the content. Also here; interesting... (somewhere in the same thread): - True, this issue is more complex than I thought. I did some experimentation: [...] - Sending from Outlook to PM: PM is able to open the URL because it was composed as an HTML email message and PM (presumably) converted it to plain text, preserving the URL. That's interesting. - Sending plain text from Outlook to PM: PM is unable to open the URL because it is hard-wrapped and is not surrounded by angle brackets. But how is Outlook set up? It does have a setting for wrapping outgoing messages. Hang on, I've got both machines right here. I'll try. Aha! If I set the wrapping to longer than the URL (the max is 132), it works fine. If I set it shorter, the URL is cut and doesn't work. Interestingly, I can't disable the wrapping in Outlook, just extend it to 132 characters. Powermail did not wrap the long URL when it came it. If I go to forward the message, the URL is already wrapped, before I even send the message. Not done yet! hehe... Wayne Brissette made this note (Word/Line wrapping - can it be disabled?): - [...] Word wrapping cannot be disabled. As much as people think a mail client controls it, the mail client doesn't. See RFC 822 http://www.tac.nyc.ny.us/cgi-bin/rfc?822. - I'm guessing section 3.4.8 on page 15 of that RFC. Hmmm. I don't read RFC 822 that way at all. It says that long _header_ lines _may_ be folded, but explicitly says that the format of the _content_ of a message is not covered. On the contrary, RFC 822 explicitly says that formatting (including folding) of the content isn't part of the standard at all! Of course, a more recent RFC might have something else to say (822 is from 1982). I'm not convinced that folding is required, and my own judgement says it shouldn't be so that the receiving client can be set to display however you want. I'll see if I can dig up some of the more recent relevant RFCs. -- Raúl Vera Director Orbit 3 Pty Ltd 8 Coneill Place NSW 2037 Australia
Re: Broken URL strings
It seems that I am able to receive and launch the long URL's I get, but if I then forward that same message on to a colleague it's getting parsed up into separate lines at their end. I have tried putting brackets around the string but this is not helping. I think someone commented before that no matter what lines get cut to 78 or 80 (?) characters as e-mail makes its way through the internet machinery. It depends on the mail program at the end to ignore the added breaks and make the link workable. Not quite. The internet machinery does nothing of the sort. Either the sending email client (in this case, Powermail) or the receiving email client (the colleague's email client) is inserting hard line breaks into the forwarded message, without regard for preserving the integrity of URLs. On other emailers I've used, Outlook for example, one can modify the behaviour of wrapping (display only, insert hard wraps on incoming, wrap on outgoing, etc.). I know that when set to wrap incoming messages, Outlook will happily cut a URL in two, then proceed to highlight the first half at display time when it recognises it as a URL. This is quite irritating, but hey, it is Outlook. I have never heard of an email client that would eat up line endings in order to reconstitute a URL it assumed was broken, as there is no foolproof way to know when a URL ends. The brackets you see in Powermail are specific to Powermail, presumably to show you what it thinks is a URL on an incoming message, making it clearer when something has caused the URL to break. I can't find any wrapping controls in Powermail 4.1.3 at all. Does anybody know if there are any? Perhaps Powermail always wraps outgoing messages to 80 characters without taking special heed of URLs? Anybody know for sure? If your colleague isn't using Powermail, perhaps you could try to find the settings for wrapping incoming mail on his client, turn it off, and reforward a message as a test. If it works, then you've solved the problem. If it doesn't, then we know that Powermail is the culprit. If that's the case you could further try typing a long URL by hand and sending that to see if all outgoing mail is affected or just forwards. -- Raúl Vera Director Orbit 3 Pty Ltd 8 Coneill Place NSW 2037 Australia
Re(3): Powermail 4.1.2
On Wed, May 28, 2003, Evan Evanson [EMAIL PROTECTED], invoked powers within the internet realm, to proclaim ... On Tue, 27 May 2003 15:53:54 +0200, Mikael Byström wrote: It's extremely disturbing that I can't write an email without interruptions and check mail at the same time. If such simple act is less than stellar, then what else is hiding under the surface? Actually, I can write email while PowerMail checks the server for more mail. In fact, I'm doing that right now, just to make sure. Not sure what's going on with your setup. I really don't get this either. I've been following all the heated discussions lately, though I've tried to just keep my mouth shut. Anyhow, I've been able to compose messages while PowerMail is set to check for new mail every 10 minutes. I think folks are talking about different things. When the little window pops up, you can keep typing, until the progress bar