Messages

1

General Software Discussion / Re: TheBat email client v4 (early alpha) - some observations

« on: January 25, 2008, 07:07 PM »

as I wrote in previous message, there is a difference between wrapping long URLs in rescipients viewer and URLs wrapped by sender's MUA or sender's MTA

-marek_mikus (January 25, 2008, 06:06 AM)

Right, ok.  I understand that.  Since the bat has no control over that, then I guess there's nothing it can do.  However, I still think my work around is a good idea, where the user can highlight text that spans multiple lines, and a right-click context menu item can open up those multiple lines of text as a hyperlink and merge it.  Again, this is a very common issue in email and I don't think it would be that difficult to implement.

-superboyac (January 25, 2008, 11:15 AM)

superboyac, I have asked developers yesterday about this and received answer, it was done now. So, stay tuned :-)

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General Software Discussion / Re: TheBat email client v4 (early alpha) - some observations

« on: January 25, 2008, 11:23 AM »

as I wrote in previous message, there is a difference between wrapping long URLs in rescipients viewer and URLs wrapped by sender's MUA or sender's MTA

-marek_mikus (January 25, 2008, 06:06 AM)

Right, ok.  I understand that.  Since the bat has no control over that, then I guess there's nothing it can do.  However, I still think my work around is a good idea, where the user can highlight text that spans multiple lines, and a right-click context menu item can open up those multiple lines of text as a hyperlink and merge it.  Again, this is a very common issue in email and I don't think it would be that difficult to implement.

-superboyac (January 25, 2008, 11:15 AM)

do not know if it can be included in 4.0 yet, but I have asked developers about it

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General Software Discussion / Re: TheBat email client v4 (early alpha) - some observations

« on: January 25, 2008, 06:54 AM »

S/MIME never worked for me in TheBat!, tells me that the messages are invalid or something...

-f0dder (January 25, 2008, 06:44 AM)

this is strange, we must use it in communicatiion with government institutions and it works for years... They have OE, so in The Bat! it is needed to select MS Crypto API and The Bat! will use certificate store of Windows

Virtual folders are a cute enough idea, but if the search is powerful & intuitive enough, I don't need them.

-f0dder (January 25, 2008, 06:44 AM)

why search if You have virtual folders created for the most used searches? :-) I have many accounts, so I have virtual folder for all Inboxes in all accounts and only todays messages are displayed. Second virtual folder is for company employees, third for all flagged messages, fourth for my projects etc.

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General Software Discussion / Re: TheBat email client v4 (early alpha) - some observations

« on: January 25, 2008, 06:39 AM »

Humm,

I'll upgrade to 4.0 when it's final & stable, but I dunno if I will pay for 4.1. Instead, I'll probably migrate my entire existing email base (including the couple of years from PMMail2000 that I have in .rar files) to some mail archive/indexing system, and change client to Thunderbird with IMAP. IMAP is friggin' great.

I've found that I don't really use m/any of the more advanced TheBat features, the menus are too crowded, and I sometimes find it a bit difficult to find whatever setting I'm looking for. I also don't like how difficult it is to get mails exported to a standard format (you have to go folder-by-folder, Ctrl+A, export to mbox... no automated way of doing it).

On the other hand we have Thunderbird, with a very nice & clean interface, probably all the features I need, with an extension system that seems pretty well-thought?, and using mbox files by standard. No, mbox files aren't the best solution once your number of mails grow, which is why I'll be moving off messages to an archive/indexing system on a monthly or quarterly or whatever basis. But mbox does have the advantage of being a very++ standard format.

-f0dder (January 25, 2008, 06:13 AM)

I understand You, if You do not take advantage of The Bat! features, but upgrade fee after almost 4 years is not something, I could blame a developer of such app. many apps I have requires 1year or 2years subsription and I do not use them as often as The bat!

I have tested many clients and there is no chance for me to migrate, if I would a reason to do it.

There is no client with such template system and macros set, with such security features including S/MIME & PGP & GnuPG, with virtual folders and filtering system, with system shortcuts and menu/toolbars customiser.

And big problem for me is eastern europe charsets support and localisation, this is drawback of apps like Eudora or Pocomail, which have major problems with this.

5

General Software Discussion / Re: TheBat email client v4 (early alpha) - some observations

« on: January 25, 2008, 06:06 AM »

old Microed used until 3.99 is not paragraph based, as I know, new one should be, must check this, it is implemented early.

-marek_mikus (January 24, 2008, 03:56 PM)

OK, I'll look forward to it.  Right now, I'm using the regular windows editor.  This is another topic, and I already started a thread about it a while back, but what's the big deal/advantage of MicroEd?

