Pegasus Mail has two html rendering engines, IERenderer (default engine) and Bearhtml.  IMHO there is very little advantage of Async over Sync, as email messages typically contain very few images (that are fetched at message opening time). Secondly, both IERenderer and Bearhtml operate cache'ing for images, so for second and subsequent opening of messages, there is no noticeable delay.

Finally regarding programming languages and code from Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer etc, none of these browsers are public-source available, as they are developed in Python and other weird languages and glued together with things like Visual C.

Firefox has only limited extension capability, Chrome currently has none, and Internet Explorer has a highly complex extension API (good luck with that !!).  

Martin 

Can there please be an option to allow "background download" of pictures and similar attachments?

The current system requires an email to be opened before it does this, which is frustrating as on rural broadband (sic) that process is far from instantaneous and we just have to wait until it is finished. I have seach high and low and can find no settings that do this.

Thanks

George 

[quote user="George"]Can there please be an option to allow "background download" of pictures and similar attachments?[/quote]

It's not possible at all even with the most recent of PM, maybe some day in the future. But I really wonder whether you know about setting up PM's POP3 configuration in a way to download messages in regular time intervals like every 15 minutes or so without you watching? Wouldn't this serve your purposes in most cases? Other options might be using selective POP3 download or IMAP connections so you can decide whether to download short messages first and postpone larger ones.

I guess what George is experiencing is the lag due to Pmail html render.

It actually takes time to download html messages, even with fast connection.

Even though with a fast connection the time needed to download the message is nothing serious (we're talking about a few secs here), still dealing with several html email may get a bit annoying as you can definitely tell Pmail is kinda holding/freezing for a moment in order to download the msg.

[quote user="aquila"]I guess what George is experiencing is the lag due to Pmail html render.[/quote]

No, IERenderer is not involved with downloading messages, and both renderers use the same download code for remote images if any. If you refer to embedded images the download is always done by PM itself, only rendering might be a bit slower. But that's not downloading, it's rendering.

Then it may just be a rendering issue...

From what I've seen, Pegasus does its network activity with sequential synchronous calls.  So when it renders a page, it fetches each external item into the renderer as it requires it (sequential) and must complete each fetch before continuing to the next (synchronous).  Browsers, on the other hand, perform these fetches asynchronously and build the page as the items being fetched arrive.  Multiple fetches at one time are possible (maximizing available bandwidth usage).

Without going for a major change in that design philosophy,  some of what is being suggested is close to impossible.

I suggest you turn off remote graphics fetching in automatic mode, and only download graphics when you really need them, via right click on message and select Manual download images.IMHO email with large numbers of graphics are an indication of commercial advertizing, and do little to add to the written content.

[quote user="sbrook"]Without going for a major change in that design philosophy,  some of what is being suggested is close to impossible.[/quote]

Pegasus Mail is an email client after all, not a browser. If images are your main interest there's an easy way of opening such message within your preferred browser by simply clicking context menu items.

"Pegasus Mail is an email client after all, not a browser. If images are

your main interest there's an easy way of opening such message within

your preferred browser by simply clicking context menu items."

Therein is the crux of a huge and different argument.  15 years ago, we were saying email clients are for text and not for pictures and so on.   Well, today, probably 70% of my email is, like it or not, html.  (Thank goodness very little is in rtf ... now there's something that needs to go the way of the dodo bird)  This is all thanks to the concept that if it can be sent by a bitstream, sending it by email is a not unreasonable thing to do!  And Microsoft encouraged the idea that email doesn't have to be boring text with its integrated desktop.

 So, one can fight that continuing trend and be accused of being stuck in the past, or moving forward at least somewhat.

 I ended up ditching Eudora because it was stuck in the past ... and I couldn't read important business emails ... the sender used nested multipart.  It wouldn't even have read the message from the forum telling me of your posting since that was in base64!

 As much as I don't like it, I've found that we do have to keep up with the trends of email or we'll find we can't read the messages being sent to us.  Corporate IT departments aren't into the idea of sending plain text just to satisfy our supposedly archaic clients.  Like it or not.

[quote user="sbrook"]And Microsoft encouraged the idea that email doesn't have to be boring text with its integrated desktop.[/quote]

And here we have the exact point: It is absolutely impossible for a single developer like David Harris to keep up with a huge world-wide company in providing all the features they do. This is why Martin Ireland an I jumped in for providing some more advanced rendering "extensions" which are still forced to deal with a very rudimentary interface which I believe doesn't currently allow for a safe way of multithreading. And aside from this I already tried to figure out using Microsoft's WinInet tools for asynchronous image downloads and failed - maybe due to the fact that I'm not a professional software developer. So here we are now: Wait for David Harris to rework the fundamental core stuff (like MailStore, IMAP and even multithreading at least with regard to POP3 and SMTP) or flood him with all sorts of requests for additional nice-to-have and convenience features which will certainly destroy the whole project as things stand ...

I might give asynchronous downloads another try some time in the future but I really can't make any promises.

Isn't that the truth ... Companies that have the manpower and other resources to do a more advanced client can't.

 Look at Eudora ... It became a reskinned Thunderbird type client with a few bells and whistles like its chili peppers!

Then there was Calypso ... which passed away

Then there was Poco mail and its integrated office companion Barca ... both in demise.

 All during the period where Outlook Express which was too much competition.

 Now we don't have that ... but we have instead a huge move towards Webmail clients, even from the ISPs or use Outlook with MS Exchange and its browser like interface.

Basically email clients aren't a profitable proposition.  That's why Thunderbird, SeaMonkey have thrived.  Lots of people doing development for free.

There are obviously areas as you indicate that will improve the core of Pegasus that need to be the focus.  Once they're dealt with, then the "niceties" are on the agenda.

[quote user="idw"]I might give asynchronous downloads another try some time in the future but I really can't make any promises.[/quote]

Just so everybody may understand that I'm not the only one having issues, thanks to the following article I might be able to "fix" this someday in the future. Quote:

If you have ever dug into the MSDN for WinInet API, you noticed that it can be used asynchronously and that it is the recommended way to use it.

If then you decide to use it, you won’t find any explanation of how to use it asynchronously. And no samples are available anywhere on Internet. After a long research and lots of testing, I finally managed to reconstruct a big part of the (voluntary?) missing documentation.

All,

after I really stuck trying to google and find help in the boards, I am writing as perhaps someone can help me to find the correct route:

I use since many years the mercury/32 mailserver connected to my old netware server and I am basically very happy with it.

What I am doing out of perhaps normal: I have an incoming account with local delivery and additionaly all emails to it are being forwarded to another external account, which I mainly use \

__________________________

Absolutely!

Today's mail clients are expected to handle html - Eudora OSE 1.0, for example, is built on the Thunderbird browser engine.

If asynchronous fetch is more efficient and faster, it should be implemented. And the wheel doesn't need to be re-invented - just borrow the code from Chrome or Firefox and give credit to the donor.

Chyasor

PS: I started my Internet experience on Windows 3.0 and Netscape. I used the old Eudora then. At my age, I'd qualify for being an 'old fuddy-duddy' averse to the 'newfangled', but I'm all for progress. (I remember when a 2mb hard drive was HUGE [storagewise] and expensive; I now have 3, count 'em, 3, multi-tb external drives, for less than $300 total). Even Barnacle Bill (Gates) had to recant his statement that nobody would ever need more than 640k ram!