Pegasus Mail & Mercury

Hi !

Here is a small strange behavior of Pegasus Mail that maybe can be fixed for the next release. When I go into "Files -> See the not-yet-sent messages", then a new tab opened, but there is nothing appearing in the top right corner, just below the window's buttons that allows reduction, expansion and closing and which lie in a blue "rectangle". What I have to do to make those three buttons appear is to press the first tab, the one of the beginning, then repress again the tab of the not-yet-sent messages. So is it possible to make those three buttons appear right from the first tab so that the tab switching procedure could be avoided ? Also, I do not know if I am clear or if you understood what I was saying, but I honestly lack the vocabulary for describing those things, English not being my first language.

Thanks !

Ginhead. 

PaulW:

This behaviour has been around for some time, and is something I've learnt to live with.  As you have discovered, you can make the buttons appear by switching to another PM window and back again.  It only seems to affect some windows (the queued messsages being one), and if it was easy to fix, I sure that would have happened.

This will only happen when you run Pegasus Mail with Maximized windows. It's known for years but IIRC there is no way it could be fixed then. Perhaps now (David Harris uses a newer development system) it can.

Besides that I can hardly understand why people run Pegasus Mail windows in maximized state, as so much facilities and options cannot be used, e.g. the marvelous drag and drop possibilities. Of course everybody is free to use the program the way they like. It's just my personal opinion.

Hi !

Well, glad to know that for once I did not miss any hidden or unknown configuration options. However, maybe this little strange behavior will be fixed in the next release, but as far as maximized state is used, I reduced the window in which Pegasus is running and the behavior is still happening, so at least in my case the non-maximized state does not solve the problem. As for the benefits of the latter state, isn't it useless because of the reduce-to-tray option ? Or maybe I am wrong with what you mean by maximized state.

Bye !

Ginhead. 

Ginhead:

Well, glad to know that for once I did not miss any hidden or unknown configuration options. However, maybe this little strange behavior will be fixed in the next release, but as far as maximized state is used, I reduced the window in which Pegasus is running and the behavior is still happening, so at least in my case the non-maximized state does not solve the problem. As for the benefits of the latter state, isn't it useless because of the reduce-to-tray option ? Or maybe I am wrong with what you mean by maximized state.

I may be misunderstanding you ... but here goes. 

From the manual:

Pegasus Mail is an
MDI (Multiple Document Interface) application, which means that all the windows you open
in Pegasus Mail share a common main window on the screen (called the Frame window).
When you close, maximize or minimize the Frame window, all other windows in Pegasus
Mail are affected as well.

I confess I've never liked that arrangement, but I expect others do. But, the design being as it is, I've never run Pegasus Mail like this:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f1/Pegasus_Mail_screenshot.png

What I do when I set Pegasus up is to keep the main outside Window fairly small, not much bigger than it comes when you start the program on first run. Then I move the inside Window--the one containing the mailfolders, list-pane, and preview pane--up to the top left-hand corner of the frame, but so that the blue bar is still showing. I then open the inside window bar by clicking on the blue arrow in the bottom right. After that I use the mouse to stretch the inside window down to that, and across to the right. You can make the inside window fit--as in the linked graphic from Wiki--by clicking the re-size button, but then the blue bar disappears. And when that happens every other window you open that's internal to that--like the mail-reader window, mail composition window, address book, etc.--comes up maximized and occupying the full space of the inside window.

I like the reader window small, anyway. I guess nowadays with HTML mail you can have designs that are more like a webpage and require a bigger window, but for normal reading of plain-text a line-length of around 10 to 12 words is comfortable because the eyes don't have to scan so far back and forth. (This is why newspapers, which are quite wide, set type in relatively narrow multiple columns.
 

