Help index

This index shows the main help topics available and key subtopics from

each major heading.

Terms and conditions covering the use of Pegasus Mail

Sending mail messages

Addresses

Attachments

Distribution lists

Glossaries and abbreviations

Message templates

Electronic Mail Etiquette

Browsing mail

The folder selector

The Folder menu

IMAP, and working with IMAP folders

Reading mail messages

Public (System-wide) Folders

Automated mail processing

Mail filtering rules

Content control (spam management)

Address books and Distribution lists

Using addressbook entries in your mail

Searching address books

The address book menu

Distribution list options

Using distribution lists

Noticeboards

Built-in TCP/IP network mail services

Options and Preferences overview

Troubleshooting and Getting Technical Support

Commandline options

Pegasus Mail System, Copyright © 1990-2004, David Harris, all rights reserved.

Proud to be a product of New Zealand.	The History of Pegasus Mail


Sending mail
Sending Mail Messages

This screen allows you to prepare new mail messages and replies.

Circulation messages

Addressing your message

The subject field

Confirmation of reading

Confirmation of delivery

Keeping a copy of your message

Urgent messages

Encryption

Rich text

Signatures

Editing your message

Attachments

Other message options

Importing text from other sources

The editor toolbar


Circulation messages

See also:	Sending mail messages

A circulation message is a specialised form of mail message where instead of being sent to all the addressees you enter, the message is sent to each recipient in turn and then automatically forwarded onto the next recipient when he or she has finished with it.

Each recipient can opt to add comments to the message and when it leaves the final recipient, it is automatically returned to the original sender. Circulation messages are an extremely easy and powerful way of passing ideas around for comment and discussion between multiple people.

To start a circulation message, choose Circulation message from the New message submenu of the File menu. This will open a message editor window that looks and behaves in almost exactly the same way as a regular message editor. You can enter any text you wish in the message, including formatted text, and you can add attachments to the message as well.

When you select the addresses through which the message is to be circulated, remember that the message passes to each person in order, so if there are people who need to see the message more urgently than others, enter their addresses at the start of the list. You can use a distribution list if you wish - the message will be circulated using the order of addresses in the list.

You cannot specify a CC or BCC address with a circulation message, since this would interfere with the circulation process. When the message is sent, a small informational section is attached to your message giving instructions to the recipients.

If you request confirmation of reading for a circulation message, then you will receive confirmation when the message is opened by each recipient, and also a separate confirmation when each recipient forwards the message to the next recipient. This allows you to track the progress of the message as it circulates.


Addressing your message

See also:	Sending mail messages

The Addressing Centre

Just as the postal service needs an address to be able to deliver a letter, Pegasus Mail requires an address to be able to send your electronic mail. Depending on your system and network you might be able to use any of several types of address, each slightly different. There are many ways you can enter addresses into Pegasus Mail's To and CC address fields, and many types of address you can potentially use.

Local addresses: You can enter the username of any user on your file server, or on any other file server to which Pegasus Mail can deliver. If you are running on a Novell NetWare LAN, then you should using the standard NetWare username syntax for your server type

Bindery (NetWare 3.x)	USERNAME, or SERVER/USERNAME

NDS (NetWare 4.x)	username (current context) or username.context

You can obtain a list of local users at any time by pressing <F2>; you can drag and drop addresses from that list into any address field.

Internet Addresses: If your system has an SMTP gateway, then you can enter any valid Internet address in the address fields.

NetWare MHS Addresses: If your system has an MHS gateway then you can enter any valid NetWare MHS address in the address fields. If you are using an advanced MHS transport, you can access MHS directory services from the Addresses menu.

Aliases ("nicknames", to Eudora users): You can enter the "name" field from any entry in any of your addressbooks as if it were an address - Pegasus Mail will replace it with the correct address when the message is sent. You can also drag any addressbook entries and drop them directly into the address fields of the message if you wish.

Recently-used addresses: The small button that looks like an addressbook at the right of each of the address fields opens the Pegasus Mail Addressing Centre, in which you can select addresses from your addressbooks, distribution lists, or from a list of addresses to which you have recently sent mail. Pegasus Mail can also use your list of recently-used addresses to autocomplete addresses as you type them into these fields.

Specialised directory services: Pegasus Mail's Addresses menu contains a number of specialised services, such as LDAP and PH clients, which you may be able to use to look up addresses. Consult your system manager for information on whether or not these services are available in your local environment, and on how to set them up.

You can also prepare distribution lists, or lists of addresses you use frequently.


The To field
The To: field of a message indicates the primary recipient of a message


The CC  field
A CC (carbon copy) recipient of a message is someone you want to "listen in" to the message you are sending to the primary recipient. CC recipients receive the message normally but their addresses do not appear in the To: field of the message.


The BCC field
Use a BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) when you want to send a copy of your message to someone other than the primary recipient without the primary recipient knowing you have done so. Unlike CC, when you use BCC, there is no indication in the primary recipient's copy of the message that you have copied anyone else. BCC is very handy for office politics.


SMTP gateway
An SMTP gateway allows you to send mail to machines on the Internet (a huge world-wide computer network), or to machines which use the Internet RFC821/822 message protocols. Almost all Unix systems and many mainframe and minicomputer systems can receive mail using this protocol.


NetWare MHS gateway
NetWare MHS is Novell's messaging system. There are several versions of it for both NetWare and non-NetWare environments. Pegasus Mail supports all versions of NetWare MHS, including NetWare Global MHS. Ask your system administrator if you're unsure whether or not this option is available on your server.


The Subject field

Enter a short summary of your message in the subject field. Because the recipient will use the subject line as a filing key, you should try to make it as descriptive and helpful as possible. When replying to a message, it is customary for the subject to be Re: <the original subject>: Pegasus Mail will automatically format the subject this way for you when preparing replies.

The subject field can be up to 128 characters long.


Confirmation of reading

If you want to be notified when the recipient reads your message, check the confirm reading box in the message editing window. A small message will be sent back to you when the message is read. Note: the recipient must be using a version of Pegasus Mail for receipt confirmation to work. Some MHS mail systems may also be able to provide receipt confirmations.

The System administrator can allow users to refuse confirmation of reading because many people feel that it is an invasion of privacy. If you attempt to mail to a local user who will not provide confirmation of reading, a small dialog will appear when you send the message advising you of this. If you mail to a non-local Pegasus Mail user who will not permit confirmation of reading you will not receive any notification at all.

The default state of the confirm reading control is "sticky" - Pegasus Mail will remember its setting from message to message and between sessions. You can also set it to be always on or always off by default in your message settings preferences.


Confirmation of Delivery

Checking the confirm delivery box in the message editing window tells Pegasus Mail to ask for confirmation that your message has been delivered successfully. Confirmation of delivery differs from confirmation of reading in that you are only advised that the message has been delivered to the recipient, not that it has been read.

Confirmation of delivery is always available if you are using NetWare MHS. You will never get confirmation of delivery on local mail (because Pegasus Mail will tell you immediately if it fails to deliver your message). With Internet mail, you may or may not receive confirmation of delivery, because there are no guaranteed ways of asking for it.

The default state of the confirm delivery control is "sticky" - Pegasus Mail will remember its setting from message to message and between sessions. You can also set it to be always on or always off by default in your message settings preferences.


Keeping a copy of your message

If you want to keep a copy of the messages you send, check the copy self box in the message editing window. Pegasus Mail will file a copy of your message in a folder called "Copies to self" which it will create automatically when necessary. Pegasus Mail can also ask you whether you want a copy to self on a message by message basis, and can prompt you to select a folder for the copy to self at the time the message is sent (see the Sending mail page of of the Tools | Options preferences dialogs for these settings).

If your "Copies to self" folder becomes too full, you can force Pegasus Mail to create a new copyself folder by simply renaming the existing one. You can move your copies-to-self folder anywhere in your folder hierarchy.

You can specify the name Pegasus Mail should use for your copy-to-self folder in your preferences.

The default state of the copy self control is "sticky" - Pegasus Mail will remember its setting from message to message and between sessions. You can also set it to be always on or always off by default in your message settings preferences.


Urgent Messages

Check the urgent box in the message editing window if you want your message to be sent at the highest priority available on the message transport your system uses. The effect of setting this flag will vary from system to system. Many MHS mailers will recognize it, as will some Internet mailers. Pegasus Mail displays urgent messages at the top of the new mail folder in red text, and sends a different new mail notification to the recipient to indicate that the message is urgent.

Note: You should use the urgent flag with care: urgent messages can be annoying, and overuse of the feature seriously impacts on its usefulness.


Encryption
Pegasus Mail's encryption module

If your message contains sensitive or private information, you might want to encrypt it. An encrypted message is scrambled, and can only be read by someone who knows the correct password. You can encrypt your message using Pegasus Mail's built-in encryptor, or if you have one, using a third party encryption module.

To encrypt your message, click the Encrypt button in the message editor. A small dialog will open into allowing you to select an encryptor. If you choose Built-in encryptor (the default) then you can enter a password using the following rules: the password should have from five to eight characters and is case-sensitive - so FOOBAR and foobar are different passwords. Press OK to add the password, or Cancel to remove it. Pegasus Mail will encrypt the message using your password when it sends it.

The recipient must know the password, so you will have to make arrangements in advance to agree on a suitable choice. Don't forget the password! If you forget it, you will never be able to read your message again; even the author of Pegasus Mail cannot break the encryption method it uses.


Rich text

See also:	Sending mail messages

Pegasus Mail allows you to incorporate complex text formatting in your message - things like bold, italics, font changes, indenting and so forth: this kind of complex formatting is called Rich text. Unfortunately, not all mail programs support the display of messages containing rich text, so you may wish to be careful about using it.

When you make a change to your message that will result in it being sent in a rich text format, the Rich text control in the message editor will be automatically checked. You can force the message to be sent as plain text, regardless of any formatting it contains, by unchecking this control. Once you have unchecked it, it will not come back on automatically no matter what formatting you apply. If you wish, you can also check this control to force a message to be sent in rich text format - this may occasionally be necessary after pasting formatted data from other programs, since Pegasus Mail cannot always detect the presence of formatting in such data.

You can tell Pegasus Mail that it should never generate messages containin rich text using the options in the Sending mail preferences page.


Signatures

See also:	Preferences overview

:	Sending mail messages

Tutorial: editing your signatures

A signature is a small fragment of text which Pegasus Mail will automatically add to the end of messages you send. You should usually put your name, address and phone/fax number in your signature, although some people like to place a witty saying or other text there as well.

Pegasus Mail supports nine different signatures that you can select on a message by message basis. Because Pegasus Mail supports a variety of message formats and delivery transports, each "signature" is actually a set of three signatures - one that Pegasus Mail will attach any time you send mail locally using its own built-in delivery agent, one that will be attached to Internet mail messages you send, and a third that will be attached to any messages you send via Novell MHS (if you are using it). Note that the selection of a signature is based on the transport mechanism, so if you send a message to a user on your file server but do so via an Internet transport such as Mercury or Charon, your Internet signature will be attached to the message. Each signature set can be given a short name to jog your memory.

For each of your nine signature sets, you can create both formatted and unformatted versions of your signatures: the unformatted version will be attached to plain text messages, while the formatted version will be attached to any message that contains formatting - pictures, tables, bold and so on. The formatted variants of your signatures can themselves contain tables and pictures if you wish.

Why do you need signature sets? Usually the information you present in your signature will include things like your e-mail address, which may be different on different transports. For example, if you are sending Local and Internet mail you may well express your address differently (possibly "THALIA/DAVID" for your local address, but "david@pmail.gen.nz" for your Internet address). Having separate signatures for each transport allows you to present information that is appropriate in each environment.

You can select the signature that should be used by default using the Signatures preferences page of the Tools | Options dialog. You can also specify that no signature should be added by default in the same location. Pegasus Mail's identity feature allows you to select a different default signature for each identity you use.

To edit a signature set, choose Options from the Pegasus Mail Tools menu, select the Signatures page, and click Edit signatures. In the signature editor that opens, select the signature set, transport (local, internet or MHS) and variant (formatted or unformatted) you want to edit and make any changes you need. You can make changes to more than one signature without closing the window - Pegasus Mail will prompt you to save any changes you have made before switching to the next signature.

You do not have to create signatures for transports you do not use, so if you only ever send Internet and Local mail, you do not have to create an MHS signature.

Add this variant of the default signature upon message creation  If you would prefer to have your signature added to the message at the time you edit it instead of at the time the message is sent, check this control, which will enable the list box containing the various signature variants in the set. Choose the one you would like Pegasus Mail to add when the message editor window is created.

To select a signature set for your mail message, simply choose it in the Signature list control in the message editor. You can also choose "No signature" in this control if you don't want a signature added to your message.

Variable signatures:  Pegasus Mail can place a piece of text selected at random from a list you provide in your signature -- for more information on preparing a variable signature, examine the sample quotes file RQUOTES.R in the RESOURCE\ subdirectory of the directory where you installed Pegasus Mail. To flag the location in your signature where you want the variable text to be placed, use the special characters ~!. Be careful when using variable signatures -- people's tastes differ hugely all around the world, and something which seems witty to you may be offensive to other people.


Editing your message

See also:	Sending mail messages

Edit your message in the large message box at the bottom of the message editing window. The message text will word-wrap when it reaches the right hand margin, or you can press <Enter> to end a line at any time. You can cut text from and paste text into your message using the Edit menu, or using the options on the right-click menu in the editor itself.

You can check your spelling by positioning the cursor at the point in the message where checking should begin and selecting Check spelling from the Tools menu, or by pressing Ctrl+K, or by clicking the Check spelling button.

Ctrl+Y deletes the current line in the message, Ctrl+T deletes the word to the right of the cursor, and Ctrl+J reformats the current paragraph so that all its text falls between the left and right margin.

ASCII indenting  Ctrl+D opens the Indenting dialog, which contains commands that allow you to reformat your text with indented left and/or right margins, using only ASCII spaces. This approach differs from using the indenting commands on the message editor's toolbar in that no tabs are used, and the results are guaranteed to be readable in even the most basic mail readers. The downside of using ASCII indenting as opposed to regular indenting is that paragraphs will no longer wordwrap correctly after you have applied it, so if you plan to use this feature, always do so after you have fully edited your text.

You can store abbreviations for commonly-used text in Pegasus Mail's glossary, and expand it at any time by pressing <Ctrl+E>.

Send your message at any time by clicking the Send button, or by pressing <Ctrl+Enter>.


Attachments

You can attach files to your mail message by clicking on the Attach button in the message editing window. The message editor view will change to one which allows you to choose files and control the way Pegasus Mail will deal with them. When your message has attachments, a small attachment indicator, like this [image] will appear to the right of the tab controls in the message editor.

Pegasus Mail will handle your attachments differently, depending on the destination of the message. You can have considerable control over this process if you wish, although Pegasus Mail's automatic handling is usually more than adequate for all situations.

Choose any of the following items for more information on attachments:

Selecting files to attach

Indicating the file type

Attachment encoding


Selecting files to attach

Before you select files to attach to your message, make sure that the File type and Attachment encoding fields in the dialog are set correctly.

To add an attachment, simply click the Add attachment button at the bottom of the window and locate the file you want to attach using the standard Windows File Open dialog.

You can remove attachments from the attachment list by highlighting them and clicking Remove attachment.

If you have added an attachment then notice that either the file type or attachment encoding you have selected for the attachment is incorrect, click once on the attachment in the list, then select the proper values for type and encoding and click the Change selected button.

The Recently-used files button brings up a list of files you have attached to recent messages. Double-clicking any of these files will attach it to the current message using the selected attachment encoding and type options.


File type

You can tell Pegasus Mail what type of file you are attaching by choosing from a predefined list of file types. The file type information is optional and is currently used only for informational purposes - the recipient will usually see then file type when examining the list of files attached to the message.

The file type information can be used to provide attachment viewing facilities, or to launch the original application with the attachment, so you should get into the habit of filling it in.

If you are uncertain of the type of file, you should use Mailer decides, the default choice.

Note: Pegasus Mail will not perform file conversion - it will not convert an MS-Word file to WordPerfect format even if you indicate WordPerfect format here - it will simply convey the wrong information. It is up to you to ensure that the file type information is appropriate for the file you are attaching. When you select Mailer decides, Pegasus Mail will usually work out the correct type information for you.

Tip for advanced users:  Pegasus Mail uses a file called FILETYPE.PM, which is located in your home mailbox directory, to determine file types. You can edit this file to change or add new types. The sample version of this file, which was installed in the RESOURCE subdirectory of the directory where you installed Pegasus Mail, contains full documentation on modifying FILETYPE.PM - but do so with care! The file format is not forgiving of errors.


Attachment encoding

When you send an attachment, it cannot always be transmitted as-is. Sometimes it is necessary to package the attachment in a particular way so that the mail transport system or the recipient's mailer can understand it. Pegasus Mail will always make sensible default choices about attachment encoding - you should only need to change the attachment encoding in very special cases. Pegasus Mail supports the following attachment encodings:

Mailer decides. The default setting, this tells Pegasus Mail to do whatever is appropriate based on the way it sends the message. Attachments to local and MHS addresses will not be encoded in any way, while attachments to Internet addresses will be uuencoded prior to transmission. We strongly recommend that you always use this encoding unless you are very sure of what you are doing, and of the need to use another of the specific encodings described below.

No encoding. Instructs Pegasus Mail not to encode the attachment at all. This is an extremely dangerous choice in some cases, particularly for Internet mail. Use it only if you know that the attachment is a plain text file with no high bit characters.

ASCII text. Indicates that the file is plain text with no formatting or high-bit characters. Pegasus Mail will actually send the attachment as a separate message rather than as an attachment.

UUencoding. A scheme used widely on the Internet. If you are mailing via the Internet, or to a user on a Unix or mainframe system this encoding is a good choice.

BinHex. Used heavily in the Macintosh world. BinHex is a good format, containing a certain amount of error checking and compression. Because it is not widely used outside the Macintosh world, you should check in advance that the recipient is able to deal with BinHex-encoded files.

MIME Encodings:  MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) is an Internet standard for multimedia mail which allows different mail applications to exchange a variety of types of information. If you select any of these MIME encodings, Pegasus Mail will attach the information necessary for other applications to be able to decode the file. You must choose an appropriate translation - selecting "GIF image" for a TIFF file will not cause Pegasus Mail to convert the file: it will simply be sent in the wrong format. Pegasus Mail will choose basic MIME encoding automatically if you set encoding to "Pegasus Mail decides" and have checked the "Use MIME features" control in the "Special" screen of the message editing dialog.


Other message options

Select Other message options from the Message menu, or click on the "Special" button in the message editing dialog and the screen will change to a dialog which allows you to control less frequently-used features for your message.

Blind CC. Enter any BCC. addresses in this field.

Send replies to. If you want replies to your message to go to an address other than your own, enter that address in this field.

Identity  This controls the identity used to create this message. If you select a different identity, some other settings for the message, especially your signature, may also change.

Use MIME features for Internet and local mail  MIME is an an Internet standard that allows mailers on different systems to exchange binary data and messages using International characters. If you check this control, Pegasus Mail will use MIME encodings to represent accented and special characters, and to package attachments so that other MIME-compatible mail systems can read and convert them. MIME is a very powerful standard, and the only time you should not check this control is if you believe your correspondent may not be using a MIME-compatible mail system.

Leave the message window open even when successfully sent  If you check this control, Pegasus Mail will not close the message editor window after you have successfully sent the message. This allows you to make changes to the message and send it again as required. Discard the window when you no longer need it by clicking the Cancel button.

Obsolete after. If your message is only meaningful for a certain length of time, enter the time after which it is obsolete in this area. Obsolete messages appear grey in the folder window, and there is a browser command which will purge all obsolete messages. Obsolete mail mail also be purged by utilities run by the system manager.

Message width. This field allows you to specify the average length of a line of text in your message. Pegasus Mail will adjust the margin of the message editor so that approximately the number of characters you specify will fit on a line. You cannot enter a width wider than the current width of the editing window.

Average tab width. By default, Pegasus Mail obeys the standard Windows convention that the <Tab> key moves from field to field in a dialog. If you enter a width in this field, however, Pegasus Mail will insert the <Tab> characters in the message instead. You can only change the tab width if tabs were enabled when you started the message. The width you enter is an average based on the average width of characters in the current font; it will only be exact if you use a monospace font such as Courier.

Custom headers  This option allows you to add specific message headers directly into the mail message generated by Pegasus Mail. It is a very technical option and should only be used if you know exactly what you are doing. Click Add and Pegasus Mail will open a window prompting you to enter the header you want to add. Type it in exactly as it should appear in the message, including the keyword and the colon character following it. You may not add any header that Pegasus Mail itself will add to the message, so you cannot add fields like From, To, Subject, CC, MIME-Version, Content-type and so on. The principal use of this feature is for list managers who need to add approval headers when submitting messages, and for internal use by Pegasus Mail itself, which uses it to attach special threading headers to your replies.


Importing text from other sources

You can add text from other applications to your message in three ways.

Cut and paste. You can use the standard cut, copy and paste commands on the Edit menu to move text around within Windows.

The right click menu  Right-clicking in the editor window opens a context menu containing a number of specialized paste options.

Import menu option. The Import file into message option on the Message menu allows you to read a text file into your message. A dialog will appear which allows you to navigate using standard file and directory lists, or type the name of the file in directly. Note: the file must be a text file for this option to work. Word processor files are usually not text files.


Distribution Lists

Pegasus Mail can accept up to 32000 characters in any address line. If you need to send a message to more addresses than will fit in this space, or you have lists of users to whom you mail regularly, you can create distribution lists.

A distribution list can be any text file containing addresses, one per line, but it's generally easier to use Pegasus Mail's distribution list manager, which you can access by pressing the button on the button panel, by pressing <F6>, or by selecting Distribution Lists from the Addresses menu.

Creating a distribution list

Distribution list options

Using distribution lists


Creating a distribution list

See also:	Distribution list options

To create a distribution list, press <F6> and click on the New list button. A dialog will open prompting you for a long name and distribution list options for the list. Complete the dialog then click OK. The list will be created and selected in the list of available lists shown at the left-hand side of the window.

To add addresses to your distribution list click in the address list area and either type in the addresses or select them from address books or the local user list. Make sure that you have only one address per line in the list. Any valid address can be entered in the list, including addressbook aliases.

The Pegasus Mail distribution list manager can handle many thousands of addresses.


Distribution list options

There are several ways you can control and customize the operation of your distribution lists. To alter these options, press <F6> to open the distirbution list manager if it is not already open, then select the list you want to work with on the left, and click the Settings button.

To field (suppressing the list of recipients): Entering an address in this field will force Pegasus Mail to suppress the listing of all the recipients' addresseses in the To: field when you use the list. Instead of showing every member of the list, the To: field will contain only what you enter here. Because of the way Internet mail works, you cannot simply enter any piece of text in this field -- you must enter something which can be legally processed as if it were an address. We recommend that you use the following format to create the contents of this field:

"(descriptive text)" <(your own address)>

Replace (descriptive text) with a meaningful name for the mailing list, and put your own address where it says (your own address). Recipients will almost always see the descriptive text instead of your address so it will not seem as strange as it sounds. The quote characters around (descriptive text) and the angle bracket characters around (your own address) are vitally important and must be included exactly as shown. It is not possible to suppress the recipient list for MHS mail and this field will be ignored for MHS messages.

Reply to: If you want to direct replies to list mailings to a particular address, enter it here. A reply-to field you set in the list will override any in the message.

Request confirmation of reading, Request confirmation of delivery, Mark message as urgent, Signature set: These controls duplicate the same features in the message editor. If you set them for the distribution list they will override the values you use when you compose the message.


Using distribution lists
Using a distribution list

There are several ways you can tell Pegasus Mail to use a distribution list

1: In the message editor, click the Addressing Centre button [image] at the right of any address field, switch to the DLists page and double-click the list you want to use. This is the easiest and best way of using a distribution list.

2: While composing your message, open the distribution list selector by clicking the button in the button panel, by pressing <F6> or by choosing Distribution lists from the Addresses menu, and double-click on the address you want to use. Pegasus Mail will paste the appropriate file name into the address field of your message.

3:  Leave the distribution list manager window open and drag the lists you want to the address field in your message.

4: Type an '@' followed immediately by the DOS path to the file containing the distribution list. You will not normally use this method, but it may be convenient if you have a mailing list in a suitable format which was not created in Pegasus Mail.


Glossaries (abbreviations)

Pegasus Mail allows you to store abbreviations for commonly-used text strings which you can expand at any time with a single keypress. To create a glossary entry, choose Edit/create from the Glossary submenu of the Tools menu. This provides an easy way of creating "canned" text that can be entered quickly into replies or other messages - very useful for helpdesks, technical support, and order handling personnel, among others!

In the Glossary dialog, a list of abbreviations appears on the left-hand side of the screen, while the full text of the currently-selected abbreviation appears in the edit window to the right. To change a glossary entry, simply select it in the list and edit it in the editing window. Pegasus Mail. Adding a glossary entry is equally simple - just click the Add button, provide an abbreviation, and edit as before. You can copy and paste into your glossary texts using the buttons in the dialog.

To expand a glossary entry in your message, simply type the abbreviation, make sure the cursor is at its end, then press <Ctrl+/> or <Ctrl+E>. You can expand glossary entries in the message editor, address fields and in the subject line, and in some other places within the program as well.


Browsing mail

The folder browser allows you to manage the mail you receive. It provides functions for moving, copying, deleting, forwarding, printing and replying to messages. Special options and functions for sorting folders are located on the Folder menu which appears at the end of the menu bar when a folder window is frontmost.

Message status indicators

The Folder Manager

The folder selector

Grouped views

Copying and moving messages

Deleting messages

Forwarding messages

Resending copy-to-self messages

Printing messages

Annotating your messages

The Folder menu


Annotations

You can add your own comments to any message you receive in a number of ways:

* By choosing Add/edit annotation from the Folder menu while browsing a folder, or from the Reader menu while you are reading a message.

* By pressing <Ctrl+9>

* By right-clicking the message and choosing "Add/Edit Annotation".

Messages with annotations appear marked with a green dot status indicator in the folder browser.

Annotations are stored in a separate file from the message and are automatically deleted when you delete the message. You may put whatever you wish in an annotation - Pegasus Mail does not impose or suggest any particular format. When you move a message to another folder, its annotation will move with it.

Note: If you make a copy of a message with annotations then the copy will have its own set of annotations divorced from the original message: changes made to the original message's annotations will not be reflected in the annotations to the copy message.


Message status indicators

Pegasus Mail reserves a small space at the left-hand side of the folder window to place status indicators that give you visual information about each message. Various icons or glyphs can appear in the status area, each giving a different piece of information about the message:

	Indicates that the message has attachments or multiple parts
	Indicates that the message consists of only a fancy version.
	Indicates that the message is in a special format that includes both plain text and fancy-formatted versions. You can control which version Pegasus Mail should display in the Message reader preferences page.
	Indicates that the message is a Digest - that is, a mail message that contains a number of other mail messages. Pegasus Mail presents digests in a format that looks a lot like a folder, allowing you to read them in much the same way as you would read mail in any other of your folders.
	Indicates that you have sent a reply to this message at some point.
	Indicates that you have forwarded the message to someone else at some point.
	Indicates that the messages has annotations.
	Indicates that you have read or previewed the message.


Mail folders
A mail folder is simply a place where mail messages are stored. The new mail folder is a special folder which changes as you receive, read and delete mail, but you can also create other folders for long term storage of messages you wish to keep. Folders can have long descriptive names to aid in filing.


The folder selector

When you choose the Move or Copy options in the folder window, the folder selector will open. In this dialog you can create new folders, rename existing ones and delete folders you no longer require.You can also create Trays, which are a special kind of folder which can contain folders and other trays.Trays allow you to organize your mail into a hierarchy, or to group related topics and folders in their own areas.

The folder selector shows a list of all the folders and trays available to you. System-wide folders, which are available to all users, appear in their own mailbox within the list: you can read from them, but you might not be able to alter their contents. You can select items from the list using the mouse, or by typing the first few characters of their names. To open a tray, highlight it and press <Enter>, or click on the Open button, and its contents will appear in the list indented one level. You can also and open trays using the left and right arrow keys.

At the right-hand edge of the entry for each folder is a pair of numbers, representing the number of messages in the folder and the number of unread messages in the folder respectively. Unread mail can appear in folders as a result of new mail filtering rules, or when you copy a message you have not read from the new mail folders. Folders containing unread mail appear in the list in green.

Special options  you can access special options for many of the folders in the list by right-clicking them. You can dismiss the menu without selecting a choice by pressing <Esc> or clicking the mouse outside the menu.

The right-click options for Pegasus Mail v2.x-format folders are:

Reindex folder  From time to time, a folder's index file may become corrupt, which can result in errors when you attempt to open it. Highlight the folder and select this command to force Pegasus Mail to rebuild the index file. Reindexing will work reliably if the actual messages in the folder are intact, but may result in the loss of some status information (such as whether or not you have replied to a message, or forwarded it). A side-effect of rebuilding a folder is that some deleted messages may reappear the next time the folder is opened.

Compress folder  When you delete a message from a folder, Pegasus Mail does not immediately reclaim the space it occupies; instead, it waits until you have deleted around 20000 characters from the folder then recovers all the space in a single pass. This deferred compression improves the performance of the program at the cost of some disk space. Select this option to force Pegasus Mail to compress a folder. Compression is always a safe option and does not result in the loss of information.

Check consistency  This option attempts to verify that a folder is intact. On rare occasions folder index files can become damaged, which can cause problems in long-term use. Pegasus Mail automatically invokes this option before recovering deleted message space from folders ("compressing"), but if you want to ensure that a folder is intact, you can perform a consistency check manually at any time.


Copying and moving messages

If you want to make a copy of message in a mail folder, or to move the message from the current folder to another, click on the Copy button or the Move button. The folder selector will open listing the available folders. You can create a new folder if you wish, or else double-click on the destination folder.

You can also drag messages from the folder where they are located and drop them on either another open folder window, or on the line representing the destination folder in the folder manager window. Holding down the <Alt> key as you drag the messages will copy them instead of moving them.

Pegasus Mail provides a feature called Quick operations which can help you file mail to your most commonly-used folders more quickly.

If the message you are copying has not been read, the unread messages counter which shows for the folder in the folder selector will increase by one.


Deleting messages

To delete messages you no longer need, highlight them in the folder and click the Delete button, or press the <Del> key.

Deleted message tracking: Pegasus Mail has a preferences option which can allow you to recover mail messages you delete accidentally. If you have checked Preserve deleted messages until exit in your preferences Pegasus Mail will not delete messages from the folder - instead it will move them to a special folder called Deleted messages which it will create as necessary. When you exit from Pegasus Mail, the deleted messages folder is removed and the messages are deleted once and for all. Any time up to the point when you exit from Pegasus Mail you may open the deleted messages folder and move or copy messages you wish to recover to other folders.

Note: you should not enable deleted message tracking if you are running in an environment with low or restricted disk space.


Forwarding multiple messages
Forwarding messages

Forwarding a message is the process of taking a message in one of your folders and sending it on to another person or address. Pegasus Mail gives you considerable flexibility in how forwarding should occur. When you click the Forward button in a folder or message reader window, the Forwarding Centre will open up, listing the messages to be forwarded, and providing options for processing them.

* Hint  You can forward multiple messages by selecting them as a group within the folder before clicking the Forward button.

Forwarding a message involves three steps:

1: Enter the address to which the messages are to be forwarded. You can click the addressbook icon at the right of the address field to open the Addressing Centre, where you can select addresses from your addressbooks, distribution lists, or from a list of recently-used addresses. Alternatively, if you know the address, you can simply type it into the field.

2: Select the way the message should be forwarded.  Pegasus Mail allows you to forward messages in four different ways:

*	Forwarding with editing  This method allows you to make changes to the contents of the message before it is forwarded. The forwarded message will appear to be sent by you, rather than by the original sender - this is because once you have made changes, it's no longer really the original sender's message any more. When you select this option, various other options are made available in the forwarding dialog: Wrap long lines in editor allows you to reformat the text of the original message as you edit it; Forward any attachments the message has as well adds any attachments the original message had as attachments to the new message you are creating. You can remove selected attachments in the message editor later if you only want to forward some of them. Finally, the three radio buttons allow you to control how much of the original message's headers should be included in the body of the new message that gets created - you can choose between all headers (useful for reporting abuse or spam), tidy headers (only the most important headers are included) or no headers.
*	Forwarding without editing  This method, which is also called Bouncing or Redirecting in other mail programs, sends the message as-is, as soon as you click the Forward button. When you forward using this method, Pegasus Mail adds three extra headers to the message to show that you have forwarded it, but does not otherwise alter the message in any way. The forwarded message will appear in the recipient's new mail folder as being sent by the original sender, because it is still wholly his or her content.
*	Start a new message with the original attached  This method starts a completely new mail message with the messages you are forwarding as attachments. This allows you to compose your own text from scratch, referring to the attached messages as necessary. The attached messages are complete and unaltered.
*	Create a MIME digest  This special option is only really meaningful if you are forwarding multiple messages; it takes the messages and packages them in a special format called a MIME digest: when the recipient opens the message in a competent mail program, the digest should be presented just like a folder, allowing the recipient to browse the messages easily. This option is very useful for maintaining discussion lists and the like. You can add your own subject field for the digest (which is what the recipient will see in their folder list when the message appears in their new mail folder), but cannot otherwise alter it in any way.

3: Click the Forward button.  If you have chosen Edit or make changes before forwarding, or Start a new message with the messages attached, a new message editor window will open, set up as you have specified; otherwise, the message will be forwarded without further ado.

Selecting an identity for your forwarded message  If you have defined multiple identities in Pegasus Mail, you can specify which identity the program should use for forwarding the message using the Use this identity... control. The identity can control the formatting of the forwarded message, the options used to create it and many other settings.

Removing messages you don't want to forward  The list at the bottom of the forwarding window shows the messages Pegasus Mail will forward when you click the Forward button. If you find you have added a message you don't want to forward, simply select it in the list and click the Remove button. This does not delete the message or change it in any way - it simply removes it from the list.


Resending copy-to-self messages

If the currently-selected message is a copy to self you have made using the Copy self option in the message editor, then you can resend it by right-clicking it and selecting Resend this message... from the popup menu.

Pegasus Mail will create a new message editor window filled out as closely as possible to the way it was filled out when the message was originally sent. If the copy-to-self was created using Pegasus Mail v3.10 or later, then attachments and identity settings will be restored as well as basic addressing options. For copies-to-self created with earlier versions of Pegasus Mail, attachments and identity settings will not be restored.

The resent message is treated as a completely new message by Pegasus Mail: so, if the Copy self control in the message editor is checked when you click the Send button, a new copy-to-self will be made -- the original copy-to-self is not altered in any way.


Printing messages

See also:	Message reader preferences

You can print messages from the message reader or from the folder list by pressing <Ctrl+P>, or by selecting Print from the file menu. The message reader also has a Print button.

When you ask to print a message, the print setup dialog will appear showing the last settings you used. Pegasus Mail remembers your print settings from session to session. The controls in the Print to group at the top of the dialog allow you to choose whether the message should be printed on the Windows default printer, or on a specific printer you select..

Print what  Selects how much of the message should be printed.

Printing message headers  Pegasus Mail lets you choose how much or little of the message's headers it will print. Choosing Significant, full will print the headers you normally see in the message reader in their entirety, while Significant, first line prints only the first lines of only those headers. Clicking All will print the message exactly as it was received, with all headers intact, and clicking None will omit the header information from the printout altogether.

Copies and collate allow you to choose how many copies of the message should be printed, and whether or not the printer should complete the entire document in one pass before moving on to the next copy (this is called collating the document).

Print a banner header allows you to tell Pegasus Mail to print a headline across the first page of the printed message. You can control the format of the banner header by clicking the Banner text... button and following the instructions in the dialog that opens.

Print an informational footer at the bottom of each page tells Pegasus Mail to add a running footer to the printout containing the page number, the time and date, and your name. You cannot alter the format of the running footer.

Click the Printer setup button to configure your printer using its standard Windows control panel. This will vary from printer to printer.

Setting the font your your printout

Pegasus Mail usually does "WYSIWYG" (What You See Is What You Get) printing using the same settings you have defined for reading the mail message. On occasions, though, you may need to print using a different font or size from the one used in the message reader. To change the font used for printing, you need to select Options from the Pegasus Mail Tools menu and select the Message reader page: the option for setting the font is changed there.

Internal technical limitations make it impossible for us to let you select the font you want from the print dialog itself - we apologize if this causes any inconvenience.


The folder menu

When a folder window is frontmost, a Folder menu appears at the right of the menu bar. The folder menu contains options which are less frequently-used or are more specialised than the button functions in the window.

Searching for text in the folder

Sorting the contents of the folder, and time zone compensation

Grouped views

Extracting messages to files

Special folder options

Quick folder options

Set colour allows you to display messages in different colours, which can be a useful way of reminding yourself about their contents. You can sort your message by colour as well.

The last entry on the menu allows you to select the font the folder window will use to display the list. This setting is global to all folders and is remembered from session to session. You cannot choose very large fonts for the folder display without truncating some of the information it shows. A 14-unit font is normally a good size.


Searching for text in a folder

The Find text and Find again options on the Edit menu allow you to search the contents of the current folder for a piece of text. Type the text you want to look for in the editing field. The text can contain * and ? wildcard characters. Searching is always case-insensitive (that is, Pegasus Mail and pegasus mail are regarded as the same string).

Search message headers only: If you want Pegasus Mail to restrict its search to the special headers at the start of the mesage, check this box. Searching headers only is considerably faster than searching the whole message, and is appropriate if you are interested in the subject of a message or who it is from.

Mark all matching messages: Usually Pegasus Mail opens a message reader and displays the first message it finds which matches your search criteria. If you want to select all messages in the folder which match your criteria instead of reading them, click this box. This option is handy if you want to tag all messages on the same subject for moving or copying.

Exact matches:  Normally, Pegasus Mail searches for messages containing any of the words you type in, then ranks them in order of decreasing relevance, based on the closeness of the match. If you would prefer to find messsages that only contain the exact text you have typed, check this control. Note that searches are always case-insensitive, even if Exact matches is checked.

Hint - searching for a specific header: If you only want to search for a particular header containing your search string, make sure that search message headers only is checked, then enter the search text like this example, where we only want messages where the From: field contains the word Otago:

From:*otago*


Wildcard characters
A wildcard character is one which matches any character or group of characters in the text searched. In Pegasus Mail the ? character matches any single character (so "?illy" will match both "Willy" and "Billy"), while the * character matches any number of characters (so "j*on" would match "johnson", "johnston" or "john's son").


