Messages

1

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: AlomWare Toolbox, mini-review

« on: August 11, 2025, 11:12 AM »

I should probably add, just on the "useful stuff" coupled with "responsive developer" front...

I have long used ClipboardHelpAndSpell's paste templates to handle renaming podcasts. These days, lots of downloads have huge and random-looking names, and because I can rarely listen to them close to the time I downloaded them, I rename them with something meaningful with something date-y stuck on the end.

Which works, more or less, but there's one particular thorn in my side: a short podcast that I never expected to hang around for long, so I created a paste template for it, of filenamennn.mp3, where nnn is a three digit number. After a while, hand-editing the number to be the next one in sequence got annoying, so I started adding 10 in the template after the nn9 download so at most I'd only have to look up to see the most recent then add the correct last digit to the pasted string.

I started wondering if I could do something more clever with Toolbox.

And, with some (okay, quite a bit of) help from the developer, I now have a script that goes off and looks to see what the biggest number in use is, adds one to it and creates the next filename in sequence, in exchange for me overtyping the suggested filename with a three character trigger. [In the process of developing that, I discovered a couple of odd omissions in the scripting language that will be fixed in the next release, and have pushed a couple of new ideas at the dev that may also be implemented soon, relating to static date variables.]

I'm definitely still learning, but maybe I'm just starting to find the gearstick.

2

Mini-Reviews by Members / AlomWare Toolbox, mini-review

« on: August 04, 2025, 10:39 AM »

Basic Info

App Name	AlomWare Toolbox
App URL	https://www.alomware.com/index.html
App Version Reviewed	6.1.0.0
Test System Specs	Windows 11, 16Gb RAM, Intel evo
Supported OSes	Windows 7 or later, 64-bit
Support Methods	Contact via website
Upgrade Policy	Free version is nagware, yearly license or lifetime
Trial Version Available?	Free version nags every day for a registration code but is fully functional
Pricing Scheme	Free is nagware, yearly license is $24 and reverts to free on expiry, lifetime license $49 down from $79
Screencast Video URL	https://www.alomware.com/videos.html
Relationship btwn. Reviewer and Product	REVIEWER: No relationship.

Intro:

AlomWare Toolbox is a collection of Useful Gadgets, all bundled up together in a relatively small app, designed to be running permanently.

I don't have a good catch-all description, but the core of the most useful parts of it is a sort of self-contained programming environment like a cross between Autohotkey and an environment manager.

The website says: Auto-typing. And you've already thought of text expansion programs that'll replace some bit of shorthand with your email address or phone number or some such, and so it is. But it can be a bit less single-minded than that: you can ask it to pop up a menu of relevant possibilities -- email addresses, say -- and it'll type in your choice from that list.

The website says: Automated actions. Like, it'll do calculations for you, or case conversions. I haven't done much with this yet, but I like the idea of not having to load a calculator and the gadget I currently use for case conversions (not going to name it) is clunky and unreliable: my limited experimentation in this area is that it's fast and accurate.

The website says: App arrangement. You can ask it to look for particular apps and have them open exactly how and where you want them. Not the most useful to me but I like the idea, there have been times where I needed something like this to manage a recalcitrant bit of software and found myself spending a while reminding myself of how to use Skrommel's WinWarden. AT looks to have similar functionality.

The website says: Clipboard history. Yes, lots of possibilities here. AT is portable, though, so you can carry your clipboard with you. It's searchable, but perhaps more limited than many separate clipboard management tools.

The website says: Reminders/Tasks. That's reminders for you, or tasks for the computer. Again, the portability of this gives it some potential that many automation tools don't have, but it's also a function of the software I haven't experimented much with.

The website says: Window control. Another area I haven't touched, but from the look of it, while there's nothing unique here, the ability to lock windows in place or dock them together so they can be moved as a group is occasionally useful and generally requires another third-party product.

