Many thanks for the comments. In fact the problem, which was as much of perception as of substance, seems to have been resolved by manipulating font sizes as well as line lengths. Pmail "out of the box", appears generally smaller on the screen than some other mail clients possibly because its default font sizes are rather small.

Having recently re-installed Pegasus after a gap of some years, I am having difficulty in manipulating the line length.

Using the composing screen the default end of line point seems rather short at some 60 characters. Increasing the line length under "Tools, Options, Outgoing mail, message formatting" does make a difference but doesn't seem to be "sticky" - working for one message only. Changing the "control-j" number doesn't make a difference but perhaps it isn't meant to. Using the "special" tag on the message screen produces the same sort of results.

Ideally I would like the line length to be, as it were, infinite - that is to wrap at the right hand frame of thw window its being written in, and reformat as the window is re-sized - like the one I am writing this in, in fact.

I am running Windows 7 64 bit and Pegasus 4.63, but I also need to solve the same problem on a machine running Vista.

Am I missing something?

Incidentally I understand the config file can't be run under Win 7 64 bit. Is there a workaround for this (and - naive question - how can pmail install itself without it?).

Thanks in advance

David

> Using the composing screen the default end of line point seems
> rather short at some 60 characters. Increasing the line length under
> "Tools, Options, Outgoing mail, message formatting" does make a
> difference but doesn't seem to be "sticky" - working for one message
> only. Changing the "control-j" number doesn't make a difference but
> perhaps it isn't meant to. Using the "special" tag on the message
> screen produces the same sort of results.

The setting in Tools | Options | Message formatting | Line length is in either inches or millimeters and the text will flow to this specified width.  When sending a message the font size will will determine how many characters you get on a line.  Of course when sending plain text messages this does not mean that the receiver of the message will see the same thing as the sender.

> Ideally I would like the line length to be, as it were, infinite -
> that is to wrap at the right hand frame of thw window its being
> written in, and reformat as the window is re-sized - like the one I
> am writing this in, in fact.

Pegasus Mail does not do a format flowed type HTML and so you will not see anything like this HTML web browser editor in Pegasus Mail.  Other mail clients that use an HTML renderer as the e-mail editor though may be more suitable for your requirements.


> I am running Windows 7 64 bit and Pegasus 4.63, but I also need to
> solve the same problem on a machine running Vista.

No difference in either system.

>
> Am I missing something?
>
> Incidentally I understand the config file can't be run under Win 7
> 64 bit. Is there a workaround for this (and - naive question - how
> can pmail install itself without it?).

The program pconfig.exe is a 16 bit program and no 64 bit version of Windows supports 16 bit programs.  This has been true since Win 64 came out with WinXP.  To run 16-bit MSDOS programs on your 64-bit Windows systems (and Linux) get a copy of DOSBox. This is quite handy to have around when you have old MSDOS utilities to run.

http://www.dosbox.com/

BTW, you may notice that I am NOT using the community editor to do this inline type reply since it is very limited in it's editing capability.  ;-)

The Help has a good section on this subject:

Tabs and margins

As e-mail becomes more like word processing, with features like tables, styles, pictures and so on, so the end user expects that the e-mail program will behave more like a word processor. In traditional e-mail, margins and tab settings were always calculated in characters, but in modern systems with proportionally-spaced typefaces, it makes more sense to use absolute measures for these settings. Accordingly, in normal operation, Pegasus Mail lets you specify the right margin and tab settings for your messages using either inches or millimetres. If you have checked Disable all text styling options (see above) then Pegasus Mail, will behave like an old-fashioned teletype mailer and will use characters as the measurements for these settings. Which of these operating modes best suits you is a matter of personal taste.

Message width  This setting controls how wide the column of text you type in your message should be. The default setting is 145mm or 5.71 inches, based on a typeface of Arial 10 point. This will result in a column of text approximately 76 characters wide, which should be readable by anyone. If you increase the size of your typeface, you may also need to increase the message width, since otherwise your lines will become shorter and shorter. Similarly, if you use a smaller typeface, you should make the message width narrower to keep the lines within a reasonable length. Experiment with these settings until you find a message width that youfind comfortable and which produces messages your correspondents have no trouble reading. As a general rule of thumb, you should choose settings that result in the lines in your message being between 70 and 80 characters long.

Tab width  Controls the approximate distance between tabs in the message editor. The default value is 12mm, or half an inch.

Units  Allows you to select whether measurements should be expressed in metric (millimetres) or imperial (inches). Pegasus Mail remembers this setting from session to session, so you only have to select it once.

Right margin for Ctrl+J reformatting command  Sometimes the text in your messages can become quite unruly, especially when you are quoting sections from an original message in a reply. Pegasus Mail incorporates a Reformat text command, available by pressing Ctrl+J in the editor. This command tidies up the current paragraph, and can work with either normal text or quoted text. Because of the nature of this command, it always works using characters as a unit of measure, irrespective of your current margins.You can set the right margin used in the Ctrl+J command by entering it here.

Current RFC5322 recommends setting your right margin at 78 chars or less and I would suggest you set the ctrl+j function value at 78 chars also. I keep my Editor set to 74 chars to allow for at least one level of quoted text in replies. Once you set the value and have saved it then  you can uncheck the item in Message Formatting section to allow use of HTML or multipart/alternative type mail. With the item checked your email would all be normal plain text messages in older versions WinPMail series like v3.x, v2.x and v1x and MSDos PMail was. As you toogle the setting in Message formatting section you will see the shown values change to match the converted measurements to match the amount set in the normal chars count method.