Extracting messages to files

Select this command if you would like to save the text of a message or messages to files on your hard disk or file server. What happens when you select this option depends on whether or not you have selected more than one message in the folder. If you have only selected one message, the Pegasus Mail will simply ask you for a filename and will save the contents of the message to that file. If you have more than one message marked, then Pegasus Mail will open a dialog asking you to choose from three options:

Extract all messages to a single file  If you choose this option, then Pegasus Mail will ask your for a filename and will save the text of all the marked messages in the same file, one after the other in the order they appear in the folder.

Extract messages to separate files, asking for names  Choose this option and Pegasus Mail will ask you for a filename for each marked message. You will usually use this option when it is important that you control the names of the files containing the message text.

Extract to separate files, creating unique names for each  If you choose this option, then Pegasus Mail will ask you to enter a single filename. It will then take the filename you supply and create unique filenames based on it, saving the text of each message in a separate file. Pegasus Mail creates the unique names by removing any file extension you supply and adding a numeric extension starting at 000, adding 1 to the extension for each file.You can extract a maximum of 999 messages to files using this command.


Sorting folders

See also:	Grouped views

The second group of entries on the Folder menu allow you to specify how the folder should be sorted. The default for folders is Sort by date. A check mark appears next to the entry which indicates how the folder is currently sorted.Most sorting options will perform a secondary sort when the primary sort fields are equal.

Sort unread before read splits the folder into two groups of messages - those which have been read and those which have not. Each group is sorted according to the current sort order, but all your unread mail appears above read mail in the list.

Sort by colour allows you to sort your mail on arbitrary criteria; use the Set colour option on the menu to display your messages in any of 15 colours, the use "sort by colour" to group them together, sub-sorted by date. You can also set a message's colour using the Highlight action in your new mail filtering rules.

Sort by thread  In this mode, Pegasus Mail sorts by subject, ignoring strings like "Re:", then sub-sorts by reverse date. In most cases, this will sort the folder so that related messages appear grouped together in chronological order. You can also turn on thread sorting by holding down the <Ctrl> key as you click on the Subject header in the folder. Tip: the best way of viewing threads in Pegasus Mail is to select the Thread Activity grouped view.

Apply timezone compensation  Normally, Pegasus Mail will attempt to work out the time difference between messages in your folder and will allow for that difference when sorting by date. This allows messages from (for example) New Zealand and England to sort correctly in chronological order, even though there is a 12 hour time difference between the two places. Whether or not this correction can be applied is dependent on the messages containing legal time zone specifications - unfortunately, many do not. If you would prefer that Pegasus Mail display and sort by the raw date of the message, make sure that this option is not checked.

The section header panels in the folder window are buttons which can also be clicked to select a sort order. To reverse the direction of a sort, click its column heading again.

Pegasus Mail remembers the sorting option you select from session to session.


Special folder options

The Special entry on the Folder menu has a submenu containing specialised or infrequently-used functions.

UUdecode message: Sometimes Pegasus Mail will be unable to recognize that a message is actually an attachment sent using a special encoding method called uuencoding. This usually happens if the attachment was sent across the Internet by someone using a mail system other than Pegasus Mail. If you receive a message like this, you can force Pegasus Mail to decode it by highlighting it in the list and selecting this option. Pegasus Mail will prompt you for a filename and will attempt to decode the message for you.

Un-BinHex message: BinHex is another special transmission format like uuencoding (see above), commonly used on Apple Macintoshes. If you receive a BinHexed message which Pegasus Mail does not recognize as BinHexed, you can force it to unpack it using this option.

Note: BinHexed files from Macintosh users may be useless to you on a PC. The Macintosh has a filing system quite unlike that of any other computer and its files are often only usable on other Macintoshes. Some programs such as WordPerfect and MS-Excel create data files which are compatible on both platforms, but not all do. If you find you cannot use the attachment when you extract it, this may well be the reason.

Mark messages as unread:  If for some reason you wish to change the status of a message from having been read to not having been read, either choose this option or press <Ctrl+U>; all messages selected in the current folder will be marked as unread. Note that marking a message as unread in the new mail folder means that any new mail filtering rules you have defined will be applied to it again the next time you open the new mail folder, and that if the sender has requested confirmation of reading, he or she will receive another confirmation the next time you read the message.

Mark messages as read  The reverse of the previous option - this allows you to mark a message as having been read without actually reading it.

Delete all expired messages: Pegasus Mail allows you to set an expiry, or obsolescence date for a message - a date after which the message is meaningless; messages which are past their expiration dates appear grey in the folder window. This command instructs Pegasus Mail to delete all expired messages from the folder, and only works in the New Mail folder.

Add sender to distribution list  When you select this command, Pegasus Mail will open the distribution list selector and prompt you to select a list. The addresses of the sender of every marked message in the folder will be added to whichever distribution list you select. Pegasus Mail will not duplicate an address which already appears in the list.

Remove sender from distribution list  This command removes the sender of every marked message in the folder list from whichever distribution list you select.

Find/verify digital signature   A digital signature is a specialized form of encryption that allows you to verify that a message is from the person who claims to have sent it, that it was sent at the time claimed, and that it has not been changed in transit. If you have installed a encryption module that supports digital signatures, such as Gerard Thomas's QD-PGP or Michael in der Wiesche's PMPGP, then you can use this option to have that encryption module scan the message for a digital signature and verify that it is correct if it finds one.

Key management   Once again, if you have installed an encryption module that supports public keys, this option can be used to have that module search the message for any public keys it might contain, and add them to your keyring. The exact action taken by this option and the Find/verify digital signature option depends on the module you have installed, and is beyond the scope of this manual.


Addressbooks

Pegasus Mail's addressbooks allow you to store electronic mail addresses and other information about people with whom you correspond. You can create as many addressbooks as you wish, and the system administrator can also create addressbooks which everyone can see (these appear in blue in the Addressbook Manager window).

The Addressbook Manager window

Creating addressbook entries

Using addressbook entries in your mail

The Addressing Centre

Searching addressbooks

The addressbook menu

Importing and exporting addressbooks

Hint: to add a user's address to an address book, drag a message from that user out of the folder and drop it onto an addressbook in the Addressbook Manager's list of addressbooks.


The Addressbook Manager
The Addressbook Manager window

See also:	Addressing your message

The Addressing Centre

When you click on the Addressbooks button, choose Addressbooks from the Addresses menu, or press the <F3> key, the Addressbook Manager window will open. This window is similar to the three-pane Preview mode view Pegasus Mail offers for your folders: it shows a list of your addressbooks at the left; beneath that list is a list of the addresses in the currently-selected addressbook, while the preview area at the right of the window shows the full details of the currently-selected addressbook entry.

The Addressbook Manager window is where you create, remove and generally administer and manage the contents of your addressbooks. You can use it for addressing your mail as well, although you will normally use the Addressing Centre for this: the Addressing Centre has been designed for ease of use, whereas the Addressbook Manager has been designed for maximum flexibility in the creation and maintenance of addressbooks.

To open an address book, simply click once on it in the list of addressbooks: its contents will be displayed in the list at the lower-left.

To create a new addressbook  Click the Book... button on the Addressbook Manager window's toolbar and select Create a new addressbook... from the popup menu that appears. Pegasus Mail will prompt you for a friendly name for your new addressbook (the name that appears in the addressbook list at the top left), a filename and a format. The filename and format fields are not used in Pegasus Mail v4.1 and earlier - they are reserved for future use.

To rename an addressbook  Click the Book... button on the toolbar and select Rename addressbook...: a small dialog will open into which you can type the new name you want the addressbook to have. You can have any characters you wish in an addressbook name, and the name can be up to 50 characters long.

To delete an addressbook  Select it in the list of addressbooks at the top left, then click the Book... button and choose Delete addressbook from the popup menu that appears. Exercise considerable caution with this option - when you delete an addressbook, it cannot usually be recovered.

Addressbook properties  When you click the Book... button on the toolbar and choose Addressbook properties..., a dialog that serves two purposes will open. The first purpose of this dialog is to alter specific settings about the currently-selected addressbook, while the second is to alter the general behaviour of all you addressbooks and the Addressbook Manager window itself.

Properties for the selected addressbook:  The options in this part of the window only apply to the addressbook that is currently selected in the list.

Apply the e-mail address instead of the alias	Normally, when you use an entry from an addressbook, Pegasus Mail will use the Name field for the entry instead of the e-mail address. When the message is actually sent, Pegasus Mail will look up the e-mail address associated with the name and send the mail to that address .This process is called aliasing (other programs may call it other things - for instance, Eudora uses the term Nickname for the same idea), and it usually makes the process of addressing messages friendlier for non-technical people. If you would prefer that Pegasus Mail simply used the e-mail address instead of using the name as an alias, click this control.
Do not resolve aliases in this addressbook	When a message is sent, Pegasus Mail will usually scan your addressbooks to see if it can find the address you have entered in the Name field of any of your addressbook entries: this process is called alias resolution (see above for a description of aliasing), and can be potentially quite time-consuming, especially for large addressbooks. If you do not want Pegasus Mail to attempt to resolve aliases in this addressbook, check this control. Disabling aliases may speed up the process of sending mail considerably, but if you check this control, you will typically have to check the Apply the e-mail address control (see above) as well.

Settings affecting all addressbooks:  The options in this part of the window will apply to all the addressbooks in the list: use them if you want to change the global behaviour of addressbooks in the program. The meaning of the controls in this section are the same as those described above.

Double-clicking an address starts a new message  Normally, if you double-click an address in the lower-left list of Addressbook Manager window, Pegasus Mail takes this as meaning that you want to make changes to the entry, so it will open the entry editor dialog and load the entry into it for editing. You may prefer to have a double-click start a new message to that addressee: if so, check this control and Pegasus Mail will change its behaviour when you double-click addresses in an addressbook.


Creating address book entries

When you have opened an addressbook, the contents of the book will appear in the list at the lower left of the Addressbook Manager window in an abbreviated form. If you click on an entry in the list, all the details from that entry will appear in the information pane at the right of the Addressbook Manager window.

To add an entry to your address book, click the Entry... button on the Addressbook Manager window's toolbar and choose Add a new address entry... from the popup menu that appears. A simple data-entry dialog will open presenting you with a blank entry template. Fill in the fields and when you are satisfied with what you have entered, click the OK button. The fields which you must complete in this screen are the following:

Name (alias): The person's name. You can use what you enter in this field as an address in any address field - it is generally easier to remember that someone is called Peter Smith than to remember his address. This use of the name as an address is called aliasing. This field may not contain a comma.

Key: A short search key for the entry. Pegasus Mail allows you to sort the address book either by name or by key, so the key field gives you an alternative sorting option.

E-mail address: The person's electronic mail address. Any single valid address can be entered in this field, including distribution lists and NetWare groups. You may not use an alias in this field, nor may you currently use more than one address.

All other fields in the address book are yours to use in any way you wish.

*** Tip *** if you have a mail message from a person you want to add to your address book, you can do so simply by opening the address book then dragging the message from the folder and dropping it onto the address book window (note that this will use the Reply-to address from the message if one exists).


Using address book entries in your mail

See also:	Addressing your message

The Addressing Centre

You can use your address books in your mail in several ways: the most flexible of these is to use the Addressing Centre, which is available any time you see its icon ( [image]) at the right of an addressing field.

You can also use your addressbooks to create mail directly from the Addressbook Manager window, in any of the following ways:

1: You can select an entry or entries in an addressbook, then click the Send Mail... button in the Addressbook Manager window's toolbar. This will start a new message and load the selected addresses into the To Field of the message editor.

2: If you have enabled the option for double-clicking to start a new message in the Addressbook properties window, you can double-click any entry in the addressbook list to start a new message addressed to that person.

3: You can drag the address entries you want to use to any edit control and drop them there.

Depending on the setting in the addressbook properties dialog, Pegasus Mail will paste either the alias (the default) or the actual e-mail address into the destination field: you may use either approach depending on your preference.

Limitations:  Most address fields in Pegasus Mail can accept up to most 32000 characters. If you have selected addresses with more characters than will fit in the field, Pegasus Mail will issue a warning. When this happens, you might have to consider creating a distribution list.


Aliases
Aliasing happens when you use the name field from an address book instead of the e-mail address. Pegasus Mail will accept either as an address: if you use the name, then Pegasus Mail will look up the real e-mail address at send time. You may prefer to use aliases over e-mail addresses because it is generally easier to remember someone's name than their address.


Searching in addressbooks
Searching address books

The quickest way to search your address book is to type the first few characters of the name or key you want to find. Depending on the current sort order of the address book Pegasus Mail will move the highlight to the first entry in the book with a key or name which matches what you type. This process is called speed searching.

For more comprehensive searching, you can click the Find... button on the Addressbook Manager's toolbar, or select the Find text command on the Edit menu. When you choose Find, a small dialog will open asking what you want to search for. Enter the string you want to find. If you want Pegasus Mail to search the whole address book marking all entries which match your criteria, click the select all matching entries button.

You can repeat the last search you made by selecting Find again from the Edit menu, or by pressing <Ctrl+G>. The search text is global, so you can search in one book, then open another and choose Search again to continue your search in the new book.


The Addressbook menu

When an address book is the frontmost window in Pegasus Mail, the Addressbook menu option becomes available at the right of the menu bar. This menu contains actions and commands specific to address books.

Searching: To to search for text in the address book, use the Find text and Find again options on the Edit menu.

The first options in the Addressbook menu control the sort order for the addressbook. The sort order is remembered for each address book separately between sessions. The sort order which is currently active shows a checkmark in the menu.

Import and export  these options allow you to import data into your addressbook from other programs and to export your addressbook. Click here for more information.

The final option, Addressbook properties, has the same effect as clicking the Book... button and choosing Addressbook properties there.


Importing and exporting addressbooks
Importing and Exporting Addressbook Entries

If you have lists of addresses in other programs, you may be able to import them into your Pegasus Mail addressbook. Similarly, Pegasus Mail allows you to export all or selected addresses from an addressbook to a file that can subsequently be imported into other applications.

Two import/export formats are available: the first, tagged format, is a simple textual format where each line contains one field from the entry, starting with a tag, or a name that identifies the field. Only Pegasus Mail can usually import this format, but it is easy to read and to incorporate into word processors. The second format is tab-delimited text: in this format, each record is held in a single line in the file, and fields within the record are separated from each other using <Tab> characters. Tab-delimited format can be easily imported into many databases and spreadsheet programs.

When exporting to tagged format, each field is named, so the order of the fields is not important: to see the format used during tagged export and import, simply select a couple of records in an addressbook and choose Export to tagged text file from the Addressbook menu. Once the export is complete, examine the output file.

When exporting to tab-delimited format, the addressbook fields are exported in the following order:

Name/Alias

E-mail address

Key

Department

Phone

Fax

Delivery address

Postal address

Details

Image filename

In tab-delimited format, you must specify a Name/alias field and an E-mail address field - all other fields are optional and can be omitted. Fields can also be empty if you wish, and will be safely truncated to acceptable lengths if they are too long. When you fail to specify a Key field, Pegasus Mail will attempt to create one for you - for this reason, Name/alias fields are best expressed as "Firstname Lastname".


The button panel

See also:	Preferences overview

Pegasus Mail's button panel is a set of tools which provides access to the most commonly-used parts of the program at the click of a button. Depending on the setting you specify in your Toolbar Preferences (see under the Tools | Options menu), the button panel can appear as either a fixed toolbar beneath the main menu (the default) or as a small floating window in either horizontal or vertical format.

Pegasus Mail includes a number of pre-configured toolbar formats, each with options suitable for different environments. You can select any of these styles using the drop-down control in the preferences dialog. It is also possible to customize the toolbar layout using a simple text file called TOOLBAR.PM in your home mail directory. For more information on customizing your toolbar, please see the file BPANEL.TXT in the RESOURCE subdirectory of the directory where you installed Pegasus Mail. Different identities can have different toolbars selected.

Pegasus Mail remembers the location and state (open or closed) of the button panel between sessions. You can also choose between having the button panel as a toolbar, or as a floating window in vertical or horizontal format using the option in your Preferences. You may see a listbox showing the word <Default>: this allows you to select a different identity if you have defined any.

The buttons on the toolbar have the following functions:

Compose a new message

Read new mail

Open/manage mail folders

Open/manage address books

Open/manage distribution lists

Open the local user list

New mail filtering rules

Use the noticeboard system

Cut selection to the clipboard

Copy selection to clipboard

Paste the contents of the clipboard

Save or write to disk

Retrieve or import from disk

Print

Select font

The following three buttons will only appear if the built-in TCP/IP mail subsystem (using WINSOCK.DLL) is available for use:

Send all outgoing mail waiting in the mail queue

Check your POP3 host for new mail

Check for new mail and send queued mail in one action


Preferences
Preferences overview

Pegasus Mail allows you to customize many aspects of the way it works to suit your own tastes. These settings are called your Preferences (or Options in some other programs), and are stored in a file called PMAIL.INI in your new mail directory. You can edit your preference settings while Pegasus Mail is running by selecting Options from the Tools menu, or by pressing <Alt+F10>: this will open a dialog with a list of preference categories on the left, and the settings for the selected category on the right.

The following settings pages are available in the dialog:

General settings

Basic settings

Advanced settings

Mailbox location

Extended features (only available in NetWare mode)

Outgoing mail

Messages and replies

Message formatting

Signatures

Copies to self ('outbox')

Encryption

Sending mail

Incoming mail

Folders and previews

Message reader

Content viewers

Hyperlinks

User interface

Toolbars

Reporting/Logging

Automatic formatting


General settings
Basic settings

See also:	Preferences overview

The following items can be changed in the Basic Settings preferences page:

Personal name  Pegasus Mail attaches whatever you enter here to your address when you send messages, making it easier for the recipient to identify who you are. You should make this entry simple and clear. Your personal name should consist only of letters and digits.

Automatically open the new mail folder at startup  If you check this box Pegasus Mail will automatically select your new mail folder for you when you run the program, even if it contains no new mail.

Preserve deleted messages until Pegasus Mail closes  If you check this box, Pegasus Mail will save any messages you delete in a special folder called Deleted Messages which will be cleared when you exit; this option can allow you to save messages that you delete by accident.

Ask for confirmation before deleting objects  If you prefer that Pegasus Mail does not ask you to confirm that you really want to delete items such as messages or addressbook entries, uncheck this control. If you uncheck this control, you increase the risk of accidentally deleting messages you meant to keep, so we recommend you consider turning the Preserve deleted messages until Pegasus Mail closes option on.

Allow read messages to stay in the new mail folder  Usually when you close the new mail folder, Pegasus Mail moves all the messages you have read but left there to the folder you have specified as your Default Folder (see below). If you would prefer new mail to stay in your new mail folder until you explicitly move or delete it, check this control.

Ask for NetWare password at startup  Check this and Pegasus Mail will prompt you for your NetWare password when you run it. It will not run unless you enter the password correctly. This option adds security to your mail if you are away from your desk a lot. This control has no effect in non-NetWare environments.

Save the Pegasus Mail desktop state between sessions  If this is checked, Pegasus Mail will remember the folders, address books, distribution lists and other windows you have open at the end of a session, and will automatically reopen them at the start of the next session. Checking this control will also cause the Folder Manager window to remember which trays are open between sessions, and to remember any mailboxes mounted using the Add mailbox to list command on the Folders menu.

Use system-defined colours in Pegasus Mail's controls  If you check this control, Pegasus Mail will use the colours you have defined using the Windows Display control panel for the window background colour, list text, selected text and so on. Pegasus Mail uses colour quite extensively, however, and if you find that your Windows colour settings clash with the colouration it uses, unchecking this control will tell it to use a neutral colour set instead.

Name for default mail folder  This is the name of the folder into which Pegasus Mail should move any mail you have read but not otherwise moved or deleted when you close your new mail folder. If the folder you have named does not exist, Pegasus Mail will create it automatically .You can simply type in the name of a folder, or if you want to use an existing folder for this purpose, you can click the Select button. The auto-move behaviour of this folder can be controlled using the Allow read messages to stay in the new mail folder option (see above).


Advanced settings

See also:	Preferences overview

This page lets you alter some of the more technical aspects of the way Pegasus Mail operates.

Refresh the new mail folder view every x secs  This option controls how frequently Pegasus Mail should scan your new mail folder for new mail while the newmail window is in the foreground. The default is to update the list every three seconds, but this can generate a lot of Network traffic and can degrade your machine's performance, especially if you are connected to your server across a slow link. Setting this field to -1 will disable new mail polling altogether - the new mail window will only be updated when you explicitly choose "New mail" from the "File" menu, or click the "New mail" Icon in the toolbar. If your new mail folder contains more than 750 messages, Pegasus Mail will stop doing automatic updates of the folder for performance reasons, and will check for new mail in your new mail folder less frequently.

Number of lines to scan for enclosures  When it opens your new mail folder, Pegasus Mail does a short scan into each message to see if it can find any obvious signs of attachments: the number of lines Pegasus Mail should scan into the message is controlled by this field. Note that selecting the Attachments view in the message reader always does a full scan of the message looking for attachments and will find any there may be -- this option really only affects the likelihood of the attachment marker being displayed in the folder window. Setting this field to a larger value will slow down the process of opening the new mail folder. Note that this setting only applies to old-fashioned non-MIME messages. MIME is a modern e-mail format, and when it is used (as it almost always is now) Pegasus Mail can always recognize the presence of attachments in the message.

Organization string  This field is only used if you are not connected to a NetWare server; you can enter a name in this field and Pegasus Mail will place it in the Organization header of all mail sent locally and via gateways on your system.

SMTP time zone  This setting is only applied to mail sent using Pegasus Mail's built-in SMTP transport. You should enter your time zone in here expressed as a plus or minus offset from Greenwich Mean Time, and Pegasus Mail will then use it in the Date field of messages you send. Example: New Zealand is 11 hours ahead of GMT, so the proper value for this field would be +1100. Pegasus Mail follows the Internet recommendations for enforcing timezone specifications as a four digit signed offset and will not allow you to enter so-called "vernacular" timezone identifiers like "EST" or "GMT". This setting is ignored if you are sending mail via Pegasus Mail's companion SMTP transport product, Mercury - the Mercury timezone setting is used instead. If you check the Auto box next to the SMTP time zone field, then Pegasus Mail will automatically work out the time zone field by asking your operating system.This means that daylight savings adjustments will happen automatically provided your system is properly configured, so if you are using either of these operating systems or a later version, we recommend you check this control. When the Auto control is checked, the contents of the SMTP time zone field are ignored. There is almost never a reason to have Auto unchecked.

Default MIME character set  Controls the character set Pegasus Mail should use by default when writing MIME messages that contain international characters. Valid values are ISO8859-x, where “x” is a digit between 1 and 9. Pegasus Mail only has full formal support for ISO-8859-1, the other character sets being supported to varying levels. If you have added a comprehensive MIME character mapping table using an external resource file, you can also enter the name of that character set here. Entering an invalid character set name may have undefined consequences for people reading your mail – we strongly suggest that you only alter this control on advice from Pegasus Mail technical support.

Accept requests to "confirm reading"  This option only applies when you are not connected to a NetWare server. It determines whether Pegasus Mail should send automatic answers indicating that you have read a message when the "request confirmation of reading" flag is set in that message. If you uncheck it, Pegasus Mail will never send confirmation of reading. If you are running on a NetWare LAN this option will be greyed and you cannot change it - instead, alter the option in your Extended features preferences.

Deleted messages folder persists between sessions  Normally, if you have turned on deleted message tracking in Pegasus Mail, the messages deleted during a session are purged when you exit from the program. If you would prefer that Pegasus Mail did not purge the deleted messages folder, check this control. When this control is checked, it is up to you to decide when the messages in the deleted messages folder should be discarded, either by deleting them from that folder (at which point they are gone forever), or by simply deleting the folder when you no longer need it. This option is not available if you are running in one of Pegasus Mail's supported Network personality modes.

Winsock loading options  WSOCK32.DLL is a program which provides Pegasus Mail with access to TCP/IP (Internet) networking services on your machine. By default, if Pegasus Mail can find a WSOCK32.DLL on your system, it will load it and make TCP/IP-based mail services available to you using it. If you do not use these features of Pegasus Mail, or if you see errors when Pegasus Mail tries to load the DLL, you can disable the automatic loading by clicking the Never button. If you are using WinSock across a slow dialup line, such as a SLIP link, you may have to check the Load only on demand button: this tells Pegasus Mail to make TCP/IP based services available but only to load WSOCK32.DLL when it actually needs to use it, then unload it when it's finished. You might also want to use demand loading if your machine has only very limited memory. In normal use on an Ethernet LAN, however, you should check the Always button so that Pegasus Mail can get the highest performance from your TCP/IP network.

Deleted space recovery  When you delete a message, Pegasus Mail does not actually remove the message's data from the folder - instead, it simply marks the message as "deleted", and adds the size of the message data to an internal counter. Whenever the folder is closed, Pegasus Mail checks the internal counter to see if it exceeds a particular size, and if it does, it recovers the space occupied by all the deleted messages in the folder. If the folder is very large, or if you delete information from it frequently, this process of compression may become annoying or may take too long. Changing the value of this control allows you to tune the point at which Pegasus Mail will perform the deleted space recovery operation - setting a large number will make the operation happen less frequently, at the cost of having some of your disk space occupied by "dead" data. Setting this field to 0 turns off deleted space recovery - deleted data will never be removed from the folder, and it will therefore continue to get larger and larger over time.

The default value for this field is 24000 bytes: this value has been determined over a number of years to be a good compromise between performance and efficiency - we recommend that you do not change this value unless you have a clear specific reason for doing so.


NetWare MHS preferences

See also:	Preferences overview

If a version of Novell's MHS transport is installed on your system, then this option allows you to configure the way Pegasus Mail will interact with MHS for you. In general, the options in this screen are quite complex and you should change them only if instructed to do so by your MHS administrator.

My NetWare MHS username:  This is the username by which MHS knows you. It may be the same as your NetWare username but need not be. If you are using an SMF-71 transport such as NetWare Global MHS, you can enter a full SMF-71 address (up to 128 characters long) in this field. You may need to enter a complete address here if you are not a member of the default MHS workgroup.

Mailbox name:  This is the name of the directory in the MHS tree where your MHS new mail folder is located. If you are using MHS 1.5, it will usually be the first eight characters of your NetWare username (which is the default Pegasus Mail uses) but it may be different, and is likely to be different if you are using an SMF-71 transport.

New mail folder:  This is the name of the folder in your new mail folder where Pegasus Mail should expect to find your new mail. In technical terms, this field should contain the name of your preferred mailer which may or may not be PMail.

Check the MHS newmail folder:  By default, MHS creates a new mail directory for every user called MHS, and makes this directory the preferred mailbox for the user. Checking this control tells Pegasus Mail to check the MHS new mail folder as well as any other you name in the New mail folder field. Checking this option is harmless at worst, although it may slow down checks for new mail a little bit.


Signatures

See also:	Preferences overview

Tutorial: editing your signatures

A signature is a small fragment of text which Pegasus Mail will automatically add to the end of messages you send. You should usually put your name, address and phone/fax number in your signature, although some people like to place a witty saying or other text there as well. As a general rule, your signature should have no more than 7 lines maximum.

Pegasus Mail supports separate signatures for each type of message you can send - Local, Internet and MHS.Note that it bases its selection of signature on the transport mechanism, so if you send a message to a user on your file server but do so via an Internet transport such as Mercury or Charon, your Internet signature will be attached to the message.

Variable signatures:  Pegasus Mail can place a piece of text selected at random from a list you provide in your signature -- for more information on preparing a variable signature, examine the sample quotes file RQUOTES.R in the RESOURCE\ subdirectory of the directory where you installed Pegasus Mail. To flag the location in your signature where you want the variable text to be placed, use the special characters ~!. Be careful when using variable signatures -- people's tastes differ hugely all around the world, and something which seems witty to you may be offensive to other people.


Home mailbox location

See also:	Preferences overview

Your home mailbox is where all your mail folders, distribution lists, address books and other Pegasus Mail related files except unread new mail are stored. By default, it is located in a special directory on the file server, but you can specify an alternative location for it using this option.

Note: before using this option, make sure that all windows in Pegasus Mail are closed except the button panel (which can also be closed but does not have to be).

You may want to change your home mailbox location if you have limited space on the file server, if you are concerned about the privacy of your mail, or for other reasons. You can also have more than one mailbox and change between them using this dialog - you might want to do this if you received mail at your address for more than one person or organization.

To change your home mailbox location, type in the new path in either DOS or UNC format. If you want to change the location but leave all your mail files where they are, make sure that the move mailbox contents to new location button is not checked (this is how you would implement more than one mailbox as described above). If you have moved your home mailbox but want to revert to the original location on the file server, press the Use default button.

If you have chosen to move the contents of your home mailbox, Pegasus Mail will do so as soon as you click the Change now button. Clicking the OK or Apply buttons without clicking Change now will leave your mailbox location unchanged.


Extended features

See also:	Preferences overview

Extended features are special Pegasus Mail features which you only have if the system administrator has explicitly granted them to you. If you have been granted access to extended features, then the Extended features menu option in the Preferences sub-menu will be available, otherwise it will be grey and you cannot select it. Choosing this option opens a dialog which allows you to change the following:

Autoforwarding: Pegasus Mail supports autoforwarding, or the redirection of your mail to another account. You can autoforward either mail delivered to you from local addresses, mail received from the Mercury Internet gateway, both or neither. It is possible to forward one type of mail but not the other. To set autoforwarding, place the forwarding address in either or both of the available autoforward fields. You can forward local mail to any address Pegasus Mail can understand including NetWare groups and distribution lists. Internet mail can only be forwarded to simple local addresses or to Internet addresses. Mail arriving via NetWare MHS cannot be autoforwarded.

Deliver mail even if autoforwarding: check this box if you want Pegasus Mail to leave a copy of mail as well as forwarding it when you have autoforwarding addresses set. This option has no effect if you are not forwarding your mail.

Allow 'confirmation of reading' requests. If you uncheck this box, then Pegasus Mail will not return confirmation that you have read messages when it is requested. Local users will be told the moment they send the message that no confirmation will be supplied, but Internet and MHS mail will receive no such notification.

Advise of new mail via broadcasts: When this box is checked, Pegasus Mail will send a NetWare-style broadcast message to indicate that a new mail message has arrived. If you find the broadcast messages annoying but do not want to use the NetWare CASTOFF command to disable them, uncheck this box..

Disable mail delivery to this address: If checked, it will not be possible to send mail to this address.


Message editor settings
Message and reply settings

See also:	Preferences overview

This page allows you to change the initial settings for mail the messages and replies you send.

Preferred editor variation for normal messages  This control lets you select the layout of the Pegasus Mail message editor you get by default when you press <Ctrl+N> to create a new message. The available layouts are shown in the drop-down list box. We suggest you experiment with the different layouts to see if there is one there you prefer to the others.

Default settings for new messages

Use MIME features  MIME is an Internet standard for handling mail messages. In general, we strongly recommend that you use Pegasus Mail’s MIME features unless you are corresponding with someone using a mail system that does not understand or follow the MIME standard. This control determines the default state of MIME support in your mail messages - whichever value you select is what Pegasus Mail will use each time you start a new message. You can enable or disable MIME support on a message by message basis using the control in the Special view of the message editor. When MIME support is turned on, Pegasus Mail will use MIME encodings for all attachments, and will use the proper MIME transformations to preserve special and accented characters in your messages. Pegasus Mail always handles mail you receive that uses MIME formats correctly whether or not this control is turned on.

Confirm reading, confirm delivery, copy to self  These sets of controls let you set the default value for the controls they match in the message editor. The On and Off settings are self-explanatory; if Use last setting is selected, then Pegasus Mail will remember from message to message the last setting you used and will use that. This is also called sticky setting throughout this help file and is the default setting for all three controls.

Settings applying to replies only

Remember address selection options in reply dialog  When this control is checked, the five address selection controls at the bottom of the reply dialog will remember their settings from message to message, as will the Copy original's CC field into reply option. Leaving this option unchecked allows these controls to work on a per-message basis, resetting them before each reply. Working with this control unchecked makes it very easy to select exactly which addresses in a message you wish to use when composing a reply, and we recommend that it normally be turned off.

For replies, place the cursor on an initial blank line  When this control is checked, Pegasus Mail will insert a blank line at the top of your replies and will position the cursor there, ready for you to begin typing.

Use message reader quoting styles in replies  If you check this box, Pegasus Mail will use the same styles you have defined in your Message Reader Preferences for highlighting text quoted from previous messages in the editor. This is primarily intended as a visual cue for you, and has been specifically designed not to cause Pegasus Mail to generate richtext messages, even if the quoting style you use contains colours or italic type.

Address completion

Pegasus Mail can complete your addresses for you as you type them. Each time you type a character in an address field, such as the To: field in the message editor, Pegasus Mail looks at what you have typed and tries to find an address that matches it in either your addressbooks, or in the list of addresses to which you have sent mail recently. If it can find a match, it fills out the address field with the matching address, selecting the text it has added: if you type more characters, the suggested text will be replaced and the process will be repeated. The two controls in this dialog allow you to choose where Pegasus Mail should look when trying to complete addresses for you: if neither is checked, Pegasus Mail will not attempt to complete addresses at all.

Note that completing addresses from your addressbooks may be very slow if you have several addressbooks, or if your addressbooks have many entries.


Settings for sending mail

See also:	Preferences overview

The options in this dialog control the way Pegasus Mail generates the messages you send. Many of the options are quite advanced in nature, so if you do not fully understand the purpose of an option, we strongly recommend you leave it as it is.

Default reply address  If you want to specify an address which Pegasus Mail will automatically copy to the reply-to field of every outgoing mail message, enter it here. There is usually no need to use this option - you might use it if you routinely prefer to receive your mail on another system for instance, but in normal use you do not have to enter anything here.

Permanent BCC (blind carbon-copy)  From time to time, you may wish to have all the mail you send automatically sent to a specific address, perhaps a supervisor's address, or to another account you use more regularly. You can do this by entering the address or a list of addresses separated by commas in this field. The addresses you add do not count towards the maximum length of your BCC field, and you can add other BCC addresses on a message by message basis.

Richtext (formatted) message handling

Pegasus Mail's editor supports a wide range of formatting styles, very much like a word processor. Unfortunately, not all e-mail packages understand formatted text, and the standards that exist for interpreting and representing formatted text are not yet widely supported or well-established. As a result, you should exercise some care when sending messages containing any kind of formatting - bold, italic, font changes, and so on. The controls in this section of the Message Editor Preferences dialog allow you to customize the way Pegasus Mail generates rich text messages.

Generate multipart/alternative versions of richtext messages  Multipart/Alternative is a special feature of the Internet MIME message standard that allows different versions of the same text to be packaged together in one message. Mail readers that understand the format can then choose the version they are most able to display. When this control is checked, Pegasus Mail will generate messages containing two versions of any rich text mail you send - the rich text version, and a plain text version suitable for any mail program that cannot handle the rich text format. The cost of generating multipart/alternative messages is that your messages will typically be twice as large as normal, because they will contain the same data presented in two different ways. It is worth pointing out that the multipart/alternative format has proven very unpopular on mailing lists, and as a result you should avoid using rich text formatting altogether for such messages.

For mail sent to local addresses, use MS-RTF formatting  Microsoft's Rich Text Format (RTF) is an extremely powerful way of handling complex formatting in documents. Pegasus Mail's editor can generate and read RTF very well, and will usually default to this format when you need to send mail containing pictures or other formatted data to other users on your local system. When this control is checked, Pegasus Mail ignores the setting of the Always remove formatting control when sending messages to other local users on your system, generating fully-formatted RTF. If the control is unchecked, Pegasus Mail will not generate RTF and will obey the Always remove formatting setting even for local addresses.

Advanced message construction settings

Send enclosures instead of attachments  When you send mail with attachments to Internet addresses, Pegasus Mail usually sends the text and all its attachments in a single mail message. In some cases, typically for people using slow links, it may be convenient to be able to have the text and attachments delivered in separate messages; if you would prefer that Pegasus Mail behaved this way and generated a separate mail message for each section, uncheck this control.

Allow 8-bit MIME encodings  If you check this control, Pegasus Mail will generate MIME messages using the MIME "8BIT" transfer encoding whenever you include 8-bit data in your mail. 8-bit data is illegal in Internet mail, but is used in some countries. This is both a very technical, and potentially very dangerous option and should only be used if you know what you are doing. We recommend you do not check this control except on the advice of a properly qualified person.

Don't add "attachment information" sections to Multipart messages  Normally, when you send a message with attachments, Pegasus Mail automatically attaches a small textual section describing each attachment. The textual section includes the file's original name, size, date and type, and is useful to help the recipient identify and place the attachment. In some cases, for instance, when sending to fax gateways, you may prefer to suppress this information section. If you wish to suppress the section, check this control.

Suppress BCC field listings in outgoing mail  BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) is a useful, but poorly-standardised feature. There are at least three ways a BCC field could be written into a message: it could be omitted altogether; it could contain only each individual recipient's address; or it could contain the addresses of all people receiving the BCC. By default, Pegasus Mail lists all the BCC recipients in the BCC field of mail it sends: if you would prefer that no addresses were shown in the field, then check this control. When this option is turned on, the BCC field will simply contain the text "(Suppressed)", without any addresses.


Settings used when encrypting messages

See also:	Preferences overview

Pegasus Mail has a built-in encryption module that you can use to scramble your mail messages, to keep them from prying eyes. It also supports plug-in encryption modules for systems such as Phil Zimmerman’s PGP (Pretty Good Privacy). You can alter some of the settings Pegasus Mail will use when you choose to encrypt your messages using the group of controls in the Encryption settings preferences dialog..

Default encryption method  If you have installed a third-party encryption module on your system, it will appear in this list: by selecting it here, you can tell Pegasus Mail that this is the encryption module you would like to use by default. Note that this does not mean that all your mail will be encrypted – simply that if you choose to encrypt a message, the encryptor you have chosen will be preselected in the encryption dialog, which can save some time if you encrypt messages often.

Default password  Some encryption modules, for instance John Navas’s PGP-JN implementation, may require a passphrase in order to perform certain operations (PGP-JN, for example, needs the passphrase to access your PGP keyring when signing or encrypting messages). If your encryptor needs a passphrase, you can if you wish enter it here, which will save you from having to type it in every time you want to encrypt or sign a message. If you enter your passphrase here, it will be stored in your INI file in an encrypted form.

WARNING!!  Setting your passphrase in this control is a security risk – you should not do it if your machine may be accessed by unauthorised users. This facility is provided for the convenience of users with low security requirements or whose systems are located in secure areas.

Ask at startup  If you do not want to enter your passphrase by default but also don’t want to have to type it repeatedly, then you can check this control and Pegasus Mail will ask you to enter your passphrase at startup. This is a reasonable compromise between security and convenience, but is still not 100% secure.