The website says: PC Tweaks. All sorts of little gadgets in this category, my favourite of which is the auto-close of quotes and brackets, which I've got used to having in various text editors but having it everywhere is lovely. And the tray indicators of keyboard locks is scarcely unique to this but it's yet another external gadget otherwise.

The website says: That's just the beginning. And so it is.

My current favourite thing is the ability to make a pop-up menu, from text input.

But there's so much stuff, and I haven't really scratched the surface.

The automation tab is where I'm spending most of my time. One thing I discovered early is that it starts out relatively empty, but there's a command to re-add the default actions that populates the system with loads and loads of autotypers and tools and gadgets, all of which can be modified, deactivated or removed according to user preference.




Who is this app designed for:

OK, so this is more awkward to define. It's a bunch of useful tools that certainly appeal to me, as a bit of a computer nerd, but whether I could convince a normal computer user that this is a good way to improve their computing experience is perhaps questionable. 


The Good

Much like many of the best automation tools, the core of the functionality is close to being a full macro language. The program holds your hand through quite a lot of it, though, so its nothing like as intimidating as sitting down with a text editor and knowing almost nothing about how to get there from here. You define an action, little more than a name and an optional trigger, and a series of steps that are picked off a menu.

It's very configurable, there are a few "how to" videos on the website and it's clear that a lot of time and effort has gone into making this product solid, stable, useful and attractive. The developer is helpful and responsive too.


The needs improvement section


There's a clear learning curve. Although there's an online manual, I think the "little wins" that are necessary to get the user into working out how the product will work well for them aren't made enough of: the "re-add default actions" instantly clutters up the available actions in the Automation tab, for instance, but it needed me to spot it and click it. Up to that point, the learning curve felt all but insurmountable. Afterwards, a lot of the structure and uses just opened up. Maybe a few tutorials are needed.
   


Why I think you should use this product

This feels to me like a great way to solve a lot of little problems that would otherwise require a handful of different tools from different sources, or a significant degree of expertise in Autohotkey or similar, or maybe both.


How does it compare to similar apps

Another slightly awkward question. There are better clipboard managers, more powerful automation tools, window and environment managers, reminder and notes tools, and so on. But the convenience of having all this stuff in a single environment; I'm not sure I've ever seen anything quite like it.

Conclusions

As you'll probably be able to tell, I am a relatively new user. I played with it in free mode for a while, enough to decide it had enough potential for me to buy a licence, and I've spent quite a while tinkering with it, mostly in the more program-y automation tab. It feels like I'm sitting on a motorbike and I'm only just working out how to get it out of first gear. That's both a good and a bad thing: if I had trouble understanding how to drive it, others will too. But it's worth learning to drive it, I think, because it feels like it has the potential to replace quite a few of the gadgets I routinely have littering my notification area with one thing with useful functions under my control; the developer is actively working on it (the last new version was yesterday, as I type this) and I don't feel like this is a "so far and no further" type of tool.

The fact that you can use it -- with nags -- for free means there's little reason not to try it. And I think quite a few of the folk here might well find it useful.

3

General Software Discussion / Re: Simple "technical" drawing tool

« on: May 26, 2025, 07:16 AM »

I think you can still get a free copy of Serif's DrawPlus X8. It's not supported anymore (they put all their efforts into the Affinity products and chose not to provide a straightforward upgrade path) but I still use it for odd stuff and it's OK.

Inkscape's quite well thought of too, although I never got far up the learning curve before giving up!

...after a little research, DrawPlus X8 looks like you can only really find it at various non-Serif sites, but archive.org have it.

There's a universal license at

https://support.serif.com/hc/en-us/articles/10259070288015-Do-you-still-support-the-Serif-Plus-range-software

4

N.A.N.Y. 2013 / Re: NANY 2013 Release: Customizable Remote Administration Panel (CRAP)

« on: June 18, 2024, 05:45 AM »

No problem, I'm happy with the latest beta for now
I guess it would be nice if the person who made the help file could update it with contents about the new features for the release version, too.

