PMMail

PMMail/2 ReadMe ================= Table of Contents - A note of thanks from VOICE, authors of PMMail/2 - Legal agreement - Secure e-mail using stunnel - Change to Index File (folder.bag) - Codepage Issues (International Support) - The online help system - Help beyond the online help system - Setting up your trial account - Trying PMMail before buying - Some cool features you might have missed! - New features in PMMail 3.24 - History - Migration Tool - The Mail Classifier (BogoFilter) - Known Issues =============================================================================== A note of thanks from VOICE, authors of PMMail/2 =============================================================================== On behalf of VOICE thank you for installing PMMail/2, version 3.24 This release provides you with a feature-packed e-mail client for OS/2. We are sure that you will be more than pleased with the slick interface and ease of use of this product. =============================================================================== Legal agreement =============================================================================== Review the license agreement in the file "licence.txt". =============================================================================== PMMail now requires libcx =============================================================================== Starting with version 3.24, PMMail is built with GCC 4.9.2 and requires libcx. To satisfy this requirement, you can use Arca Noae Package Manager (ANPM) or yum. The package to install is named libcx. In addition, PMMail now requires aspell, and aspell can also be installed by ANPM or yum. The PMMail Utility requires DrCtl. At the command line the additional requirements can be installed by: yum install libcx aspell-en DrCtl The following language dictionaries can be specified instead of aspell-en aspell-de aspell-en aspell-es aspell-fr aspell-it aspell-nl aspell-ru =============================================================================== Secure e-mail using stunnel =============================================================================== PMMail supports POP3 using a secure channel provided by stunnel. Stunnel has been ported to OS/2 by Paul Smedley, and is available from his website. http://www.smedley.info/os2ports/index.php?page=stunnel An Account's POP and SMTP settings pages have a new option: Use Secure Channel. There is a new page in the Program Settings notebook: "Secure Transfer". It is similar in concept to the MIME Associations, Signatures and Filters pages. It manages a list of connection definitions. =============================================================================== Change to Index File (folder.bag) =============================================================================== A major change was introduced in PMMail 3.12 to the contents of the index file, <folder.bag>, that may have gone insufficiently noticed. The specific issue that prompted this change was #531. The Subject, FROM name and address, and TO name and address, are now encoded using Quoted Printable. This eliminates a problem when saving data for non-7bit languages, namely having the non-7bit patterns (just about anything not US-ASCII) misinterpreted as other characters like a newline (0x0A), a field NULL value (0xE1) or a field separator (0xDE). The side effect is that the index file has encoded fields. Versions of PMMail 2.90 earlier than v.792 do not expect encoded strings and display the strings as they are. And obviously non-VOICE versions of PMMail would do the same. The effect is minimal for 7bit strings: spaces are replaced by an underscore. Characters outside of the usual 7bit printable values (0-9, A-Z, a-z, punctuation) are encoded; each encoded character looks like "=XX", where XX is the hexadecimal value for the character. For instance: <Fwd: Fw: Cute Fruit> encodes to <Fwd:_Fw:_Cute_Fruit> while <é▓Æ?òÂéáéÞé¬éãéñé▓é┤éóé▄éÀ> an unencoded Japanese subject line encodes to: <=82=B2=92=8D=95=B6=82=A0=82=E8=82=AA=82=C6=82=A4=82=B2=82=B4=82=A2=82=DC=82=B7> The original messages themselves are not affected in any way by this change. =============================================================================== Codepage Issues (International Support) =============================================================================== The character-set encoding (charset) support has been almost completely rewritten. PMMail now has support for close to 30 different encodings, including: UTF-8 ISO Latin-1 through -11, -13 and -15 Windows-1250 through -1257 ISO-2022-JP and ISO-2022-KR Shift-JIS Extended Unix Code BIG-5 US-ASCII KOI8-R For the time being, however, PMMail is still limited to entering and displaying characters in the current display codepage. Therefore, these encodings are used for incoming/outgoing translation of characters to and from the current codepage. Refer to the online help for more information. If PMMail appears to be treating your codepage improperly, please let us know via e-mail at pmmail@os2voice.org =============================================================================== The online help system =============================================================================== PMMail has an extensive built-in online help system. From anywhere within PMMail pressing the F1 key takes you to the help panel for whatever window or dialog is currently active. This should be considered the first source of help when it comes to