As best I can tell (from several years of investigation), this is actually a bug in the Windows MDI manager. I've spent dozens of hours trying to work out why the window buttons disappear in certain circumstances, without even coming close to a solution. My best guess is that the Windows MDI code expects Windows messages to appear in a particular order (which, if true, is actually a bit naughty of it), and when it gets them in an order it doesn't expect, this is what happens.

It's probably worth being absolutely clear that those buttons are not under my control - I don't create them, and they're not in any part of the window space over which I have control. They are maintained purely by internal Windows code and all I really do is respond to the messages they generate when they're pressed (and even those messages are filtered by Windows before they get to me). I can't even track what's going on in a debugger, because it's all happening in the Windows Kernel code.

Given that MDI isn't flavour of the month at Microsoft any more, it's very unlikely they'll ever fix this. About the best we can hope for is that I can stumble over some reference somewhere that describes a solution someone else discovered. If anyone ever sees anything like this, please feel free to direct me to it - I'd like to see this one fixed as much as anyone else.

Cheers!

-- David --

Hi !

Well, this may sound a little naive or stupid even, but why not try to send Microsoft an email ? Maybe, they will agree to help you or provide you with a fix that you can merge into Pegasus Mail.

Bye !

Ginhead. 

Ginhead:

Well, this may sound a little naive or stupid even, but why not try to send Microsoft an email ? Maybe, they will agree to help you or provide you with a fix that you can merge into Pegasus Mail.

Hi !

Well, since we had the visit of someone from Symantec, maybe there will be someone from microsoft that will come, who knows ? Also, perhaps there is one community member that has some connections. If such a person exist, please come forward, your help is needed .

Bye !

Ginhead.
 

I'm asking myself how other programmers solve this problem. There must be a solution somewhere.

Marc 

Hi !

I am no programmer, but it seems to me that they form a large "family" where sharing adn helping their fellow coders is not something of an exceptional nature. Or maybe I have this picture because I use a lot of open source programs. Anyway, I am sure that the solution, if it exists, can be found on some forums, but to know what forums, you have to be a programmer.

Happy hunting then !

Ginhead. 

Ginhead:

I am no programmer, but it seems to me that they form a large "family" where sharing adn helping their fellow coders is not something of an exceptional nature. Or maybe I have this picture because I use a lot of open source programs. Anyway, I am sure that the solution, if it exists, can be found on some forums, but to know what forums, you have to be a programmer.

Most open source projects don't last long. It's questionable how much of the success of the successful ones is down to distributed contributions, too. People _can_ offer patches; that doesn't mean they will. Mozilla has full-time employees working on Firefox, and, AFAIK, they're doing most of the heavy lifting. Open Office has had a lot of work from Sun's people, and others, on it over the years. Moreover, when it comes down to it, a lot of contributions to the Linux kernel are coming from people working at IBM and suchlike.

I doubt this is something that can be worked around, either. If you look at David's post he says: 

It's probably worth being absolutely clear that those buttons are not under my control - I don't create them, and they're not in any part of the window space over which I have control.

If, as he says, "MDI isn't flavour of the month at Microsoft any more" then, presumably, going forward it's a dead horse, and that way of doing things is unlikely to be in Pegasus 5, anyway. I can't think of another mail client or PIM client that does things that way, anyway--so it's not a necessity. I wouldn't worry.

Hi !

This was just a minor suggestion, and it would have been nice to resolve it, but if it is not in David's hands, there is little we can do about it. Anyway, this is really not a big drawback, and it is certainly not that important that it will make me or anyone change to another email client. Actually, I even got used to it . Concerning sending an email to microsoft, I do not have the time now, but definitely I will try, just to see what happens.

Bye !

Ginhead. 

Ginhead:

Concerning sending an email to microsoft, I do not have the time now, but definitely I will try, just to see what happens.

Good idea.

Unfortunately, while reporting bugs to Apple is easy, and I know people who've done that, the same is not true of MS. The process seems to be  a problem -- here's someone's blog post on that:

http://weblog.timaltman.com/node/834