-ConstanceJill (June 01, 2024, 12:41 PM)

Sorry, I had a whole heap of stuff hit me at once and I haven't been paying attention recently.

I'll try to get caught up with the new stuff and update the help document that the help file was built from in the next few days.

Do you feel that my previous style (largely of worked examples) was a useful approach?

5

N.A.N.Y. 2013 / Re: NANY 2013 Release: Customizable Remote Administration Panel (CRAP)

« on: April 08, 2024, 04:57 AM »

An initial note. Quite a few of my CRAP buttons use "runas" so I can use an admin account to run things from a non-admin login.

If I use the new "skip command window" option, I have to set the application as runas.exe and pass everything else (the actual program as well as the user account details) to the command as a lengthy parameter.

It works -- of course! -- and is exactly as the command actually works but it means, for me at least, most of my buttons -- those that don't need a results window left open, anyway -- are going to be runas.exe with the actual program I'm running (along with its parameters) demoted to a parameter of runas.

Not sure if this matters or not! I haven't found an error with it, just a change of focus.

6

N.A.N.Y. 2013 / Re: NANY 2013 Release: Customizable Remote Administration Panel (CRAP)

« on: April 08, 2024, 04:21 AM »

The new CRAP is cheerfully working with my favorites / layouts etc in Windows 10. I definitely like the new favorites menu and dark mode. I will experiment with the CMD-related settings as I go.

The edit and delete favorites buttons -- will they return?

7

N.A.N.Y. 2013 / Re: NANY 2013 Release: Customizable Remote Administration Panel (CRAP)

« on: April 02, 2024, 08:30 AM »

Here’s my reasoning for the application launch mode. With the command line window the command is all arguments side. If I am going to skip it then I need a reliable way to tell what the executable is without dealing with the arguments side of things.

-hamradio (March 31, 2024, 08:47 AM)

There were, I think, some commands that took a lot of tinkering to make work properly -- and there are definitely some where the command window should be left open as well as some that don't.

I think I made most things work by either using start /b or not -- the remote desktop example I documented in the help is one where it was needed, but -- and I think it's down to Microsoft rather than anything else! -- expecting consistency is possibly a step too far!

I thought I'd left a note on here a few days ago to help with updating the help, if it's needed, for the new version, but I don't see the message so I expect I abandoned it accidentally

Anyhoo -- I'm still using CRAP only on a Windows 10 machine, but that doesn't mean I don't have Win11 available to test on if it's useful!

8

Developer's Corner / Re: Autohotkey robots

« on: July 06, 2023, 04:34 AM »

Hmmm, I am not sure if that's a left-handed insult or compliment.

-MilesAhead (July 05, 2023, 03:03 PM)

Definitely a compliment.  My use of Autohotkey to solve some really awkward problems over the last few years wouldn't have got off the ground without the DC community, even if much of the time it's just been me looking at other people's code and consequently standing on the shoulders of giants.   

9

Developer's Corner / Re: Autohotkey robots

« on: July 05, 2023, 04:35 AM »

Along with the AHK experts here I would also ask on AHK Forums

-MilesAhead (July 04, 2023, 01:12 PM)

Have done. I thought I'd ask here first -- where everyone is utterly lovely -- in case I was being extremely stupid. 

I haven't decided if I will learn V2.x yet. 

I was intuitively sure my code wasn't complex enough to fail to work in either, but it would only compile in v1 so it looks like I have some learning to do too! (I think #NoEnv is now the default so isn't required, and I think v2 didn't like my read loops so I suspect some syntactical changes there too, but at the point of compilation it didn't seem important to acquire v2 compatibility so I didn't bother trying to fix it!)

10

Developer's Corner / Autohotkey robots

« on: July 04, 2023, 09:10 AM »

Hi all

I've written an automation process in autohotkey. It takes a file (that's automatically generated elsewhere at 6pm every day), cleans a copy of it up then uses that as a set of inputs to a Windows program that has no ability to be batch-fed data.