Auto-attach a digital signature if the encryptor supports it  A digital signature is a special form of encryption that authenticates a mail message as being from you and as being unaltered, while still allowing the recipient to read the message normally. Digital signatures are based on complex mathematics and offer very reliable proof of the authenticity of a mail message. If you have installed an encryption module, such as PGP-JN, that supports digital signing, you can check this control to have Pegasus Mail automatically generate a signature for every message you send by default. Note that in most cases if you check this control, you will also need to provide your passphrase by one means or another. Checking this control will also increase the size of each message you send and may introduce a delay in the sending process.


Message reader settings

See also:	Preferences overview

The Message reader settings page of the options and preferences dialog allows you to control the way Pegasus Mail displays messages in the standalone message reader.

Show quoted text in  It is a common Internet convention to include part of the mail message to which you are replying in your reply, marked with the character “> “ to show that it is being quoted. When you are reading messages, Pegasus Mail can display parts of the message marked this way in a different colour, which can make it much easier to follow the flow of the conversation. Select the colour you would like Pegasus Mail’s reader to use for quoted text by clicking the button. The button will show the currently-selected colour.

Italic text  If you check this control, Pegasus Mail will also show quoted text using an italic typeface. This can further increase the ease of reading replies.

Right margin for wrapping and reformatting  This setting controls the column at which Pegasus Mail should begin wrapping or reformatting lines in mail messages when either the Wrap long lines or Reformat long lines display mode is selected (either from the Reader menu, or by pressing <F5> or <Ctrl+F5>).

Always save the last window size and position used  Pegasus Mail normally uses a default size for message reader windows - you can adjust that default size by setting a reader window to the size you would like then choosing Save window size from the Reader menu. All subsequent message reader windows will open at that size. If you would prefer that Pegasus Mail always used the size of the last message reader window you opened instead, check this control.

Where a choice exists, display the fancy version  A lot of mail sent using formatting also includes a version of the message in plain text format. The plain text format can usually be displayed with complete reliability, where the rich text version may in some cases be unpleasantly formatted, especially when it contains HTML data. Checking this control tells Pegasus Mail to present the formatted version of the message, while leaving it unchecked tells it to display the plain text version in preference. In situations where only a fancy version of a message is available, Pegasus Mail will display it even if this control is unchecked.

Turn off attachment preview by default in the attachment view  Normally, when you use the attachments page of the message reader, Pegasus Mail will try to offer a preview of the data in each attachment as you click it. This behaviour can be turned off by clicking the No preview button in the attachment view, or if you would prefer the behaviour to be suppressed by default, by checking this button. Note that this control only alters the initial state of attachment preview - you can still turn it on on a message-by-message basis by clicking the Preview button in the attachment view.

Use alternate font for printing messages  Normally when you print a mail message, Pegasus Mail will use the same basic font and settings that it uses to display the message in the reader window. On occasions, this may not be suitable, so if you wish you can check this control and select an alternate font that the program should use when printing. Click the Set font button to choose the font that should be used for printing.

When the current message is moved or deleted  These controls determine how the message reader will react when you move or delete the message you are reading.


Reading mail

See also:	Message reader preference settings

Message reader tutorial

Keyboard shortcuts

To read a message in a folder, either double-click on it or select it and press the Open button. If you are running Pegasus Mail in its folder preview mode, you can still open a message in its own reader window - and in fact, you will often want to do so.

The message reader window has a toolbar with most of the options available in the folder window appears. There is also a Print button, which has the same effect as choosing Print from the File menu, and a pair of buttons marked Next and Prev. The Next button replaces the message in the reader window with the next message from the folder, while the Prev button replaces the message with the one before it in the folder. If you hold down the Shift key while you press Next or Prev, the message you are leaving will be marked in the folder selector before the new one is loaded. If you hold down the Ctrl key when you click Next, Prev, Move, or Delete, the next or previous unread message will be loaded instead of simply the next message.

The Copy command on the Edit menu will copy any selection you have made in the message. There is also a Copy command on the right-click menu for the reader.

Right-clicking a message will bring up a list of options specific to that message. Most of these options are duplicated on the Reader menu, but one, Copy to DList, is unique: this command will take whatever text you have selected and add it directly to a distribution list. This command is very useful for adding addresses to regularly-used mailing lists, and in conjunction with the new mail filtering rule that checks list membership.

Options specific to the message reader appear in the Reader menu.


Message reader keyboard shortcuts

See also:	The Message reader

Message reader tutorial

The following keyboard shortcuts are available while using the message reader:

R	Start a reply to the message
F	Forward the message to another address
C	Copy the message to a folder
M	Move the message to a folder
D or <Del>	Delete the message
P or <Ctrl+P>	Print the message
X	Open the next mail message or digest contained within the message in its own window
V	Switch between fancy and plain views (if available)
<Ctrl+F>	Find text within the message
Z	Switch between normal and expanded header view
<Ctrl+S>	Save the message text to a file on disk
<F5>	Reformat long lines in the message (setting is "sticky")
<Ctrl+F5>	Wrap long lines in the message (setting is "sticky")
<F12>	Switch to a monospaced view of the message (does not work in HTML or text/enriched messages)
<F11>	Select a folder display colour for the message
<F8>	Switch to the "Message" view
<F7>	Switch to the "Attachments" view
<F9>	Switch to the "Annotations" view
<Ctrl+H>	Toggle between the "Raw" and "Message" views
1 or <Ctrl+1>	Quick-move or quick-copy to quickfolder #1
2 or <Ctrl+2>	Quick-move or quick-copy to quickfolder #2
3 or <Ctrl+3>	Quick-move or quick-copy to quickfolder #3
4 or <Ctrl+4>	Quick-move or quick-copy to quickfolder #4
5 or <Ctrl+5>	Quick-move or quick-copy to quickfolder #5
6 or <Ctrl+6>	Quick-move or quick-copy to quickfolder #6


The Reader menu

While reading mail, the Reader menu appears on the main Pegasus Mail menu bar. The menu offers options specific to the message reader: Note that you can alter certain aspects of the message reader’s behaviour using the Message reader settings page of the Options dialog on the Tools menu.

Save window size:  When you choose this option, Pegasus Mail will save the current size of the message reader window to your preferences. All future message reader windows you open will open at this size. You cannot save the location of a message reader window because doing so would result in messages overlapping onscreen and therefore being difficult to select. If you would like Pegasus Mail always to save the last size you used for a message reader window, use the Format options menu entry (see above).

Toggle monospaced view  Most fonts in Windows are proportionally-spaced -- that is, an 'I' character takes up less space on a line than an 'm' character. If you receive a message containing a table or other information laid out in a columnar manner and your normal reader font is proportionally spaced, the columns in the table will not line up correctly. Selecting this command temporarily switches the message reader into a monospaced font, where all characters are the same width. This will allow you to see the tabulation correctly. Selecting this command again will switch you back to your regular view of the message. You can also toggle this mode by pressing the F12 key on your keyboard.

Save message to file:  If you want to make a copy of this message in a DOS text file, perhaps for inclusion in another program, then select this option. You will be prompted for a filename - when you click OK, Pegasus Mail will extract the contents of the message to the file. You can also perform this action by clicking the Save to disk button on the button panel.

Wrap long lines, Reformat long lines  Periodically, you will probably receive mail from other mail systems where the lines are extremely long, and hence can't easily be read. These two options allow you to deal with malformatted mail of this kind - which of the two you will use depends on the message. Wrap long lines simply chops the line at the nearest space to the right margin until the line is shorter than the right margin. This option is simplistic, but will work well if the sender's mail program sends whole paragraphs as a single line. Reformat long lines applies a much more complex reformatting approach that tries to estimate how the message was intended to appear: it will usually do a better job of most messages than simple wrapping, but may scramble tables or figures that depend on long lines. After a time, you will work out which of these settings suits the particular types of mail you receive. Whichever you turn on will remain turned on for subsequent messages until you turn it off or select the alternative method.

Quick actions:  allows you to move or copy this message into one of your Quick-Access Folders

Font...: Use this option to change the font you use to view messages. This change is global, and affects all messages already open and subsequently opened in Pegasus Mail. You can also click the Font button on the button panel to set the message reader's font.


Message headers
Headers are the special set of lines at the start of a mail message which contain addressing and other machine-readable information about the message. Headers are rigidly formatted and vary widely from system to system; many headers in a message are only of interest to the mail transport system and are meaningless to a human reader, while others, such as the Subject and From fields carry information which the reader needs to know. Pegasus Mail usually tries to present you with only those headers which may be meaningful to you.


MHS Directory Services
The MHS Directory Service

If your system has an MHS SMF-71 message transport such as Novell's NetWare Global MHS, then the directory service provided by that system (called the Extract File) is available to you from within Pegasus Mail. To open the MHS Directory Service, choose the entry on the Addresses Menu.

The MHS directory service list behaves like a read-only address book: you can double-click on an entry to start a new message using the entry as an address, you can drag addresses from the list window to any address field, or you can click on the Paste button to paste the selected addresses into the last address field you were using.

You can also speed search through the list by typing the first few characters of the name you are looking for.

For technical reasons, you should close the extract file window as soon as you can after using it, since NetWare MHS may not be able to update the list while you have the file open.


Pegasus Mail Extensions
Pegasus Mail Extensions:  An extension is a program that can be loaded into Pegasus Mail to enhance it in some way, either by adding new functionality or by changing the way an existing feature operates. In other programs, these are also called Plug-ins and Snap-ins. Pegasus Mail is shipped with a number of extensions written by Pegasus Mail's author, but extensions can also be written and supplied by other developers.

Pegasus Mail provides an extremely rich range of functions and options for extension developers and the entire interface is publicly documented-- if you are interested in developing extensions for Pegasus Mail, we suggest you obtain the file WPMFORMS.ZIP from the site where you obtained Pegasus Mail - this contains all the information you need to begin work.


TCP/IP timeouts
TCP/IP timeout settings

TCP/IP timeout value settings control how long Pegasus Mail should wait for responses on your network before assuming that a problem has occurred. On fast networks such as Ethernet, you should set this to a relatively small value, such as 15 seconds. On slow links such as SLIP or PPP, however, considerably longer values may be appropriate - for example, 120 seconds or even more. If you find that Pegasus Mail is frequently reporting network errors, try increasing this value to a larger setting.

Because of the way Pegasus Mail's TCP/IP module works, you can run into problems if you exit from Pegasus Mail while a TCP/IP operation is in progress. Because of this, you should experiment with the timeout value, until you find the lowest value that gives you reliable connectivity. Avoid using a timeout value which is higher than it needs to be. Our recommendations are as follows

On a fast local area network:  15 seconds

Using a reliable PPP link, or 28.8K modems  30 seconds

Using a SLIP link or 14K4 modems  60 seconds

If your link occasionally loses packets  add 60 seconds


Using the built-in TCP/IP mail services
Using Pegasus Mail's built-in TCP/IP mail services

Once you have configured Pegasus Mail correctly, you can use the options on the File menu and the three special buttons on the button panel to access and send your mail.

 , or Send all queued mail on the File menu: Tells Pegasus Mail to process all mail currently in your outgoing mail queue and send it to your relay host using the SMTP protocol. If you have checked the control labelled Send queue during idle checks in your Network configuration dialog then any mail in your queue will also be sent any time Pegasus Mail checks to see if your remote POP3 account is holding new mail for you.

 , or Check host for new mail on the File menu: Tells Pegasus Mail to connect to your POP3 remote mailbox and download any mail waiting there. Unless you have the Message count only on idle poll control checked in the Network configuration dialog, new mail will also be downloaded any time Pegasus Mail does a check during idle time.

 , or Check and send mail on the File menu: Has the same effect as selecting both the options described above in a single connection.

Review queued mail on the File menu: Allows you to examine and change mail in your mail queue waiting to be sent. You can edit queued mail any time up to the point when Pegasus Mail actually attempts to send it: at that time, Pegasus Mail converts the queued message into its final form and from then on, you can only delete that message from the queue.

Enter offline mode and Leave offline mode on the File menu: When you enter offline mode, Pegasus Mail will cease all POP3 and SMTP activity including idle checks, and will no longer establish any connection to your hosts. While in offline mode, you can create, edit and read mail as normal, just without any network activity. Offline mode is useful if you are away from your network connection (for instance, travelling on a plane) but still want to work with your mail. Once you select Leave offline mode from the File menu, normal network activity will resume. You can force Pegasus Mail to start in offline mode by adding the commandline switch -O (that's an "oh", not a zero) to the Program Manager Icon you use to run the program. If you travel a lot, you may want to consider creating a separate icon for running Pegasus Mail in offline mode.


Windows Sockets Interface
WinSock, or the Windows Sockets Interface is a standard way of providing network services under Microsoft windows. WinSock is usually used to provide access to the Internet TCP/IP network protocols although it can in theory provide other services as well. The advantage of WinSock is that applications can use Network services without knowing anything about the vendor-specific details of the transport modules installed on your system. This means that Pegasus Mail can use any WinSock implementation no matter which vendor supplies it nor how it is actually implemented at the hardware level.

WinSock support is always provided by means of a DLL called WINSOCK.DLL which will be installed in either your Windows directory or somewhere on the path. If you are using a 32-bit version of Pegasus Mail under Windows NT, 95 or 98, the WinSock support is stored in a file called WSOCK32.DLL.


Post Office Protocol v3 (POP3)
POP3

POP3 (Post Office Protocol, version 3) is an Internet standard which defines a mechanism for accessing a mailbox located on a remote host machine. In order to use POP3 services, you require a user identity, or account on the host machine; when people send mail to you, they send it to your account on the host, which receives it and stores it in a mailbox for you. The next step is to run a program which supports the POP3 protocol (such as Pegasus Mail): the program logs into the remote host on your behalf and copies any unread mail on the host to your local machine for reading. The copy of the mail remaining on the remote host can then be deleted (although most POP3 mailers make deletion an option).

POP3 is a necessary protocol because your PC will usually not be running all the time and hence will not always be available to receive mail directly from the Internet. A larger machine, such as a Unix system, typically will be on all the time, and so is better suited to receiving your mail for you. POP3 only defines the retrieval of new mail - mail is sent using the SMTP protocol.

POP3 is described in detail in several RFCs (Internet Standards Documents); the document on which Pegasus Mail's POP3 implementation is based is RFC1725.


Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP)
SMTP

SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is the standard mechanism by which mail is delivered on the Internet and on TCP/IP networks. A very old protocol, its qualities are its robustness and ease of implementation. On the negative side of the ledger, SMTP is an extremely primitive protocol with no well-defined support for non-text attachments or international character sets. Because SMTP was originally designed for large multitasking systems which run continuously, it has certain design characteristics which make the reception of mail on PCs a difficult proposition. Because of this, most PC-based mailers which use the TCP/IP network protocols use SMTP to send mail, but use another protocol called POP3 to receive mail. Pegasus Mail uses this approach.

With over 75 million connectable addresses, SMTP is currently the most widely-used electronic mail protocol in the world and is likely to remain a potent force for several years. The SMTP protocol is documented in the Internet standards document RFC-821.


Setup for standalone operation

Welcome to Pegasus Mail! Before you begin using the program, you will have to provide Pegasus Mail with a small amount of information about your system and its configuration. This is needed so that Pegasus Mail knows where to store your mail folders, address books and other mail-related files, and so that it knows who you are.

The screen in front of you has three fields you should fill in. The first, Home mail path, is the DOS path to the directory in which your home mail folder should be located. The default value, C:\PMAIL\~8, tells Pegasus Mail to use the directory C:\PMAIL: the special string ~8 stands for the first eight characters of your username, and is replaced by Pegasus Mail before it uses the path. So, if you entered Peter as your username, Pegasus Mail would set your home mailbox location to C:\PMAIL\PETER. Using the special substitution this way means that more than one person may use the mail system on the same machine and ensures that their mail is kept separate. If you prefer not to use drive C: for your mail, or if for any other reason you need to change the path, you may do so provided the path you enter is legal, although we recommend you use the default value unless you have good reasons to change it. The path you supply need not exist - Pegasus Mail will create it as necessary.

Your user name:  Enter in this field the name by which Pegasus Mail will recognize you. As described above, you can tell Pegasus Mail to use the first eight characters of this name as a way of identifying your home mailbox. Please ensure that your username contains only letters and numbers - it must not contain spaces or special characters, because Pegasus Mail will use it as a DOS filename when naming your mailbox directory.

Save your username in WIN.INI:  Usually, when you start Pegasus Mail, it will open a small dialog asking for your username. If you are the only person using this system, you can bypass this step by telling Pegasus Mail to store your username in the Windows setup file, WIN.INI. Once you have done this, the system will always run using the name you supply, so do not check this control if there are other people using this system for mail as well. You can also specify the username Pegasus Mail should use by means of a DOS environment variable called PMUSER.


Noticeboards

Pegasus Mail's noticeboard system is like your own mail folders, the principal difference being that people other than you can see them and read the messages they contain.

A noticeboard may contain both notices, which you can read by pressing <Return> (the same way as in a regular mail folder), and can also contain other noticeboards. If you double-click on a noticeboard entry, Pegasus Mail will open that noticeboard and show its contents in the list. If you have opened a noticeboard, then there will always be a special entry at the top of the list marked .., which will take you back to the parent noticeboard.

Noticeboards have two names - a short name, which is used by Pegasus Mail to keep track of where you are, and a long name which contains a description of the purpose of the noticeboard. Short names are joined together with period characters to create paths, showing where a noticeboard fits into the hierarchy of noticeboards - so, the topic comp.sys.mail refers to a topic called mail which can be found in another topic called sys, which in turn is found in the topic comp.

If you are permitted to post notices in the current noticeboard, then the text Post will appear next to the topic's entry in the list: in a read-only topic you may only read the message, not add or delete them. If you have administrator rights in the current board, the word Administrator will appear next to the topic's entry. As an administrator, you can delete messages in the noticeboard, and create new noticeboards within it. Administrators are also automatically allowed to post and read messages in the topic.

Posting notices

Following up

Administration


Posting notices

If the noticeboard administrator has permitted you to do so, you can post a new notice on the board by clicking the New post button. You can only post into the currently-displayed noticeboard - it is not currently possible to 'cross-post' to other boards.

Posting a notice is a simplified version of posting a mail message - you only have to enter a subject and then type in your notice. Pegasus Mail automatically supplies the name of the noticeboard in which the notice is to be placed.

While you compose your notice, you can add attachments to it in exactly the same way as you would to a mail message, by clicking the Attachments button or by pressing <F7>.

To finish your notice and post it to the noticeboard, click Send or press <Ctrl+Enter>. Your notice will appear on the noticeboard immediately.

You can also post notices from a regular mail message editor by entering the letters NB: followed by the name of the noticeboard as an address - so, to send a message to a noticeboard called alt.animals.cows, you would send it to NB:alt.animals.cows.


Following up on notices
Following up

Following up is the process of posting a public reply to a notice which is already in the board. Think of a followup as being your contribution to an ongoing conversation.

Followups are always posted into the same board as the notice to which they refer. You cannot change the subject field of a followup - Pegasus Mail automatically sets it to the subject of the original message prefixed with the characters Re:. The reason you can't alter the subject is to ensure that all notices on a particular topic will be grouped together when people use the Sort by subject sorting option.

If you want to post an entirely new notice (one with a new subject field), but want to copy some text from an existing notice, read the original notice, mark and copy the text you want from the notice, then post a new message, and use the Paste or ^V command command to insert the text you copied into your new posting.


Noticeboard Administration

If you have administrator privileges in the current noticeboard, the New topic and Current topic properties options will be available to you on the Noticeboards menu. Both these options present the same noticeboard administration dialog. Note that these options are available or not depending on your rights in the current noticeboard, not on the selected item in the list.

Short name: Enter the short name for the topic here: the short name may not contain spaces or periods. So, if you are currently in a noticeboard called comp.mail and you want to create a new topic called comp.mail.pegasus, you would enter pegasus in this field.

Long name: Enter the descriptive name for the topic here. The descriptive name can contain any characters.

Administrator(s): Enter the names of those users who are permitted to create topics in and generally manage the new topic.

Posters: Enter the names of those users who may post messages in the new topic. If you leave this field blank, all users will be allowed to post messages in the new topic.

Browsers: Enter the names of those users who may browse messages in the new topic. If you leave this field blank, all users will be allowed to browse the new topic.

In the Administrator(s), Posters and Browsers fields, you may enter as many names as you wish, separated by commas. If you are using Pegasus Mail in Novell NetWare NDS mode, enter the user's full name starting at the root of the NDS tree. If you are operating in a Network mode where groups are supported, you may use group names here by prefixing them with a hash character (#).

Notices expire after x days:  If you running on a system that has a noticeboard expiration utility available, such as NBEXPIRE for Novell NetWare servers, you can specify that notices should be automatically purged after a certain number of days. Enter 0 in this field if messages should not be automatically purged. NBEXPIRE can be obtained from any of the official download points for Pegasus Mail.

Noticeboards can also be administered by directly manipulating their file structures using a text editor: click here for more information.

Advanced note: You can force Pegasus Mail's Noticeboard Setup Wizard to appear by holding down the <Ctrl> key as you click on the Noticeboard button. This is a handy way of accessing multiple noticeboard systems from the same PC.


Manual Noticeboard Administration

This section covers how noticeboards work at a lower level, and details how to create and maintain them by manipulating their NB.ID files.

Creating a noticeboard:  Follow these steps to create a noticeboard

1: Start a DOS shell, and create a subdirectory in the noticeboard where the new noticeboard is to appear. Any name will do for the directory.

2: In the new directory, use a text editor to create a file called NB.ID. NB.ID can contain the following keywords:

Long name:	The full name of the board

Short name:	The abbreviated name of the board

Administrator:	ID of a user who administers the board

Post:	ID of a user who can post to this board.

Browse:	ID of a user who can read notices in the board.

Post, Browse and Administrator each take only a single user ID, but may appear multiple times in the file. On NetWare systems you can specify NetWare groups in these fields by prefixing the name of the group with a # character.

Rights: When you create a noticeboard in Pegasus Mail, you are really working within two different sets of rights; there are the rights that Pegasus Mail applies to a noticeboard to determine whether or not a person can see it and its messages, and there is also the actual operating system rights which apply to the directory structure on the disk. If the operating system and Pegasus Mail do not agree on the rights assignments, things won't work.

As an example, just because you have told Pegasus Mail that user "JBLOGGS" can post messages in a particular noticeboard, it does not follow that he will be able to do so if he does not actually have the operating systems rights to create files in the noticeboard directory.

As a result, for each class of user for a noticeboard (Administrator, Browser and Poster) you will typically have to run some kind of command on your LAN which allows the user the actual physical access he needs to operate as indicated within a noticeboard.

A topic administrator must have at least the rights required on your system to be able to create and remove files and directories in the board directory.

A topic browser must have at least the rights needed to be able to see and open files in the directory.

A topic poster must have the rights of a browser and whatever else is needed to create and write files in the directory.

If you are running under NetWare 3.x or earlier, then you will have to use the NetWare "GRANT" command to assign appropriate rights for each type of poster.


Mail filtering rules

See also:	Detecting messages based on their content

Pegasus Mail allows you to perform automated processing of mail when messages matching particular conditions are met. You might use this, for example, to move all "confirmation of reading" replies from the current folder to another folder -- in this case, the condition for which you would test would be the first 4 characters of the "Subject" field being "RCPT". Pegasus Mail can provide this automated processing in the following situations --

Automatic filtering when the new mail folder is opened or closed

Filtering your copies to self

Using rules to filter the contents of any folder

On a POP3 server prior to downloading mail

You can trigger your rules (that is, define the set of conditions which must be true before the rule will be applied to a message) based on a number of criteria. You can select any of the following types of rule trigger from the drop-down list at the top of the rule editor window:

Matching on text in standard message headers

Matching on regular expressions

Matching messages by date and age

Matching based on list membership

Filtering attachments

Using this drop-down list, you can also create rules that always trigger, rules that are simply comments and have no effect on rule processing, and rules that are labels (see Advanced formatting, below, for more information on why you might want to use a label).

A wide range of actions can be triggered by a rule. Rule processing continues until all rules have been applied, or until the message is moved to a folder or deleted as the result of a rule.You can define multiple rules with the same trigger conditions to have multiple actions applied to the same message -- Pegasus Mail will apply them in the order in which they appear in the list. Make sure that any rules containing "Move" or "Delete" actions are the last you define for a particular trigger text, since rule processing on a message stops after these actions.

Actions that can be triggered by a rule

Advanced filtering - flow control and logical operations


Filtering new mail
Automated filtering of new mail

You can define a set of rules that are automatically applied to the new mail folder when you open it, and to any new mail that arrives in the new mail folder while it is open, and another set of rules that are applied automatically when you close the new mail folder. These options are especially useful if you are subscribed to mailing lists and want to reduce the clutter in your new mail folder by sorting your list mail out to folders, where you can peruse it at your leisure.

To define new mail filtering rules choose Edit new mail filtering rules from the Mail filtering rules option on the Tools menu. The rule sets applied when the folder is opened and closed respectively can be edited separately.

Only messages that are not marked as read will be processed during new mail filtering - mail that has been read but left in your new mail folder is never affected by new mail filtering rules unless you mark it as unread. You should be aware that if a message remains unread between sessions, it will be filtered each time the new mail folder is opened - keep this in mind if you are using rules to make copies of messages in other locations, or that send replies.


Filtering your copies to self

You can create a set of rules that are applied to any copies of mail you send using the Copy self option in the message editor. This allows you, for example, to move your personal copies into folders based on the person to whom they are addressed or the subject matter. You can define any rule action in your copy self filtering rules, but the most common actions will usually be to move the message or to set its colour.

To define rules that should apply to your copies to self, choose Edit copy-self filtering rules from the Mail filtering rules option on the Tools menu.

If no copyself filtering rule results in the message being deleted or moved, Pegasus Mail will automatically file the copy to self into the Copyself folder you have designated in your General Preferences settings.

Note: It's quite important that the name you give your copy-self folder in your General Preferences should be unique - you should not have another folder with the same name anywhere in your folder hierarchy.


Filtering mail in any folder

Pegasus Mail lets you define sets of rules that you can apply to any folder at any time. These general rule sets can be either invoked manually, by selecting Apply general rule set to folder from the Tools menu while a folder window is frontmost, or automatically when the folder is either opened or closed. To have a rule set applied automatically, right-click the folder in the Folder Manager window and select either Attach folder-open filter set or Attach folder-close filter set.

Unlike new mail filtering, general rule sets will filter both read and unread mail alike (new mail filtering will only filter unread mail). You can create as many different rule sets as you wish and may invoke them on any folder, including the new mail folder.

To define a general rule set, choose Create/Edit general rule set from the Mail filtering rules option on the Tools menu. This will open the ruleset selector dialog, in which you can create, delete and rename rule sets.

To apply a rule set you have created to a folder, choose Apply general rule set to folder from the Mail filtering rules option on the Tools menu.


Filtering mail in a POP3 mailbox prior to download

Pegasus Mail allows you to create special filtering rule sets that can be attached to a POP3 mailbox. These filtering rule sets are applied to mail in the POP3 mailbox before it is downloaded to your computer, and have some special actions available that allow you to choose to leave a message on the server, delete the message on the server, or download it.

Why would you want to do this? Here are some examples:

*	You are on the road using a cellphone or some other slow Internet connection to access your mail: you may want to download only urgent mail, or only mail smaller than a certain size, or only mail from particular people.

*	You share a mailbox with four other people (this type of mailbox is called a domain mailbox): you only want to download those messages that are actually explicitly addressed to you.

*	You want to leave your mail on the server, but to delete it once it gets past a certain age (for instance, you may want to leave mail on the server for 14 days).

... And there are other scenarios too.

POP3 filtering sets are slightly different from other filtering rule sets in Pegasus Mail - they have a more limited range of actions available (because many of the standard filtering actions are only meaningful if the message is actually present on your system), and have the three additional special actions described above.

To enable POP3 server-side filtering, simply create the rule set by selecting Create POP3 rule set from the Mail filtering rules submenu of the Pegasus Mail Tools menu, then add it to any of your POP3 definitions by selecting it in the Download controls page of the POP3 definition editor. You can use the same rule set in many different POP3 definitions if you need to.


Rule matching on predefined headers
Matching on text in predefined message headers

In the majority of cases, you will simply want to detect messages which contain particular addresses, or which have particular text in the subject field. Pegasus Mail provides an easy way of triggering rules based on conditions like this.

To search for a text within the common headers (such as the "Subject" or "From" headers), click the "Headers..."-button when prompted for the type of rule to create. Then, simply check the fields in which you would like the test to be made, and enter the text you would like to match in the "Trigger text" field. You can check as many of the six controls as you wish, although some are probably mutually exclusive (such as "From:" and "Subject:"). You should usually check at least one control, although it is permissible to check none (this is a useful way of disabling a rule without deleting it).

Exact matching:  Pegasus Mail usually triggers the rule if any of the fields you check contains the trigger text anywhere; if you want Pegasus Mail to trigger only on an exact match, check the control labelled Message field must match this text exactly. Doing this means that the rule will only trigger if the header and the match are the same length and contain the same characters. The match is always case-insensitive -- this cannot be changed even for an exact match.

Examples:

If "Subject:" is checked and the trigger text is "SUBSCRIBE" then the rule will trigger if the subject is any of the following:

Subscribe

I want to subscribe to your list

Notice to all subscribers

If "Subject:" is checked and Message field must match this text exactly is checked, then the rule will trigger only for the first of the examples shown above ("Subscribe")


Rule matching on regular expressions
Using regular expressions as rule triggers

Using regular expressions to trigger rules is more complicated than matching on predefined headers but is considerably more powerful, since it allows you to match on any message header, or even on the contents of the message body.

To use a regular expression as the trigger for a rule, click the "Expression..." button when prompted for the type of rule to create. You can restrict the extent of the search by selecting one of the radio buttons that control the scope of the search -"Headers only", "Body only" or "Headers or body".

**NOTE ABOUT SEARCHING THE MESSAGE BODY** you should be careful when using either of the scopes which permit searching the message body, since this can dramatically increase the time it takes Pegasus Mail to open the new mail folder (sometimes by a factor of as much as 10 times or more). You need only have one action whose scope is the message body in your entire rule set to cause this increase in processing time, although subsequent rules in the message body scope do not introduce appreciable further delay.

Next, enter the regular expression you wish to use in the "trigger text" field. Pegasus Mail recognizes the following metacharacters in expressions:

*	Match any number of any characters

?	Match any single character

+	Match one or more occurrence of the last character

[ ]	Encloses a group of characters to match. Ranges can

be specified in the group using '-'.

All metacharacters can be used as many times as necessary. Regular expression searches are always case-insensitive. To search for literal occurrences of any of the characters *, ?, + or [, you must enclose them in group markers (so to search for a literal asterisk, enter [*]). Regular expressions do not cross line boundaries - you can only perform expression matching within individual lines in the message. If the first character of your expression is not '*', then matching must begin at the start of the line - so if you want to use a regular expression to find lines containing text at any position, you must use a leading '*' character (this is the reverse of matching on predefined headers, where the match is always open unless exact matching is specified).

Note: Unlike predefined header text matching, regular expression matches do not match substrings - they match entire lines. Because of this, if you want to detect a sequence of characters occurring anywhere in a line of text, you must surround the text with a pair of asterisks (*). This is the regular expression way of saying that any text can precede and follow the search text. Example: if you want to match on any line containing the string offer using an expression, you would need to enter the match text *offer*. Similarly, if you wanted to match any line starting with the word Subject and containing the word offer anywhere else on the line, you would need to enter the match text Subject*offer*. If you omitted the second asterisk, you would be telling Pegasus Mail that the line would have to end with the word offer.

Examples:

MIME-VERSION:*[12]*

or	MIME-Version: +[12]*

Matches "MIME-Version:  1.0"

but not "MIME-Version: 3.0"

(The '+' matches multiple successive spaces)

*pmail.gen.nz*

Matches any line containing "pmail.gen.nz"

Priority:*urgent

Triggers a rule for urgent mail


Filtering on the message's date or age
Filtering on the date or age of a message

Filtering on message age

To trigger a rule based on the age of the message, simply enter either a date, or a number of days. The rule will trigger if the message's Date: field specifies a date older than the date you enter. This type of rule can be useful for purging mail from folders once it reaches a particular age.

Filtering on the message date

To trigger a rule on the date of a message, enter either a pair of dates, or a range of numbers of days. It does not matter whether you enter the earliest or latest date first - Pegasus Mail sorts them into the correct sequence internally. The rule will be triggered if the Date: field of the message specifies a date that falls within the range you have specified. This type of rule can be useful for selecting messages received within a particular time period.


Filtering based on list membership
Filtering messages based on list membership

With this type of filtering rule, the rule will trigger if the sender's e-mail address can be located in a Pegasus Mail distribution list. When you create the rule, simply select the distribution list Pegasus Mail should search, and it will do the rest.

This type of rule has two major applications:

1: Creating "kill" files to catch "spam" (Unsolicited Commercial E-mail) from known addresses. When you receive an unsolicited spam message, you can add the sender's address to a list of known evildoers, then delete all future messages from that address using a single rule of this type.

2: Verifying that a person is a list member: if you offer services that are triggered by filtering rules (for instance, if you return product information or encryption keys in response to automated messages), then you may wish to verify that the person sending the request is actually a member of a list of authorised people before providing the service. You can use a rule of this type to determine whether or not the person is authorised based on their membership of a list.

Features used in conjunction with this option

Pegasus Mail includes a number of powerful features designed to work in conjunction with this type of filtering rule: the first is the Add sender to list option on the right-click menus in both the message reader and folder browser windows. This command allows you to add the sender of a message to any distribution list with a single command. The second feature is the Copy selection to DList option on the right-click menu in the message reader: this command allows you to select any text (presumably an address) from the body of a mail message and add it straight to a distribution list.

Advanced option

You can create an entry in your target distribution list that matches any address from a single domain by editing the list manually and adding a line exactly like this:

\MATCH *@domain.com

into the list. The "\" character must appear hard against the left margin of the file.

Example: to suppress all mail from any address within the domain "bigdeals.com", you would add the following line to your distribution list:

\MATCH *@bigdeals.com


Filtering attachments

You can create special rules that are only tested if the message being filtered has attachments. These rules can match the entire filename, the file's extension, or just the file's name part. When you create an attachment filtering rule, a number of extra rule processing actions are available that allow you to manipulate the attachments that match the rule.

Attachment rules are applied in sequence to all attachments in the message.


Actions that can be triggered in rules
Actions that can be triggered by rules

When a rule's trigger text matches text in the message, its action is performed. Actions are selected from the list in the Rule Editor - selecting an action will often result in you being prompted for more information, such as selecting a destination folder, or entering a file name.

Rules are processed until a rule is triggered whose action results in the message being either deleted or moved to another folder. Because of this, you should always take care to ensure that rules containing Move or Delete actions are the last ones you define for a particular trigger text.

You can also force rule processing to stop for a specific message by using the Exit this rule set action.

The following summary briefly describes the actions that are available:

Copy  Copies the message into the selected folder that is set in the parameter field.

Move  Moves the message to the selected folder that is set in the parameter field. All filtering stops as soon as this action is encountered.

Delete  Deletes the message: all filtering stops as soon as this action is encountered.

Forward  Forwards the message to the user or e-mail address that is set in the parameter field.

Extract  Can be used to extract the message body to a text file. Extracts to preset name set in the

parameter field.

Append  Appends the message body to an existing file whose name is set in the parameter field.

Print  Print the message to the default printer defined in Pegasus Mail.

Send Text file  Sends a preset text message to the sender of the message; the text is sent in the body of the message, but not as an attachment / enclosure. The text message to be sent is set in the parameter field.

Send Binary File  Sends a binary file to the sender of the message; the file is attached to the

message to be sent. The binary file to be sent is set in the parameter field.

Add user to list  Adds the sender of the message to the distribution list named in the parameter

field.

Remove from list  Removes the sender of the message from the distribution list named in the

parameter field.

Run a program  Runs a program application, passing a copy of the message to it on its commandline. You can place the special characters %s anywhere in the parameter to identify where the name of the temporary file containing the message text should appear; if you do not supply these characters, the filename will be added to the end of the command you type in. If you check the option Pause rule processing until the program completes, then Pegasus Mail will monitor the program as it runs and will suspend all other actions until it completes (or 90 seconds have elapsed, whichever comes first). If this control is not checked, Pegasus Mail will run the program but will then immediately continue with rule processing, without waiting for the program to complete.

Set message colour (called Highlight in older versions)  Sets the colour in which the message will be displayed in your new mail folder listing.

Expire message  Expires the message. Expired messages display in grey and appear at the bottom of your folders' message lists. Expired messages can be deleted with a single command.

Select Message  Selects the message - forces it to sort at the top of the folder.

Exit this rule set  Exits the filtering rule set - all filtering action ceases and any remaining rules in the set are ignored.

Mark message as read  Marks the message as read.

Play a sound  Plays a sound file that is set in the parameter field. The sound file can be any valid Windows .WAV file.

Call a Label  Calls a labelled subroutine. The name of the label to be called is set in the parameter

field. For more information on this, see the section on Flow Control.

Return from call  Returns from a call label subroutine and continues with the next rule after the

initial call. For more information on this, see the section on Flow Control.

Goto Label  Unlike the Call Label and Return From Call, the Goto Label simply goes to the label

whose name is set in the Parameter field. Using a Goto action, the flow control processing cannot return to where the label has been called from. For more information on this, see the section on Flow Control.

Skip next rule  Skips the next rule and executes the rule that follows the next rule. For more information on this, see the section on Flow Control.

Message Dialog  Displays a simple display message dialog. Enter the message to be displayed in the parameter field.

Set Identity  Sets a new Pegasus Mail identity as active: the identity is only active until rule processing completes - you cannot change the global identity that is active in the program using this command. This command is primarily useful if you want to send a text or binary file in response to the message you are filtering, and need to do so using the settings from a different identity..

Logical AND  Used in advanced flow control. Often, you may only want to apply a rule to a

message if all of a number of conditions are matched.

Add message header  Use this action to add any header you wish to the mail message. The parameter should be the header exactly as you want it to appear in the message, including the header name and the colon character that follows it. Note that you cannot add headers then test for their presence in the same rule set, because the addition of headers is always done as a final task just before rule processing completes (for performance reasons). Adding headers can also only be done while the message is in the new mail folder - once the message has been moved to a folder, this action is invalid and will be silently ignored.