answering questions about PMMail. The second line of help is the Help -> Contents page (or Options -> Contents from within the help system). The contents presents a tree view of topics. Many common questions are answered in the "How Do I...?" and "Where Do I Set the...?" topics. Please check here for a list of Very Frequently Asked Questions. =============================================================================== Help beyond the online help system =============================================================================== If the online help system does not give you a satisfactory answer to your question, please check the PMMail World Wide Web page, maintained by VOICE. On this page, you can find various REXX scripts to enhance PMMail, conversion utilities to convert other mail formats to PMMail's format, and an up to date list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), and their answers, provided by VOICE. This URL for this page is: http://pmmail.os2voice.org If you still cannot answer your question based on the information on both the web page and the online help system, feel free to e-mail the PMMail support account. To ensure that you get a speedy response from VOICE, make sure you include all of the information that is requested. The support e-mail address is: pmmail@os2voice.org If you are reporting a bug, please use our online bug tracking system. http://pmmail.os2voice.org/mantis/ In your bug report, please let us know: - The *EXACT* steps in reproducing this bug. Make sure that you can reproduce this bug before you tell us about it. - If there is a problem with a specific e-mail message, send us the e-mail message as an *ATTACHMENT*. Do NOT forward or bounce the message to us. A defect report is incomplete without this. To find the e-mail message, look under the Accounts directory and follow the directory structure into the account (*.ACT subdirectory) it is in, and then the folder (*.FLD subdirectory) it is in. Take a look at the FOLDER.BAG file to obtain the name of the e-mail message. The full path to the folder is also displayed in the Folder Settings window. You can also drag and drop the message to attach it to a note. - Include the log file (logfile-00.log) located in the Accounts directory. - The version of OS/2 (with fixpack numbers), other programs that you frequently run when PMMail is running, and your network setup. If you are telling us about a feature you would like to request: - Please understand that all feature requests get added to a feature database. We do not necessarily determine on the spot if your feature will be in the next release or not. Usually, some amount of research must be done before this can be determined. =============================================================================== Setting up your trial account =============================================================================== Please be sure to check the online help for account creation before attempting to create your first account. Many questions about "what information goes where" in this setup process cannot be answered by VOICE, rather they must be answered by your Internet Service Provider (ISP). If you are having trouble setting up your account (such as networking errors), try setting up your account with your ISP on the phone so they can guide you through this process. We require a very minimal amount of information to set up an account, and any ISP should know the information. =============================================================================== Trying PMMail before buying =============================================================================== PMMail allows unlimited usage for 90 days after installation. After 90 days, a message pops up to remind of the unregistered status at program startup, and whenever a message is sent. =============================================================================== Some cool features you might have missed! =============================================================================== In case you missed these here are some added or hard to find features: - If you highlight text while reading a message and then hit reply, only the highlighted text is quoted. - If you highlight text while reading a message and then hit the Right Mouse Button, PMMail extracts e-mail addresses and URLs and allows you to perform several operations on them. - You can drag and drop into and out of the "Files" area of both the read and compose windows. In fact, you can drag and drop just about anything. - Check out the MIME Associations (PMMail -> Settings -> MIME Associations). These allow you to receive an attachment, and have PMMail automatically decode and open the attachment in any program that you have simply by double clicking the icon in the "Files" area for that attachment. - PMMail ships with several default MIME associations. Please check these to make sure they are correct for your system. =============================================================================== New features in PMMail 3.24 =============================================================================== New features and enhancements (Mantis bug number): None. Changes (Mantis bug number): (1943) The build number is the fourth number in the version string. In December 2019, the version history was lost in a server crash. To make it easier to upgrade development copies of PMMail, we increased the patch version from 0 to 1. This means that the first release of 