It works pretty well -- the file cleanup element does its thing as it should, the Windows program it invokes gets started and the right part of the program opened and the input data fed to it an element at a time, each requiring a little routine of keypresses and mouse clicks. All exactly as intended. I was thoroughly pleased with myself when it worked -- fine-tuning delays between parts of the automated process took some time and when it all came together, I had a great feeling of accomplishment.

So why am I here? Well -- I want it to run on its own, on a virtual PC. But when I set it off automatically (using task scheduler), the only part of the process that happens is the file cleanup and the invocation of the program that's going to be manipulated. Anything that requires the simulation of user interaction with a program just doesn't happen.

I can make guesses why -- there's no desktop being created, no attached screen being written to, things like that, if you're going to issue "click at this pixel" instructions when there's no session being displayed anywhere, that's maybe going to confuse things.

So ... am I trying to do the impossible? Or is there a way to programmatically create the screen, mouse and keyboard that would be there if I'd RDPed to the machine, even though I haven't? Or have I misunderstood the nature of the problem?

(This feels a bit like a version of the "if a tree falls in the forest and there's nobody there to see it" paradox!)

11

LaunchBar Commander / Re: Changes won't save anymore...

« on: June 14, 2023, 04:39 AM »

Can you try a Save As and verify that it is saving the file as a new file, and then load that file explicitly, and see if its still not showing changes?

-mouser (June 13, 2023, 04:32 PM)

Tried that. It didn't error, but it didn't write a file either.

I've fixed it. Not sure why or how -- I went and played in the main settings are for the tree. You know, selecting options and unselecting them again in the Docking Bar 1 and 2 tabs, that stuff. And something (didn't notice what, I wasn't expecting anything to work, really, so I wasn't being careful about it) made the Save Changes button light up, and when I hit it, it saved a new copy of TimPortable.mcf. Then I saved a new copy and the file got created and opened. And my changes are now surviving program exits and reloads just as before.

I'm aware that there's no way there's enough here for you to be able to find a fixable bug.  If it happens again, I'll try to be more forensic in my analysis!

12

LaunchBar Commander / Changes won't save anymore...

« on: June 13, 2023, 04:28 AM »

I don't know what's changed or why it's happening... but I can't make changes to my LBC setup that will "stick" on one of my systems.

I'm using the portable version. I've checked security on the files and folders and everything looks fine.

The file that gets loaded at startup is TimPortable.mcf.

Any change I make -- let's say I delete a node -- happens, I can rebuild the tree and it all gets processed as expected.

But when I save the file, either by using the save icons or the File/save or save as function, nothing happens. TimPortable.mcf last changed 8 months ago. Oh, and the save icons never grey out, which they always used to.

I can try to save as TimPortable2.mcf and nothing happens. Well... a link to it gets added to Windows' recent files list. But that's it. The target the link points to never gets created.

I can do a manual backup via the tools menu; that creates a new file.

I've redownloaded the portable zip, Just In Case, but nothing.

This tree is fairly big (268 nodes) so I'd rather not have to completely rebuild it -- are there any steps short of that I might try? or any other ideas?

13

General Software Discussion / Re: Form letters for medical use

« on: March 09, 2023, 12:10 AM »

does it have to be text?  could not the image/text combination be converted to an image so you're just pasting/inserting an image from a pic list?

-Target (March 08, 2023, 06:59 PM)

It's definitely a possibility - makes it slightly harder to update if text changes might need to be made in the future, but yes, that might make the final assembly process easier.

14

General Software Discussion / Re: Form letters for medical use

« on: March 08, 2023, 05:51 PM »

Although, I have to say, I'm still not very clear on what you really want.

-rjbull (March 08, 2023, 05:17 PM)

I didn't think I was explaining things very well.

