Hello! [quote user="manwithoutaname"] Hello everyone. First of all, congratulations on 'Pegasus Mail'. Good user program. Not [yet] excellent to my standards [please read below].[/quote] As usual, such a statement depends on what you think is good / useful / needed for an e-mail client (or any other program). As every program has their flaws, you can only decide which disadvantages you can easily live with, and what program features you can benefit the most from. It is two features that has attracted me the most when I chose to use Pegasus Mail: (a) the enormous filtering capabilities, as described in the FAQ-entry "Order of Pegasus Mail‘s filtering tools (for incoming messages)", and (b) the options that allow you to set up Pegasus Mail the way you really want it. However, your mileage may vary, as they say, so it is not surprising you have some different thoughts than I have.
[quote] My first suggestion is to consider the use of dark or dark-ish backgrounds in contrast to brighter fonts both on the forums and on the program itself. It goes easier on the eyes: I should know. I realize it's a 'fashion' to do it this way because it looks 'pretty', but like most fashions not a smart one, in my humble opinion and based on the evidence provided by research on the effect of bright backgrounds on the eyes after long-term exposure, and for several more reasons. [/quote] You may want to try out the following two suggestions:
(a) You can set Window's background colour to a darker one and have Pegasus Mail use the colour settings used for Windows instead of its own colour definition. Go to "Tools" | "Options" | "General settings" | "Basic settings" where you find the option "Use system-defined colours in Pegasus Mail's controls". This is what the help says about that option:
Use system-defined colours in Pegasus Mail's controls If you check this control, Pegasus Mail will use the colours you have defined using the Windows Display control panel for the window background colour, list text, selected text and so on. Pegasus Mail uses colour quite extensively, however, and if you find that your Windows colour settings clash with the colouration it uses, unchecking this control will tell it to use a neutral colour set instead.
As far as I understand your request, I suggest you set the Windows-wide colours to a darker colour for "windows colour" and have the option mentioned above checked - then, Pegasus Mail will have most of its windows with a darker background colour. ("windows colour" can be set in the Windows display setting; as I have a German-speaking Windows version, I cannot tell you what the exact English-speaking name of "windows colour" is, but I hope you get the idea.)
(b) You may set Pegasus Mail's banding colours. Go to "Tools" | "Options" | "User interface" | "List displays". You can enable list banding for the folder list, the message list and the addressbook address list. Just read what the help says about the option. You may want to play around a little with the options in order to find whether they are useful to you. Their goal is simply to have a light background colour as a visual aid; perhaps, that amy help you as well. (Note that those settings are bound to the current identity, so each identity you have can have its own settings for banding colours.)
[quote] Second of all, I suggest that you consider allowing 'anonymous' posts on the forums. Many professionals simply don't have the disposition nor the time to go through usually annoying 'registration processes' for perhaps once-only suggestions, as is probably my case -although your registration process was rather 'smooth' compared to others. 'Moderators' might argue that this is to prevent profanity or what have you, but I submit that this is a faulty logic, making most carry a burden for the action of some tainted irresponsibles -we see this everyday all around the planet. Besides, what are they there for? A 'garbage' thread could be used to collect all the 'junk' or the undesired content before 'selection for deletion', perhaps. [/quote] As I am not the owner of your forum, I cannot promise you anything here. Myself, I prefer a membership for posting messages - that way, you can see who has written the message, and after a certain amount of time, you may get a feeling what someone wants to say or how they usually say it (a kind of a human touch). To me, "Guest1143A" is not as useful as a unique username for a unique user. However, I see your point; perhaps, a moderated "free for all"-section (in which everyone can post, even "Guest1143A") might be added.
[quote] And regarding Pegasus Mail, it's a good tool for users, but not yet excellent for a professional -always in my humble opinion-, for a simple reason of OPTIONS and CONTROL:
** A good tool is all about options and control, in my opinion. Smart options and great control. [/quote] I am really surprised to read that. One of the usual arguments against Pegasus Mail is that it has too many options, too much for a novice to understand. (Myself, I do not think so; a user only has to set up the options they really need and can have any other options remain untouched.) Reading that Pegasus Mail lacks some options is surprising; it is the first time that I read it does not have enough options. Nevertheless, let us see what you have written:
[quote] Sure 'Pegasus Mail' has a lot of options, but some of the very basic ones haven't been considered, it seems, or for some reason not programmed [It's also possible that I have missed some feature on the program or some method on the manuals, in which case I apologize in advance for my ignorance]. Examples: I have 8000+ messages on a mail account which I'll be downloading onto disk from a remote server . I'd like to perform a "Selective Mail Download", but I'd like to control how many headers to download. It seems like this isn't possible. After a while, I just gave up and was forced to program a quick little tool just for this.[/quote] I am not sure whether I have really understood your description. Are you saying that Pegasus Mail does not have any "Selective download"-feature, or are you saying that Pegasus Mail's Selective Download is not useful to you?
In case you are looking for such a feature, go to "File" | "Selective mail download". Provided that there are any e-mail messages on the POP3-server you are connecting to, you will be displayed a window listing the messages waiting to be downloaded. When using Pegasus Mail's Selective Download, only the important header lines will be downloaded (Subject and From). Does that help you?
If Pegasus Mail's Selective Download is not enough for you or if you want to have the incoming messages handled automatically, Pegasus Mail's POP3-filtering rules may help instead - you can define what messages to download or to delete on the POP3-server etc. If you have any questions about that, just ask (describing all options of the POP3-filtering rules might be too much for my current reply.)
[quote] ** When mail is downloaded, a certain number of messages need to be downloaded before 'clearing on the server occurs'. An option to allow each message to be downloaded and cleared individually would be good, especially for very unreliable connections, or better yet an option to control the number of messages to download before clearing them on the server regardless of the already existing option to limit the number of downloaded messages.[/quote] Are you talking about the usual POP3-download? If so, you have to know that teh RFCs define how to handle such POP3-download: the usual modus operandi as predescribed in the RFCs is to download all messages from the POP-server, deleting them on the server only if all messages has successfully been downloaded. In other words: Pegasus Mail behaves as the RFCs instruct it to.
There are some options to control POP3-downloading: (a) the POP3-filtering rules I have mentioned above; (b) the numbers of messages to be download in a single POP3-download instance; (c) the maximum size of messages to be downloaded. (b) and (c) are useful particularly with regard to instable connections.
Open the "Settings for retrieving mail"-window and go to its "Download controls"-tab. There you can find the options I have mentioned for (b) and (c).
[quote] During any step of the 'Selective Mail Download' process, an interruption of it causes whatever progress was made to be lost. This may be fine and neat, but it does not seem to be practical. Why not at least give the user a chance to resume work on whatever progress was made? [/quote] Sorry...could you describe that more detailed? What I want to know is what kind of interruption you have usually experienced.
[quote] To conform to the 'established' norms and trends and to make programs 'user-friendly' and easy to use does not imply cutting options for the smart user, I think. Not all of us are inclined to use tools made "for dummies" [not to say that your program is such a tool because I don't see it as one - if I did I wouldn't even touch it]. Why sacrifice power to conform to mediocrity, is my question? At least leave options open for anyone with the capacity to use them, is my opinion, so the smarter options left open the better, I think. "Truth is what we all need the most" I learned recently. I say that cleverness too.[/quote] A program that is fool-proof will only be used by fools - if that is what you want to say, then I totally agree with that.