3.24 will actually be 3.24.1. (1937) This version, 3.24, is the first to be built with the GCC 4.9.2 compiler and the new libc from Bitwiseworks Fixes (Mantis bug number): 3 traps; One in message reindex code, One caused by updating LibC to the new BWW's version, One in the code that inlines attachments under certain conditions fixed the "shell" handling which was broken by the fact the new libc fixed the path to SH so it is used where with the old libc the OS2 comspec got used. Removed (Mantis bug number): None. =============================================================================== PMMail for OS/2 History File =============================================================================== The file History.txt contains the release notes for each PMMail/2 version in reverse chronological order (newest first, ending with the oldest) =============================================================================== Migration Tool =============================================================================== A migration tool is supplied which migrates your older PMMail accounts (for PMMail 1.96a, and 2.x) to a new location where you have chosen to install the new PMMail. This tool copies all of your account information to a new Accounts directory and makes necessary modifications to certain files to accommodate the new PMMail program. The copy process can take a significant amount of time especially if you have many, large accounts, so wait for it while it is being done. The migration tool automatically sets all accounts to Leave All Messages on Server (for Beta versions only) to allow a user to test PMMail, while they continue using their old PMMail as they have always done. References to the old PMMail support contacts are removed from your address book, and the new support address is added. Old MIME associations are added to the end of the assoc.db file, with the name "zuser - " added to them. They are DISABLED by default, and in most cases they are replaced by new MIME associations which should be more appropriate to today's world. You may need to edit those associations to match your own configuration. Don't remove the "zuser - " part of the name, that indicates that the user has made those entries, and is used by the migration tool (if it is run again) so that it doesn't add them again. If the tool beeps, while copying the accounts, there have been errors. Look in the new ...\PMMail directory for migratePMM.log. That should help to isolate the problem. There is also a DEBUG mode for the tool. Add "/DEBUG" (without the quotes) to the parameters in the tool icon, and it will produce a more comprehensive log. =============================================================================== The Mail Classifier (BogoFilter) =============================================================================== If you are using PMMBogoFilter with PMMail, it migrates your wordlist.db file to the new location. You MUST have a version of BogoFilter that uses a single wordlist file, or that may not work properly (if it is that old then you are better off to simply erase it). When you first start to use the new Classifier (BogoFilter), you may feel that it is not as accurate as the older version. That is because the high and low cutoff points have been changed, and some further training is required to adjust for that. After a few training sessions, you should find that it has improved its accuracy. The Classifier (BogoFilter) is disabled initially. You need to set it up using the Mail Classifier configuration pages (there are two) in the Accounts settings notebook. Each account may have its own unique settings different from the defaults. This allows uou to have different wordlist.db (word database) files for each account, or you can share one database among several, or all, of your accounts (useful for different languages, or a business account, vs a private account). =============================================================================== Known Issues =============================================================================== PMMail is sensitive to the number of messages in a folder. If there are more than 30000 messages in a folder, PMMail may run out of resources and be unable to work properly with the folder. Users are advised to reduce the number of messages per folder if problems of this kind are encountered. When messages are being deleted with the Delete key and a Transfer (Send of Fetch) operation starts, the program may freeze. The program may generate trap screen at shutdown after it has been running for some time. Messages may be dragged onto the desktop. At this time there is no warning that the message is deleted from the source PMMail folder if the Drag operation is Move instead of Copy. The message window does not change but the message is no longer available PMMail. A Re-Index corrects the message display. Some STunnel components from the original 3.00 version of PMMail had incorrect dates. This has now been fixed. The result is that when upgrading from PMMail 3.00, WarpIN will warn about replacing a newer file with an older one. It is safe to do so. The files are identical except for the date. When the program is loaded from a remote system and the mailstore is on another remote system, the Message window is empty even though the selected folder (the parent folder for the collapsed tree) may have messages in it. ===============================================================================