Imagine a picture with some associated words in a horizontal box that fills the width of a page and maybe a quarter of its length.

Now imagine there's about fifty of them, all different but similarly formatted. Some are explanations of the service, some are specific to the diagnosis, some ask the patient to do things...

A letter might contain eight of them, which ones being chosen according to the specific needs of the patient and their test results. They'll be in some sort of order, there will be different categories, many will be mutually exclusive.

TFLM allows paragraphs of text to be assembled into a completed document, but it doesn't do formatting or graphical content. And for this, formatting is every bit as important as the content.

There's a big enough problem that it's worth trying to automate it, but it's not so big that it's going to justify industrial levels of automation -- and nobody's got a budget for that anyway.

Still clear as mud?

15

General Software Discussion / Re: Form letters for medical use

« on: March 08, 2023, 05:04 PM »

This is a different direction, but I've heard that a lot of organizations are finding ChatGPT to be very helpful for customizing/personalizing form letters.

-Deozaan (March 08, 2023, 12:43 PM)

I have yet to experiment.

But in this case, there are a set of quite prescriptive guidelines relating to how things must be laid out on the page, how to present the information as simply as possible, how to make it work for people with learning disabilities and other conditions that can make potentially complex issues difficult to engage with. There are quite a few possible outcomes of a retinopathy scan, some of which consist of "don't worry and come back again next year" and others where a referral to a hospital ophthalmology service is needed. I'm told the number of different possible letters that might need to be sent are close to 100...

TFLM is excellent for defining chunks of boilerplate text that can be added in just by choosing options from a menu. But this is a step beyond that: instead of text (or pure text, anyway) think small, friendly picture on the left with large font text using just a few of Randall Monroe's Thing Explainer style words to give a simple and understandable message. And those blocks must be spaced carefully on a page, so the white space is as important as the words.

I'm wondering if I can maybe suggest the use of something like a Publisher template with mailmerge fields and use the latter to call up a graphic / textbox pair, prebuilt and preformatted to be dropped into a precise position on a page / group of pages. If I can make TFLM spit out csv style data, that might work...

16

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: GS-Base Mini-Review

« on: March 08, 2023, 12:24 PM »

Just waking up an old thread: I'm still using this, the product is still being developed. I bought a second licence so a colleague and I can use a database I built for the storage of user details, and she (by no means any sort of techie!) finds it works well for her as well as me.

My favourite thing right now is its ability to make custom drop-down lists for fields and either to specify a finite set of possible entries (like a field that can be True or False) or one that can be told to take anything it hasn't seen before and add it to the list of acceptable entries. Multiple selections are possible, you can set the order manually or have the list sorted alphabetically, and checkboxes are a brand new addition.

The Form view of the data is I think getting easier to work with. It's still really fast, and although I still miss being able to do the things I used to love Approach for, this is still a database with the best bang for the buck out there.

I intended to post a screenshot of a form view of a data item and discovered that my colleague has been playing with some of the design elements. Specifically fonts. Oh dear. Still, I guess it illustrates something:



There are four dropdown lists: three for predictable / static choices, one (job title) for a good way of accumulating things that might be reusable in the future and will save typing.

There are a few calculated fields -- UserID is either surname+first initial all in lower case (as illustrated) plus any content in the UIDSuffix field so you can deal with the 50th John Smith who rocks up... but if Login Name has content, it'll be that instead.

NewPass is a calculated field chosen by gluing together a randomly chosen attribute (usually colour) and a randomly chosen animal, from a separate table in the database. The calculation that handles that is very Excel-ish

[Select]

=concatenate((vLookup_ex("PasswordConstructor",(int(randBetween(0,22))+1),"Row","PassA",0)),(vLookup_ex("PasswordConstructor",(int(randBetween(0,22))+1),"Row","PassB",0)))

and as the random number generator does what they generally do, it calculates a new password (a) any time anything happens, and (b) any time you press F9, so we pick one we like, ^C and ^V into the IssuedPwd field so it can be recorded.