Attachment actions:

Certain actions are only available in rules that filter attachments - they are:

Save attachment to file  This action allows you to take the attachment that matched the conditions in the rule where it occurs and save it to a file. You can save the attachment in one of two ways, and the parameter you supply depends on which of these you select. In the first method, you supply a complete filename as the parameter and the filename information stored with the attachment in the mail message is ignored (this is handy if you want to use the Run a program rule with the data in the attachment, because you can save the file to a specific name then give that name as the parameter to the run rule). In the second method, you supply the name of a directory on your computer, and Pegasus Mail will save the file in that directory using the filename information transmitted with the attachment. If a file already exists with the attachment's stored filename, it will be overwritten without warning, so be careful.

Delete attachment  If you no longer want the attachment in the message, use this rule action to remove it. This action is only possible while the message is in the new mail folder - once the message has been moved to any other folder, the action is invalid and it will be silently ignored.


Advanced filtering options - flow control and logical operations
Advanced filtering - flow control and logical operations

This section covers specialised uses of mail filtering and is intended mainly for advanced users. Please ensure you have read all the other sections on mail filtering before attempting to use the information in this topic.

Flow control

Many times, you may find that there are certain groups of rules that you want to apply repeatedly in a rule set, or that you want to have more control over the order in which rules are processed. This concept is called flow control, and Pegasus Mail provides six rule actions to support it - skip, exit, labels, call/return and goto.

Using flow control

Logical operations

Often, you may only want to apply a rule to a message if all of a number of conditions are matched, or if any one or more of a number of conditions apply. This kind of operation is known as a logical operation (it is also known by the technical name Boolean operation). Pegasus Mail implements logical operations by a combination of rule order and flow control structures. Before reading about logical operations, we strongly suggest you read the section above on flow control.

Creating logical operations


Using flow control in your rule sets

Many times, you may find that there are certain groups of rules that you want to apply repeatedly in a rule set, or that you want to have more control over the order in which rules are processed. This concept is called flow control, and Pegasus Mail provides six rule actions to support it - skip, exit, labels, call/return and goto.

Skip  The simplest flow control operator is the Skip next rule action: when a rule triggers and this action is indicated, Pegasus Mail will skip over the next rule in the list without testing or applying it. You can use this as a way of handling exceptions to a general rule - for instance, imagine that you want to delete all messages where the subject contains the phrase free offer, except when that message comes from the address support@pmail.gen.nz - you would add the following two rules to your rule set:

If "From" field contains "support@pmail.gen.nz", then skip next rule

If "Subject" field contains "free offer", then delete message

Exit  When a rule triggers that has the action exit this rule set, all rule processing for the current message terminates at once - no more rules are examined or actioned. The primary use of this action is to separate subroutines, or groups of rules that you access via call label actions, from the main body of your rule set.

Labels  A label is simply a name you can add to any line in your rule set. Labels are used by return and goto actions (see below) to transfer processing to a different location in the rule set. Labels can appear anywhere in the rule set - when calling or going to a label, you can go either forwards or backwards. Labels are simply a textual name - you can use any text or letters you wish up to 45 characters in length. Labels are the only passive item in a rule set - on their own, they do absolutely nothing, and any match conditions they contain are ignored.

Calls and returns  If you have defined a label in your rule set, you can call it at any time by defining a rule with the Call label action. If the rule triggers, processing of the rule set will transfer to the first rule after the label you name and will continue until either there are no more rules (in which case rule processing terminates), or a rule triggers that has the Return from call action (in which case processing resumes at the rule following the one which initiated the call).

Gotos  A goto is like a call, in that it simply transfers processing to a label anywhere else in the rule set. The difference is that you cannot return from a goto - the transfer of processing is final. Gotos are primarily useful when implementing complex logical operations.

Example

In this example, we will implement a list server where the user can subscribe to lists on your system by sending you a message containing the subject line subscribe <listname>: to do this, we look for the word subscribe in the subject line, and if we find it, we call a label that handles the list names. Note the use of expressions in this example to isolate complex cases.

If data matches expression "Subject: +Subscribe*" then call subscriptions

[… other rules can appear here…]

If data matches "*" then exit from this rule set

Label subscriptions

If data matches expression "*interest-list* then add sender to list "ilist"

If data matches expression "*beta-testers*" then add sender to list "beta"

[… other subscription cases could appear here…]

If data matches "*" then return from call

Some things to note about this example: firstly, notice the way the subject line is detected: the regular expression Subject: +Subscribe* detects a line that starts with the letters subject:, followed by one or more spaces (the + operator) then the letters subscribe. Note that the Return from call rule matches on a single * - this is the way you tell a rule to match on any text, and in this case ensures that the return will always be triggered. Finally, notice the use of an Exit from this rule set action to ensure that we don't drop into the subscription processing rules other than at the proper times.


Creating logical operations in your rule sets

Often, you may only want to apply a rule to a message if all of a number of conditions are matched, or if any one or more of a number of conditions apply. This kind of operation is known as a logical operation (it is also known by the technical name Boolean operation). Pegasus Mail implements logical operations by a combination of rule order and flow control structures. Before reading about logical operations, we strongly suggest you read the section on flow control.

***Tip*** When using logical operations in rule sets, it is very important to remember that rules are always applied to the message in the order in which they appear in the rule list editor, starting at the top of the list and working through to the bottom.

Applying a rule when any of several conditions is met (logical OR)

The simplest logical operation you can create in a rule set is that where an action is applied if one or more conditions is satisfied (i.e, condition1 OR condition2 OR condition3 and so on). You can create this kind of operation simply by creating multiple rules matching on different conditions, all executing the same action. For example, say you want to highlight a message in Magenta in your folder if the subject contains the word order, or if the subject contains the word invoice or if the To: field contains the address orders@foo.bar.com - you would add the following three rules to your rule set

If "Subject" field contains "order" then highlight message in magenta

If "Subject" field contains "invoice" then highlight message in magenta

If "To" field contains "orders@foo.bar.com" then highlight message in magenta

Notice that the action is the same in each case. In cases where repeated application of the rule action might not be desirable (for instance, copying messages to a folder, in which case you could get multiple copies of the message), more complex combinations of goto and call statements can be used to achieve the same effect - for example, like this:

If "Subject" field contains "order" then goto label "copy message"

If "Subject" field contains "invoice" then goto label "copy message"

If "To" field contains "orders@foo.bar.com" then goto label "copy message"

label "Next label"

[… other rules …]

Label "copy message"

If "Subject" contains "*" then copy message to "orders"

goto label "next label"

In this example, any of the conditions will transfer control to the rule that actually copies the message, which in turn immediately transfers control to the first rule after the group, so you will only ever get one copy of the message. Note the use of the single asterisk (*) in the copying rule: a single asterisk matches any text and in this case ensures that the rule will always trigger.

Applying a rule only if all specified conditions are met (logical AND)

Pegasus Mail offers two ways of applying a rule only if all of a set of conditons apply. The simpler form allows you to match exactly two conditions, using the Skip next rule action. To do this, you simply use the Skip next rule action on the first rule in the pair if the data does NOT match the first condition, then apply the action you want in the second rule only if the second rule DOES match the second condition. For instance, in the following example, we want to delete the message only if the subject field contains free offer and the from field contains cyberpromo.com.

If "Subject" field does not contain "free offer" then skip next rule

If "From" field contains "cyberpromo.com" then delete message

The more complex approach to matching multiple conditions depends on using a call statement to transfer to a group of rules where each rule returns if it does not contain the required text. This approach requires more setup, but allows you to match on an unlimited number of conditions. For instance, say we want to play a sound when we get a message from anyone at compuserve.com where the subject line contains the word Transylvania but not the word vampire, and the To: field contains the address foo@bar.com: to achieve this, we would create the following rules in our rule set -

If "From" field contains "compuserve.com" then call label next-test

[… other normal rules are here…]

Label next-test

If "Subject" field does not contain "Transylvania" then return from call

If "Subject" field contains "vampire" then return from call

If "To" field does not contain "foo@bar.com" then return from call

If "Subject" field contains "*" then play sound "tada.wav"

If "Subject" field contains "*" then return from call

Note the use of a single asterisk (*) in the last two rules to match any text: this ensures that the rule actions will always be applied. In order to get to the rule that plays the sound, all the rules before it must have been matched.


Regular expressions
Regular expressions: a regular expression is a description of an expression which permits matching based on patterns rather than on exact correspondence. If you have ever used a DOS command like "DEL *.BAK" then you have already used a regular expression -- what this command is really saying is "Delete all files where the name contains anything and the extension is BAK".

When you compose a regular expression, you use a combination of literal characters which must be present (such as the "BAK" in the command above) and special metacharacters (also called wildcard characters) which can match varying numbers of characters, or characters in specific groups only. As an example, MS-DOS supports two metacharacters - *, which means "match any number of any characters" and ?, which means "match any single character in this position".


Options for replies

Pegasus Mail offers you considerable control over the way replies are generated.

The reply dialog has three sections, each controlling a different aspect of the reply. Settings in this dialog are "sticky" -- that is, they are remembered from session to session.

Original Message

This section contains controls which determine how much (if any) of the original message is included in your reply.

Include original message in reply  If checked, Pegasus Mail will include the text of the original message in your reply. Including the text to which you are replying provides a context for the recipient, and is an important part of the process of using electronic mail. Pegasus Mail can include a maximum of 31000 characters from the original message into your reply.

'Comment out' the original text  If checked, Pegasus Mail will attach a visual indicator (usually "> ") to the start of every line included from the original message. Doing this creates a clear visual distinction between the original message and your text.

Copy original CC field into reply  If you want to send a carbon copy of your reply to the same people who received carbon copies of the original message, check this control. Pegasus Mail will copy the first 180 characters of the original CC address into your reply.

Formatting

This group of controls dictates the visual presentation of your reply.

Reformat line breaks in original  If checked, Pegasus Mail will reformat the included message so that it fits within your message editor's default margins. Pegasus Mail attempts to preserve indenting and "commenting-out" of the original text, but you may find that tables and other textual elements which depend on tabulation may be misaligned when you use this option.

Omit message headers  Pegasus Mail usually includes the most important headers from the original message into your reply. If you check this control, it will omit all header information from the reply.

Use custom header line  If you check this control, Pegasus Mail will open another dialog and will prompt you for a custom header line, which allows you to create the first line of the reply automatically based on information from the original message. The default header line is "On ~D at ~T, ~F wrote:" -- the ~D, ~T and ~F characters are special placeholders which Pegasus Mail replaces with the Date, Time and Sender's personal name from the original message respectively. The other valid substitutions are ~S, which is replaced with the Subject field from the original message and ~A, which is replaced by the sender's full reply address. If you want to enter a line break into a custom header, add the substitution ~L at the point where you would like the break to occur.Any custom header line you define is remembered from session to session, even if you uncheck the control.

Addressing options

The controls in this section allow you to choose addresses from the original message to which replies should be sent. Pegasus Mail extracts all the addresses it can find from the headers of the message and shows each of them next to a control: checking the control includes that address in the "to:" field of your reply. If you leave all controls unchecked, Pegasus Mail has default addressing logic which will produce valid addressing in almost all cases. You will typically use these options when replying to mail from mailing lists, or if you want to start a new conversation with a secondary recipient of the original message.

Reply-to-all  Checking the control labelled Address reply to all recipients tells Pegasus Mail to attempt to send your reply to every person who received the original message. To achieve this, Pegasus Mail takes the following steps:

*	The sender of the message is copied into the "To" field of the reply (this is the address in the Reply-to field of the original if there is one, or else the address in the From field).
*	All the addressees in the "To" field of the original message are copied into the "To" field of the reply
*	The addressees in the CC field of the original message are copied into the CC field of the reply
*	Any duplicated addresses are removed
*	Your own address is removed if it can be identified

A single address field in Pegasus Mail can contain up to 32000 characters: if the total size of the addresses in any field of a reply-to-all exceeds this limit, Pegasus Mail will automatically create a temporary distribution list containing the addresses and will place the name of that list as an address in the "To:" field of the reply. Note that unlike almost every other setting in Pegasus Mail, you cannot change the default setting of the reply dialog so that reply-to-all is always selected -- it is always reset on each reply.


The Folder Manager Window

See also: Right-click options for folders

When you select Mail folders from the File menu, or click the Folder icon on the toolbar, the Folder Manager window opens. This window lists all the folders and trays you have created and can be left open on your desktop while you run the program.

Extra options for the Folder manager can be found on the Folders menu

While the Folder Manager is open, you can drag messages from any folder window and drop them onto any folder entry it contains. You cannot drag messages onto a tray entry because trays can only contain folders and other trays.

When the Folder Manager window is frontmost, you can type the first few characters of a folder or tray's name to select it quickly. Pressing <Enter> when a tray is selected will open (or close) that tray, or will open a folder's browser window if selected.

Click the New button to create a new folder or tray.

Click the Rename button to change the name of a folder or tray. Note: for trays, you can only change the tray's long name using this command -- you cannot rename the DOS file in which the tray's information is stored.

Click the Delete button to delete a folder. You can only delete trays if they contain no entries.

Click the Open button to open a folder or tray. You can also double-click on the entry in the list, or highlight it and press <Enter> to open it.

Most folders, trays and mailboxes have special options associated with them: to access these special options, right-click the entry in the folder manager list.


Right-click options for folders

See also: Mail filtering rules, Identities

Right-clicking a folder, tray or mailbox entry in the Folder Manager list will present a list of options specific to that item.

You can associate an identity with any mailbox or folder by selecting Set default identity for entry from the right-click menu. For more information on identities and associating them with folders, click here.

The options Attach folder-open rule set, Attach folder-close rule set will be available when you right-click on a folder of any type. These options allow you to associate a filtering rule set with the folder - Folder-open rule sets are applied automatically when the folder is opened, while Folder-close rule sets are automatically applied when the folder is closed. Choosing Detach filter sets from entry will remove the association between the rule set and the folder without deleting or otherwise affecting either the rule set or the folder - the rule sets will simply no longer be applied automatically to the entry.

The following options are available for folders in the Pegasus Mail v2.x format:

Reindex folder  From time to time, a folder's index file may become corrupt, which can result in errors when you attempt to open it. If this happens, highlight the folder and select this command to force Pegasus Mail to rebuild the index file. Reindexing will work reliably if the actual messages in the folder are intact, but may result in the loss of some status information (such as whether or not you have replied to a message, or forwarded it). A side-effect of rebuilding a folder is that some deleted messages may reappear the next time the folder is opened. You cannot reindex tray entries.

Check consistency  This option attempts to verify that a folder is intact. On rare occasions folder index files can become damaged, which can cause problems in long-term use. Pegasus Mail automatically invokes this option before recovering deleted message space from folders ("compressing"), but if you want to ensure that a folder is intact, you can perform a consistency check manually at any time.

Recover deleted space  When you delete a message from a folder, Pegasus Mail does not immediately reclaim the space it occupies; instead, it waits until you have deleted around 20000 characters from the folder then recovers all the space in a single pass. This deferred compression improves the performance of the program at the cost of some disk space. Select this option to force Pegasus Mail to recover the space from a folder immediately. Compression is always a safe option and does not result in the loss of anything other than deleted information. You cannot compress tray entries.

Close all open trays  Select this option and Pegasus Mail will “flatten” your folder hierarchy so that only the top level is visible in the Folder Manager window.


The Folders Menu

The Folders menu is available on the menu bar when the folder manager window is the current window. It contains less-frequently used options for managing your folders.

Add mailbox to list:  This command allows you to add another mailbox to your folder view. You will be prompted to enter a directory or a username which Pegasus Mail should use to locate the mailbox. It will then proceed to add that mailbox as a root entry in the Folder Manager window, and will add any recognizable mail folders from that location into that root entry. Mailboxes added to the Folder Manager in this way are just like your own mailbox - you can read messages, create folders, move messages around (including between mailboxes) and so on.

Examples of uses for this command include:

* Secretaries who need to access the boss's mailbox while he's away on business

* System administrators who need to troubleshoot a user's mailbox

* Accessing folders from another mail program, such as Eudora (Pegasus Mail can read the unix folder format used by Eudora), so you can migrate messages from one to the other.

* Accessing two mailboxes when you use a laptop and can be both attached to a LAN in NetWare mode, and regularly using your laptop in standalone mode on the road.

Close all open trays:  Reverts the Folder Manager window to its initial state, by closing any trays and mailboxes you may have opened. This command only alters the view of your hierarchy - it does not close any folders you have opened on your desktop.

Open all trays:  Expands the Folder Manager's view of your hierarchy so that every folder you have is visible.

Quick open:  allows you to configure your Quick-Access Folders.

Font:  Allows you to select the font which should be used to display entries in the Folder Manager's list view.


Trays
A tray is a specialised type of folder which can contain other folders or trays, but not messages. A tray is just like a subdirectory on your hard disk -- it can contain files and other subdirectories, but does not contain data of its own. You can use trays to create a hierarchy within your folder structure -- to keep folders on related topics together in one place.

There is no limit to the depth of a tray hierarchy, but you will generally find that three to four trays deep is a reasonable maximum for easy management.

Organizing your mail folders in a hierarchy can make your mail easier to find and can result in considerable performance improvements in the program when it has to list or open your folders.


MIME
MIME (Multi-purpose Internet Mail Extensions)

MIME is an Internet standard for the transmission of data of any type via electronic mail. It defines the way messages should be formatted and constructed and has provision for indicating the type and nature of the contents of a message, and for preserving international character set information. In most cases, a MIME message can be read correctly on any kind of system which has a MIME-compliant mail program.

MIME provides direct support for graphic images in GIF and JPEG format, Video images in MPEG format, and Audio data as well. It also has a Digest format for sending multiple mail messages at once (Pegasus Mail displays MIME digests in a manner very similar to a folder).

Pegasus Mail will automatically handle incoming MIME messages without any intervention from you. The decision over whether it should generate outgoing messages in MIME format is yours -- to enable MIME features, click the control in the Special view of the message editor. Once checked, the setting will be remembered for all subsequent messages. The only reason you would not use MIME formatting for Internet mail would be if you knew your correspondent did not have access to a MIME-compliant system.

MIME is described in the Internet Standards Document RFC1521.


Troubleshooting

At some stage, things will probably go wrong -- there's no escape from Murphy's Law. This section lists the most common problems and solutions known to us at the time of release of this version of the program. See the next section, Technical support for information on how to obtain the most up-to-date lists of common problems and solutions.

READ THIS FIRST!!!

Pegasus Mail and the Novell NetWare environment

Pegasus Mail and Windows 95

Pegasus Mail and WINSOCK.DLL

"Cannot create container file" errors

International character set problems

Other problems


Murphy's Law
Murphy's Law:  "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong".

There's also Parkinson's Law -- "Work expands to exceed available time".

Forget Einstein -- these are the laws that REALLY govern the universe.


First steps when troubleshooting
First steps for troubleshooting

It has been our repeated experience that the vast majority of problems people have with Pegasus Mail fall into three categories, none of them actually to do with the program itself:

1: Configuration problems  more than 80% of all problems reported to us result from simple misconfiguration of the system. Pegasus Mail doesn't require a great deal of configuration, but it is important that the configuration it does require be done correctly. Always read WGUIDE.HLP carefully, especially the "Important information" and Installing Pegasus Mail" sections.

2: Problems with other people's software  this is particularly true with WINSOCK.DLL, because the quality of available WINSOCK implementations varies widely. If your problem results in a GPF (Windows-speak for a crash), check the report Windows generates carefully - it will say something like "PEGASUS MAIL caused a GPF in module XXXXXX"; the actual cuplrit is whatever is named in XXXXXX: if it is the name of a DLL, especially WINSOCK.DLL, then your problem almost certainly is not in Pegasus Mail but in a third-party product.

3: System problems  some very common problems can be caused by incorrectly installed network drivers, by marginal hardware (this is especially true of modems), or by running in environments with too little disk space or memory. In the network environment, incorrect or inadequate trustee and access rights can also cause innumerable problems. Always check these external influences before assuming that Pegasus Mail itself is at fault.

Finally, if Pegasus Mail is producing an error message, please read it carefully! Very often, the solution to the problem will be shown in the message itself.


WGUIDE.EXE
WGUIDE.HLP is the Pegasus Mail online guide. It is a Windows Help File supplied in the original Pegasus Mail archive you retrieved. If you ran Pegasus Mail's setup program to install it, WGUIDE will appear as an icon in the "Pegasus Mail for Windows" group created by setup. When you double-click it, it will display a menu of topics about installing and using Pegasus Mail.


WinPMail and the Novell NetWare environment
Pegasus Mail and the Novell NetWare environment

How can I stop Pegasus Mail from running in "NetWare mode"?

You can force Pegasus Mail to run in standalone mode (ie, to ignore the connection to the NetWare server) by changing the command line you use to run the program to:

WINPM-32.EXE -A

This commandline switch also works for the DOS version of Pegasus Mail.

Pegasus Mail tells me it can't find my home mailbox, but it's there!

There are three possible causes for this problem:

[*] 1: You may be running Windows in Standard mode while connected to a NetWare server, and your PC is using the Novell NETX shell set. This combination will provoke a bug in the NetWare API libraries, especially if your machine is a 286. The only solution is to move to the VLM shell set or to step back to Pegasus Mail 1.02 (which uses an older API set).

[*] 2: If you are running in standalone mode (not connected to a NetWare server), your standalone configuration might be incorrect - the most likely cause is an invalid path in either the home mailbox or new mailbox fields in PCONFIG. Try deleting the file PMAIL.CFG in the directory where PEGASUS MAIL.EXE is located and re-entering the values the next time Pegasus Mail starts up.

[*] 3: You may be running under NetWare 4.0x in a directory services context which is not the Bindery Context. Pegasus Mail is a Bindery-based NetWare application and requires information from the NetWare Bindery, which is poorly emulated under NetWare 4.0x. The only solution is to have your usercode moved into the Bindery Context.

Pegasus Mail runs in standalone mode even though I'm connected to a NetWare server

Windows reports "Cannot find NETWARE.DLL" when starting Pegasus Mail

You probably have not installed NetWare support into your copy of Windows. Run the Windows setup program and see what Network it thinks you are using; if it says "None", choose "Novell NetWare" and insert the disks it asks for. You should also make sure you are using the most recent NetWare drivers from Novell. The "Cannot find NETWARE.DLL" message is an error in Windows - there is no "NETWARE.DLL" - it is looking for NETWARE.DRV.

Windows, The "Black Screen of Death" and broadcast messages

If your copy of Windows crashes with the "Black Screen of Death", or your system locks up or behaves erratically when you receive the broadcast "New mail" notification messages Pegasus Mail generates, then you almost certainly have a NetWare Shell problem. Make sure you are using the absolute most recent driver files from Novell (see the preceding entry for details on getting these) and take particular care to delete all old versions of these files (especially NWPOPUP.EXE and NETWARE.DRV) right across your DOS path.


WinPMail and Windows 95
Pegasus Mail and Windows 95

I'm running Windows 95 and getting GPFs in NWCALLS.DLL

There is a bug in Windows 95's NetWare emulation such that it reports a server connection even when there is none actually available. You can fix this easily by forcing Pegasus Mail to start in standalone mode by adding the switch "-A" to its command line.

My Windows 95 users can't send mail via Mercury - it gets returned with a "missing $$ signature" diagnostic.

There appears to be a severe bug in the Windows 95 NetWare Queue Services emulator which means that the first four bytes of jobs written directly to queues by programs will be corrupt. The only workaround I have been able to find for this is to switch Mercury and Pegasus Mail into Mercury's spooler submission mode instead of queue mode. This problem may also affect Windows NT v3.51 users, because that system appears to use the same Queue Services code with the same bug.

I'm trying to use the Microsoft WINSOCK.DLL supplied with Windows 95 but am having connection problems.

This, and variants of it, are usually attributable to having WINSOCK.DLL files other than the Microsoft version on your system. This is particularly likely to happen if you have upgraded to Windows 95 rather than doing a fresh install. Hunt through your system making sure that there is only one copy of WINSOCK.DLL present and that it is the Microsoft offering.


WinPMail and WINSOCK.DLL
Pegasus Mail and WINSOCK.DLL

The quality of Windows Sockets implementations currently available for Windows seems to be extremely variable, so if you have problems with WINSOCK- based mail in Pegasus Mail, please check first that you have the current version of your WSOCK32.DLL and any support software, and that it's correctly configured.Next, if you are getting connection problems, try expressing the address of the host to which you want to connect using dotted IP notation instead of an address (or vice-versa).

Many problems using WINSOCK across slow SLIP or PPP links arise from timeouts being set too short - set a much longer timeout value in your network configuration screen in these cases (I recommend up to 120 seconds).

Pegasus Mail v2.0 and later uses "non-blocking sockets" to obtain the greatest level of control of TCP/IP communications. Some WinSock implementations do not handle non-blocking sockets well. If your WinSock implementation has problems connecting with Pegasus Mail, or if performance is erratic, try changing the command line you use to run Pegasus Mail to:

WINPM-32.EXE -Z 1024

This will force Pegasus Mail to use blocking sockets, at the price of lower performance and possibly occasional conflicts between POP3/SMTP and TCP/IP-aware Pegasus Mail extensions.

I don't get the Network Configuration or other WinSock-based entries on the File menu

[*] Pegasus Mail may be unable to find WSOCK32.DLL - make sure it is on the path, in \WINDOWS, or in \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32. On some systems, especially Windows NT, you may find you have to force Pegasus Mail to "Blind load" WINSOCK.DLL -- you do this by changing the command line you use to run Pegasus Mail to:

WINPM-32.EXE -Z 128

[*] You may have the Winsock loading field in your Advanced settings preferences dialog in Pegasus Mail set to Never. Set it to On demand or Always then exit and restart the program.

Pegasus Mail reports "Invalid password" when I connect to my POP3 server, but I've double-checked and the password is right.

[*] The password may be right, but your username may not be (for security reasons, most POP3 servers will accept any username and fail the password automatically if the username is invalid). The most common cause of this is putting a full address in the "username" field of the Network Configuration dialog's POP3 section. If you can see an '@' symbol in this field, then it's wrong - Pegasus Mail only wants your basic username, which is everything preceding the '@' in your address.

How can I prevent Pegasus Mail from autoloading WSOCK32.DLL?

Pegasus Mail has built-in support for a variety of e-mail protocols using the TCP/IP networking protocol. To provide this support, it looks for a file called WSOCK32.DLL when it starts up; WSOCK32.DLL is a file supplied by Microsoft or your TCP/IP vendor which provides a standard interface to TCP/IP network services for Windows programs. If you do not want Pegasus Mail to load this file (and hence not to provide access to its built-in mail TCP/IP mail services), do one of the following:

[*] Prior to running Windows, enter the command "SET WINPMAIL=1" from the DOS prompt. You cannot do this from a Windows DOS session - you must do it prior to running Windows

[*] Change the command line the Program Manager uses to run Pegasus Mail so that it includes the switch "-Z 1". You can use this switch with all other switches in the program.

[*] Go to the Advanced settings preferences dialog in Pegasus Mail and set the Winsock Loading field to Never.


"Container file" errors
"Container file" errors and what they mean

One of the most common errors you may see from Pegasus Mail is a message saying:

   Pegasus Mail has failed creating the container file for a message

This is also one of the harder error messages to diagnose, but in general it means that Pegasus Mail has attempted to create a file for delivery and the operating system has reported a failure on the operation. The most common causes for this problem are:

[*] (In NetWare mode) This message can indicate several things:

* You may be out of disk space on the file server volume where the recipient's mailbox is located (or the submission directory if you are sending mail via Mercury)

* You may have insufficient rights in the destination directory

* The destination directory may not exist (this can happen on NetWare 4.x servers running in Bindery Emulation mode when the recipient has never logged into the server, because NetWare 4.x only creates the user's SYS:MAIL mailbox when he or she logs in the first time).

* If sending mail between servers, this may indicate an error in the configuration of the inter-server delivery account created for Pegasus Mail's use, usually a password or connection restriction, or a lack of rights in the destination server's SYS:MAIL directory.

[*] (In standalone mode) You may have addressed the message to a local user who does not exist. Because Pegasus Mail can manage multiple users on the same machine, if you enter an address like "david", or "betty" - namely, an address with no domain portion - Pegasus Mail will assume it refers to a user on your own machine and will try to deliver it locally. If you have no users other than yourself on your machine, you may want to set the "Use for all outgoing mail" flag in the Network configuration dialog - this tells Pegasus Mail that there are no local users and to send everything via the SMTP transport.


International character set problems

Pegasus Mail users in countries where English is not the primary language will often run into problems using accented characters in electronic mail. Problems with accented characters are not a sign of ignorance or carelessness on the part of Pegasus Mail's developer (who studied French for 11 years and German for 5) -- rather, they reflect a very general problem with computers in that there is very little standardisation on character sets and the way they are represented.

The first thing to do to improve the situation is to turn on Pegasus Mail's MIME support - MIME goes a long way towards dealing with International character set issues. Enable MIME support by checking the control in the Special view of the message editor.

You can customize the character sets Pegasus Mail uses for MIME messages by creating and compiling a file called WPM-LMTT.RSC, and placing it in the same directory as WINPM-32.EXE. A sample source file for this resource, called WPM-LMTT.R, is supplied in the RESOURCE\ subdirectory of the directory where you installed WINPM-32.EXE - examine it for details of the formatting required.

For non-MIME messages it is impossible to preserve 8-bit data accurately in any meaningful way -- when sending non-MIME mail, Pegasus Mail will always convert accented characters to non-accented ASCII equivalents; this process is required by the Internet mail standard, RFC822, and cannot be subverted. You can customise the conversion process Pegasus Mail applies to your accented characters by providing a WPM-CHAR.RSC file in the same directory as WINPM-32.EXE. As with WPM-LMTT.RSC, this file is compiled from source you provide, and a sample WPM-CHAR.R file is provided in the same location.


Other problems

The .WAV file I have chosen as a new mail alert sound doesn't work

By default, the new mail alert sound only works when Pegasus Mail is minimized on your desktop.

[*] If you would prefer the alert sound to play any time new mail arrives, add the switch "-Z 512" to the Pegasus Mail command line.

I have some users whose preferences don't get saved properly between

Pegasus Mail sessions

Pegasus Mail only saves your preferences when it believes they have changed during the session - sometimes it may fail to detect changes.

[*] You can force Pegasus Mail to save your preferences by holding down the Ctrl key while selecting "Exit" from the file menu.

[*] This can also happen when user has no rights to read or write files in the temporary directory specified in the TEMP or TMP environment variable, or in the "Temporary files directory" setting in the user's PMAIL.INI configuration file.

Why can't I see some of/all the mail folders I created using older versions of Pegasus Mail?

Pegasus Mail supports hierarchical foldering using "trays", or containers in which folders can be placed. When it first runs, Pegasus Mail creates a file called MAIN.PMT which is your main tray and contains all the folders it can find in your home mailbox: from this point, it uses the file to maintain your hierarchy. If you create a folder using an earlier version of Pegasus Mail after you have run this version, the new folder will not be added to the hierarchy file and Pegasus Mail will not be able to see it.

[*] Solution: run Pegasus Mail, and press <^L> to select a folder; choose "Check tray list"from the Folders menu. This instructs Pegasus Mail to look for any folders which might be missing from your hierarchy and add them to it.

How can I stop Pegasus Mail from running in "NetWare mode"?

You can force Pegasus Mail to run in standalone mode (ie, to ignore the connection to the NetWare server) by changing the command line you use to run the program to "WINPM-32.EXE -A". This commandline switch also works for the DOS version of Pegasus Mail.

Why do all my folders and other mail files appear twice in Pegasus Mail?

If you can see two entries for each DList, Folder, Addressbook or other Pegasus Mail file when you try to select one, and one is in blue, then you have probably installed PEGASUS MAIL.EXE in the same directory as your home mailbox (as opposed to using the recommended installation); this causes Pegasus Mail to see every file as both personal and system-wide, and to list them twice.

[*] Solution: Move WINPM-32.EXE, WINPM-32.DAT, W32NW3/4.DLL (if you are

on a NetWare system) PMAIL.CFG (if you are running on a standalone system) and WINPM-32.HLP into another directory.

My new mail folder doesn't open at startup even though I have the option checked in my preferences.

Pegasus Mail originates from the LAN world and is still far and away most heavily used there; in that environment, most users prefer to have the new mail folder open automatically only if there is actually new mail to display. This option is less useful for standalone users so a fix is provided.

[*] Solution: Add the switch "-Z 256" to the Pegasus Mail command line (in the Program Manager Icon you created for it). This will force the new mail folder to open irrespective of its contents.


Technical support
Technical support, manuals

Your first port of call for technical support for Pegasus Mail is this help file. The answers to most questions can probably be found here: if you can't find it at a glance, try searching the index for the help file..

If the help file doesn't turn up the answer for you, send a mail message to the Internet address support@pmail.gen.nz. This will retrieve an automatic reply listing all the available sources of help, including regularly-updated frequently-asked-question lists (FAQs), addresses for support mailing lists, and direct mail addresses for the program's author.

Finally, manuals are available for Pegasus Mail at very reasonable prices. We don't guarantee you'll find the answer to every problem in the manual, but it is a handy, complete reference to the program. Manual purchases are totally optional - there is no pressure or obligation for you to purchase manuals: Pegasus Mail is provided as a free service and our primary objective is not the accumulation of money. We want you to enjoy using the program and benefit from the capabilities it offers you, and if you do not feel you need a manual to increase your enjoyment then that is the best compliment we could ask for. Information on ordering manuals can be found in the online order form, which you can use at any time by clicking the '$' button on the program's main toolbar.

For up-to-date information on manuals and support options for Pegasus Mail, please visit the official Pegasus Mail web site at

http://www.pmail.com


Using Drag and Drop in Pegasus Mail

Pegasus Mail makes heavy use of Drag and Drop - picking something up by holding down the left mouse button, dragging it to where you want to use it, then dropping it by releasing the mouse button. You can perform the following actions via drag and drop:

You can drag addresses from any Addressbook, from the Local User List, from the MHS Directory Service, from the Distribution List Manager window or from the Logged-in user list to any address or text field in the program.

You can move messages from any folder window to any other folder window (even minimized on the desktop), or to a folder entry in the Folder Manager list. Holding down the Alt key while you drag the message will copy it instead of moving it.

You can rearrange the folders in your Folder Manager window by dragging them and dropping them in the location where they should appear.

You can copy an addressbook entry from any addressbook to any other addressbook by dragging between them.

You can drag messages from any folder window to any addressbook (even minimized) and Pegasus Mail will create an addressbook entry based on the information in the message.

You can drag a message from any folder window to any message editor field and Pegasus Mail will paste the contents of that message into the message you are editing at the cursor position, prompting you for the portion of the message it should copy.

Finally, you can drag any file from the File Manager and drop it onto the minimized Pegasus Mail icon and it will do one of two things: if the frontmost window within Pegasus Mail is a message editor window, Pegasus Mail will add the file as an attachment to that message; if the frontmost window is not a message editor, Pegasus Mail will begin a new message with the file added as an attachment.


Quick Folders

Pegasus Mail lets you define up to six Quick Folders that you can access with a single keystroke from the Folder Manager window and when browsing the contents of a folder.

To define your Quick Folder settings, choose Define quick folders from the Quick copy/move submenu of the Folder menu (if you are browsing a folder), or from the Quick open submenu of the Folders menu (if you are working in the Folder Manager's window). You will be presented with a dialog containing six entries that look like this:

Click the large button to select the folder which you want to associate with each quick folder entry. The folder's long name will appear next to the button once you have selected it. The Move and Copy radio buttons allow you to choose whether any messages you have selected while browsing a mail folder should be moved or copied into the quick folder when you activate it. You do not have to define all the Quick Folders in the dialog - you can define as few or as many as you wish, and you can define them in any order.

To use a Quick Folder definition, either select it from the submenu in the Folder or Folders menus, or hold down the Ctrl key and press the number of the Quick Folder you want to access. If the Folder Manager window is frontmost, this will open the Quick Folder; if a mail folder is the frontmost window, any messages selected in it will be moved or copied to the quick folder, depending on you Quick Folder settings.

If you want to be able to perform moves or copies into quick folders while browsing a folder simply by pressing the number of the Quick Folder (i.e, without having to hold down the Ctrl key), check the control labelled Allow activation without pressing Ctrl when in folder windows at the bottom of the definition dialog.


Configuring Pegasus Mail

Pegasus Mail configures itself automatically for use in the Novell NetWare environment, but when running in other environments requires a small amount of information the first time it runs. The information you give it will determine how it operates for you and depends on how you plan to use the system.

Single user configuration

One user on this computer and only one address.

Multi-user configuration

More than one user on this computer, or if

 you have more than one address.

Network configuration

For multiple users on non-NetWare networks.


Single user configuration

Click the single user button in the configuration dialog if there will only ever be one person with a single e-mail address running Pegasus Mail on this computer. This is the simplest configuration option - if you select it, Pegasus Mail will simply ask you for the name of a directory on your computer where your mail-related files should be stored.

The name of the directory you enter must be a full path (for example, "C:\PMAIL\MAIL"). If you use a partial path (such as "MAIL", "..\MAIL" or "C:MAIL") you may run into unpredictable problems later on. You do not have to enter an existing directory path: Pegasus Mail will create all or any portion of the path you enter as required.

You should not use the directory where you have installed WINPM-32.EXE as the mailbox directory you enter here - if you do, you will see two occurrences of all your mail-related files, such as folders and distribution lists. This is because Pegasus Mail regards any files of these kinds which it finds in its installation directory as system wide files, and thus presents them to you twice - once as your own files and once as system-wide entries.


Multi-user configuration

Click the multi-user button if you want to allow more than one person to use Pegasus Mail on this computer, each having different mailboxes and preference files. In multi-user mode, Pegasus Mail will prompt for a username when it is run, or the -I command line option can be used to create an icon which will start the program with the proper user information. You can also use this option if you send and receive mail using more than one e-mail address, by creating a separate user account for each address.

When you select this option, Pegasus Mail will ask you for a path to the directory where it should create and look for user mailboxes. The path you enter must be a full path from the root of a drive and should not end in a trailing '\' character. The path need not exist - Pegasus Mail will create it for you if required.


Configuration for networks
Network configuration

Click the network button if you want to use Pegasus Mail on a network for which it does not have explicit support, such as LANtastic or Windows for Workgroups. Running in network mode differs from multi-user mode only in that the path you enter for the new mailbox locations must exist on a shared volume available to all mail system users. Pegasus Mail will wait while you mount the volume you want to use and then will proceed with a regular multi-user installation.

Considerations for network use

* The shared drive on which the mailboxes are located must be mounted before you run Pegasus Mail - Pegasus Mail will not mount it for you.

* All users must be able to access the shared volume using the same drive letter. If your network supports the UNC path format (i.e, \\SERVER\VOLUME\PATH) then you can enter the path using this format instead of a path based on a drive-letter.

