Re: [ANN] PowerMail 4.2 private preview

[Pat O'Halloran]

It appears that on 6/7/03 PowerMail info spake thus:

>
>* Ultra-fast indexing and searching: preliminary benchmarks show
>performance gains ranging from 300% to over 500%

Very impressive indeed

-- 
Pat O'Halloran http://www.danu.co.uk  
TB or not TB, that is the congestion - Woody Allen

[ANN] PowerMail 4.2 private preview

[PowerMail info]

Greetings,

We are pleased to make a preview of PowerMail 4.2 available exclusively
to members of the PowerMail discuss list for testing. 

This is NOT a public release, please do not repost outside of the
PowerMail user community, thank you.

---
What's new in the PowerMail 4.2 preview (4.2a5)
---

- Now includes entirely new CTM FoxTrot(TM) high-speed search technology;
benefits over previous PowerMail releases include:

* Ultra-fast indexing and searching: preliminary benchmarks show
performance gains ranging from 300% to over 500%
* Instant on-the-fly indexing upon fetching messages
* Entirely based on Unicode for better international text searching

* Colored hiliting of search results in a message's body
* Additional search features:
  - Ability to restrict searches to subject, to, from or body
  - Search literal (ie: "the quick brown fox")
  - Search words starting with (ie: quick brown f* )
  - Search for numbers
  - Omit words (ie: quick brown -shoe -typewriter)
  - OR searches (ie: quick|rapid|fast brown fox) (see search dialog for
more  
information)
*  Gets rid of all former "Lady" errors
*  Background indexing now fully reliable on Mac OS X
* Most of the re-indexing process occurs in a background thread, allowing
simultaneous work in the application (this used to only be true for
updating the index).
*  Supports both Mac OS X and Mac OS 9

- ! Also new in 4.2a5: Now compatible with the WWDC "Panther" (Mac OS X
10.3) preview !

Known limitations in this version:
- This release ships as a Stuffit archive and not yet as a disk image
- Because of a dependency on Unicode, Mac OS 8.6 is not planned to be
supported in PowerMail 4.2; at the very least, it is not in the current
version.

---
5 steps to better searching - how to install:
---

1. In order to access this software, we ask that you join the ad hoc
"PowerMail-testing" discussion list by clicking on the following link:



The confirmation message will contain the URL to download the 4.2 preview
from.

2. Make a backup of your current PowerMail files folder. Although we are
confident enough to use this software on our own main databases, keep in
mind that PowerMail 4.2a5 will make changes to your current databases
which will no longer be readable by 4.1.3. As with any pre-release
software, use it responsibly and at your own risk.

3. Install PowerMail 4.2a5 and launch it; as a default, a fresh folder
named "PowerMail files 4.2a" will be created in your User folder. If you
wish to convert a copy of your 4.1 database (see point 2 above), use
"Switch user environments" in the Database submenu of the File menu

4. After converting your database and deleting your now-obsolete V-Twin
indexes, PowerMail should automatically begin the indexing process. If
for some reason you wish to rebuild your index later, you may do so with
the "Rebuild Indexes" item of the Database submenu of the File menu

5. Once the index is complete, start searching ! Compare former search
results and performance, and please discuss your findings either on the
PowerMail-testing list exclusively, or by private post to us at
[EMAIL PROTECTED] We are especially interested in feedback from Japanese-
and Chinese-language users with respect to the way words are broken up
for indexing; possible crash logs, with the situations that mght have
lead to them, are also of interest.

Thanks in advance, and kind regards,

The PowerMail development team
[EMAIL PROTECTED]