-superboyac (January 24, 2008, 07:55 PM)

AFAIK Windows editor is based on same library like Notepad, so it has limited feature set. New Microed was developed from scratch but with preservation of all useful features like column block, free caret position, formatting text etc. It is planned to remove Windows editor, because new Microed is based on Unicode and supports proportional fonts, there will be no need to have both.

how could program detect wrapped link in plaintext? surprise me :-)

-marek_mikus (January 24, 2008, 03:56 PM)

Well, I'm not a programmer, so I'm not sure.  But I'll give it a shot.  If the link was detected as being one line, but wrapped, since the link doesn't have spaces in it, it should easily be able to tell that everything from "http" to the first space after that is part of a link.  Now, maybe it's not possible for it to detect wrapped lines, so it would consider it two separate lines.  But I don't see why it can't detect the difference between two lines and a wrapped line.  Is information like that inherently lost when you send email?  I know that in text editors, it's very easy to tell and preserve multiple lines vs wrapped lines.
But, let's assume the program will never be able to detect a wrapped line.  Then there should be a workaround.  If I highlight the whole multi-line link, there should be a context-menu item like "open selected text as hyperlink with merging".  That way I can force the program to merge the multi-line content into one line even though it can't tell automatically.

Right now, it's frustrating because when that happens you have to copy the lines, paste them into a text editor, manually delete the "return" so it becomes one line, then repaste it into the web browser.  This has been an issue for years with email, let's solve it already.

-superboyac (January 24, 2008, 07:55 PM)

as I wrote in previous message, there is a difference between wrapping long URLs in rescipients viewer and URLs wrapped by sender's MUA or sender's MTA

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General Software Discussion / Re: TheBat email client v4 (early alpha) - some observations

« on: January 25, 2008, 03:17 AM »

how could program detect wrapped link in plaintext? surprise me :-)

-marek_mikus (January 24, 2008, 03:56 PM)

Why not use the existing spellchecker?  Here's how, I'll use the link to this thread as an example as it is fairly representative of many URLs...

http:://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=11985.0#quickreply 

(FYI - I put in two colons so the SMF engine wouldn't compact the URL)

-=o=-  First, like Superboyac saiid, it is a long string without spaces...

-=o=- Next, if you split this at just about any point it is basically unintelligible jibberish as far as a spell check is concerned.  Yes, I do see that a split between "quick" and "reply" might get past this, but this is far and away the exception and not the rule; in fact, the chances of the split actually occurring at a chance intelligible break like that would be astornomical.  Also given it was jibberish to start with, it seems an "intellegent" parser would be able to identify the string as a URL (the "http;//" at the beginnig of the string would be a big hint) and could be "marked" in the editor to treat it as "Do not break" when lines are wrapped.

-CodeTRUCKER (January 24, 2008, 10:56 PM)

but as I understand You, You are talking about lines wrapped by rescipients viewer, but problem is in URLs wrapped by sender's MUA or sender's MTA, so rescipients plaintext viewer have no chance to know, link is wrapped to more lines

7

General Software Discussion / Re: TheBat email client v4 (early alpha) - some observations

« on: January 25, 2008, 02:16 AM »

I've been a paying fan of TB! for a solid decade now, so I'm not trolling by any means. . . and will upgrade to 4.1, but... honestly, has anyone ever heard of major version free, while the next decimal update to that major version is a paid upgrade?

I can remember when TB 2.0 was more mythological than anything--having been mentioned for years; RIT is known for major version changes that are not so much update based as version number (call it time, if you'd like) based, version 2.0 not being that different from late 1.x, same for 2 to 3, etc. -- so it's not a suprise that 4.0 is just a subtle update to 3.9x. But the pay for 4.1 as opposed to 4.0 just really blows my mind.  I'd wager it's a problem of arbitrary version numbering--and as tb is at 3.99, you have nowhere to go but 4.0.  But as a fan of sensible numbers, I'd rather pay for a trivial upgrade to 4.0 than pay to go from 4.0 to 4.1, understanding when paying for 4.0 that 4.1 will be a bigger update than 3.9 to 4.0 was.

It doesn't bother me in a way that would make me less likely to use the software, but this scores high, for me, on the WTF?! scale -- admittedly a scale RIT has been a frequent presence on.

(Unrelated, but nice to see you here Marek; having been subscribed to TBUDL for ... well, ages, your name is by no means unfamiliar!)

-allen (January 24, 2008, 10:57 PM)

as I think, they thought, users will not pay for upgrade, if there will be upgrade from 3.99 to 4.0.0, so planned updated GUI and some new features, this is why upgrade was announced as free for v3 user until major rework in 4.1 will be introduced.

But this was changed, because 4.0 was announce for years as big milestone, so there are smaller GUI changes (rewritten tabs, rewritten statusbars, updated message header pane etc.) AND there are major changes implemented, which were planned for 4.1 like new unicode Microed with new spellcheck system (long time developed), downloading remote images, new image viewer, new Address History feature, new unicode viewer with new search pane etc.

So after more than 3 years, users of v3 will get free upgrade for a major milestone 4.0.0-4.0.x. And for 4.1 and others 4.x, additional major changes are prepared too :-)

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General Software Discussion / Re: TheBat email client v4 (early alpha) - some observations

« on: January 24, 2008, 03:56 PM »

I know! Fume! This is excactly what's wrong with that!   Do you ever need to press Alt+L in, I don't know, Notepad or Ultraedit? More fume!