* On some networks where the file server is actually a user's workstation (for instance, Windows for Workgroups) you may find that the user running on the file server cannot see the shared volume using the same drive letter as other users on the network - for example, the file server's C: drive may be visible to other users on the network as drive K:. If this is the case, you will have to create an alternate configuration file for that one user. To use an alternate configuration file, you must start Pegasus Mail with the command line

WINPM-32.EXE -e <filename>

filename must have no path component and may have 11 characters or fewer. It will be created in the same directory as WINPM-32.EXE, so you must have write access to that directory when creating an alternate configuration. When creating an alternate configuration to cover a file server user, you should enter the path to the same mailbox location as your other users, just using the local path notation instead of the network path specification; otherwise, proceed with the configuration exactly as you did for your regular users.

If your network supports access control rights, then you can increase the security of the mail system by granting users all rights to their own mail directory but only sufficient rights to create files in all other users mail directories.


Command line options
Command-line options

Pegasus Mail is able to run in a very wide range of environments using a wide variety of message formats and transports. This versatility means that the program has a very rich selection of configuration options (as you can see by looking through the various preferences screens in the program). Some of the more specialised configuration options, as well as options for sending mail automatically, are accessed by passing parameters to the program on its command line. The command line is a set of parameters which the Windows Program Manager can pass to Pegasus Mail at startup, and is part of the Properties of the icon you create for Pegasus Mail. To change the commandline for Pegasus Mail, select its icon in the Program Manager and press <Alt+Enter>, or else choose Properties from the File menu.

Pegasus Mail for Windows recognizes the following commandline options: where an option has a parameter, you must place a space on the commandline between the option and that parameter.

Message submission options (sending mail from the commandline)

-T <address>

Specify the primary addressee of the message

-F <filename>

Specify the file which should be sent as the body of the message

-B (no parameter)

If present, indicates that the file is binary and should be attached.

-C <address>

Specify Carbon Copy (CC:) recipients of the message

-S <"Subject">

Specify the message subject (must appear in quotes)

-J <filename>

Advanced job submission

Run control options

-A (no parameter)

Forces Pegasus Mail to run in standalone mode, ignoring any NetWare connection.

-R <filename>  Load and run a Pegasus Mail extension (plugin) as soon as the program has finished starting up. This is a handy way of starting an extension automatically on a one-off basis.

-V <keyword=parameter>

Define an entry in Pegasus Mail’s environment table. This has the same effect as defining the variable in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file using the SET command, and is primarily useful for specifying things like the noticeboard directory, or values that can be substituted into User-Defined Gateway commandlines.

-P <server>

Forces Pegasus Mail to use a NetWare Bindery connection to the specified server. You must already have a valid attachment to the server. Use this option if you regularly connect to more than one NetWare 3.x server.

-U <username>

"Become" another user for the duration of the session. In NetWare mode, you must belong to a group called BECOME to be able to use this flag, and must have proper rights to the target user's mailbox and new mail folder on the file server.

-I <username>

Specify your standalone identity on the commandline. This flag only operates in standalone mode (it is ignored in NetWare mode) and differs from -U in that you are not actually becoming another user - you are simply identifying yourself, so Pegasus Mail takes fewer security precautions against mail forgery.

-ID <Identity>

Specify an identity that Pegasus Mail should switch to automatically on startup.

-O (no parameter)

Enter offline mode. In offline mode, Pegasus Mail will ignore all commands or situations in which it might normally initiate a check for new mail using its built-in TCP/IP mail transport. This effectively allows you to use the program as if you were connected to your service provider without actually establishing a connection.

-E <filename>

Instructs Pegasus Mail to use an alternate standalone configuration file: by default, Pegasus Mail looks for a configuration file called PMAIL.CFG in the directory where it is installed to find its standalone configuration information. This option allows you tell it to use an alternative filename, although the filename you give must have no path attached to it and the file must still reside in the same directory as WINPM-32.EXE. This option is ignored in NetWare mode.

-Q <address>

If your WSOCK32.DLL has a defective gethostname() function, you may need to specify the address of your machine on the commandline using this option. Pegasus Mail must know the name or address of your own machine in order to be able to start a mail transaction when sending mail - usually it can get this information  by asking your WSOCK32.DLL, but some WinSock implementations are faulty in this area. <address> should be either your machine's Internet domain name if you have one (example: -Q calliope.pmail.gen.nz) or else a dotted IP address for your machine (example -Q 192.156.225.64). If you are using a SLIP or PPP connection where your IP number is assigned dynamically and hence is not known in advance, then you may find that you can get things working either by using the address -Q 0.0.0.0 or by using a fictitious name - something like -Q unknown. You should usually only use this option when you get an error from Pegasus Mail specifically advising you to do so. If you need to use this commandline option, you should immediately get in touch with the supplier of your WSOCK32.DLL and ask if they have a version where gethostname() works correctly. If they cannot supply an updated version that works properly, you should consider moving to a different WSOCK32.DLL.

-W <path>

Allows you to force Pegasus Mail to use a specific WINSOCK.DLL file instead of using the standard Windows search algorithm to find it. Handy if you have multiple WINSOCK implementations installed, or if you need to use one which cannot be found by the standard Windows search mechanism.

-X <language code>

Specify an internationalization module on the commandline. <language code> should be the two-letter code for the module you want to use - for example DE for the German module.

-Y <filename>

Specify an alternative name for the Pegasus Mail User Preferences file, PMAIL.INI. This switch tells Pegasus Mail that it should read and save all preferences information in the file you give, which must not have a path associated with it (it must be a simple filename). This is mostly useful if you run Pegasus Mail from two different machine with different screen resolutions, since it allows you to define settings specific to each machine.

-MS (no parameter)

Start multiple sessions of Pegasus Mail. Use this switch if you want a new copy of Pegasus Mail to start up when the program is run, instead of control simply being transferred to any copy that might currently be running on your system. This switch is usually only useful when combined with the -I or -U switch to specify a user. WARNING!!  This switch DOES NOT allow you to run two copies of Pegasus Mail that simultaneously access the same mailbox: all running copies of Pegasus Mail on the system must be accessing different mailboxes. If you ignore this warning and allow two copies of Pegasus Mail to access the same mailbox at the same time, then you will almost certainly end up with loss of data.

-Z: The feature control flag

The -Z flag is used to enable a number of special case options within Pegasus Mail, and you will not normally need it in day to day use. The parameter to the -Z flag is created by adding together values from the following list:

1	Never load WINSOCK.DLL (disables the built-in POP3 and

SMTP mailing code).

2	Do not save the widths of columns in folders between sessions

4	Don't send NetWare Broadcast delivery notifications

16	Force the use of MIME encodings in noticeboards

32	Enter TCP/IP debugging mode

64	Use "From field" value to form the SMTP envelope address

128	"Blind load" WINSOCK.DLL - do not attempt to locate it first.

512	Play new mail alert sound any time new mail arrives

(the sound usually only plays when minimized)

1024	Use blocking sockets; may be needed for some

defective WINSOCK implementations.

2048	Allow multiple instances of the 32-bit version of Pegasus Mail

to run at the same time on different mailboxes (use with care).

4096	Use blocking WINSOCK Name Resolution calls; may be

needed by some defective WINSOCK implementations.

16384	Update the new mail folder with each new message as it

is downloaded using the POP3 protocol.

32768	Use DOS-compatible character conversions on 8-bit data

(note that this switch has a reversed meaning from its

meaning in previous versions of Pegasus Mail)

65536	Use simplified drive detection code. Use this switch under

OS/2 and Windows 3.x if you find that Pegasus Mail

crashes when you try to save attachments to disk or

add attachments to messages.

131072	Do not start the Internet Setup Wizard for first time

users even if a valid WINSOCK.DLL is detected.

262144	Force all message text to flow right-to-left. This is an

experimental option intended for use in environments such

as Hebrew Windows, where both Western and Hebrew

fonts are present on the system.

Other values are reserved and should not be used.


Advanced Job Submission

The most powerful way of submitting mail automatically to Pegasus Mail is via the -J command line option. The parameter to this commandline option should be a file formatted using Pegasus Mail's reloadable queue format - the same as is generated by the built-in TCP/IP transport and when you save a message as a draft. An RQF file is a rigidly-formatted text file using the following structure.

Line 1:	A title line. This is ignored when using the -J option, but must be present.

Line 2 .. Line x: A sequence of header lines. Header lines consist of two characters, followed by a colon, followed by a data item of arbitrary length. Absent fields default to 0 or an empty string. The following header lines are recognized by Pegasus Mail (numbers in brackets indicate maximum field length for strings, or permissible values for integer types):

TO:	The message's "To:" field (256)

SU:	The message's "Subject:" field (65)

RE:	The message's "Reply-to:" field (65)

CC:	The message's "Cc:" field (256)

BC:	The message's "BCc:" field (256)

EN:	Whether or not to encrypt the message (1/0)

CS:	Whether to keep a copy-to-self (1/0)

RC:	Whether to request confirmation of reading (1/0)

FL:	Message flags (currently not used)

DC:	Whether to request confirmation of delivery (1/0)

UR:	Whether or not to set the urgent flag (1/0)

SS:	Whether to omit the message signature (1/0)

NB:	Whether the message is destined for a noticeboard (1/0)

EX:	Tagname of selected encryption module (12)

TN:	Tagname of Extension that generated the message (12)

8H:	Pre-formatted special RFC822 header to add to message

MH:	Pre-formatted special MHS header to add to message

FI:	If present, transmission is in the file named (65)

KY:	Encryption key (48)

!M:	Message width (20 < x < 254)

!T:	Tab width (0 < x < 20)

RT:	The message contains rich-text data (2/1/0)

AT:	An attachment. The format for this field is:

<filename><,><attachment_type><,><encoding><,><original_name>

Note that no parameter may be omitted, spaces are significant and no parameter may contain a comma. "Encoding" specifies the encoding method for the attachment - in almost all cases it should be set to 0 to allow Pegasus Mail to select the most appropriate method. "original_name" is the real name for the file (the assumption is that "filename" may be a temporary file created for mailing only). "Attachment_type" can be any string but should usually be selected from the list of available types in Pegasus Mail.

Line x + 1:  Exactly one blank line indicating end of headers / start of message

Line x + 2: .. End of file: Message text if no FI: header was specified.

Hint:  For an example of the layout of one of these files, prepare a message within Pegasus Mail turning on every message option, then save it as a draft and examine the .PMO file that gets created in your home mailbox.


Managing users

When running in multi-user mode, or on a non-NetWare network, Pegasus Mail maintains user mailboxes in a single directory you choose the first time you run the program. You can create as many users as you wish for the system, each user having his or her own preferences files, mail folders, address books and so on. This versatility can also be useful for a single user who wishes to maintain multiple separate mail addresses.

The first time Pegasus Mail runs in multi-user mode, it will bring up the user management dialog to allow you to create an initial set of users for the system. At any future time, any user designated an administrator can also select Manage users from the Addresses menu to add, remove or edit the details of mail system users.

Mail system users have three characteristics:

* A username:  A mail system user's username consists of eight or fewer letters or numbers and acts as that user's local mail address - that is, the address other mail system users will enter into Pegasus Mail to send mail to that user. The username is also the name of the mailbox directory Pegasus Mail will look for in your installation directory. All users must have a username, and every username on the system must be unique.

* A personal name:  A user's Personal name is a descriptive tag which appears in the local users list in Pegasus Mail. It is usually simply the user's first name and surname, but the exact format is up to you. Every user must have a personal name. The only restriction on a personal name is that it may not contain a semicolon character (";").

Administrative privileges:  A user with administrative privileges may add and delete users within the mail system and may change any user's details. If you are running on a system which actually has a privilege structure of its own, then administrative users must also have the necessary system-level rights to create and remove directories in the base mailbox directory. At least one user in the system must have administrator privileges.


Message Encryption and Decryption

Encryption is the process of scrambling the contents of a mail message so that only the authorised recipient can read it. If you are sending sensitive or personal material, you can gain extra security by encrypting it. An offshoot of encryption technology is an authentication technique called a digital signature: digital signatures provide a means of proving incontrovertibly that you wrote a particular message at a particular time; some digital signature techniques are acceptable as evidence in courts of law around the world.

There is a very wide range of encryptors available, and in many countries, especially the United States of America and France, paranoid government agencies have done everything in their power to prevent encryption technology from becoming available to the general public, usually in the name of "national security". This has resulted in astonishing regulations such as the USA's "ITAR" export regulations, under which encryption technology is regarded as a munition and cannot be exported without the approval of the NSA.

Pegasus Mail incorporates an encryptor which is adequate for day to day use (it is a variant of the old unix "crypt" program using DES to "seed" the encryption key). It also permits third-party developers to add their own encryption technology into the program in a seamless manner. Because of this, the specifics of the encryption options available to you may vary from system to system.

When you select the Encrypt option in the message editor, Pegasus Mail will open the encryptor dialog. The topmost control in this dialog allows you to select the encryption technique you want applied to the message -- unless you have added third-party encryptors to your copy of Pegasus Mail, there will only be one entry in this list, Pegasus Mail's built-in encryptor. The other options in the dialog may become enabled and disabled depending on the technique you select -- not all encryptors will support digital signatures, for instance.

The password is usually your secret key to the message and will not display as you type it in. With some encryptors, the password may actually open your encryptor's key ring -- this will depend on particular instances. Some encryptors may place certain restrictions on the characters you can use in passwords -- consult the specific reference for each encryptor module to find out if this applies to you.

Default password button:  If you have defined a default encryptor passphrase in the Message editor settings page of your preferences, then you can enter it into either the encryption or decryption dialog by clicking the button labelled “*” at the right of the password field.

Pegasus Mail's built-in encryptor has the following characteristics:

* Passwords can be from 5 to 8 characters in length

* Passwords may not contain international characters

* The encryptor cannot produce digital signatures

* The encryptor cannot encrypt binary data such as attachments

* Only other users of Pegasus Mail will be able to decrypt its messages

The recipient of a message encrypted using Pegasus Mail's built-in encryptor must know the password you have used to encrypt it.


The Joke Page

Congratulations! You found the joke page.

Software developers are curious, stunted individuals with massive egos and towering (and usually wildly inflated) opinions of their own worth and ability... Pegasus Mail's author realises that he's probably no different from any other software developer in this regard. Accordingly, he has indulged himself outrageously by burying this completely pointless page in the help file to see if anyone finds it.

Your reward for enduring this string of platitudes and pointless observations is a short selection of some of my favourite quotable quotes -- you might like to use some of these in your variable signature, or, you might not... <grin>. Warning in advance - some of these quotes are probably not very politically correct, so if you're a pious or self-righteous person, you should probably stop reading this screen right now and return to your mail.

Definitions

Philosopher (n):  a blind person in a dark room looking for a black hat that is not there.

Bachelor (n):  a thing of beauty and a boy forever.

Erotic (adj):  using a feather as a sex aid.

Kinky (adj):  using the whole duck.

Newspaper glitches

"Ghana is to change over to driving on the right.

The change will be made gradually."

“Iraqi head seeks arms”

“Two convicts evade noose - jury hung”

“Miners refuse to work after death.”

Quotes from famous people

“Wagner has beautiful moments, but awful quarter-hours.”

-- Rossini

"Each time a New Zealander leaves for Australia the IQ of both countries goes up."

-- Rob Muldoon

“A woman is only as old as the man she feels”

-- Mae West

Signs seen around the world

“Dreaded veal cutlet”

-- On the menu of a Chinese Restaurant.

"Stop: drive sideways."

-- Detour sign seen in Kyushi, Japan

“When the passenger of foot heave in sight, tootle the horn. Trumpet him melodiously at first, but if he still obstacles your passage, tootle him with vigour”

-- On the driver instructions in a Japanese rental car.

"Salad a firm's own make; limpid red beet soup with cheesy dumplings in the form of a finger; roasted duck let loose; beef rashers beaten up in the country people's fashion."

-- Seen on the menu of a Polish hotel

“Cream dognuts”

-- Seen on the menu of a Belgian hotel.

And finally

Remember, even if you win the rat race, you're still a rat...


Guidelines for Electronic Mail Etiquette
Etiquette Guidelines for Electronic Mail

This section presents some simple guidelines for electronic mail etiquette and usage. It does not try to mandate any particular style or rules, but is rather an attempt to highlight important issues affecting the clarity of the electronic mail we send -- after all, electronic mail is about communication, so clarity should be our goal. (Click here for information on reprinting or re-publishing these guidelines).

Addresses and personal names

A Personal name is an arbitrary string that many mailers will allow you to define, and will attach to your e-mail address as a textual comment: in Pegasus Mail, you define your personal name in the General Preferences dialog.

*	Always provide a personal name if your mail system allows it - a personal name attached to your address identifies you better than your address can on its own.

*	Use a sensible personal name: "Guess who" or other such phrases are annoying as personal names and hinder the recipient's quick identification of you and your message. Most mail programs will show only your personal name (not your e-mail address) in recipients' folder lists, so using a sensible name is essential in allowing them to identify you as the sender.

*	If your mail system lets you use personal names in the addresses to which you send mail, try to use them. This will often help a postmaster recognize the real recipient of the message if the address is invalid.

Example:

The address 344188@foo.chaos.com conveys less information on its own

than if it were written as 344188@foo.chaos.com (Ford Prefect)

Subject lines

*	Always include a subject line in your message. Almost all mailers present you with the subject line when you browse your mailbox, and it's often the only clue the recipient has about the contents when filing and searching for messages.

*	Make the subject line meaningful. For example, sending a message to WordPerfect Technical Support with the subject WordPerfect is practically as unhelpful as having no subject at all.

*	If you are replying to a message but are changing the subject of the conversation, change the subject too - or better still, start a new message altogether. The subject is usually the easiest way to follow the thread of a conversation, so changing the conversation without changing the subject can be confusing and can make filing difficult.

Message Length, Content and Format

*	Try to match your message length to the tenor of the conversation: if you are only making a quick query, then keep it short and to the point.

*	It has become increasingly common for people to try to cram their entire message into the "subject" line, but you shouldn't do this - it is visually confusing to open a message and see nothing in the body: many people will mistake such messages for botched delivery attempts and will delete them without necessarily noticing the subject. Make your subject descriptive, by all means, but ensure that the message body also contains meaningful text.

*	In general, keep to the subject as much as possible. If you need to branch off onto a totally new and different topic then it's often better to send a new message, which allows the recipient the option of filing it separately.

*	Don't type your message in all-uppercase - it's extremely difficult to read (although a short stretch of uppercase may serve to emphasize a point heavily). Try to break your message into logical paragraphs and restrict your sentences to sensible lengths.

*	Use correct grammar and spelling. Electronic mail is all about communication - poorly-worded and misspelled messages are hard to read and potentially confusing. Just because electronic mail is fast does not mean that it should be slipshod, yet the worst language-mashing I have ever seen has been done in e-mail messages. If your words are important enough to write, then surely they are also important enough to write properly.

*	Avoid public "flames" - messages sent in anger. Messages sent in the heat of the moment generally only exacerbate the situation and are usually regretted later. Settle down and think about it for a while before starting a flame war. (Try going and making yourself a cup of coffee - it's amazing how much you can cool down even in that short a time, besides which a cup of good coffee is a great soother).

*	If your mail program supports fancy formatting (bold, italic and so on) in the mail messages it generates, make sure that the recipient has a mail program that can display such messages. At the time of writing, most Internet mail programs do not support anything other than plain text in messages, although this will change over time.

*	Be very careful about including credit card numbers in electronic mail messages. Electronic mail can be intercepted in transit and a valid credit card number is like money in the bank for someone unscrupulous enough to use it.

Replies

*	Avoid using "group reply" (reply-to-all) functions whenever possible: the vast majority of messages that receive group replies each day do not warrant them. Abuse of this function generates an enormous amount of unwanted and unnecessary mail: always consider carefully whether a group reply is really required before using it.

*	Include enough of the original message to provide a context. Remember that Electronic Mail is not as immediate as a telephone conversation and the recipient may not recall the contents of the original message, especially if he or she receives many messages each day. Including the relevant section from the original message helps the recipient to place your reply in context.

*	Include only the minimum you need from the original message. One of the most annoying things you can encounter in e-mail is to have your original 5-page message quoted back at you in its entirety, with the words "Me too" added at the bottom. Quote back only the smallest amount you need to make your context clear.

*	Use some kind of visual indication to distinguish between text quoted from the original message and your new text - this makes the reply much easier to follow. ">" is a traditional marker for quoted text, but you can use anything provided its purpose is clear and you use it consistently.

*	Pay careful attention to where your reply is going to end up: it can be embarrassing for you if a personal message ends up on a mailing list, and it's generally annoying for the other list members.

*	Ask yourself if your reply is really warranted - a message sent to a list server that only says "I agree" is probably better sent privately to the person who originally sent the message.

SPAM (unsolicited commercial e-mail)

*	If you are tempted to advertise your business or service by sending out e-mail to large lists of people, then we have one word for you: DON'T. This is called spamming, and it is the single most reviled practice on the Internet. Sending unsolicited commercial e-mail will have the opposite effect from anything you might intend, and because it is explicitly mentioned in most Internet Service Providers' terms and conditions as a prohibited practice, it may end up costing you your e-mail address. At the very least, you will get hundreds or thousands of deeply irate people screaming at you. We can't stress this one enough - DON'T SEND SPAM; it is nothing but trouble.

*	If you receive a spam message (and who doesn't, these days?) don't assume that the person in the "From" field of the message is actually the person who sent it. It is a very common practice for spammers to forge the headers of their messages to deflect the blame for their evildoing onto someone else.

*	This one is not etiquette, exactly, but it's so important we have to mention it here. Most spam mail will claim to have a "remove" option - an address to which you can send a message so that you will supposedly never get spam from the sender again. Never, never EVER use such remove options - they simply confirm to the spammer that your address is valid and that you read your mail. Rather than reducing the amount of spam you get, using a "remove" option will almost certainly result in you getting even more spam.

*	Spam is one of the most emotive, complex social issues facing the Internet. If you are interested in helping to kerb this abusive practice, you might like to consider joining one of the anti-spam action groups, such as CAUCE (the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail) - visit their web page at http://www.cauce.org.

Forwarding mail

*	When forwarding a message, think carefully about whether the recipient will actually appreciate it. It's become common for people to forward jokes, funny pictures and other incidental items on an almost open-slather basis, without first checking whether or not the people to whom the items are being forwarded really want to receive them. Always ask before forwarding incidental mail to someone.

*	If a message contains a request that you forward it to other people, then that's almost always a good reason not to do so. There are many well-known hoaxes and chain letters that have been going around the Internet for years - for instance, the letter with the heart-rending tale of the sick child who before he dies wants to set a record for the most e-mail greeting cards received... The message goes on to urge you to send a postcard to the child, then forward the e-mail to all your friends. Don't just blindly fall for hoaxes like this one - either ignore them, or if they seem especially worthy, ask around and find out whether or not they are kosher before proceeding.

Signatures

A Signature is a small block of text appended to the end of your messages, which usually contains your contact information. Many mailers can add a signature to your messages automatically. Signatures are a great idea but are subject to abuse; balance is the key to a good signature.

*	Always use a signature if you can: make sure it identifies who you are and includes alternative means of contacting you (phone and fax are usual). In many systems, particularly where mail passes through gateways, your signature may be the only means by which the recipient can even tell who you are.

*	Keep your signature short - four to seven lines is a handy guideline for maximum signature length. Unnecessarily long signatures waste bandwidth (especially when distributed to lists) and can be annoying.

*	Some mailers allow you to add random strings to your signature: this is well and good and can add character if done carefully. You should consider the following basic rules though:

Keep it short. The length of your quote adds to the length of your signature. A 5,000 word excerpt from Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason' used as a signature will not win you many friends.

Definitions of "offensive" vary widely: avoid quotes that might offend people on the grounds of religion, race, politics or sexuality.

Avoid topical or local quotes, since they may be meaningless to recipients in other towns, countries or cultures.

Variable signatures are usually best if they're amusing; polemical outbursts on politics or other such topics will turn most people off, but a one-liner that brings a smile can make someone's day.

Courtesy

Electronic mail is all about communication with other people, and as such some basic courtesy never goes amiss.

*	If you're asking for something, don't forget to say "please". Similarly, if someone does something for you, it never hurts to say "thank you". While this might sound trivial, or even insulting, it's astonishing how many people who are perfectly polite in everyday life seem to forget their manners in their e-mail.

*	Don't expect an immediate answer. The fact that you don't get an answer from someone in ten minutes does not mean that he or she is ignoring you, and is no cause for offense. Electronic mail is all about dealing with your communications when you are able to do so.

*	Always remember that there is no such thing as a secure mail system. It is unwise to send very personal or sensitive information by e-mail unless you encrypt it using a reliable encryptor. Remember the recipient - you are not the only person who could be embarrassed if a delicate message falls into the wrong hands.

*	Include enough information: if you are sending in a question to which you expect a response, make sure you include enough information to make the response possible. For example, sending the message My spreadsheet program doesn't work to Lotus Technical Support really doesn't give them very much to work with; similarly, sending the message What has happened to my order? to a vendor is also unhelpful. When requesting technical support, include a description of the problem and the version of the program you're using; when following up on an order, include the order number, your name and organization, and any other details that might assist in tracing your order - and so on.

"Smiley faces" (Emoticons)

Electronic mail has very nearly the immediacy of a conversation, but is totally devoid of "body language". As many new e-mail users quickly discover, it is depressingly easy to send what you feel is a completely innocent mail message, only to find that the recipient has read things into it that you never intended, and has taken offense. The Internet "counter-culture" has had an answer to this problem for years - "smiley faces" (also known as "emoticons"), or sequences of characters that are meant to look like a face turned on its side: the idea is that using a smiley face simulates some of the cues you would use in a face-to-face conversation, and reduces the likelihood of being misinterpreted.

The most common smiley faces are probably these:

:-) or :)	A smiling face seen side-on; generally used to indicate amusement, or that a comment is intended to be funny or ironic ("<g>" or "<grin>" is also sometimes used for the same purpose).

:-( or :(	An unhappy face seen side on; generally used to express disappointment or sorrow.

;-)	A winking smiley face; usually indicates that something should be taken "with a grain of salt".

>;->	A mischievous smiley face (note the devil's horns); usually indicates that a comment is intended to be provocative or racy.

There are hundreds of others, some more recognizable than others.

Using the common smiley faces appropriately can markedly improve the clarity of your message and can allow you to express a wider range of sentiments and emotions in what you write. Like any embellishment, however, overusing them will destroy their value - use them sparingly.

The Bottom Line

Above all else, remember that electronic mail is about communication with other people. When you compose an e-mail message, read it over before sending it and ask yourself what your reaction would be if you received it. In the end, any time we spend on making our e-mail clearer is time well-spent, so let's start taking the time.


Reprinting these etiquette guidelines

I regularly get requests to reprint or re-publish these guidelines: I am happy for you to use the Etiquette Guidelines section of this help file provided you agree to the following reasonable conditions:

1:	You must attribute my copyright in the republished or reprinted item. The sentence "These guidelines are Copyright (c) 1990-2004, David Harris, all rights reserved" appearing anywhere visible in the document is sufficient to meet this requirement.
2:	The guidelines must be published or reprinted complete and exactly as they appear in this file. In particular, you may not modify the spelling or grammar in any way. The only exceptions to this requirement are that the reference to setting your personal name in Pegasus Mail in the section entitled "Addresses and personal names" may be edited out, as may the reference to this page covering reprinting/re-publishing in the first paragraph. Aside from these changes, no other modifications are permitted.
3:	You may not use the guidelines in any publication or context that promotes or condones the sending of spam (unsolicited commercial e-mail).

Provided you meet these conditions, you do not have to approach us for specific publication permission. That said, if you would like to send us a copy of anything in which you use these guidelines, we would be pleased and grateful to receive it - please contact David.Harris@pmail.gen.nz for details on how to send materials to us.


Viewing attachments

See also:	Preferences overview

When you receive mail with attachments, you may wish to view the contents of the attachment without leaving Pegasus Mail: you can do this provided Pegasus Mail can find an application on your system that is capable of displaying the type of file contained in the attachment. When looking for a suitable viewer, Pegasus Mail can use either the extension of the filename for the attachment, or if the attachment has attachment type information associated with it, it can use that.

*Note: Pegasus Mail is intrinsically capable of displaying plain text, HTML, enriched text, GIF, Animated GIF, JPEG, BMP, EMF, PNG, WMF and some other common graphic formats. For these data types, you do not have to define viewers.

There is no absolute way of identifying that a particular application can open any particular file, but Pegasus Mail uses the following method when attempting to find one:

* If you have defined an explicit viewer using the Attachment Viewers option on the Preferences menu, Pegasus Mail will use that viewer.

* If no viewer has been defined explicitly, it scans the [Extensions] section of your WIN.INI file looking for applications that have stored associations there.

If no suitable viewer can be found, the View button in the attachments dialog will be disabled. If a suitable viewer is available, Pegasus Mail will create a temporary file containing the data from the attachment and will run the viewer application, passing it that file to open. If you click the Save and Edit button instead of the View button, Pegasus Mail will create a permanent file instead of a temporary file. In no case can you ever actually alter the data of the attachment itself using a viewer.

Defining a viewer

To define your own viewers for different types of attachments, choose the Attachment Viewers option on the Preferences menu. Click Add to create a new entry, or double-click an existing entry to edit it. Next, decide whether Pegasus Mail should examine the file's extension when deciding whether or not to use this definition, or else examine the file's attachment-type information. It is reasonable, and in fact often even necessary to create two entries in the list, one to select by extension and the other to select by attachment type.

If you choose to select by extension, you should then type in the extension Pegasus Mail should look for when examining the file. If you choose to select by attachment type, you can either select an attachment type from the standard list of types Pegasus Mail knows about, or else you can type in any other type you know you receive. Note that you must type the attachment type in accurately and completely - Pegasus Mail only does exact matching on this information.

Once you have worked out the conditions that need to be matched for Pegasus Mail to use this definition, you can click the OK button to save the definition. If you get an error from Windows when you try to view an attachment, or if nothing happens when you click the View button, you may have to uncheck the control labelled "Let Windows choose an appropriate application" and enter the name of the application Pegasus Mail should run to view the document. Click the Browse button to use a list to choose your application.

Extension to use for temporary file:  Many applications will only load documents if the extension of the file is one they know. If someone sends you a file of a particular type with a different extension, then the application will refuse to open it. To get around this, Pegasus Mail allows you to force the use of a particular extension in the filename of the temporary file it creates and passes to the viewer application. A good example of this might be with JPG graphic files: most Windows-based graphic viewers expect the extension for JPG files to be .JPG, but if you receive such a graphic from a unix system, where the conventions are different, it will usually have the extension .JPEG. To handle cases like this, you would enter .JPG into this field to force Pegasus Mail to create the file using the extension .JPG instead of the unix name.

Selecting special MIME types: MIME is a special Internet message format which can represent the type of data in an attachment in special ways, many of which are not standard. Although it is very technical, you can tell Pegasus Mail to use a viewer for particular MIME document types by entering the MIME data type in the Attachment type field. For example, if someone sends you GIF images using the MIME data type Image/GIF, you can define a viewer for attachments of that type by entering Image/GIF in the attachment type field. This option should not normally be necessary and is provided for the benefit of advanced users working with their own special data types.


Filenames

Under MS-DOS and Windows, a filename consists of three parts

* Its path, which is the full name of the directory containing the file

* Its name, which can contain up to eight letters or digits

* Its extension, which is an optional group of three letters or digits separated from the filename by a single period (.).

A file's extension usually serves to identify the type of data the file contains - so for instance, a file called MYFILE.TXT would usually contain plain text, the .TXT extension indicating this.

Under Windows 95, files can have much longer names, but they still can have an extension, and the extension still usually serves the same purpose.


Searching for data throughout your folders

Often you may know that you have received a message on a particular subject at some stage but have no idea which folder you stored it in. If you want to search through some or all of your folders for particular messages, open the Folder Manager window and select Find from the Edit menu. A dialog will open offering you options for your search.

In the Search for messages containing field, type in the words for which you would like Pegasus Mail to search. When searching, it looks for each word you enter separately and gives a relevance score to each message based on how many of the words you enter it contains, how close they are together in the message and on how exact the match is. When searching, it will match the words you enter both as whole words and as partial words -- so, if you enter agree as a word to search for, Pegasus Mail will match messages containing agree, disagree and agreement, but will score the message containing agree more highly because it is a more exact match. Choosing the words you want to search for carefully increases the likelihood of Pegasus Mail finding the exact message you are looking for. You can enter up to twenty words.

Search in allows you to control which folders Pegasus Mail should search, and how long it should spend doing it. Searching folders can be a very slow process, so Pegasus Mail allows you to limit the search to a certain length of time. You can also halt the search at any time once you have started it by clicking Stop in the progress dialog. You can limit the search to folders whose long names contain particular words or strings by clicking the Folders whose names contain control and typing in the characters Pegasus Mail should match. This can be very handy if you have organized your folders using consistent or specific naming conventions. When searching by folder names, the search ignores trays - all your folders are candidates for searching even if they are in trays that are not currently open in the list.

Searching within a tray:  if the currently-selected item in the folder list is a tray, you can select Selected folder or tray only, and Pegasus Mail will limit the search to the folders and trays contained within that tray.

If you check the control labelled Search in message headers only, Pegasus Mail will limit its search to the special message headers for each message and will not search through the message body. This can result in a much faster search.

When you have filled out the fields in the dialog, click OK and Pegasus Mail will begin the search. As it finds candidate messages, it will display them in a results window, sorted by relevance, the most promising messages at the top of the list. You can see an indication of the relative relevance of a message by examining the bar at the left-hand side of each entry in the list -- the longer the bar, the more relevant Pegasus Mail believes the message to be. You can stop the search at any time by pressing Stop in the progress dialog, and you can switch to other applications while the search is in progress. If you interrupt a search, the results window will remain open with the messages found up to that point.

You can sort the messages in the result window by relevance, sender, subject or date; the default sort order is always by relevance. You can open any message in the result window by double-clicking it, or by highlighting it and pressing Open. The folder containing the message will also be opened with the message highlighted.


Clickable links

See also:	Preferences overview

Pegasus Mail can detect URLs (Uniform Resource Locators), or hypertext links for the World Wide Web in your messages. When it finds a valid HTTP:, FTP: or MAILTO: URL in a mail message, it highlights it by displaying it in underlined green text. It also attempts to locate ordinary e-mail addresses and highlight them in the same manner.

If you double-click a MAILTO: URL or a highlighted e-mail address, Pegasus Mail will simply start a new message using that. For other URL types, if you have a Web Browser, such as Netscape or Microsoft Internet Explorer on your system, you can have Pegasus Mail load the browser for you and open the link by double-clicking on it in the message reader.

The first time you do this, Pegasus Mail will open a window asking you to locate your web browser. In most cases, you can simply check the control labelled Find browser automatically. This tells Pegasus Mail to use standard system resources to locate the proper browser to load and run. When this control is checked, Pegasus Mail will activate your web browser if it is already running, and will instruct it to replace the page it is currently displaying with the one you double-clicked.

By default, Pegasus Mail passes the URL to the Windows operating system and asks it to open an appropriate application. For this to work, you must have a properly-installed copy of URL.DLL on your system. If URLs do not launch properly using the default method, you can click the control labelled Use URLPROXY.EXE: this tells Pegasus Mail to use a special URL launcher of its own that can reliably interact with Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator.

Some web browsers may not install themselves in a way that will allow the Find browser automatically option to run properly. When this is the case, nothing will appear to happen when you double-click a URL in a message. To fix this situation, enter the path to your web browser in the edit control and make sure the Find browser automatically button is not checked.

Note: Microsoft Internet Explorer uses a strange, illegal URL format for specifying local files. If you are using Microsoft Internet Explorer as your web browser, you must check the control labelled Use the non-standard URLs expected by MS Internet Explorer in this dialog.


Selectively downloading your mail messages

The process of retrieving your mail from your Internet Service Provider can be costly, especially if you have to make a toll call to do so. Pegasus Mail allows you to preview the contents of your POP3 mailbox before downloading it, by downloading only the message headers and showing them to you. Once the mail headers have been downloaded, Pegasus Mail terminates the connection immediately and allows you to browse the headers from the messages at your leisure. You can indicate that you want to retrieve some of the messages from your mailbox and possibly delete others, then when you are ready, you can tell Pegasus Mail to reconnect and perform the actions you have specified.

To start a selective download from your POP3 mailbox, choose Selective Mail Download from the File menu. Pegasus Mail will start a connection to your POP3 host and will retrieve the headers of the messages it contains. If you have told Pegasus Mail to download only unread mail using the option in your Internet setup settings, then the selective download will only retrieve the headers of messages you have not already seen. While it is downloading the message headers, you may continue to work on other things, or switch to other applications; the only thing you may not do while this operation is in progress is attempt to start a regular mail download or to send mail in your mail queue - Pegasus Mail will report an error if you attempt to do this. Once the header download is complete, Pegasus Mail will open a window displaying the sender, subject, date and size of each message in the mailbox.

For each entry in the list, you may Retrieve the message, Delete the message, do both, or leave it untouched. Messages marked for retrieval will show a green dot in the “R” column at the right of the list, and messages marked for deletion will show a red dot in the “D” column.

To indicate that you want to retrieve a mail message from your mailbox to your local system, highlight the message and click the Mark for retrieval button. A green dot will appear next to the message, but nothing more will happen at this stage.

To indicate that you want to delete a mail message from your mailbox, highlight the message and click the Mark for deletion button. A red dot will appear next to the message and it will display in red, but nothing more will happen at this stage.

To indicate that you want to retrieve a message from your mailbox then delete it, either click both buttons, or more conveniently, click the Mark for both button.

You can mark more than one message by holding down Shift or Ctrl as you click in the list. The Mark for Retrieval, Mark for Deletion and Mark for both buttons will tag all selected messages.

Once you have marked the messages you wish to retrieve and delete, click the button labelled Make it so (apologies to Star Trek). This tells Pegasus Mail to open another connection to your POP3 host and take all the actions you have specified. If any messages are downloaded successfully as a result of the connection, they will appear in your new mail folder, which will open or resynchronize itself automatically to display them.

Important notes:

•	Messages marked for both retrieval and deletion will only be deleted if they are actually retrieved successfully.

•	Messages not marked for deletion will not be deleted from the remote mailbox, even if you have turned on Delete mail from host once successfully retrieved in your Internet setup settings.


Terms and conditions of use

Pegasus Mail is free software and may be used by any number of users on any number of systems without fee or obligation, subject only to the terms and conditions laid out below.

Pegasus Mail is NOT in the public domain - the author, David Harris, retains ownership and copyright, and exclusively reserves all rights to the software. In countries where assertion of the right to be identified as the author is required for copyright purposes, David Harris asserts his right to be recognized as the author and owner of the Pegasus Mail System and all its associated components.