itself freezes and typing is held up. This lasts for only a fraction of a second, but is distracting if you type fast. I find it annoying. There it foess (it lasted the time it took me to mistypye goes, less than a second but more than half a second. The window came up, the progress bar moved and the heading changed from login... to checking for mail, it proceeded for a bit, then the progress bar paused, as did my ability to type, then the progress bar resumed, as did my typing, then the window went away. If you are a hunt-and-peck typist you won't even notice it. If you type 70+ wpm it is a nuisance. I've also been able to do stuff in other applications while watching PowerMail check for new mail That shouldn't be a problem given that OS X does true preemptive multitasking. The issues related to a slowdown in email creation while retrieving mail sound to me like a multitasking problem, Actually, it appears, as others have commented, to be a multi-threading problem within the application, and it seems to occur only at a particular phase of the POP protocol, and perhaps only if it does not find any mail. It does occur every time, however. or perhaps due to settings. I think, in the internet settings, there is an option to allow more than one concurrent connection (just looked, but couldn't find) - could this be the problem? Nope. I just have one server I check, so this is the only connection. And I do have checking for mail set to be simultaneous. Or could it be related to dial-up software? I'm on a LAN here and on cable at home (laptop). No dialups, ever. It happens both places. Interference caused by spam software? I don't run any. I just keep tweaking my filters in Powermail. I have DSL access and my mail functions haven't caused interruptions in other activities. Again, this isn't the problem, nor would I expect it to be. Are you checking and/or sending one account at a time or more than one email account simultaneously? Nope, as above. The fact that the progress bar stops moving implies that the GUI thread is waiting on the network at that particular point of the sequence. Needless to say, this is a mistake, as the GUI thread should never wait for anything. -- * 867 PowerBook G4 * OS X 10.2.5 * 768 MB Ram * 500 PowerBook G4 * 10.2.6 * 500Mb RAM (The clock speed may be relevant to the length of the pause.) Hmmm. It just went again and did not happen when there was mail, so I think it might be a sequencing bug that doesn't handle the no-mail-found case correctly. Sorry this is so long, but the idea is to provide CTM with the most help in finding the bug. Besides, I type 70 wpm. :-) -- Raúl Vera Director Orbit 3 Pty Ltd 8 Coneill Place NSW 2037 Australia
Re: Failed Mail
I have received occasional mail returned under the title Returned mail: see transcript for details. Can anyone tell me how to access the transcript? It follows immediately in the same returned mail. Sorry, I should have mentioned this. Nothing follows. The returned mail is blank. I have several examples of this. Then there is no transcript and you can't access it. The server rejecting your mail is broken. Usually this error message appears in the body, not the title, and it is of course followed by the transcript. Does it always happen when sending to the same person or organisation? If so, send an email, perhaps forwarding one of them, to postmaster@whatever. If the sysadmin is any good, they will appreciate being informed of a mail server problem. Of course, the fact that the problem exists at all does not bode well for their being any good... :-) -- Raúl Vera Director Orbit 3 Pty Ltd 8 Coneill Place NSW 2037 Australia
Re: Not a real good start
For importing that much mails, you need a license. I switched to Powermail a few months ago, and I have very few complaints. It has features I haven't seen elsewhere that make it live up to its name. (Location-based SMTP-server override was the killer feature for me.) However, one of my few complaints is that the 200-message trial limit makes no sense for power users of email, which would appear to be target market for Powermail. Just about anyone serious enough about email to be willing to spend money rather than use any of the numerous free options is going to have more than 200 messages to import as the very first step in checking out the product. Because of this I could not really test Powermail at all before I bought it, so I almost didn't buy it. I was tempted by the feature list, which I had not seen on any other Mac OS X native emailer, so I took a chance. I'm glad I did, as it is very good, but the trial system was useless to me and is clearly annoying to others. This is almost certainly costing CTM sales. So I have a suggestion for CTM: Change the limit to 200 messages sent or received rather than 200 messages in the database. This allows power users to check out such things as how well it searches a large database (ahem), how well it imports from other mailers, how fast it navigates a large database, etc., all of which are important to power users, while still imposing a limit so that significant use requires a license. Raúl -- Raúl Vera Director Orbit 3 Pty Ltd 8 Coneill Place NSW 2037 Australia