-tranglos (January 24, 2008, 11:55 AM)

Exactly!!  This, to me, is the most frustrating feature of the Bat.  There are a couple of quirks with the message editor that I find really annoying.  One is this wrapping issue, I don't know why they don't fix it and I don't understand why it should behave any differently than any other text editor.
The other issue is if you copy a paragraph of text from the Bat and paste it in a regular text editor, even though the paragraph is supposed to be one continuous wrapped line, it appears as multiple lines in the text editor.  That means that the Bat doesn't keep track of wrapped lines and stuff, so if it appears as two lines, it really is two lines.  It's annoying when you have to go back and forth with text between applications.

-superboyac (January 24, 2008, 03:33 PM)

old Microed used until 3.99 is not paragraph based, as I know, new one should be, must check this, it is implemented early.

And what about long hyperlinks (web addresses)?  If it's wrapped, sometimes it doesn't detect and connect the second line, even if you use the context-menu, hyperlink-specific options.  Wasn't this problem solved years ago with most email clients?

-superboyac (January 24, 2008, 03:33 PM)

how could program detect wrapped link in plaintext? surprise me :-)

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General Software Discussion / Re: TheBat email client v4 (early alpha) - some observations

« on: January 24, 2008, 03:37 PM »

regarding nohtml inline, could you be a little more specific? 

-mouser (January 24, 2008, 04:24 AM)

Sorry about that.   Corrected original wording in my post; however, my questions have been addressed by Marek, except for the one about SmartBat.  Well, maybe he already answered it.

-CodeTRUCKER (January 24, 2008, 03:21 PM)

for 4.0, no changes are prepared for SmartBat/Scheduller except GUI changes, as I heard, scheduller improvements are planned for 4th generation, but do not when

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General Software Discussion / Re: TheBat email client v4 (early alpha) - some observations

« on: January 24, 2008, 03:31 PM »

...there is new searching pane in viewer

-marek_mikus (January 24, 2008, 09:01 AM)

Would this happen to work like the character-by-character incremental parsing of messge bodies, subject, etc. of the "tree" including subfolders?  (See Pocomail 4 "Focus" box)

-CodeTRUCKER (January 24, 2008, 03:26 PM)

do not know about Pocomail, but no, this is related to searching text in preview of message

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General Software Discussion / Re: TheBat email client v4 (early alpha) - some observations

« on: January 24, 2008, 03:29 PM »

ok got it, thanks.  doesnt add anything from my standpoint, using my normal external image viewer (irfanview) works exactly the same.  it might be nice if they did what codetrucker seemed to be asking for which is have an option where the images were all shown at once, perhaps automatically.

-mouser (January 24, 2008, 09:18 AM)

Ritlabs is not going to do a second irfan, but I know many users, who do not or can not use external apps like Irfan and this is great addition for them.

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General Software Discussion / Re: TheBat email client v4 (early alpha) - some observations

« on: January 24, 2008, 09:13 AM »

Welcome to the site marek and thank you for the post, looks like there are quite a few new things i didn't see during my quick evaluation.  How do you enable the new image viewer?

-mouser (January 24, 2008, 09:05 AM)

open Options | Preferences and uncheck option "Use external viewer to open attached images". Then open image file from Attachments pane

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General Software Discussion / Re: TheBat email client v4 (early alpha) - some observations

« on: January 24, 2008, 09:11 AM »

As far as I know, version 4 will be a free update. But RitLabs will charge for version 4.1 where they introduce a new user interface. I can't remember where it was mentioned, but I read it some time ago in a blog or so...

-aignes (January 24, 2008, 08:30 AM)

yes, all users with regcode for v3 will have upgrade to 4.0.0-4.0.9 free of charge. First 3.0 was released more than 3.5 years ago, so upgrades were free for a very long period.

4.1 will have additional changes in GUI, will supports new features like message labels etc

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General Software Discussion / Re: TheBat email client v4 (early alpha) - some observations

« on: January 24, 2008, 09:01 AM »

Hi guys, let me answer some of your questions, because I am using alphas

there will be many and major improvements, this can not be really compared to upgrade from v2 to v3.

1) downloading remote images to HTML messages is implemented, there is an URL download manager, where You will be able to allow/block requested hostnames

2) there is a new images viewer, You can view all images attached to message in one window, it is possible to rotate, zoom, fullscreen etc.

3) the bat! will internally suppport decoding of Microsoft's MS-TNEF format! not sure, how many clients supports it, as I think, only MS's products

4) there is completely new plaintext editor and viewer, it is Unicode based now, supports Redo, supports new spellchecking engine, there will be possible to use more dictionaries at the same time etc.

5) there is completely new feature for monitoring history of communication based on virtual folders

6) there is completely reworked tabs and folder pane, You can set columns for every tab, change their order, create its own tabs with selected addresses from history and folders from accounts

7) there is new searching pane in viewer

and many other smaller improvements