Modification of the program or its resources or associated data files without the author's explicit written permission is strictly forbidden. Unauthorised modifications of any component of the Pegasus Mail System constitute a breach of intellectual property laws in most countries and will be pursued vigorously to the full extent of the law.

Pegasus Mail may be used by anyone and may be freely distributed via any medium, either commercial or non-commercial, provided the following conditions are met:

1:	Distribution  The Pegasus Mail Software must be distributed complete and unaltered in the original ZIP archive file or self-extracting archive, with all messages intact. System administrators and ISPs wishing to repackage the Pegasus Mail archive for supply to their users may do so provided some basic guidelines are followed - please send e-mail to tech-support@pmail.gen.nz for more information on this. In the event that the Pegasus Mail software is being distributed as part of another package or software bundle, or in association with software or services for which a charge is being levied, the author's permission must be obtained before distribution occurs. We will authorise by fax or by an e-mail message signed with our public key signature at our discretion. Bona fide Internet Service Providers are exempted from the requirement to obtain formal permission (see section 5, below).

2:	Charging for distribution  No charge may be directly levied for Pegasus Mail itself. Fair copying and support charges may be applied but you must not represent that you are actually selling the software itself. The intent of this statement is to allow book publishers to distribute the system freely with books, and to permit Software Libraries and BBS systems to distribute Pegasus Mail in their catalogues provided only reasonable handling and duplication fees are charged.

3:	Prohibited supply  The supply or promotion of Pegasus Mail for the purpose of sending bulk, unsolicited e-mail is incompatible with the basic aims of the program, which revolve around the free provision of a service that enhances the quality of communication between people. Pegasus Mail may not be included in any package designed for this purpose, whether free or otherwise, nor may vendors of such packages use the "Pegasus Mail" trademark or other related material in the promotion of their package. Similarly, we do not consider bulk, unsolicited e-mail to be an appropriate use of Pegasus Mail and reserve the right to decline technical support, or the sales of manuals to people using it for this purpose.

3a:	Prohibited use:  Pegasus Mail may not be used for the purpose of sending Bulk Unsolicited Commercial Electronic Mail. For the purposes of this section, this shall be construed to mean electronic mail sent to a total of more than 50 recipients for the purpose of advertising a commercial product or service, where the recipient has not explicitly expressed interest in receiving such advertisements.

4:	Ownership  Ownership of the Pegasus Mail Software remains vested in the author, David Harris. You may not represent ownership or copyright in the system in the course of distribution, and you must not represent any specific connection with, or authorisation or license from the author.

5:	Distribution by ISPs  Bona-fide Internet Service Providers are explicitly granted permission to bundle the Pegasus Mail Software with their standard subscriber access package if they wish, even if a charge is levied for that access package, provided the conditions laid out in section (1) above are met. If you supply Pegasus Mail as a separate item (as opposed to being part of an access bundle), you may only charge a reasonable duplication or handling fee and must otherwise abide by all other terms and conditions defined herein.

6:	No liability  although all possible care has been taken to ensure that the Pegasus Mail Software is as reliable as possible, the diversity of environments in which it might be used means that we can accept no responsibility for loss or damage, whether real or consequential, arising from its use. By using the software you explicitly agree to hold the author blameless for any such losses or damages.

7:	All rights reserved  we reserve the right to change the terms and conditions of use and distribution of Pegasus Mail without specific notice, although we will make reasonable efforts to advise of any such change through normal channels (user groups, mailing lists and so on). The current terms and conditions of use of Pegasus Mail can be obtained at any time by sending a message to tech-support@pmail.gen.nz requesting them.

All the legalese aside, it is my strong desire that Pegasus Mail be as widely used as is possible in the hope that by furthering communication between people, we may in some small way come to understand and accept each other better.


Notepads

Pegasus Mail incorporates a notepad facility that provides an easy way to keep notes or lists or reminders from within the program itself. To open the Notepad window, choose Notepads from the Tools menu.

You can create as many different notepads as you wish by clicking the New button. You can select or view the contents of any notepad you have created by double-clicking it in the list of notepads at the left-hand side of the window. Anything you type in a notepad is automatically saved when the notepad window is closed, or when you switch to a different notepad. Notepads can contain a maximum of 30,000 characters each.

To read the contents of a text file into a notepad, click the Import button and choose the file you want to add to the notepad. The file must be a plain text file, not a word processor file. You can save the contents of the currently-open notepad by clicking the Export button and entering a filename. Be aware that if you enter the name of a file that already exists, it will be deleted and replaced by the contents of the notepad.

Click the Date/time button to enter the current date and time at the cursor position in the currently-open notepad. This is a handy way of adding timestamps to your notes.

You can print the currently-open notepad by clicking the Print button.

Notepads are a handy way of storing text temporarily or for storing blocks of text that you use regularly in your mail. You can paste text into notepads from messages or any other source, and you can cut, copy and paste text from notepads into your messages or other applications.


The History of Pegasus Mail

By the standards of the ever-changing Internet, Pegasus Mail has a long, long history: it sent its first message in December 1989, and has been made available as a free service to the Internet since February 1990, with the Windows version of Pegasus Mail first appearing in 1993. In the time since its initial release, Pegasus Mail has sent billions of messages for millions of people. It dates from the time when the Internet was a community rather than just a highway -- when people helped each other without worrying too much about who was going to pay for it.

My name is David Harris -- I'm the person who develops both Pegasus Mail and Mercury, its companion server product. There is no anonymous corporation behind the program, and the same pair of hands that wrote the first version in 1989 is still writing it in 2004. People regularly ask me why I originally wrote Pegasus Mail, and why I still make it available for free: if you've got a moment, I'll try to give you a little background.

In 1989, the University where I worked (in Dunedin, New Zealand) installed its first Novell NetWare network. It wasn't until after we installed it that we found that it didn't include an e-mail system, but we'd already used up our budget and the commercial mail packages that were available were very expensive. To fill the gap, I wrote a simple e-mail program in my own time and made it available on the network: I was quite surprised to find that people liked it.

Early in 1990, after tidying it up a little, I made it available on the Internet at a friend's FTP site in Hawaii, expecting that four or five other sites might find a use for it... In the first week of availability, it was downloaded more than 100 times, which also surprised me. I found that I was receiving mail from people thanking me for giving them something they couldn't have afforded any other way -- communication. I came to understand that communication had to be regarded as a right, not as a privilege: it seemed to me in 1989, as it still seems to me now, that freedom of speech is useless if nobody can hear you. Giving away Pegasus Mail seemed to be a means by which I could try to make communication more accessible to a much wider range of people who needed it. Even now, thirteen years on, I still believe that this is true, although these days it's more an issue of still having some choices than not being able to be heard at all.

Anyway, from the time I released the program, I began a curious double existence, working at the University by day, and working on Pegasus Mail at night, refining and tuning it to add the things people were asking for. With each release of the program, usage grew, until by 1993, the demands it was placing on my time were so great that I had to make a choice between my safe University job and going out full-time to support Pegasus Mail. Leaving the University gave me what I needed most -- time -- but took away what I needed to survive -- my salary. This put me in an awkward situation: the ideals that had motivated me to make the program available in the first place were still just as valid as ever, but I also had to eat. I hit upon the idea of making the manuals available for sale as an option to support the development of the program. This allowed the software to remain free, and the addition of extensive online help ensured that the program remained useful even without the manuals: so, the larder was stocked without compromising the ideals. To this day, my only source of income remains the sale of manuals for Pegasus Mail.

Since 1990, the world has changed: the Internet has become more or less a commodity, and people's expectations of software have altered enormously. I've worked hard to try to keep up with the expectations of my user base and to keep offering a program that fits all their needs. I enjoy making Pegasus Mail available on these terms, knowing that it helps people. Your support is a key component of making this all happen, whether it's by purchasing manuals, or by showing the program to people who might benefit from using it, or simply by enjoying the fruits of my labour. With your support and backing, I look forward to being able to offer Pegasus Mail in the future for as long as the ideals it represents are still relevant.

Cheers!

-- David Harris --

Author, Pegasus Mail

Dunedin, April 2004.

David.Harris@pmail.gen.nz


Identities

See also: Attaching identities to Folders

An "Identity" is a collection of program settings within Pegasus Mail. The first time you run the program, a "Default" identity is created for you -- when you change your preferences, you are saving those changes within that Default identity. Pegasus Mail allows you to create other identities, each with its own settings, and to use them in a number of ways. You can define as many identities as you wish and select them using the "Identities" dropdown control on the Pegasus Mail toolbar. To give you an example of how identities may be useful, imagine that you act as your organization's webmaster or postmaster: you may occasionally get messages in your mailbox that need to be handled in that capacity instead of in your normal user capacity. Rather than going into your preferences and manually changing your personal name and signatures to reflect the official position, you could simply define an identity where these changes are already made, then switch to that identity with a single click. Similarly, if you handle multiple POP3 e-mail accounts, you can use identities to hold the settings for each account.

To create a new Identity:

Select Tools | Identities... from the menu to bring up the Identities dialog. You should have at least one Identity defined there already, usually called <Default>.  From this dialog, you can create and delete identities, as well as change to one of your available identities using the Become button.

To add a new Identity, click the Add... button. Enter a descriptive name for this new identity in the upper field and in the lower drop-down box, select the identity you wish to base this new identity on from your current list of identities. This allows you to have a starting point of reference when creating new identities and is quite helpful if you are creating many identities that are mostly similar to each other. Click the OK button to create the new identity.

Once created, the identity can be selected by highlighting it within the dialog in the Tools | Identity menu and clicking the Become button. As a shortcut and visual clue, there is also an identity drop-down box on Pegasus Mail's main toolbar (note that the toolbar is configurable, so the identity drop-down box might not be available to you). The identity drop-down box on the toolbar always displays the currently-selected global identity.

Once you have created and selected the identity you can go to the Tools | Options... menu to customize its settings. When creating a new message, Pegasus Mail will use the settings as specified by the currently-selected identity (called the global identity) showing on Pegasus Mail's main toolbar. Changes made to the default signature, font, and other settings for a new message will be recorded for the global identity.

Your identity is now ready for use. Use the different identities by selecting them from the main toolbar or from the Tools | Identities dialog, by pressing the-become button.

When replying or forwarding mail, you can select a non-global identity from the Reply Options and Forward dialogs and that identity will be used to generate only that reply or forwarded message. The global identity will continue to be used for new messages and so forth.

NOTE: Once you open the message editor window for a new message, a reply to a message or on a  forwarded message, any global identity change is ignored for that message. So first change the identity (or select it from the "Reply Options" or "Forward Message To" dialog) and then create the message.


Automatic replies

If Pegasus Mail's companion Server product, Mercury, is installed on your system, you can create replies that will be sent out automatically any time you receive a message. These automatic replies are actually handled by the Mercury server process and thus will go out even if your own machine is turned off.

An automatic reply is simply a short message returned to the sender of incoming mail - common uses for automatic replies are to indicate that you're on holiday or out of the office, or to indicate that a message has been received and will be read in due course.

To edit your automatic reply, choose Automatic reply... from the Tools menu. Enter the text you want to send automatically in the editable area and check or uncheck the control labelled Enable automatic replies to determine whether or not the reply should be sent. When automatic replies are disabled, your message is stored in a different location and can be edited in the same way as when automatic replies are turned on.

Mercury will only send an automatic reply to any given address once in any 48-hour period: this prevents mail storms and stops people sending mail regularly from being deluged with autoreply notices. You can also create a file called AREPLY.KFS in your new mail directory containing a list of addresses that should never receive automatic replies, one per line.


Dialling

Pegasus Mail conforms to the Windows Sockets specification, which is a standard for accessing Internet-related communications protocols. Unfortunately, the Windows Sockets specification does not cover the issue of how connections should be controlled in dialup environments - it has, instead, been left up to individual implementors to do this. Unfortunately, the most commonly-used Windows Sockets implementation - the Microsoft version shipped with Windows 95 and NT - is also one of the poorest at handling dialup connections.

To work around the deficiencies of Microsoft's code, Pegasus Mail provides a number of methods you can use to control dialling and hanging up on your Internet connections. These methods are configured using the Dialling option on the Network configuration page of your preferences. Which method is most suitable for you will depend on your environment and on how you connect to the Internet. These dialling options are only available in the 32-bit version of Pegasus Mail.

1: No explicit dialling  If you have a working solution, such as Dunce, installed on your system, then your Internet connections may already work correctly: if this is the case, check this control and Pegasus Mail will not attempt to do anything special to handle dialling or hanging up on your system. This is also the proper control to check if you are connected to a local area network and do not need dialling support.

2: Run commands  If you have programs you can run to control your connections, you can use this option: there are separate fields for dialling and hanging up - you can use either or both if you wish. When a command is defined in these fields, Pegasus Mail will run the command and will then wait for the command to finish before continuing to connect. Under Windows NT, the NT RASDIAL utility can be used for this purpose. Pegasus Mail also includes a neat utility by Claudio Fahey called RASDIAL95, which provides the same comprehensive access to the Microsoft telephony subsystem on Windows 95 and NT systems. RASDIAL95.ZIP is installed in the RESOURCE subdirectory of your Pegasus Mail installation directory. It contains simple instructions on its use.

3: Use IE4/Win98 dialling functions in WININET.DLL  If you have installed Microsoft Internet Explorer v4.0 or later on your system, or if you are using Windows 98, then you will have a Microsoft system component called WININET.DLL, which provides excellent dialup support. When WININET services are available, they are usually the best and cleanest way of handling your connections.

4: Don't dial, but hangup automatically using HANGUP32  HANGUP32 is a Pegasus Mail extension written by a very talented man called John Navas: it sits in the background while Pegasus Mail is running and watches when connections are made. When Pegasus Mail finishes with the connection, HANGUP32 takes over, controlling the process of shutting down the connection. This is probably the most useful option for most people, because the Microsoft Windows Sockets module can usually dial quite reliably, but cannot hangup correctly. Selecting this option installs HANGUP32 the next time the program runs. Note that if you switch to another option from HANGUP32, you should exit and restart Pegasus Mail immediately to avoid clashes between the methods.


What's new in v4.2?

See also:	Hints and tips for v4.0

V4.21b and V4.21c - June 2004

V4.21b fixed a problem where distribution lists with a "Reply-to" field defined would cause a crash when used; it also added more high-colour bitmaps to the program. V4.21c fixes a problem where annotations could be lost when moving messages from one folder to a folder of a different base type (for instance, when moving a message back to the new mail folder). It also allows you to turn on the display of new mail in a bold typeface (see the Folders and Previews preference page), supports the use of Ctrl+Shift+R to start a new message to the sender of the selected message in a folder, and has still more high-colour bitmaps (thanks to Sven Henze for putting in many hours of work converting the remaining bitmaps). V4.21c also has the distinction of being the first ever version of Pegasus Mail where we have been able to release English and German versions on the same day - once again, thanks  to Sven Henze for his excellent work in making this possible.

V4.2, April 2004

V4.2 originally started out as a single-item revision, focusing on rewriting the program's support for the IMAP protocol, but it sort of blew out during the development process, and has become a fairly significant release in its own right.

The IMAP Revision   Pegasus Mail's IMAP code was originally written in 1997, and at the time the servers that were available implemented the IMAP protocol fairly unevenly. As a result, my IMAP code tended to be very defensive, which meant that it worked with a wide range of servers, but did so quite slowly and didn't take any advantage of the clever parts of the protocol. Pegasus Mail v4.2 fixes all that. The IMAP code now caches extensively and has a wide range of performance options you can use to tune the way you connect to your server: all IMAP-related operations should be substantially faster than in previous versions, and we have timed some operations as being as much as 80 times faster than in v4.12a. You can also access IMAP profiles offline, with full access to any message for which Pegasus Mail has locally-cached data; a right-click option allows you to cache an entire folder with a single command, allowing you to work with it "on the road". You can also use internationalized characters in your IMAP folder names, and can create IMAP profiles that "subscribe" to only a few of your folders for ultra-fast connections. Finally, we've gone to considerable lengths to make the program's IMAP support as robust and reliable as we possibly can, since all the performance improvements in the world don't amount to much unless the code works reliably.

Other changes   The IMAP component of Pegasus Mail has always been just about the most complex and difficult part of the whole program, which is largely why the step from v4.12 to v4.2 has taken so long... Having said that, though, there are lots of other new things in v4.2 as well:

•	New look user interface   Pegasus Mail now sports new high-colour bitmaps for its buttons and user interface. You'd be amazed how long it takes to do these things - many of these buttons have been through multiple designs before we settled on the set that now appears in the program. While this modification is purely cosmetic, we are continually surprised at just how much of a difference it makes to the user's experience of the program.

•	New WindowBar   The new WindowBar makes it easier to navigate between multiple open windows. It shows all the windows that are currently open, and allows you to switch between them with a single click. The buttons on the WindowBar also act as drag-and-drop targets for windows that accept drag-and-drop data. You can open and close the WindowBar using the blue arrow button at the far right of the program's status bar.

•	Filtering rule wizard   It's now easier than ever to create new mail filtering rules: just select a message you want to use as a model and click the Filtering button; Pegasus Mail's filtering rule wizard will ask you a couple of simple questions and voilà! A new rule is created for you, ready to go.

•	Attachment filtering   You can now create filtering rules based on attachments in incoming messages, and a new group of actions allow you to save attachments to files, run programs on attachments or delete attachments from the message. A new filtering rule action also allows you to add headers to messages in your new mail folder if you wish.

•	New Public (System-wide) Foldering options   Pegasus Mail has supported the idea of System-wide folders (folders available to all users) for a number of years, but it's required some tinkering to set up, and was rather limited in capability. V4.2 has completely reworked this idea: it is now easy to create up to fifteen different Public Folder trees accessible to all your users, and Public Folders are now much more flexible. A public folder can have attributes shared amongst all your users (so, if one user reads a message, it will be marked as read for everyone), or if you prefer, attributes can be private, so each user will have his own view of the folder. Public folders can also now have a hierarchical structure. We think that for many sites, this will be the most exciting single change in Pegasus Mail for a number of years, because it finally allows true, seamless multi-user access to shared folders.

•	List banding   You can now tell Pegasus Mail to display alternate items in message lists, the folder list, and addressbooks in different colours. This effect, called Banding, gives a clear visual cue when you are working in lists, and is extremely effective. Banding is turned on by default, and can be adjusted in the new List display preferences page in the Tools|Options dialog.

•	Visual feedback during drag and drop   When you are dragging and dropping items, Pegasus Mail now highlights the item in a list into which the drop will occur. This visual feedback adds certainty to the process.

•	Content Control updated and overhauled   Pegasus Mail has now inherited the improvements made to Mercury/32 v4.01 for Content Control (spam detection). The new CC engine has a number of new and powerful tests, including support for checking on excessive HTML comments, lazy HTML (remote-linked pictures), obfuscated words (like "v1agra") and more. Our experience of Content Control is that it catches 90-95% of the spam we receive with almost no false positives.

The little things:   Usually when I write these "what's new" summaries, I add an entry that says "lots of other little things were changed", but that's truer than ever in this release. I thought it might be apposite to give you just a few examples of the "little things" we've modified for v4.2, although this is just a smattering...

•	When you move a message to an open folder, it will now appear at the top of that folder's list of messages.

•	The Pegasus Mail status bar has been reworked, with new buttons that toggle between online/offline mode, stop TCP/IP connections, and toggle the new WindowBar.

•	You can now create a list of your own prefixes that Pegasus Mail should ignore at the start of the Subject line of a message during sorting. This file, called PREFIX.PM, can include anything you want the program to disregard when sorting on the subject line.

•	Date parsing (interpreting the "Date" field of incoming mail) has been totally overhauled to deal with the increasingly wide range of malformed date headers generated by spamware and other poorly-written Internet mail programs.

•	If you have a mouse with a mousewheel, the wheel now works slightly differently from previous versions: now, it will scroll whatever portion of a Window currently contains the mouse pointer, without that window needing to have input focus. This is actually one of my personal favourites in v4.2, but I may just be easily amused.

•	Right-clicking a message and choosing Start new message to sender will now open a dialog allowing you to select from the various e-mail addresses in the message if there is any ambiguity.

•	 The "Run a program" filtering rule action now has a new option that forces Pegasus Mail to stop all processing until the program finishes.

•	A new message editor layout includes an identity selector on the front page - this is a Godsend if you use identities extensively. See Tools|Options|Messages and replies to select the new layout.

•	You can now right-click any message in a message list and select Message headers to see a quick raw view of the headers of that message.

•	Pressing Ctrl+Shift+S in the message editor will swap the contents of the To: and CC: fields.

... And there's lots more in there too - don't forget to spend some time looking through the menus and preference dialogs for other changes.

In previous releases:

V4.12, May 2003

V4.12 is a consolidation release that fixes a fairly wide range of minor problems in the v4.10 and v4.11 releases. It also fixes a major problem where Eastern European character sets were not correctly written into outgoing mail messages, and another where replying to a message and specifying "no signature" would result in an application crash. V4.12 also correctly installs a default Content Control definition (see below) for existing users (v4.10 and v4.11 would only install the default set for new users).

V4.12 also includes an updated and significantly improved SPAMBUST.DAT default rule set for spam detection. This file will not be installed for existing users unless they currently have no content control definitions at all. If you are using the default content control from v4.10 or v4.11, simply take the copy of SPAMBUST.DAT you will find in the RESOURCE subdirectory of the directory where you installed Pegasus Mail and use it to replace the version in your home mailbox. System administrators who installed v4.10 or v4.11 should also note that the copy of SPAMBUST.DAT in the DEFAULTS directory where WinPMail is installed will not be updated by the installer (because it may have been modified locally). You can update the file by manually copying it from the RESOURCE subdirectory to the DEFAULTS subdirectory.

Future versions of Pegasus Mail will include optional online and automated updating of this and other content-control files, to make it easier to keep definitions up-to-date.

V4.10, March 2003

Pegasus Mail v4.1 is a major release with the first of a number of key feature additions we intend to make during 2003.

•	Content control  This powerful new feature allows you to apply rigorous testing to the content of the e-mail you receive. It is primarily aimed at trapping spam, but can be used for much more if you wish. Click here to go to the help section on Content Control.

•	SSL Support  Pegasus Mail now supports secure connections using SSL on all the major protocols it supports - IMAP4, POP3 and SMTP. Using SSL minimizes the chance that your e-mail can be intercepted during download or sending, and Pegasus Mail's certificate fingerprint management ensures that you are warned if someone attempts to masquerade as your server (a so-called Man in the Middle attack). Strong encryption, with keys using 192 bits or even more if the server supports it, is standard. SSL is configured on the Security page of the configuration dialog for each protocol where it is available.

•	Rewritten POP3/SMTP code  Pegasus Mail's POP3 and SMTP mail routines have been totally rewritten for V4.1: you can now have multiple POP3 mailboxes active at any time, can apply Pegasus Mail's powerful filtering rules to messages on the server before they are downloaded, and there are several new and revised features for controlling how much mail is downloaded from the server at any given time. Click here to go to the help section on POP3 and SMTP mail.

•	Grouped views  Pegasus Mail v4.1 provides you with a powerful new way of organizing the mail within your folders: grouped views create a hierarchy within your folders, allowing you to construct any of ten different organizations of mail. Of particular note is our active threads grouped view, which sorts messages into threads, then sorts active threads (those which have new mail) to the top of the list. To experiment with grouped views, look on the Messages menu if you use Pegasus Mail's preview mode, or on the Folder menu if you use Pegasus Mail's classic mode to browse your folders.

•	New skipping modes for the message reader  Coupled with the new Grouped Views feature is a set of skipping modes for the message reader: located on the Reader menu under the section Next/Prev skipping modes, these options allow you to tell the message reader to skip over read or uncoloured messages when you click the Next or Prev button in the message reader. The new skipping modes have convenient hotkeys so you can turn them on and off quickly.

•	Attachment browser in preview mode  If you run Pegasus Mail in its three-pane "preview" mode, you can now view and manipulate the attachments to your messages simply by pressing the <F7> key to switch to attachment view. You can switch back to the message view at any time by pressing <F8>. There are also buttons on the preview window's ribbon bar to change views.

•	Template editor  Pegasus Mail's Template Support (mail construction from a pre-written script) is one of the most powerful features in the program, and prior to now has been one of the least-used, because of its complexity. Pegasus Mail v4.1 includes a powerful template editor that vastly simplifies the process of writing and maintaining templates. With full editing assistance, it allows you to build templates without having to worry about the details of the template scripting language. It is accompanied by extensive additions to the online help that describe the template scripting language. For more information on templates, click here.

•	Windows XP Look and Feel, improved status indicators  Pegasus Mail v4.1 will automatically use the Windows XP "Look and Feel" if you run it on Windows XP, and the folder and preview mode windows now have new, more intuitive status indicators to show what each message in the folder is. Click here to look at the new status indicators.

•	New option for creating default folders and files  You can now create a folder called DEFAULTS in the directory where Pegasus Mail is installed and place in that directory any files that should be automatically copied into the mailboxes of new (first-time) users. As installed, the directory contains three default folders, a default addressbook and a default Content Control set, but you can use it to add distribution lists, other addressbooks, templates - any type of Pegasus Mail data file residing in the user's home mailbox directory.

•	Improved multi-folder searching  Searching through multiple folders has been considerably improved in v4.1, with options to limit the search to only messages falling within a particular age range, and to require all search terms to match. These changes can dramatically decrease the time it takes to search across all your folders for mail.

Changes in previous versions - V4.02, July 2002

V4.02 is primarily a bug fix release, aimed at smoothing out lingering rough edges in v4.01. Many, many small problems and behaviours have been fixed in this version, but there are a few commonly-requested feature additions too.

•	New right-click options allow you to open any message in a web browser, and to display the pictures in "lazy HTML" messages (improperly-formatted HTML messages that contain remote links instead of properly-embedded graphics). Internal jumps within HTML messages now also work correctly.

•	New controls have been added to the forwarding dialog allowing you to choose what level of message headers should be included in messages you edit before forwarding.

•	System-wide addressbooks can now be modified by anyone with sufficient privilege to do so (in v4.01, system-wide address books could not be edited at all, only imported).

•	You can now specify what colours Pegasus Mail should use to indicate folders that contain unread and recent unread mail.

•	Based on extensive feedback, a number of small changes have been made to the preview mode view of your folders to make it more keyboard-friendly; in particular, the <Enter> key now opens messages, and <Ctrl+Space> can be used to page backwards in the preview. Also, pressing the back-quote key ( ` ) while in preview mode will switch from the preview window to the last window you were using (handy for getting back to a reply if you have had to refer to another message in the preview window).

•	You can now select any text in a message, right-click.and choose Open as hyperlink: Pegasus Mail will reassemble the text and pass it off to your web browser. This is especially handy for working with URLs that span multiple lines.

There are also over four hundred other small changes, fixes or additions - thank you to everyone who has taken the time to report problems to us - we hope we have found and fixed your favourite pet peeves. From here, work begins on v4.1, which is a major feature addition release, and which we hope to release late in 2002.

V4.01, September 2001

With more than 2500 changes or fixes, 11,500 messages exchanged by the beta test team, and fifteen months of extensive development, Pegasus Mail v4.0 represents the culmination of a huge reworking of the entire Pegasus Mail system - practically no part of the program's user interface has not been modified and brought up-to-date in some way. The aim of the redevelopment process was to improve the usability, style and appearance of the program without sacrificing any of its proven reliability or personality.

The list of things that have actually changed is enormous, but the most visible highlights are:

•	Vastly improved handling of HTML: Pegasus Mail can now display practically all HTML content, and can compose HTML messages containing tables, graphics, hyperlinks and more.

•	Preview Pane mode for folders. You can now view your mail folders in a three-pane mode, much like Microsoft Outlook. Switching between preview mode and Pegasus Mail's "Classic" multi-window mode is done at the touch of a button.

•	Powerful new message reader window. Pegasus Mail's message reader has been completely overhauled, especially in areas like Attachment handling and Annotations.

•	Forwarding of mail has been totally overhauled, especially in the area of forwarding messages with attachments.

•	Printing has been totally rewritten: Pegasus Mail can now print messages of arbitrary complexity, and a number of problems with printing in earlier versions have been fixed.

•	New mail filtering options: We invented mail filtering in 1991, and now Pegasus Mail's mail filtering has been improved even further, with the ability to filter on message attributes. The filtering rule editor has also been completely overhauled and has a much more logical, consistent interface.

•	New "Select" and "Incremental search" options for folders make it vastly easier to find and select messages based on almost any criteria you can imagine.

•	Automatic formatting: Pegasus Mail's editor can now correct common typos as you type, and can automatically create hanging indents and bulleted lists for you.

•	Security has been tightened even further: although Pegasus Mail can now display HTML messages of almost any level of complexity, it remains immune to all the nasties that plague other mail programs. New content viewer options also protect you from inadvertently running dangerous or malicious files sent to you as attachments.

•	Signatures have been completely reworked: you can now have fancy signatures with pictures and formatting in your HTML mail, and you can choose to have your signature included in the message at the time you compose it.

•	Addressbooks have been redone with a brand new interface. There's also a new addressing centre, available while you compose your messages, which allows you to access your addressbooks, distribution lists and recently-used addresses all from within a single easy-to-use interface.

•	The toolbars in the various windows can now be switched between Graphics-and-text, graphics-only and text-only modes, and support scrolling so you can still get at all the buttons even if you use narrow window sizes.

•	The huge range of configuration options offered by Pegasus Mail have been consolidated and presented in a completely new preferences dialog that is much easier to navigate and use.

•	Right-clicking a hyperlink in the message reader or preview window now offers a number of useful options for using the contents of that hyperlink.

... and this is really only the visible things; if you have previously used Pegasus Mail, you will probably be surprised how many new and useful things you find as you work your way into the program.


Hints and tips for v4.0

Here are some hints and tips we thought might help you get up to speed with Pegasus Mail v4 more quickly:

Folder preview mode and scrolling toolbars   If you have previously used Pegasus Mail, your Folder Manager window (the window that lists all your folders and mailboxes) may not be wide enough to show the new Preview button that switches into the multi-pane preview mode. If this is the case, there will be a green arrow button at the right of the Folder Manager's toolbar - simply click this button to scroll the Preview button into view. Keep an eye open for this green arrow throughout the program - many windows now have extra buttons that can be scrolled into view in this way.

Fancy styling   Pegasus Mail v4 has excellent support for composing HTML messages that include all types of fancy formatting - graphics, bold and italic typefaces, tables and more - experiment with the buttons on the message editor toolbar to see the options that are available. If you do not use formatting in your messages, Pegasus Mail will send plain text messages, just the way it always has. You can always tell if Pegasus Mail is going to send an HTML message because the Rich Text control in the message editor will check itself. Unchecking the control will force the program to send a plain text message, although any formatting in the message will continue to show until you send it.

Preferences, preferences, preferences   One of the most striking things about Pegasus Mail is how configurable it is - v4 being more so than any previous version. The preferences hierarchy in Pegasus Mail is much easier and clearer than in previous versions too - we strongly recommend that you select Options from the Tools menu and spend time familiarizing yourself with the various settings you can change.

Do the tutorials!   Some of the most commonly-used Pegasus Mail windows now have comprehensive tutorials associated with them. These tutorials will give you a head start towards getting the most out of the program. If you are offered a tutorial by the program at any point, we recommend that you do it. As an example, click here to see the tutorial on the new Pegasus Mail message reader window.

Ordering manuals and technical support   Starting with Pegasus Mail v4, we have changed the way we provide technical support and manuals in response to feedback from you, our users - please click the '$' button on the program's main toolbar for more information on the options that are now available. As always, manuals and support are optional - you don't have to purchase them, but doing so shows your support for the ongoing development of the system.


The message editor toolbar

The editor in Pegasus Mail has a toolbar containing commonly-used formatting options. The drop-down controls at the left of the toolbar allow you to choose specific fonts and sizes, while the buttons on the toolbar have the following functions:

Turn bold text on or off

Turn italic text on or off

Turn underlined text on or off

Turn right-aligned text on or off

Turn centred text on or off

Turn fully-justified text on or off

Indent the current paragraph one tab stop at the left.

Indent the current paragraph one tab stop at the right

Add a "hanging" indent to the current paragraph

Indenting and outdenting  The indent buttons can be pressed multiple times to indent a paragraph by one tab stop per click. To "outdent" a paragraph - that is, to undo an indenting change - hold down the Ctrl key as you click the button.

Text alignment  The text alignment buttons are "toggles" - that is, they change the text to whatever is the opposite of its current format... So, if you click the "Centre text" button when the current paragraph is already centred, it will revert to being regular left-flush text.

Rich text  Clicking the Bold, Underline or Italic buttons sets a flag in the message that will result in it being sent in a rich text format if your settings permit this. You should be aware that not all mailers can handle rich text at present - always check with your recipients before sending them messages containing formatting. Paragraph alignment and indenting will not necessarily force the message to be sent in a rich text format. Not all text formatting can currently be stored in draft messages. Pegasus Mail can be told never to send rich text mail using the options on the Sending Mail preferences page.


Downloading Pegasus Mail from the 'Net
Downloading Pegasus Mail from the Internet

Pegasus Mail is free software and can be freely downloaded by anyone. Please visit the official Pegasus Mail website for access to information and downloads:

http://www.pmail.com


IMAP Support
IMAP Support in Pegasus Mail

See also:	Defining an IMAP profile

IMAP troubleshooting

IMAP is an Internet protocol that allows you to access mail folders on a remote computer system. There are several versions of IMAP, but the most widely-used version these days is called IMAP version 4, or IMAP4. Pegasus Mail only supports IMAP4 servers and will not work with older servers.

To access a remote IMAP mailbox in Pegasus Mail, you use the IMAP Profiles option on the Tools menu to create a profile: a profile contains the name of the host computer where the mail folders reside, your login name and password for that machine, and a few other pieces of information.

Defining an IMAP profile

Once you have created a profile, it will be remembered from session to session and you can connect to it simply by selecting it in the IMAP Profiles dialog and clicking the Connect button. Pegasus Mail will open the Folder Manager window and will create a new root mailbox entry there, then it will login to the IMAP server you have defined and get a list of the folders available on that server. These folders will appear in the Folder Manager window list and can be manipulated and used just like any other folder within Pegasus Mail. This process of connecting to an IMAP server and presenting its mailbox view is called mounting the mailbox in technical terms.

You can create as many profiles as you wish, and you can have as many IMAP profiles mounted in your folder view at once as you wish. There is no reason why you cannot mount two IMAP mailboxes on completely different systems and drag and drop messages between their folders. Only one copy of a profile can be mounted at a time - you cannot create a second copy of an IMAP mailbox in your folder list if it is already mounted there.

To finish an IMAP session and terminate the connection to the IMAP server (or dismount the mailbox), right-click on the root entry for the mailbox you want to dismount and choose Remove this mailbox.

Using an IMAP profile Off-line

As you use an IMAP profile online, Pegasus Mail will build up a cache of information from the remote IMAP mailbox. This means that information about folders, headers and messages is stored locally on your PC. Pegasus Mail allows you to access this locally cached data in offline mode, without requiring any kind of network connectivity to the remote host. When you mount an IMAP profile offline, you can see all the folders in the profile, and can read any messages that are present in the folder cache. In offline mode, the IMAP profile is read-only - you cannot delete, change or add messages or folders in the profile while offline.

To use an IMAP profile offline, you must already have connected to it online at least once. Certain options on the "Performance" page of the IMAP definition editor, most notably the Fast Listing and Subscribed folders options, will prevent you from using a profile in offline mode if they are set. Actually using the profile offline is simplicity itself - simply click the Use offline button in the profile list window instead of the Connect button.

Hint: if you want to make sure that all the messages in a folder are available for use in offline mode, right-click the folder in the list of folders and select the Cache all messages option from the right-click menu.


IMAP4

IMAP stands for "Internet Message Access Protocol", or "Interactive Mail Access Protocol", depending on which standards documents you read. It defines a set of methods that a client program can use to access mail folders on a remote computer system. It differs from the POP3 protocol in that it allows you to access all your mail, instead of just your new mail; it also allows you to organize your folders into hierarchies and view them as if they were actually present on your computer. IMAP is primarily an online protocol - that is, you usually need to be connected all the time you are accessing your remote mailbox (although Pegasus Mail also allows you to access your IMAP profiles in an offline manner as well).

The IMAP protocol has a long and rather turbulent history: it has been through numerous revisions and wrangles, and it is not until the last few years that it has become stable and standardized, as IMAP version 4, or IMAP4. It is an extremely dense and complex protocol, and using it is seldom completely trouble-free. Despite some problems, however, it's still the only really viable protocol available for this kind of remote folder access.

Pegasus Mail implements the IMAP4rev1 protocol as defined in RFC3501.


Protocol

A protocol is simply the set of rules that determines how two systems interact. On the Internet, protocols control the way that a client program will interact with a server to perform a task. Protocols are the means by which complex tasks are handled in an orderly, step-by-step manner - in fact, we use them all the time in real life: when you pick up the phone and say "Hello", you are using a protocol for answering the phone. If you really want to confuse and upset someone, try picking up the phone and saying nothing: the person at the other end will be bewildered by this, because you are not following the expected protocol (actually, don't try this too often - it's a good way to lose friends).

On the Internet, protocols are defined in standards documents that are rather oddly called "RFCs" - oddly, because "RFC" means "Request For Comments"... You might expect that by the time something became a standard, you'd no longer be requesting comments about it. Still, that's the Internet for you - a strange place at the best of times.


Defining an IMAP Profile

See also:	IMAP support in Pegasus Mail

Using SSL to provide secure connections

An IMAP profile contains the information Pegasus Mail needs to establish a connection to your remote mailbox. When you edit an IMAP profile, Pegasus Mail will present you with a dialog that has three pages. The first two pages allow you to configure IMAP-specific features of the profile, while the third page, "Security", allows you to configure the use of secure SSL connections for the profile.

The "Connection" page

The "Settings" page

The "Performance" page

The "Security" page


IMAP Profiles - the "Connection" page

See also:	Defining an IMAP Profile

Enter a name for this definition:  Enter here the name Pegasus Mail should display for this entry in the IMAP Profiles dialog box and in the Folder Manager window. You can call your profile entry anything you wish.

IMAP Server address:  The Internet name of the machine to which Pegasus Mail should connect in order to access your remote mailbox. The machine must be running a piece of software called an IMAP4rev1 server - ask your ISP or network administrator to confirm that this piece of software is available on the machine before trying to connect to it. You can enter either a name (like myhost.mydomain.com) or an IP address (like 225.198.64.37) in this field.

Server port:  This is, if you like, the number of the socket on the remote machine where Pegasus Mail should "plug in" to access the server. In most cases, this should be left at its default value, 143, but on rare cases, your ISP or network administrator may tell you to use a different port number.