What we do with this is use it to spit out a CSV of any records where Done = False and feed a mailmerge with it, after which Done is set to True.

Would that be useful to you? Probably not. If  DIY databases were popular, there'd be more of them and people would use spreadsheets for adding up. But if it's the sort of thing you need, you might not find a more cost-effective solution anywhere.

17

General Software Discussion / Form letters for medical use

« on: March 08, 2023, 05:20 AM »

This might be a bit rambly. Bear with me.

I was chatting to a couple of admins for the local diabetic retinopathy screening service yesterday. They already routinely send results letters to patients, but they're trying to do something specifically for people with reading and learning disabilities.

So they got hung up on designing a layout for a letter; there are some agreed standards for font, layout, illustrations, borders, object positioning and sizing and so forth, and the main part of our conversation was around helping them understand what the difference between a master page and a page with actual, variable content is.

So far so straightforward.

However, letters are built depending on the findings of a patient exam and the content will vary considerably depending on all sorts of factors. And somewhere in the back of my mind, some background process was wondering if something like Mouser's Form Letter Machine could help.

I've come to the conclusion that probably not. But the concept: a set of checkboxes and radio buttons that can place prebuilt elements on a page, perhaps with some variable information (like patient name and address, perhaps) and where those elements are very formatted (a graphic with some associated text) and intended to fit within a strict layout (say four horizontal panels with a set amount of white space between the elements) strikes me as exactly the sort of thing that ought to exist already...

I know how to make mailmerge-type documents work, but the concept of embedding a specific object following strict layout rules based on a user-selectable choice in a dialog of some sort, I don't think that's something I've seen. It doesn't feel like it ought to be all that niche but maybe I'm just more inclined to think about automation than most people?

Anyone have any ideas of things I might suggest or helpful things I might try? Or even (I guess) if I could use The Form Letter Machine to output something that something with page design features could be persuaded to pick up and work with?

18

General Software Discussion / Re: Listary 6 released

« on: December 29, 2022, 06:58 AM »

I've only just updated to Listary 6 and -- for my use of it -- it seems similar to Listary 5. But I only really use it for fast access to specific folders, a folder history in load and save dialogs, and for occasional file searches.

Keywords are right there -- features tab, commands -- and there's an add function. I have a Pro licence, though, carried through from my Pro version of 5, so maybe more of the functionality is locked away from users of the free version?

19

LaunchBar Commander / Re: Disappeared LBC?

« on: December 27, 2022, 06:36 AM »

LBC does automatically keep some backups, so the first thing might be to find these backups, in the directory where your launchbar is, and preserve them.

-mouser (December 27, 2022, 06:08 AM)

Hi, and thanks for such a quick comeback during the festive season!

I've got LBC back again, after a fashion, and I think I've found what's broken.

I have an old MCF file that I was able to make work after I'd deleted the ini files and everything else.

The broken thing seems to be an MCP file.

The Options allows a path to the project file to be set, but although I have two backups, they're both datestamped 24/12 and if I rename one of them to match the one in use -- having exited and backed up the working one first -- I get the previous behaviour of no LBC etc.

So the backups are over 20Mb. The in use one is 2.15K.

What do MCP files do? The new one just looks like text, but the huge older ones have text and binary content, by the look of things -- likely corruption, perhaps?

Annoyingly, I don't have a backup MCF that I can find, dated later than May 2020. But at least I have a working LBC again!

I'm going to reinstall Listary now and see if that was a coincidence!

20

LaunchBar Commander / Disappeared LBC?

« on: December 27, 2022, 04:27 AM »

LBC has been a staple on my laptop for ages. Used always as a menu minimised to the tray, it's a collection of my most used shortcuts and is completely embedded in my workflow.

Until yesterday.

It's gone away. It's running, I can see it in task manager, but I can't make it appear - no tray icon, the -options switch doesn't work (nor does -exit).

I've rerun the installer. No change.

Next is a full ripout and reinstall, followed by portable mode, but I figured I should post something here in case...

The most recent system changes have been Intel graphics driver updates and an accompanying (and over intrusive) Arc game mode thingy that I've stopped auto starting but not yet removed. And an update from Listary 5 to 6. Either could be implicated.

I'll let you know when I get LBC working again and if I can identify the culprit.

That aside, merry Christmas! 

21

General Software Discussion / Controlling Edge

« on: October 14, 2021, 05:53 AM »

Hi chaps -- yes, I've been quiet for ages (here, anyway) while various other parts of Life have been escalating.

Quite why they should replace anything as important as DC is entirely mysterious. Sleep less, is the conclusion my rational brain comes up with, while the sleep-loving lizard poking me any time I get rational has entirely different views about dropping below 6h/night.

Er. Anyway.

I think the answer to this may be "you can't do it" or "you can't do it without an extension" or even "go away and stop bothering us" but I present you this conundrum anyway.

Work has started using Edge as its default web browser, and has deployed it in a form that doesn't allow for extensions because security and users, and we can't even switch off the favourites bar because... grumble grumble grumble.

So there are a roomful of people near me who all use a browser-based gadget that lets them see realtime info from the voip system we have.

If I were designing it, it'd be in a small, always-on-top window with no address bar or other bits and pieces. It doesn't need to be interacted with at all, it's just info.

But obviously, Edge is used for all sorts of other things too.

So what I want is a way to open a specific url in a separate Edge window at a specific size and a specific (33%) zoom. And nothing I seem to be able to do with Edge itself seems to do anything more than open the thing in a new tab without some sort of user intervention.

So am I missing something?

22

General Software Discussion / Re: Eudora, Hermes and Pandora - also compared to TheBat! and other email clients

« on: July 05, 2020, 11:15 AM »

Consider trying out Interlink Mail & News.

-Attronarch (July 05, 2020, 02:17 AM)

Thanks -- I'll give it a go!

23

General Software Discussion / Re: Eudora, Hermes and Pandora - also compared to TheBat! and other email clients

« on: July 03, 2020, 12:32 PM »

Reminds me of something I once used TheBat! for... a commitment that was always going to be met in a week but was never actually kept led me to write a polite reminder email that TheBat! sent on my behalf every day at 11am for about 6 months.

FOAAS might have been a useful thing for the recipient. Fortunately, she had no such tool available

24

General Software Discussion / Re: Eudora, Hermes and Pandora - also compared to TheBat! and other email clients

« on: July 03, 2020, 11:50 AM »

Thunderbird doesn’t have add-ons anymore? Ew.

(Here I am, still using Pandora ... while keeping an eye on Pegasus.)

-Tuxman (July 03, 2020, 11:40 AM)

It does, but it's following the Mozilla / Firefox codebase into a new addons architecture so a lot of things you've been using for years have Gone Away or will do so.

25

General Software Discussion / Re: Eudora, Hermes and Pandora - also compared to TheBat! and other email clients

« on: July 03, 2020, 11:35 AM »

My small contribution here...

I've used Pegasus (not since about 2000, though) and TheBat! and finally settled on Thunderbird.

I still have a license for TheBat! but I didn't go beyond v7 -- I always loved its configurability and its use of FidoNet-style message quoting but I got badly burnt by a massive failure of the encryption mechanism for the Voyager variant and I decided never to trust it again.

Thunderbird's abandonment of its addons infrastructure is an annoyance -- a couple of addons for message management that I used and relied on have either gone away already or are going away as we speak (Nostalgy and QuickFolders being the most important of them) but the newly discovered ability to create virtual folders via the saved search functionality has just stopped me wondering about possible alternatives, which is why I started reading this thread in the first place!

I have tens of thousands of stored emails in Thunderbird and it copes. This is probably A Good Thing.