Timeout:  This controls how long Pegasus Mail should wait for responses on your network before assuming that a problem has occurred. For more information on timeouts, click here.

Login name:  The name Pegasus Mail should use to login to the server.

Password:  The password matching the login name you gave. When you type in your password, it will display as asterisks.

* HINT: You can leave any of the username, the password or the server address blank, and Pegasus Mail will prompt you for them when you connect using the profile.

Mailbox reference:  This field is not usually required, but some servers may require assistance in locating the directory where your mail folders are located. For example, on some unix IMAP servers, you may need to give the path to your mail directory, as ~myname/Mail, in this field. In general, you should only enter a value in this field if instructed to do so by your ISP or network administrator.


IMAP Profiles - the "Settings" page

See also:	Defining an IMAP Profile

This server supports folders within folders:  Some IMAP servers will allow you to create mail folders inside other mail folders along with the messages they contain, while some will not. Servers that do not allow folders within folders will create trays that can contain folders, just like Pegasus Mail's standard folder view. Checking this control helps Pegasus Mail to work out how it should go about creating folders for you on the server. At the time of writing, the following common IMAP servers do support folders within folders (i.e, this control should be ticked if you are using one of these servers): Netscape IMAP Server, Microsoft Exchange IMAP Server, Novell GroupWise IMAP Server, Cyrus IMAP Server. Most unix-based IMAP servers, especially the University of Washington UW-IMAPD reference server do not support folders within folders, and hence this control should be left unticked if you are accessing one of these servers. Mercury/32, Pegasus Mail's companion product, shares the same message store as Pegasus Mail and hence does not support folders within folders, so you should leave this control unchecked if you are connecting to it.

Pegasus Mail displays a folder that can contain other folders as a hybrid item in its folder manager window - it looks like a regular mail folder icon (three stacked letters) but has the [+] toggle control that allows you to see the other folders it contains. Double-clicking one of these hybrid folders will open it and display its messages, as will highlighting it and clicking the open button. Use the [+] toggle or the left/right arrow keys to display any other folders that may be nested inside the item. You can also right-click the entry and select Expand or collapse entry to display the contents of the folder without actually opening it.

Always connect to this profile at startup:  If this control is checked, Pegasus Mail will mount this profile in your Folder Manager window automatically each time you run the program.

Make this definition's INBOX folder the default new mail folder:  When this option is checked, Pegasus Mail will regard the INBOX from this definition as its primary new mail folder when the definition is active. The effect of this is that pressing <Ctrl+W>, or selecting any option that views your new mail will open this folder, and the toolbar "Edit new mail filtering rules" button will open the rule set associated with this folder instead of the normal one.

Periodically update the INBOX view  "INBOX" is the name that IMAP servers give to the folder where new and unread mail is placed on arrival. If you want Pegasus Mail to check this INBOX folder periodically to see if new mail has arrived for you, tick this control and enter a number of seconds between checks in the field labelled every xx seconds. Performing periodic checks requires a TCP/IP connection, so if you are using a dialup link to the Internet, you will need to experiment to see whether this option is useful to you. You should generally not set a periodic check period shorter than fifteen seconds.

Deleted message handling

When you work with local folders, Pegasus Mail allows you to save the messages you delete in a folder called "Deleted messages" until you exit from the program. When working with an IMAP mailbox, however, it's sometimes impractical or undesirable to download a copy of the message just so you can delete it. To get around this, Pegasus Mail offers three ways it can handle messages that are deleted within the mailbox controlled by each IMAP profile.

Move them to an IMAP folder called xxx:  This is basically the same as the local option except that the deleted messages folder is stored on the IMAP server instead of locally. If the folder does not exist, Pegasus Mail will create it for you automatically. This option is very fast and is recommended in practically all cases.

Move them to the local deleted messages folder if active:  This option tells Pegasus Mail that it should treat IMAP messages like any other message and to make copies of them in a local deleted messages folder if you have enabled that option in your preferences. When this option is enabled, Pegasus Mail may have to download the message when you delete it (so it can store it in the local folder); as a result, this option can be quite slow, but it does mean that you can access the deleted messages at a later time, even if you don't have an IMAP session active.

Delete them immediately and do not keep a safety copy:  If you select this option, Pegasus Mail will ignore all other settings and will delete the message at once without making any kind of "undo version" for you. This is the fastest setting of all, but also prevents you from ever recovering any message you delete without meaning to.


IMAP Profiles - the "Performance" page

See also:	Defining an IMAP Profile

IMAP is a very intensive protocol and can be used in a great many ways. Some IMAP operations are very "expensive" in computing terms - that is, they either take a long time or consume considerable amounts of computing resources. The options on this page allow you to tune the way Pegasus Mail uses the IMAP protocol to suit your needs and environment.

It is important to note that enabling some of these options involves a trade-off between performance and features: so, enabling some operations may speed up access to your IMAP mailbox while also disabling or reducing the effectiveness of other features in the program. Where such trade-offs exist, they are noted in the descriptions below.

Connection management

Mailbox is accessed exclusively by this copy of Pegasus Mail  If you only ever access this mailbox via IMAP, and using a single copy of Pegasus Mail, then checking this control will speed up a number of operations because it allows Pegasus Mail to make some assumptions that it cannot reliably make if the mailbox could be accessed by another program. If, however, you ever access this mailbox by some other means - for instance, using a local copy of Pegasus Mail that accesses it directly instead of via IMAP, or by using a WebMail server, you should not check this control.

Keep a utility connection open when this definition is active  Checking this control tells Pegasus Mail to keep a base connection open with the IMAP server at all times while the profile is active, over and above any connections required to display individual folders or messages. Using a utility connection allows Pegasus Mail to get regular folder status (for instance on the INBOX folder) more efficiently, and will speed up other operations in the program, especially the Use fast folder listing commands option (see below). Trade-off:  The trade-off for enabling this option is that Pegasus Mail will keep your Internet connection open for the entire time the IMAP mailbox is present on your desktop. If you operate on a LAN or on a high-speed Internet connection, such a trade-off is usually no issue, and in those environments this option is recommended.

Folder status handling

The process of getting status information for folders (i.e, getting the total number of messages and the number of unread messages in the folder) is one of the more "expensive" operations you can perform on many IMAP servers, and reducing the number of status requests required can have a considerable impact on the time it takes to establish an initial connection.

Only get folder status for INBOX when connecting  Usually when you connect to an IMAP server, Pegasus Mail will ask the server for status information about each of your folders. It does this in order to present you with the total number of messages and unread messages in each folder. Processing these status requests can be quite slow, especially across dialup links: if you are finding that it takes a long time to connect to your IMAP mailbox, or if you only want to make a quick check for new mail, tick this control and Pegasus Mail will only ask for status on the server's INBOX (or new mail folder). This can result in a marked improvement in performance when connecting, at the price of not knowing how many messages are in any of your IMAP folders except your INBOX.

... And also get status for any subscribed folders:  IMAP servers allow mail programs like Pegasus Mail to store a list of folders that can be very quickly accessed at any later time; this process is known as Folder Subscription, and you can subscribe and unsubscribe your folders by right-clicking them and selecting the appropriate option from the popup menu. When this option is selected, Pegasus Mail will retrieve your list of subscribed folders when you connect to the mailbox and will get the status of those folders. This option can only be enabled when you have checked Only get folder status for INBOX... (see above).

Folder list handling

Like the process of getting folder status, the process of listing the folders in a mailbox can be very "expensive" under IMAP. Reducing the number of LIST commands issued can have a very considerable performance impact on IMAP connections.

Use fast folder listing commands:  When this option is selected, Pegasus Mail will only retrieve the top-level folders in the mailbox when it initially connects. From that time, whenever you open a tray or folder that contains other folders, Pegasus Mail will issue a new list command to the server to get the folders in that level of your folder tree. If you have a complex folder structure with many folders below the top level of your folder list, this command can save a considerable amount of time on connection, and if you enable the utility connection option (see above), the delay involved in fetching new parts of your folder list becomes minimal. Trade-off: when you use this option, Pegasus Mail will not be able to access any folder in a level of your folder tree that you have not explicitly opened (because it won't yet know that the folder exists). This is primarily an issue if you use filtering rule sets on IMAP folders, because Pegasus Mail will not be able to move messages into folders you have not yet seen in the session. If you do not use filtering rules, or if you only filter messages into folders that are always visible, this option can give a major performance improvement. This option is incompatible with the List only subscribed folders and Mailbox is accessed exclusively by this copy of Pegasus Mail options. You also cannot use a profile where this option is enabled in Offline mode.

List only subscribed folders in this mailbox:  As described above, IMAP servers allow mail programs to store arbitrary lists of folders in what is known as a subscription list. The subscription list can be retrieved very quickly by the mail program and usually does not entail the performance hit that normal list commands do. Selecting this option tells Pegasus Mail to display only the contents of your subscription list when you connect to the server - all other folders will be unavailable during the session. This option is normally used in a secondary definition for a mailbox, typically when accessing the mailbox over a slow or unreliable link, such as a GSM cellphone. Your primary connection will connect to the same mailbox but will not have this option enabled, so you see all your folders and use the right-click option to select those that should be in your subscription list. Then, when you have to connect quickly to your mailbox, you can use the secondary profile with this option enabled to establish a fast connection that only displays the folders you are directly interested in. This option is incompatible with the Use fast folder listing commands and Mailbox is accessed exclusively by this copy of Pegasus Mail options. You also cannot use a profile where this option is enabled in Offline mode.


IMAP Troubleshooting

The IMAP protocol is large, complex and dense, and offers considerable scope for problems. Many IMAP servers have unusual or even sometimes incorrect implementations of the IMAP protocol standards. This section covers some of the more common problems you might encounter when using IMAP support.

* How do I send mail using IMAP?

You don't. IMAP is only a protocol for accessing folders and does not provide any facility for sending mail. To send mail, you need to use the SMTP protocol - so, simply fill out your e-mail address and the Settings for sending mail in the Network Configuration preferences page. You do not need to fill in the Settings for receiving mail section if you only access your mail via IMAP, but there is equally nothing to prevent you from using both IMAP mailboxes and POP3 mailboxes simultaneously.

* I can't connect to the IMAP server I've specified.

- Make sure that you have entered the IMAP Server address correctly

- Make sure that there is actually some IMAP Server software running on that machine

- Make sure that the TCP/IP port is correct - the default is 143, but some systems may use other values. Consult the machine's administrator to find the proper port value.

- Make sure that the IMAP Server is an IMAP4rev1 server - this is important: Pegasus Mail does not support earlier versions of the IMAP protocol.

- Pegasus Mail uses only the simple LOGIN command to login to the server. In rare cases, you may encounter servers that will only accept encrypted or secure logins. In this case, you will need to see if the system administrator will enable normal logins.

* When I create a folder, I can't create other folders within it.

- Make sure that This server supports folders within folders is checked in the profile definition for the server you are accessing.

* When I open a folder, all the messages are from unknown with no subject

- You are probably using the Novell GroupWise 5.5 IMAP server, which responds incorrectly to some of the commands sent by Pegasus Mail. Contact Novell to see if there is a patch for their server to correct this problem.

* All other problems

- Diagnosing IMAP problems is complex, but Pegasus Mail provides a powerful tool to help you do it. Add -Z 32 to the Pegasus Mail commandline (note that there is a space between the Z and the 3). This puts Pegasus Mail into TCP/IP debugging mode the next time it is run. In this mode, it will create comprehensive transcripts of all the data exchanged between it and the server to which it is connecting. Generate the problem you are experiencing, then exit from Pegasus Mail. In your home mailbox directory, you will find a number of files with the extension .WPM: these are text files that contain the transcripts of each session opened with a server. Locate the transcript file that was generated at the time the error occurred, and send it with your manual license number to tech-support@pmail.gen.nz.


Identities and Folders
Attaching Identities to Folders

See also: Identities; The Folder Manager Window

Pegasus Mail allows you to associate a particular identity with any of your  folders; then, when you forward or reply to a message from that folder, the settings from the associated identity will be used for the message instead of the current default identity.

To see why you might use this feature, consider the situation where you have filtering rules that move all mail from a particular mailing list into a folder. You may wish to ensure that particular settings (such as your signature, or the use of MIME features) are applied in a particular way when you reply to messages from that list. By associating an identity that has these settings with the folder into which the mail is filtered, you can ensure that the proper settings are always used, no matter what default identity is currently selected.

To associate an identity with a folder, right-click the folder in the Folder Manager Window, then select Set default identity for entry. You can also associate an identity with a mailbox entry in the Folder Manager Window: when you do this, the identity will be used for all folders in that mailbox, even ones created after you make the selection.


Setting a password for your mailbox

VERY IMPORTANT!!  Please read this section carefully: the author of Pegasus Mail cannot be held responsible for breaches of security on your network, so it is very important that you understand the level of protection that is actually available to you.

If you are running in an environment for which Pegasus Mail has a specific Network support module, you can normally use the password protection options of the network to protect your mailbox. In environments of this kind, such as Novell NetWare, the level of password protection offered by Pegasus Mail is very strong.

In environments for which Pegasus Mail has no specific network support, you can still add a password to control access to your mailbox, but the protection it offers you may be more limited. Pegasus Mail has to store the information it needs in order to validate your password somewhere, which means that anyone with the ability to modify files in your mailbox directory may be able to bypass the password you have set.

In environments such as Windows NT, where the operating system provides security facilities to control who can access your mail directories, the password scheme used by Pegasus Mail can be quite reliable. In environments where the operating system provides less or no backing security, Pegasus Mail's password scheme can often be circumvented.

Specific cases:

* Windows NT Server 4.x:  The directory permissions on your mailbox should be set so that anyone can Add files to the directory (in order to deliver mail), but only you can view, change or remove the files that are there. With these permissions in place, Pegasus Mail's password scheme provides good security.

* Windows 95/98 Peer-to-peer Networking:  The operating system provides no effective security. Pegasus Mail's password scheme is vulnerable and can be bypassed. Do not rely on it to protect your mailbox from prying eyes.

* A single computer running Windows with multiple Pegasus Mail users:  The operating system provides no security at all. Pegasus Mail's password scheme can be easily bypassed and offers little security of any kind.

* Other cases:  If other users can add files to your mailbox directory but cannot change or remove the files that are already there, then Pegasus Mail's password scheme will provide you with good levels of security. If other users can change or delete files that already exist in your mailbox directory, then Pegasus Mail's password scheme will not provide you with effective security.


Reporting preferences

This preferences page controls the way Pegasus Mail reports information to you, most particularly about new mail as it arrives on your system.

New mail reporting

System messages and logging


New mail reporting

See also: System messages and logging

The options in this section control the methods Pegasus Mail uses to advise you that you have new mail. There are three separate options you can enable, each of which works independently of the others: one option or combination of options will probably suit you better than the others.

Notify of new mail using a floating telltale window  When you check this option, Pegasus Mail will report the arrival of new mail by popping up a small window above all other windows in your system. This small window, or "telltale", reports the number of new messages available in each source known to Pegasus Mail - this includes your new mail folder, the new mail folder of any other mailboxes you have mounted, your POP3 server, and IMAP folders you have mounted in your folder list.

Place an icon in the Windows System Tray (Win32 version only)  When this control is checked, Pegasus Mail will add its icon to the Windows system tray when you minimize it. You can reactivate Pegasus Mail at any time by double-clicking the system tray icon. This option has three sub-options:

Animate the icon when new mail arrives  The system tray icon will flap its wings when you have new mail (we think this looks pretty neat). If the telltale window (see above) is disabled, right-clicking the system tray icon will open the telltale with a report about the new mail waiting for you.

Only display the icon when Pegasus Mail is minimized  When this control is checked, the system tray icon will only be added to the system tray when the program is minimized to the task bar. If you have many system tray icons, you may prefer this effect.

Hide the Pegasus Mail taskbar entry when minimized  When this control is checked, the regular Pegasus Mail button on the Windows taskbar will be hidden when the program is minimized, leaving only the system tray icon to indicate that it is running. Enabling this option saves space on the task bar, but means that you cannot use Alt+Tab to switch back to Pegasus Mail - you can only switch back by double-clicking the system tray icon.

Play a new mail alert sound  When you check this control, Pegasus Mail will play whatever sound you choose when new mail arrives. The sound can be any valid Windows .WAV file on your system. You can select the sound Pegasus Mail should use by clicking the Select sound button, and test the currently-selected sound by clicking the Test button.

Only play the sound if Pegasus Mail is minimized  If you find the sound annoying when you are actually working within Pegasus Mail, check this control and the alert sound will only play when mail arrives while Pegasus Mail is minimized to the Windows task bar.


System messages and logging

See also: New mail reporting

Pegasus Mail keeps a running log of events that occur while it is running - you can inspect this log at any time by choosing System Messages... from the Window menu. This group of controls manages the behaviour of the System Messages window and the way event information is reported to you.

System message reporting level  This controls the verbosity of the information reported in the System Messages window. Level 0 disables reporting altogether, while level 5 is typically used to report low-level program status information. There is usually no reason to adjust this control from its default level 3 setting. At level 3, Pegasus Mail reports useful things, such as the results of mail filtering operations and POP3 downloads.

Show System Message window after applying filtering rules  If you check this control, Pegasus Mail will automatically open the System Message window any time filtering rules are applied to a folder and affect at least one message. This is a useful way of seeing at a glance what actions the filtering system has taken with your messages.

Keep a log of messages sent (in SYSLOG.PM file)  When this control is checked, Pegasus Mail will create a log entry every time you send a mail message. The log entry contains detailed information about the recipient, subject and message settings used for the message, and is stored in a file called SYSLOG.PM in your home mailbox. SYSLOG.PM uses a tab-delimited format designed to be imported into database programs or spreadsheets for analysis. The file will be created automatically if it does not exist, and will continue to grow until you explicitly delete or edit it.


Selecting messages

"I want to select all the messages from David that are older than 15 days, don't have any colour set on them, and aren't marked as urgent"

How often have you found yourself in a situation where you want to perform a complex selection operation like this? If you've ever needed to do it, then you've *really* needed it - and this screen allows you to perform this kind of search. Using this option, you can select messages in a folder based on arbitrarily complex sets of rules. You can either simply select messages (useful if you want to move them or delete them), or more powerfully, you can take the selected messages and have them sort together at the top of the folder as a group: this facility allows you to gather together messages based on complex relationships and manipulate them as a group.

Although the screen probably looks rather intimidating, the process of setting up a complex selection is really very simple: you just create selectors, or rules that will either match or not match specific messages, then click the Select button. You can have as many selectors as you need, and you can link selectors together (so that more than one condition must be true before a match is made).

To create a selector, simply click on one of the buttons on the left-hand side of the window. You can select messages based on their addressing, subject field, age, size, colour, or message attribute; or you can simply select messages containing any piece of text you choose. Each of the selector buttons opens a small editor window where you enter the condition that must be true for the match to occur. These editor windows are simple to use. When you click the OK button in the editor window, your selector will be added to the list of selectors at the right of the window.

Linking selectors  If you need to specify a match that depends on more than one selector being true (for instance: "Message is smaller than 20000 bytes" and "Message is older than 14 days") then click the And button after you add each selector. This will add an And line in the list of selectors showing that the selectors are joined together. If you do not use And lines to connect selectors, then any selector that matches a message will select that message.

Negating selectors  If you want to negate a selector (for instance, "Select messages that are not from david"), then highlight the selector in the list and click the Not button. Clicking the Not button again will reverse the condition.

Saving and loading selector lists  The selector list you create is remembered each time you open this window during a session, so you can re-use a selector set on different folders without having to re-enter it. If you want to save a selection set so that you can use it again in future, simply click the Save button when you have finished assembling it, and give it a filename. You can re-load a selector set you have previously saved at any time by clicking the Open button and choosing the file.

Selection actions  The two radio buttons underneath the selector list allow you to choose what Pegasus Mail should do with messages that get selected by your selector set. Highlight all matching messages found in folder simply marks the messages, ready for any folder operation that works on multiple messages, such as Move, Copy or Delete. Sort matching messages to top of folder will re-sort the folder so that the selected messages are placed at the top of the folder above all other messages. The selected messages are sorted using the current sorting option for the folder.


Internet options

Pegasus Mail contains all you need to send and receive mail from the Internet, either from a LAN connection, or using a dial-up connection to an Internet Service Provider. In order to handle your Internet mail for you, Pegasus Mail typically needs some information about you, and the machines it needs to contact on your behalf. Pegasus Mail's Internet Mail support has a rich range of features, covered in the sections below.

Overview of Internet Mail operation

General Internet Mail settings

Receiving mail via the POP3 protocol

Sending mail via the SMTP protocol

Using SSL security for encrypted connections

Dialling control

How to retrieve and send mail using Pegasus Mail

Advanced topics:

Troubleshooting

Windows Sockets configuration issues


Overview of Internet Mail Operation

Internet mail is based on a concept called store and forward - that is, the message is received by a system on your behalf, and stored there until you are ready to receive it, at which time it is forwarded to you. Mail programs such as Pegasus Mail are responsible for approaching larger machines (called servers) and asking them to store a message (send it), or to forward a message (receive it). It is the process of storing and forwarding mail that allows you to turn your computer off, or disconnect your Internet session - without store and forward, if your machine was unavailable, there would be nowhere to deliver the mail.

The Internet is simply a whole lot of telephone cables: data gets transferred across these telephone cables between computers... Now, imagine what happens when a person in England makes a telephone call to a person in China: unless the two people have a language in common, they won't be able to understand each other... The same is true with computers: in order to understand each other, they need to talk the same language. On the Internet, these languages are called protocols - they are the rules that control how different systems communicate with each other.

Internet electronic mail is governed by a number of these protocols, but the two most commonly-used are POP3 and SMTP. POP3 stands for Post Office Protocol version 3, and is the language two computers use when one wants to retrieve a mail message from a mailbox located on the other. SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, and is the language two computers use when one want send a mail message to the other. Practically all Internet mail programs, Pegasus Mail included, support these two protocols.


General Internet mail settings

My Internet e-mail address is  Enter your electronic mail address here. Your electronic mail address will usually be in the form username@host.domain - enter the whole address here.

Default timeout for network connections - This controls how long Pegasus Mail should wait for responses from remote computers before deciding that there has been a connection failure and giving up: click here for more information. Please note that this default setting is only used when your POP3 or SMTP definitions themselves have their own timeout values set to 0: if you set a non-zero timeout in any definition you create for Internet mail, that value will take precedence over the default value defined in this window.

Easy setup, step by step  This option will start the Pegasus Mail Internet Setup Wizard, a series of windows that take you step by step through the process of entering the information Pegasus Mail needs in order to handle your Internet e-mail. If you are new to the Internet, we strongly suggest you use this option to setup Pegasus Mail. You can use the setup wizard to configure Pegasus Mail the first time you run it, or to change your existing information if you ever need to do so.

Create Internet session logs (advanced diagnostic use only)  Checking this control tells Pegasus Mail to create special log files that show the entire exchange of information between it and the servers it connects to. Each session will be created in a file called TCPxxxx.WPM in your home mailbox directory (the "xxxx" is replaced by four digits). Creating session logs will slow down the performance of your system somewhat, and you should be aware that any username and password information exchanged between Pegasus Mail and the server will be shown in the log, *even* if you use SSL to secure the connection. Session logs are primarily useful if you need to debug a problem between Pegasus Mail and one of the servers it connects to - you should enable the option only on instructions from a system administrator or from Pegasus Mail technical support. [ Technical note: this control has the same effect as using a "-Z 32" commandline switch when you run Pegasus Mail ]

Return to the Internet Options help page


Receiving mail via the POP3 protocol

See also:	Creating a POP3 definition

Mail filtering rules

The entries in this screen control the way Pegasus Mail will download new mail for you via the Internet's POP3 protocol.

Managing active POP3 definitions

Check these POP3 hosts for mail   This list contains the POP3 definitions that are active in your current identity: you can have as many definitions active as you wish, each definition retrieving mail from a single mailbox on a single server. Different identities can have different sets of definitions active - this can be especially useful if you are running Pegasus Mail on a laptop and move from location to location as you retrieve your mail. It is important to understand that you may have created many more definitions than appear in this list: this list only represents the ones that are currently active.

To add a definition to the list, click the Add button: this will open another dialog that lists all the POP3 definitions you have created. You can either select a definition that is not currently present in the active list, or you can create a new definition and use that.

To change the settings within a definition  Select the definition in the active list and click the Edit button. It is important to remember that any changes you make to a definition will apply in other identities as well - so, if you are using the same definition for a POP3 mailbox in three different identities, changing it in any of those identities will change it for all of them.

To remove a definition  Select the definition and click the Remove button. This does not delete the definition! It simply removes it from the active list. If you want to delete a definition permanently, click the Add button, and use the deletion facilities in the dialog that opens to delete the definition.

To disable or re-enable a definition, select it and click the Enable or Disable button (the name of the button will depend on whether the definition is currently enabled or not). Disabling a definition prevents Pegasus Mail from using it when checking for mail without removing it from the list - it can be useful in a situation where a particular host may be temporarily inaccessible.

To rearrange the definitions in the active list  select a definition then click the Up or Down buttons (the red and blue arrow buttons underneath the Enable/Disable button). Pegasus Mail checks the hosts in the order they appear in the list, and that order may sometimes have a bearing on performance or the way in which you receive your mail.

Polling controls

Check for new POP3 mail every x seconds  This option controls whether or not Pegasus Mail should poll the hosts in your active POP3 definition list for new mail automatically, and if so, how often. Enter here a number of seconds between poll cycles (Pegasus Mail is accurate to the nearest three seconds), If you check the Idle control next to this, then Pegasus Mail will wait until it has been idle (no keystrokes or mouse presses) for this length of time before it will automatically check for new mail. If the Idle control is unchecked, then checks will occur at regular intervals, regardless of activity. A value of zero means that Pegasus Mail should never poll your POP3 hosts automatically – you will have to initiate the check yourself by choosing "check host for new mail" from the File menu.

Check whenever the new mail folder is opened  If you check this box, Pegasus Mail will check your list of active POP3 hosts for new mail every time you open the new mail folder or click the New Mail button in the button panel. If you leave this button unchecked, then Pegasus Mail will only check for new mail when you explicitly choose Check host for new mail from the File menu.

Checking multiple identities	see also Identities

When checking for mail, perform checks for all identities  If this option is checked, then when you check for new POP3 mail, Pegasus Mail will go through all the identities you have currently defined and will perform a new mail check for each of them. Individual identities can be excluded from this multiple check operation by checking the Exclude this identity from multi-identity checks box. Identities where the same username and host are specified will only be checked once -- Pegasus Mail is smart enough not to perform redundant checks. Note that this setting itself is identity-specific - it can be set or unset depending on an identity-by-identity basis; so, for some of your identities you can have the program set to check all your identities while for others, only the current identity is checked. You can temporarily override the setting of this flag by holding down the Ctrl key as you select Check host for new mail from the File menu, or as you click on the toolbar button for the same action. So, if you have turned on Check mail for all identities, holding down Ctrl when you do a check for new mail will check only the current identity. Similarly, if this control is not turned on, then holding down Ctrl when you do a check for new mail will force a check for all your identities.

Exclude this identity from multi-identity checks  When this box is checked, then the current identity will be excluded from any POP3 mail check that operates on all your identities (see the preceding entry). If When checking for mail, check for all identities is not checked, this control has no effect.


Creating a POP3 definition

See also:	Using SSL to provide secure connections

Mail filtering rules

A POP3 definition allows you to set up a check for mail in a single mailbox on a single POP3 mail server. You can create as many definitions as you need, and can have as many or as few as you require of them active in each individual Pegasus Mail identity as required.

Settings on the General page of the definition editor

Definition name

Each definition you define needs a name. The name can contain any characters and can be up to 50 characters in length. The name is what Pegasus Mail displays in the active definition list for each identity: we suggest that you use a name that clearly identifies the definition - something like "username on host".

General settings for receiving mail via POP3

Server host name  The name of the machine from which Pegasus Mail should retrieve your new mail. The format of the address you provide here depends on your WinSock implementation: many will allow you to enter a normal internet name (for example, parnassus.pmail.gen.nz), but some may require that you enter the address in dotted notation (for example, 192.156.225.2). Consult your system manager or WinSock manual if you are unsure which form to use.

User name  The name of the account on the machine under which mail is being held for you. Pegasus Mail logs into the host using this account name and retrieves any mail waiting there.

If what you have been told to enter here contains an '@' symbol, then it may be incorrect. Some Internet systems may require your full address, but most do not. Unless your system manager or ISP specifically tells you to enter your full address in this field, try entering just the portion preceding the '@' sign. If you get an error from Pegasus Mail when you try to download your mail, then try putting in the whole address.

Password  The password for the account on the host. The password is not displayed on the screen and is stored in an encrypted format in your configuration file.

Optional and advanced settings for receiving mail

Server TCP port  The TCP/IP port on which the server listens for your connections. The default for this field is 110, which is the port defined by the POP3 standard. On rare occasions, your POP3 server may listen for connections on a different port number, in which case you would enter that port number here. You should only change this value if advised to do so by your service provider, network administrator, or by Pegasus Mail technical support.

Timeout:  The length of time Pegasus Mail should wait on a reply from the host before concluding that there is a communication problem and giving up. If you enter zero (0) in this field, Pegasus Mail will use the default timeout that appears on the General Internet mail settings page of the Internet Options dialog.

Count messages when checking but don't download them  If this control is checked and you have set an idle poll cycle (see the last entry) then Pegasus Mail will simply check the number of new mail messages on each idle check and report that number on the status bar. If this control is unchecked, Pegasus Mail will automatically download any new mail it finds on the host on each idle check. On slow links, checking this control can result in a lower performance demand on your machine.

Delete mail from host once it has been successfully retrieved  If you check this box, Pegasus Mail will delete the host's copy of each mail message it successfully downloads, which will prevent it from being presented to you again the next time you retrieve mail. Leaving this box unchecked tells Pegasus Mail to leave the mail on the host even if successfully downloaded. Mail left on the server will be retrieved every time you download mail.

Scheduling

Check no more frequently than once every x minutes  This control allows you to have some of your definitions checked more or less frequently than others. If you enter a non-zero value here, then Pegasus Mail will only check this definition at most once every x minutes, no matter how often you have set your polling period in the Receiving mail via the POP3 protocol page of the Internet Options dialog. So, if you have a relatively unimportant mailbox somewhere that you only want to check at most once per hour, you would enter 60 here: even if Pegasus Mail is checking your other POP3 definitions every minute, this definition will only be checked once per hour.

Settings on the Security page of the definition editor

SSL/TLS (encrypted data stream) settings  The controls in this group allow you to enable and configure secure connections between Pegasus Mail and the POP3 server. Click here for more information on secure connections.

APOP login control - APOP shared secret  Pegasus Mail supports a POP3 command called APOP, which allows you to connect to a POP3 server without transmitting your password over the network in plain text. In order to use the APOP command, your POP3 server also needs to support the command, and you need to have a special word or phrase known both to you and to the POP3 server: this special word or phrase is called a "shared secret". If your ISP or network administrator tells you that your POP3 server supports the APOP command, then you can enter your APOP shared secret here and Pegasus Mail will use it to connect to the server. Note: your APOP shared secret is almost never the same as your regular password: if you are unsure what to enter in this field, either leave it blank, or else ask your ISP or network administrator for assistance.

Settings on the Download controls page of the definition editor

The controls in this section allow you to tailor the way Pegasus Mail retrieves mail from your POP3 mailbox.

Download only unread mail  The usual practice when retrieving mail from a POP3 host is to delete it from the host when it is successfully downloaded. If you do not delete it, you would normally expect to see it again the next time you download mail from the host. Pegasus Mail incorporates a powerful and complicated facility which allows you to leave mail on the POP3 host without deleting it, but only download mail you haven't already seen. Because the POP3 protocol does not actually provide this facility, there are some limitations on this command, the most specific being that if you run Pegasus Mail on more than one machine, each one will have a separate list of what you have already seen; so, if you download mail using one machine then access your account later from a different machine, you will probably get the mail you downloaded the first time again, where downloading the mail on the same machine you originally used would only show mail which had arrived since the last time you accessed your account. Check this control to instruct Pegasus Mail to attempt to download only mail you have not read. The effect of this control is probably meaningless if you do not also uncheck the "Delete retrieved mail on host" control. Using this feature can significantly increase the time it takes for Pegasus Mail to retrieve your new mail.

During any connection, download at most x messages  If you set this field to a non-zero value, then Pegasus Mail will download no more than the number of messages you specify from the POP3 server in any single connection. There are two primary reasons why you might wish to do this:

1: Unreliable connection	If you have a low quality connection to your POP3 server, you may find that you end up downloading the same messages over and over again each time your connection fails (this is because of a safety feature in the POP3 protocol). Reducing the number of messages downloaded in a single session can reduce the impact of connection failures.
2: Helpdesk operation	If you act as a support person, you may find it useful to tell Pegasus Mail simply to download one or two messages at a time. That way, if several people access the same mailbox, the workload can be shared around.

Setting a value of zero in this field tells Pegasus Mail that it should not assume any limit on the number of messages it can download in any session.

Do not download mail larger than x bytes If you are connected to the mail host by a slow TCP/IP link (such as a SLIP link) then downloading large messages can be very time consuming. If you enter a value in this field, Pegasus Mail will not attempt to retrieve any mail larger than the size you specify (in bytes) - it will be left untouched on the host. A value of 0 in this field means no limit - Pegasus Mail will download all mail.

Note: when a message is too large to be downloaded, Pegasus Mail will create an entry in the System Messages window advising you of this fact - this is the only indication you will get that messages were left on the server. You can then choose to download the oversized messages using Pegasus Mail's Selective download feature, on the File menu.

Server-side mail filtering	See also:	Mail filtering rules

Normally, Pegasus Mail applies its filtering rules after you have downloaded your mail into your local mailbox. On occasions, though, this may be unhelpful or too late - for example:

*	If you share a mailbox with other people (for instance, a so-called domain mailbox) then you don't really want to download their mail as well as your own - you would sooner only retrieve your own mail and leave theirs on the server for them to download at their leisure.
*	A secretary, for instance, may want to download only messages from particular clients from her employer's mailbox while he is away
*	If you have a very slow connection, you may want to retrieve only mail marked as urgent, or from particular people, leaving the remainder until another time when you are better able to deal with it.

In all these cases, it would be better if you could apply filtering rules to the mail as it resides on the mail server, before you download it, using those rules to choose which messages should be downloaded and which should not. Pegasus Mail allows you to do this.

Filtering rule set  This control selects the set of filtering rules that Pegasus Mail should apply to messages in the mailbox prior to downloading them. Filtering rule sets for use in server-side filtering are a special type of filtering rule set that must be created using the Create/Edit POP3 rule set option on the Mail filtering rules submenu of the Pegasus Mail Tools menu. You must create your POP3 rule set before you can select it in this control. You can also use the same rule set in as many POP3 definitions as you wish. To select a POP3 server-side filtering rule set to use for this definition, click the Select button and choose it from the list of available sets. If you have set a server-side filtering rule set but no longer wish to use it, click the Clear button - this will remove the set from the definition, but will not delete it.

Lines to retrieve from each message's body for filtering   Pegasus Mail performs its server-side POP3 filtering by retrieving the headers of each mail message and applying the rule set you have selected to those headers. It is possible to download a certain number of lines from the message body as well as the headers - this can increase the effectiveness of the filtering rule set (clearly the filtering rule set cannot work on the entire message, since that would be the same as retrieving it: the value of server-side filtering is its ability to work on a portion of the message only, since this is a fast operation). If you want Pegasus Mail to retrieve some lines from the message body of each message when filtering, enter that number of lines here. Note that if your filtering rule set only works on message headers, then there is no point in entering a non-zero value here.

Default action for messages still present after filtering   When Pegasus Mail applies a server-side POP3 filtering rule set to a message, there are three possible actions that can occur at the end of the process:

1:	The message may be deleted on the server
2:	The message may be downloaded from the server
3:	The message may be explicitly left on the server - neither downloaded nor deleted.

Pegasus Mail needs to know which of these actions it should apply in the absence of an explicit command - that is, when a message passes through a server-side filtering rule set without triggering any rules at all. Select the default option you want Pegasus Mail to assume for such messages from the three provided here.

Return to the Internet Options help page


Sending mail via the SMTP protocol

See also:	Creating an SMTP definition

The entries in this screen control the way Pegasus Mail will send mail on your behalf using the Internet's SMTP protocol.

Managing active SMTP definitions

Send mail using these SMTP hosts   This list contains the SMTP definitions that are active in your current identity: you can have as many definitions active as you wish, each sending to a different SMTP host, although in general you will only have one definition enabled at a time. Different identities can have different sets of definitions active - this can be especially useful if you are running Pegasus Mail on a laptop and move from location to location as you send your mail. It is important to understand that you may have created many more definitions than appear in this list: this list only represents the ones that are currently active.

To add a definition to the list, click the Add button: this will open another dialog that lists all the SMTP definitions you have created. You can either select a definition that is not currently present in the active list, or you can create a new definition and use that.

To change the settings within a definition  Select the definition in the active list and click the Edit button. It is important to remember that any changes you make to a definition will apply in other identities as well - so, if you are using the same definition for an SMTP server in three different identities, changing it in any of those identities will change it for all of them.

To remove a definition  Select the definition and click the Remove button. This does not delete the definition! It simply removes it from the active list. If you want to delete a definition permanently, click the Add button, and use the deletion facilities in the dialog that opens to delete the definition.

To disable or re-enable a definition, select it and click the Enable or Disable button (the name of the button will depend on whether the definition is currently enabled or not). Disabling a definition prevents Pegasus Mail from using it when sending mail, without removing it from the list - it can be useful in a situation where a particular host may be temporarily inaccessible.

To rearrange the definitions in the active list  select a definition then click the Up or Down buttons (the red and blue arrow buttons underneath the Enable/Disable button). Pegasus Mail accesses the hosts in the order they appear in the list.

Settings controlling the way mail is sent

Send mail at once without placing in queue  If you check this, Pegasus Mail will send your mail messages to the relay host as soon as you click the Send button in the message editor. If you leave the box unchecked, Pegasus Mail will queue your messages, and will only send them to the relay host when you explicitly choose Send all queued mail from the File menu. If you are using a slow TCP/IP link, you should probably leave this box unchecked.

Use in preference to LAN mailer for Internet mail  This option is only meaningful when you are running Pegasus Mail on a NetWare system which is also served by either the Mercury SMTP transport or the Charon Internet mail gateway. Checking this control tells Pegasus Mail to use its own built-in mail delivery routines instead of passing your outgoing mail to Mercury or Charon for processing. If you leave this box unchecked, then Pegasus Mail will always use Mercury or Charon in preference to its own SMTP delivery routines if either is available on the NetWare system to which you are connected. The setting of this control is ignored when you run Pegasus Mail in a non-NetWare environment.

Use for all outgoing mail, regardless of address:  Usually when you enter an address such as "DAVID", which has no domain portion, Pegasus Mail regards it as a local address and attempts to deliver it to the user based on the assumption that he can be found on the machine you are using. If you are the only person who uses your computer, however, then there will be no other users on your system and this assumption will not be valid. Checking this control tells Pegasus Mail to pass all mail to the remote host for processing and not to presume that any addresses are local to your machine. You should only check this control if you are the only person who uses your machine.

Send any mail in the queue during idle checks:  If you check this control, Pegasus Mail will send any messages waiting in your mail queue when it does an idle check to see if you have new POP3 mail. The frequency of these checks is determined by the setting of the Poll new mail after x secs idle field of the POP3 configuration section of the Network configuration dialog

Send mail before retrieving mail  Pegasus Mail normally checks for new mail using the POP3 protocol before sending your mail using the SMTP protocol; doing it this way allows you to read your new mail more quickly. If you would prefer that Pegasus Mail sent any mail in your outgoing message queue before retrieving your new mail, check this control.


Creating an SMTP definition

See also:	Using SSL to provide secure connections

An SMTP definition allows you to send mail via a single SMTP mail server. You can create as many definitions as you need, and can have as many or as few as you require of them active in each individual Pegasus Mail identity as required. Unlike POP3 definitions, though, where you might quite reasonably have a number of definitions active at any time, you will usually only have a single SMTP definition active at any given moment.

Settings on the General page of the definition editor

Definition name

Each definition you define needs a name. The name can contain any characters and can be up to 50 characters in length. The name is what Pegasus Mail displays in the active definition list for each identity: we suggest that you use a name that clearly identifies the definition - something like "Sending via <host>".

General settings for sending mail via SMTP

Server host name  Enter here the name of a machine which can process outgoing mail on your behalf. This is often the same machine you entered as your POP3 mail host, and the address is subject to the same restrictions and rules described there. Pegasus Mail asks this machine to send outgoing mail on your behalf, so the machine you name must be running an SMTP server; your system manager or service provider will be able to tell you which machine or address to use for this field.

Optional or advanced settings for sending mail

Server TCP/IP port  Specifies the TCP/IP port Pegasus Mail should connect to when sending mail. The default value for this field is 25, and you should usually only change it if you are using a proxy server or firewall, or on the instructions of your network administrator.

Timeout:  The length of time Pegasus Mail should wait on a reply from the host before concluding that there is a communication problem and giving up. If you enter zero (0) in this field, Pegasus Mail will use the default timeout that appears on the General Internet mail settings page of the Internet Options dialog.

Use an alternate e-mail address for the SMTP envelope. [Warning: this section is rather technical and loaded with jargon - sorry about that... ]  An Internet Mail message consists of two sections - the message and the envelope. The envelope is a kind of "wrapper" of delivery information that is passed from SMTP host to SMTP host, and includes information about the sender and recipients of the message in transit. You will usually never see the envelope, as it is discarded once the message is actually delivered. The only remnant of the envelope in your message is a special field amongst the message headers called Return-path, which contains the address of the original sender of the message. The Return-path information is usually only used by SMTP servers to handle errors, but unfortunately there are some mail systems on the Internet that ignore your "From" field address and instead send replies to whatever value is stored in the Return-path header. By default, Pegasus Mail forms the return-path header from the Internet E-mail address you provide on the General page of the Internet Options dialog. In some cases, though, that address information may not be valid for use in the envelope when sending a message via a particular SMTP server, even though it may be fine in the "From" field of the message. In cases like this, the small group of aberrant mail systems on the Internet may end up trying to reply to you using an address that is not valid. Checking this control tells Pegasus Mail to form your Return-path headers using the address you supply here rather than your general e-mail address. This option is necessarily technical, and you will typically only fill it in on instructions from your system administrator, ISP or Pegasus Mail technical support.

Use this domain name in the HELO/EHLO server greeting   [Warning: this section is also pretty technical, unfortunately]   When Pegasus Mail connects to a mail server to send mail, it is required to identify itself: the identification the server expects is one of two commands, either HELO or EHLO, followed by the Internet domain name of the computer on which Pegasus Mail is running. Pegasus Mail asks the Windows operating system on your computer to tell it the domain name of the computer (using a Windows Sockets function called gethostname), but unfortunately on many systems, Windows returns an invalid or incorrect value. In the past, this didn't matter too much, because most mail servers weren't especially concerned by the domain name that accompanied the HELO/EHLO command: unfortunately, in the age of spam (unsolicited commercial e-mail), this has become an increasingly important test, and you may sometimes find that a server will refuse to accept connections from Pegasus Mail because it doesn't like the hostname reported by Windows. To get around this problem, you can tell Pegasus Mail your system's real Internet host name in this field. If you get mail server errors popping up in Pegasus Mail that mention the words HELO or EHLO, then you will probably need to enter a value in this field - ask your ISP or network administrator what your computer's domain name is and put that value in here. Note that you must not try to put an e-mail address in this field - only the domain part is required here. Hint: if you believe you need to enter something in this field, but you don't know what it should be, try entering 0.0.0.0 (four zeros separated by periods). This will work in many cases.

Settings on the Security page of the definition editor

SSL/TLS (encrypted data stream) settings  The controls in this group allow you to enable and configure secure connections between Pegasus Mail and the POP3 server. Click here for more information on secure connections.

SMTP Authentication

The entries in this section enable various mechanisms for proving that you are who you say you are when sending mail. Not all networks or Internet Service Providers will require you to use an authentication method, and there are three or four different methods that might be used. If you have trouble sending mail, consult your ISP and see if you need to enable one of these options. When you contact your ISP, it may help them to help you if you mention that your mailer supports several SMTP Authentication options.

Do a prior POP3 login to authenticate before sending mail   If your ISP supports it, this is the simplest way of authenticating who you are. Some ISPs will log POP3 mail checks, and provided you have done such a check in the last x minutes, will permit you to send mail from the same address. When you enable this control, Pegasus Mail will login to your POP3 server and immediately logout without actually retrieving mail, prior to opening the SMTP connection to send mail. It is harmless to enable this option, even if your ISP does not require it. When you enable this option, you must select one of your POP3 mail definitions by clicking the Select button.

Login to the SMTP server with the following username and password  If you check this control, Pegasus Mail will attempt to login to the SMTP server using the username and password you supply here. As with the option above, it will only do this if the server states that it will accept such a login. Your Internet Service Provider will advise you if this option is one you should use.

Login to the SMTP server using a POP3 username/password  If the SMTP server uses the same username and password as one of your POP3 definitions (this is quite common if both servers run on the same unix or linux system, for example), then you can check this control and click the Select button to choose the proper POP3 definition. Doing things this way, if you ever need to change your POP3 password, it will automatically be changed for the SMTP definition as well, meaning one less thing you have to remember to do.

Return to the Internet Options help page


Using SSL to provide secure connections

See also:	Internet Options

SSL ("Secure Sockets Layer") is an Internet Standard for creating and managing encrypted connections between a client (a program such as Pegasus Mail) and a server (such as the POP3 server from which Pegasus Mail retrieves your mail messages).

By encrypting the data as it passes between the client and the server, the risk of your mail being intercepted or compromised in transit is effectively eliminated. The price for this extra security is slightly slower transfer of mail and slightly increased complexity of setup.

Before you enable SSL support in Pegasus Mail, you need to ask your system administrator or ISP if his server offers support for SLL version 3 encrypted sessions. You also need to ask whether the server supports SSL via direct connection, or via a STARTTLS command (don't worry too much about what this all actually means - the answer you are given simply determines which button you should check in the Pegasus Mail configuration dialog). If the administrator tells you that his server supports SSL via direct connection, you will also need to ask him what port number should be used to connect to the server when using SSL.

Once you have the necessary information, go to the Security page for the POP3, SMTP or IMAP definition you want to secure in Pegasus Mail. An explanation of the various controls is given below, but as a quick-start guide, you can use these guidelines:

If your ISP or administrator told you that his server supports SSL via direct connection, then check the radio button titled Via direct SSL connect in this dialog. You will also need to switch to the General page and tell Pegasus Mail to use the port number you were given at the same time.

If your ISP or administrator told you that his server supports SSL via a STARTTLS command, then check the radio button titled Via STARTTLS (or STLS) command. In this case, you do not have to change the port on the General page.

If your ISP cannot tell you the port number the SSL server is listening on, this table of commonly-used values may help you:

Protocol	Port number
POP3 over SSL	995
SMTP over SSL	465
IMAP over SSL	993

What the various controls mean

Via direct SSL connect   Tells Pegasus Mail that the server expects SSL negotiation to occur as soon as a connection is made between the client and the server. This operating mode is in disfavour amongst the powers-that-be on the Internet, and its use will decline over the next few years, primarily because it requires the use of a special port number for the encrypted version of each protocol that uses it.

Via STARTTLS (or STLS) command   Tells Pegasus Mail to perform a normal connection to the server, but before transferring any data, to ask the server whether it supports SSL connections. If the server indicates that it does support SSL connections, Pegasus Mail will issue a command that tells the server to switch to an encrypted session. This is the preferred and recommended way of handling SSL sessions on the Internet.

Never   Tells Pegasus Mail not to attempt to negotiate an SSL session even if the server appears to support it.

Server certificate fingerprint tracking

As well as provding encrypted transfer of data between a client and a server, the SSL protocol includes methods of authenticating that the server and the client are who they say they are via the use of Public Key Certificates. Because such certificates are expensive and difficult to obtain, they are seldom used on the client side of the connection, but the server must always provide a certificate. The server's certificate is currently generally of dubious value in proving the actual identity of the server, but it does have one absolutely invaluable characteristic - its fingerprint. All public key certificates can be uniquely identified by this fingerprint: by comparing the fingerprint of the certificate the server offers you with either a known fingerprint (presumably supplied separately by the system administrator), or the last fingerprint Pegasus Mail saw from the server, it is possible to detect that the certificate has changed.

If the certificate has changed, this may be an innocent administrative issue (for instance, the old certificate may have expired or been replaced), but it may also indicate a security breach, or the presence of a "middleman" eavesdropping on your messages in transit. In either case, the fact that the certificate has changed acts as a warning to you to contact your ISP or system administrator to check on the integrity of the system.

Checking the control labelled Enable server certificate fingerprint tracking tells Pegasus Mail to compare the server's certificate fingerprint with a stored value. You can either paste a value supplied by your ISP into the text field called Current certificate fingerprint or, if you leave the text field blank, Pegasus Mail will fill it in with the certificate fingerprint for you the next time you connect to the host. It is slightly more secure to be able to paste a known fingerprint value for the certificate, but this will seldom be available. Allowing Pegasus Mail to fill it in for you still gives you useful security because you are mainly interested in the fact that the certificate has changed, rather than that it is the one you expect to see. The fingerprint Pegasus Mail stores is a 32-character string of numbers and letters called an MD5 Hash. Your ISP or system administrator may ask you for this information when supplying you with the proper fingerprint value.

Suppressing certificate verification

When Pegasus Mail connects to an SSL-enabled server and negotiates a secure connection with it, the server is required to pass Pegasus Mail a piece of data called a certificate (see above for more details about certificates): the certificate is intended to prove that the server is who it claims to be. Unfortunately, in the course of its development, the SSL mechanism has spawned many offshoots and variations, and this has resulted in a very real unevenness in the way certificates are prepared and represented. Pegasus Mail is normally quite strict about ensuring that the certificate passed to it by the server is in a valid form, but sometimes you're going to run into servers that will offer you invalid certificates: one of the annoying (and really quite worrying) things about the Internet is that many other packages will simply ignore certificate problems and hence will appear to "work" with the server, even though their security has been compromised - the rationale is that ease of use is more important than security, which we feel is a dangerous attitude.

If you encounter an SSL-enabled server to which you cannot connect using Pegasus Mail, the most likely reason is a problem with its certificate. When this happens, you can tell Pegasus Mail not to verify the contents of the certificate it is passed by the server, by checking the control labelled Disable certificate validation. In many cases, this will allow you to connect to the server, but it carries considerable risk. We strongly recommend that you do not use this option until you have exhausted all other possibilities. Your first point of contact should be the administrator of the server with the invalid certificate: he is doing neither himself nor his users any favours by installing a broken certificate on his server - even if other programs accept it in its broken form, it is clearly better that the certificate be correct, since this ensures that security is properly-preserved.

When this option is enabled, Pegasus Mail can no longer perform certificate fingerprint tracking (see above for more details), so the security of your connection is considerably reduced. Once again, we recommend that you put pressure on the system administrator to fix the problem rather than to use this workaround.


Windows Sockets configuration issues

In order to use Pegasus Mail's built-in support for TCP/IP mail, you must have a properly-installed Windows Sockets implementation installed on your system. Windows Sockets is a specification developed by a group of major vendors that standardizes the methods Windows applications use to access the Internet. Under 16-bit Windows (including Windows 95/98/NT, if you are running a 16-bit application), the Windows Sockets support code is found in a system file called WINSOCK.DLL. 32-bit applications running under Windows 95/98/NT use a system file called WSOCK.32.DLL, which is always located in the Windows SYSTEM directory. For the remainder of this section, we will refer to the system file as WINSOCK.DLL for the sake of clarity.

In order to use the Windows Sockets subsystem on your computer, Pegasus Mail needs to be able to find your WINSOCK.DLL - it must be on the path, in the \WINDOWS directory, or in the \WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory. You can force Pegasus Mail to load a particular WINSOCK.DLL file using commandline options.

By default, when Pegasus Mail detects that you have a valid WINSOCK.DLL on your system, it will enable the built-in TCP/IP services by setting the WinSock loading option in your Advanced Settings preferences to On demand. This means that Pegasus Mail will only load WINSOCK.DLL when it actually needs to access its services. When you are using a SLIP or PPP link to connect to the Internet, most WINSOCK.DLL versions will dial as soon as they are loaded, so the On demand setting allows you to minimize your connect time when checking for mail. If you are connected to a fast local area network, however, you should probably consider setting the Winsock loading flag to Always, for performance reasons.

Regrettably, under Windows 95/98/NT, dialling is handled poorly by the operating system: in order to get around the weaknesses of the operating system, Pegasus Mail includes a number of options to handle dialling by itself - click here for more information on dialling.

If you have a valid Windows Sockets implementation installed on your system, six extra options will appear on your File menu. The first option, Network Configuration, allows you to configure the way Pegasus Mail's built-in TCP/IP mail services work for you. You can also access the network configuration dialog using the Internet Options entry on the Tools menu.

Return to the Internet Options help page


Message formatting preferences

See also:	Preferences overview

Message editing features

Automatically check spelling before sending message  Pegasus Mail incorporates a spelling checker with dictionaries for UK and US English. You can check your spelling in the message editor at any time by pressing Ctrl+K or clicking the Check spelling button on the editor toolbar. You can also have Pegasus Mail perform a spelling check automatically when you click the Send button - if you would like Pegasus Mail to do this, checkmark this control.

Automatically save messages in progress every X minutes  Pegasus Mail is a very reliable program, but even so, accidents can happen... If you enter a non-zero value in this field, the program will regularly save your messages as you work on them. If the worst happens and your system crashes, you can recover the most recent saved version of your message by choosing Open saved message from the File menu (or pressing Ctrl+O). Automatic saves are identified in the list of saved messages by the letters [ASV] at the start of the description. When you send your message normally, the automatic save is deleted.

Formatting and use of styling in messages

Pegasus Mail can generate extremely rich HTML messages containing formatting, pictures, tables and so on. In normal operation, Pegasus Mail generates HTML only when you take an action that necessitates it - for instance, by marking some text in bold. You can always tell if Pegasus Mail is going to send HTML mail because the Rich text control in the message editor will check itself (you can uncheck the Rich text control to force the message to be sent as plain text). If you do not use any feature that requires the use of HTML, Pegasus Mail will send the message as plain text.

HTML mail is, however, somewhat controversial on the Internet - not everyone likes it, and not everyone uses a mail program that can understand it. Many long-time users also believe that HTML mail has no place in e-mail. The controls in this group allow you to control the way Pegasus Mail handles formatting for you.

Disable all text styling options (never send styled mail)  If you check this control, Pegasus Mail will become a traditional plain-text mail program for you. This has a number of side-effects: the editor toolbar will include a smaller range of buttons reflecting only the formatting options available in plain text messages; paste operations will always always paste plain text only; the right margin for your messages will change to an exact character-based measurement; and Pegasus Mail will never generate multipart/alternative or text/html messages (although it will still be able to read and display the ones you receive, of course).

Do not display the editor 'styles' toolbar  This control turns off the message editor's toolbar when checked. When the editor toolbar is turned off, the only way to check spelling in your mail is by pressing Ctrl+K.

Always paste plain text in preference to styled text  When this control is checked, paste operations will paste plain text into the message editor even if formatted versions of the text are also present on the clipboard. This setting is implicit if you check the Disable all text styling options control (see above).

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 you find 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.


Copy-to-self ('outbox') preferences

See also:	Preferences overview

Messages and replies

Mail filtering rules

Pegasus Mail allows you to keep copies of the mail messages you send if you wish. In other programs, this is often called an "outbox", but in Pegasus Mail we refer to this idea as sending a copy to self. The 'outbox' feature of other programs is usually relatively limited - typically, a copy of every message you send is placed into a folder called "outbox". In Pegasus Mail, however you have much more flexibility in deciding both whether or not a copy-to-self should be made, and if it is, where it should be stored.

To make a copy to self, check the Copy Self control in the Pegasus Mail message editor - this tells the program that you want to keep a copy of this message. The normal operation of this control is that it is "sticky" - so, once you have turned it on for one message, it will remain on for future messages until you turn it off. You can change this behaviour if you wish using the options on the Messages and replies preference page.

If a copy to self is made for a message, the options in this preference page come into play.

Default copy-to-self folder name  In the simplest case, Pegasus Mail will simply create a copy of your message in a folder whose name you type in this field; Pegasus Mail will create the folder if it does not already exist. If you wish, you can select a folder that already exists by clicking the Select folder button. When your current copy-to-self folder becomes too large, simply rename the folder - the next time a copy-to-self is made, Pegasus Mail will automatically create a new one using the name you specify here.

Ask at send time whether or not to make a copy to self  You may prefer to have Pegasus Mail ask you for each message whether or not a copy-to-self should be made - if so, check this control. When you click the Send button, Pegasus Mail will ask you whether or not a copy should be kept: if you choose "yes", then the other options in this preferences page will apply. When this option is enabled, the Copy self control in the message editor window will be greyed out.

If making a copy to self, ask at send time which folder to put it in  When this control is checked, Pegasus Mail will ask you to select a folder into which the copy to self should be placed at the time you send the message. When this option is enabled, the Default copy-to-self folder name field is ignored.

Copy-to-self filtering  The most powerful option of all, this allows you to create a special set of filtering rules that act on your copies-to-self. Using these rules, you can choose which folder should receive the copy to self, send copies of the message to other users, even print the message at send time. For more information on creating mail filtering rules in Pegasus Mail, please click here.


Folders and folder preview mode preferences

See also:	Preferences overview

Grouped views

Folder 'preview mode' settings

The settings in this group apply only when you have switched to Pegasus Mail's folder preview mode by clicking the Preview button in the folder manager window.

Display a 'details' ribbon in association with the preview area  When this control is checked, a small grey area will appear above the message preview pane, in which information about the sender, recipient and subject of the message will be displayed. The ribbon also has a set of status indicator controls that show you at a glance whether messages have been replied to, forwarded, and so on. If you change the setting of this control, the change will take effect the next time you open the folder manager window.

Apply filtering rules when previewing folders  If this control is checked, Pegasus Mail will apply any filtering rules associated with a folder whenever the folder is previewed in the folder manager window. If this control is not checked, then filtering rules will only be applied to a folder when it is opened in its own separate window by clicking the Open button.

Remember and apply each folder's sorting mode separately  If you check this control, Pegasus Mail will remember the way each folder is sorted and will restore that sorting mode when the folder is previewed. If the control is not checked, the preview window will use the same sorting mode for all folders.

Ctrl+W activates the preview and selects the new mail folder  If this control is checked, pressing Ctrl+W or clicking the "Open new mail folder" toolbar button will open the folder manager window (or bring it to the front if it is already open) and select the new mail folder for previewing. If this control is not checked, then Ctrl+W will cause the new mail folder to open in its own window, as if you had selected it in the preview and clicked Open.

Mark previewed messages as having been read  When checked, this control causes mail that is displayed in the message preview area to be marked as having been read. If the control is not checked, messages will only be marked as read when you explicitly open them in their own window.

Folder Colouring and Visual Cues

The two colour buttons in this section allow you to alter the colours Pegasus Mail uses in its list of folders to identify folders that contain new mail. The first button, Colour for folders containing unread mail, defines the colour that is used for any folder containing messages that have not been marked as read. The second button, Colour for folders containing recent unread mail defines the colour Pegasus Mail should use to identify folders into which mail has been moved since they were last opened in the current session. Note that mail is only "recent" if it is received while the program is running: as soon as you exit and restart Pegasus Mail, any messages that were "recent" in the previous session simply become "unread" in the new session.

Underneath the colour buttons are a pair of checkboxes that allow you to enable the use of bold text in certain cases when new mail is present:

Use bold to emphasize new mail  If this control is checked, Pegasus Mail will use a bold version of the folder's typeface to show any message that is not marked as having been read when a folder is being displayed.

Use bold to emphasize folders with recent mail  When this control is checked, folders that have recently had unread mail added to them (typically by means of mail filtering) will have their names displayed in bold in the list of folders.

Grouped views

Grouped views are an extremely powerful way of organizing the mail in a folder based on their similarities. It is essentially a form of super-sorting, and presents your folders in a hierarchical manner. Grouped views are remembered on a folder-by-folder basis and can be selected from the Grouped views submenu of the Folder menu (if you view your folders in "Classic" mode) or from the Grouped views submenu of the Messages menu (if you view  your folders in Preview mode). The controls in this group control some of the ways in which your grouped views will behave.

Auto-open the first group in the list when creating a group view  If this control is checked, then whatever the top item in your grouped view is will be automatically opened whenever you create a grouped view in a folder.

Auto-open groups containing unread mail  If this control is checked, then any group in a grouped view that contains unread mail messages will be automatically opened when you create a grouped view.

Auto-open groups containing coloured mail  If this control is checked, then any group in a grouped view that contains mail messages for which you have selected a colour will be automatically opened when the grouped view is created.

Caption colours  These two buttons allow you to control the colour of the captions created in grouped views: the caption is the descriptive title bar that heads each group in the view. It is customary to use a different colour scheme for the captions so that the boundaries between groups are clear. The Background button allows you to set the background colour for the captions, while the Text button allows you to set the colour for the text in the caption.


Automatic formatting preferences

See also:	Preferences overview

Glossaries

Pegasus Mail can perform a number of formatting operations on your text as you type it into the message editor. The settings controlling those operations are found in this page. Automatic formatting works correctly for both plain text and styled (HTML) mail.

Automatic formatting features

Pressing <Tab> at the start of a line indents the paragraph  When this option is turned on, each time you press <Tab> at the start of a line, the whole paragraph you type in will be indented one tab stop to the right.

Create a bullet item when <*><Tab> is typed at the start of a line  When this option is checked, Pegasus Mail will automatically create a bullet list entry when you type an asterisk (*) followed by a tab at the start of a line. This option only creates a single bullet item, not a bulleted list. You can also turn on bullets using the button on the editor toolbar, but many people find this approach faster and easier.

Create hanging indents on a <Tab> near the start of a line  When this option is checked and you press the <Tab> key within five characters from the start of a line, Pegasus Mail will automatically format the paragraph with a hanging indent. This is useful for creating numbered lists - just type in the number, then press <Tab> and Pegasus Mail will automatically format that paragraph for you. As with bullet items, this option only applies to a single paragraph - Pegasus Mail does not support automatic numbering of paragraphs.

Autoreplacement

Do you find that your fingers seem to have crossed connections to your brain? Do you find that you perpetually type in "taht" when you mean "that", or "teh" when you mean "the"? If so, Pegasus Mail can help you by automatically correcting these glitches as you type them.

Enable autoreplacement of common typos and abbreviations  Check this control to turn on Pegasus Mail's autoreplacement feature. When the feature is turned on, Pegasus Mail will check each word you type against the autoreplacement list and will make any changes required automatically.

Autoreplacement list  The list displays the autoreplacements you have defined, showing what you expect to type on the left-hand side, and what Pegasus Mail should replace it with on the right. So, if you want Pegasus Mail to correct "teh" to "the", you would click the "Add" button, and type the two words into the autoreplacement definition dialog that opens.

You can create as many autoreplacements as you wish: Pegasus Mail ships with a list of about five hundred of the most common typographic slips - you can use this list if you wish and you can supplement it with your own favourites.

Abbreviations  You can use autoreplacement for more than just correcting errors - you can also use it as a handy way of typing common words and phrases quickly. To do this, simply create an entry where the "when this is typed" item is an abbreviation, and the "replace it with this" entry is the full text. We recommend that you prefix your abbreviations with an underscore character ( _ ) so that there's no chance of them being confused with regular automatic corrections. This use of autoreplacement is very similar to another Pegasus Mail feature, the glossary, but is better-suited to short, common words and phrases.

Example: if you regularly type "Pegasus Mail", you might create an autoreplacement entry called "_pm" that expands to "Pegasus Mail" whenever you type it.

Note: an autoreplacement can only be a single word - Pegasus Mail cannot autoreplace phrases, although it can replace a word with a phrase.


Regular expression syntax

A regular expression is simply a way of defining a pattern of characters you would like to match. This kind of pattern matching is something the human mind does instinctively, but computers need to be given rules describing how it should be done on a case by case basis.

In Pegasus Mail, a regular expression consists of text characters and metacharacters. A text character is simply a piece of invariant text that must appear in the data you are attempting to match, while a metacharacter is a special character that matches some arbitrary pattern. This is all a little too much like jargon, so let's take a simple example:

Say you want to define an expression that matches any string containing "sorry Dave"; in this case, the text characters are "sorry Dave", and you need a special way of matching any text on either side of them. In this case, that "special way" is to use a metacharacter, "*", which Pegasus Mail interprets as meaning "match anything". So, to match any string containing "sorry Dave", we need to match anything preceding our text characters, then match the text characters "sorry Dave", then finally we need to match anything following our text characters. The regular expression we need to give Pegasus Mail to achieve this is "*sorry Dave*".

By combining metacharacters and text characters, it is possible to create patterns that can match almost any type of text. Pegasus Mail supports the following metacharacters in regular expressions:

*	Match any number of any characters

?	Match any single character

+	Match one or more occurrence of the last character

[ ]	Encloses a group of characters to match. Ranges can

be specified in the group using '-'.

Let's look at one or two of these a little more closely:

*	You'll probably use this metacharacter most often: it means "match anything" - which also includes "nothing". So, in our example above, Pegasus Mail will match the string "sorry Dave, I can't do that", even though there is nothing in front of the matching text characters.

?	This matches any one character. Unlike *, it will always match at least one character - it won't match nothing. So, the expression "?? cat" will match the string "My cat", but it will not match the string "A cat", because there are too few characters before the text characters.

+	You'll normally use this to match a repeated occurrence of a character when you don't know in advance how many there might be. The most common use is to match space characters - so, the expression "A +cat" will match "A cat", "A     cat" or "A   cat".

[]	Say you only want to match the digits 0-9: that's where the square brackets come in. The expression "[0-9]" tells Pegasus Mail to match any single character as long as it is 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 or 9. Like the ? metacharacter, this matches exactly one character. You can use quite extensive ranges and combine them with single characters - for instance, the expression "[0-9a-exyz]" will match any digit, any letter from A to E, an X, a Y or a Z. You can combine range matching like this with the + metacharacter to match similar groups of characters: so, if you want to match any number, you could use the expression "[0-9]+", which would match "1", "123", "12304567" and so on.

It is important to remember that Pegasus Mail always attempts to match regular expressions on a line by line basis, starting at the beginning of the line. Imagine that we had written our example expression as "sorry Dave*" (no leading * metacharacter): Pegasus Mail understands this to mean match any expression as long as it starts with "sorry Dave" - it would no longer match a line where this string occurred further on in the line.

Regular expressions in Pegasus Mail are always case-insensitive - that is, lowercase and uppercase text is treated as the same. So, "SORRY DAVE" is treated exactly the same as "sOrRy DaVe".


Translating Pegasus Mail into other Languages
Translating Pegasus Mail

This section offers a short description of how a translated version of Pegasus Mail is created, and how you might be able to help.

Pegasus Mail consists of many language resources, among them this extremely large helpfile, so the process of translation is naturally quite time-consuming. In most cases, not only the resources need to be translated but the dialogs and windows themselves have to be resized and reorganized in order to ”fit” the new texts, because non-English versions are usually either much longer or shorter than the original English versions. A complete translation of Pegasus Mail from scratch needs some hundreds of hours including testing cycles - it‘s hard work but it‘s very rewarding!

Given the amount of work involved, the process of translation is usually carried out by a team of people, each taking a smaller part of the whole process. A translation team usually consists of a team leader who coodinates the work of the individual translators and merges the results, and anywhere from two to six assistant translators who each take a part of the translation process. The team leader has to know Pegasus Mail in detail and must have an excellent grasp of the English language.

The translation is done step by step including an intensive beta testing period for a couple of weeks with a closed beta test user group. When the beta test team decides that the translation is ready for release, the resources are made available for download through the official Pegasus Mail Internet sites. There will also be announcements on mailing lists and in selected newspapers/magazines.

If you are truly interested in helping translate Pegasus Mail into your mother tongue, please contact the translation coordinator at:

    translation-coordinator@pmail.gen.nz


Setting addressbook properties

This window lets you adjust key aspects of the way addressbooks are used by Pegasus Mail, most particularly whether addresses or aliases should be used when starting new mail messages, and whether or not specific addressbooks should be used to convert aliases into regular e-mail addresses.

Spare me the jargon: what do you mean by "Aliases"?  In Pegasus Mail, an Alias is a kind of "abbreviation" for an e-mail address: whatever you place in the "Name" field of an addressbook entry can be used as if it were an e-mail address - Pegasus Mail will convert it to the proper address when it sends the message. So, if you have created an addressbook entry where the "Name" field is Bob Smith, and the address is Bob.Smith@mybusiness.com, then you can actually type "Bob Smith" into any address field in the program as if it were a valid address. Alias resolution is the process of turning the alias into the e-mail address that actually gets placed in the message.

The controls in this dialog are divided into two groups - one set which only change the behaviour of the currently-selected addressbook, and another set which changes the behaviour of all your addressbooks.

Apply the e-mail address instead of the alias  If you check this control, then Pegasus Mail will insert the e-mail address from the selected addressbook entries when you use them to create a new mail message. In the default state, with the control unchecked, Pegasus Mail will insert the "Name" field of the entry as an alias.

Do not resolve aliases in this addressbook  If you check this control, then Pegasus Mail will not check this addressbook when resolving aliases. You might want to do this for very large addressbooks, or addressbooks that you don't use much but keep only for reference purposes. Alias resolution increases the time it takes Pegasus Mail to send your messages, particularly if you have large addressbooks. Checking this control will automatically check the Apply the e-mail address instead of the alias control, because pasting the alias is only useful if the alias later gets resolved correctly when the mail is sent.

The group of controls affecting the behaviour of all your addressbooks have the same general functionality as the specific controls; checking either of them will disable the corresponding specific control.

Double-clicking an address starts a new message  Normally, when you double-click an addressbook entry in the addressbook window, Pegasus Mail takes this as meaning that you want to edit that entry. If you would prefer that a double-click be interpreted as meaning "Start a new message using this entry", check this control.


Editing your signatures

Pegasus Mail allows you to have up to nine different signatures for your messages; furthermore, each signature has at least four possible variations.

Why do I need multiple signatures?  Imagine for a moment that you fill two roles in your organization - one in your day-to-day role, and the other as the postmaster for your company. It's very likely that you might want your signature information to be different depending on the "hat you are wearing" at the time you send a mail message. Having multiple signatures allows you to choose the right one with a couple of simple keystrokes.

Why do I need "variations" on my signatures?  Pegasus Mail can send mail both locally, and to Internet addresses, so you may want to attach different information to messages sent locally from the messsages you send to the Internet (a different e-mail address, area codes in your phone number and so on). Furthermore, Pegasus Mail supports formatting in mail, and if you send a message with formatting, you might also want your signature to contain formatting as well. As a result, each of your "signatures" is actually a "signature set", consisting of at least four different variations:

1: A signature for plain text mail sent to a local address

2: A signature for formatted mail sent to a local address

3: A signature for plain text mail sent to an Internet address

4: A signature for formatted mail sent to an Internet address

You will typically need to add signature data for each variation in your signature.

To edit your signature:  First, select the signature you want to edit using the control labelled Signature set: this tells Pegasus Mail to select that group of variations for edting. Next, select each variant of your signature using the Variant control and enter the information you want your signature to contain. The formatted variants will use an editor that allows formatting, while the plain variants will not. You can copy text from one signature or variant using Ctrl+C and paste it into another using Ctrl+V.


Detecting and handling unacceptable content
Detecting messages based on their content

See also:	Defining a content control set

Creating content control rules

General-purpose rule-based mail filtering

Content control vs General filtering

Let's face it, the worst thing about e-mail is having to wade through dozens of unwanted messages offering unwanted "products" and "services" every day - this kind of unsolicited commercial e-mail (more commonly-known as "UCE", or "spam") has become the bane of our existence in the last couple of years. Unfortunately, while spam is obviously a social problem, not a technical one, legislators around the world have been extraordinarily lax, even incompetent in their attitude towards it. As a result, we're left with no real protection from spam, even though it wastes a huge part of the Internet's dwindling resources each day.

Pegasus Mail provides a fully-integrated approach to handling this type of unwanted mail, but takes the notion even further, by allowing you to check the content of any message in any way you wish: while most people will primarily use the content control feature to detect and handle unwanted "spam", the feature is powerful enough to be used to detect messages with almost any kind of content you wish.

Using the Content control option on the Tools menu, you can create sets of tests that Pegasus Mail applies to every message that passes through your new mail folder: each set consists of three separate and optional tests -

A blacklist check  You can create a blacklist of addresses and sites from which all mail is regarded as unacceptable.

A whitelist check  This is like the blacklist, except that all addresses and sites that appear in the list are never treated as unacceptable.

A rule set check  For messages that are not caught by the blacklist or whitelist, you can create arbitrarily complex sets of rules to test the content of the message. These rules are like Pegasus Mail's general-purpose filtering rules, but are more specific to the particular task of content evaluation, allowing unlimited numbers of "and" operations to link conditions together. Also, unlike general purpose rules, content testing rules are given a "weight": when all the rules have been processed, the weights of all the rules that were triggered are added together, and the final result is compared against a predetermined value you assign. If the combined weight of the message is greater than or equal to your preset value, the definition's action is activated. Content rule sets are stored as text files that can be easily modified using any text editor, or using the built-in rule editor. Note, though, that modifying rule sets is inherently quite technical and should probably only be attempted by experienced users, or users willing to spend some time "learning the ropes".

Each content control set has an action, which is applied when a message's calculated weight is greater than the threshhold you define for the set - this action can be to quarantine it in a folder for later examination, to forward it to an alternative address, mark it with a particular colour, or simply delete it (not usually recommended). You can have as many content control sets as you wish - Pegasus Mail will apply them in the order they appear in the list in the Content control configuration dialog: the first set that results in the message being quarantined, deleted, or otherwise removed from circulation will terminate content control processing for that message

Using the Content control dialog

To create a new content control definition, click the "Add" button - click here for detailed information on the various settings associated with a single control set.

To change the values for a single content control definition, select the definition in the list and click the "Edit" button.

To remove a content control definition, select it in the list and click the "Delete" button: Pegasus Mail will ask you if you want to delete the list and rule files associated with the definition as well as the definition itself - if you use the lists or rules in other definitions as well, you should not delete them.

To adjust the position of a content control definition in the list, select it and click the "Move up" or "Move down" button. The position of a definition in the list is important, because Pegasus Mail applies them in the order they appear, and stops applying definitions to a message when a definition results in the message being deleted or otherwise removed from circulation.

To enable or disable a definition simply click the "Enable" or "Disable" button. A disabled definition is not checked at all during processing.

Each content control definition is stored in a file with the extension .PNC in your home mailbox directory.

Using content control sets from Mercury

Pegasus Mail's companion product, Mercury, also supports content control. While you can use the same rule sets and blacklist/whitelist files with both Pegasus Mail and Mercury, you cannot share the actual set definitions themselves - Mercury stores all its sets in a single file and has a different range of actions that it can take.


Defining a content control set

See also:	Detecting messages based on their content

A Pegasus Mail Content Control set consists of four separate parts, each of which is edited in its own page within the Content Control editor dialog.

The "General" Page

Use this page to change the name that appears next to the definition in the list of definitions, and to define the types of mail to which the set should be applied.

The "Exceptions" Page

Use this page to create Blacklists, which identify senders whose mail should always be regarded as unacceptable, and Whitelists, which identify senders from whom you always want to accept mail.

The "Message Tests" Page

Use this page to maintain a set of rules that should be applied to mail messages that are not covered by either a whitelist or blacklist. The rules allow you to perform comprehensive tests on the actual content of the message, and can be linked together to create chains of tests. Each rule can have a weight, and after all the rules have been applied, Pegasus Mail adds up the combined weights of all the rules that matched the message: if the combined weight is greater than a value you specify, the message is marked as acceptable.

The "Actions" Page

On this page, you define what you want to happen to messages when they pass through the content control system. You can add headers to the message (which can later be detected by your filtering rules), and you can also choose other actions such as moving the message to a folder, forwarding it to another address, or deleting it.


Content control editor, the "General" page
The Content Control editor's "General" page

See also:	Detecting messages based on their content

Defining a Content Control set

The settings on this page allow you to change the name that appears next to the definition in the list of definitions, and to define the types of mail to which the set should be applied.

Name for this content control definition   Whatever you enter in this field is the name Pegasus Mail will use to identify this definition in the list shown in the Content control dialog. You can use any name you wish up to 50 characters in length.

Apply this definition to mail originating from   Allows you to choose what type of message this set should apply to. Any source will apply the definition to any mail passing through the queue; Local addresses only will apply the definition if the sender of the message has a local address (one with no domain part); and Non-local addresses only applies the definition to any mail where the sender's address is not local (i.e, the address does contain a domain part).


Content control editor, the "Exceptions" page
The Content Control Editor's "Exceptions" page

See also:	Detecting messages based on their content

Defining a Content Control set

Use this page to create Blacklists, which identify senders whose mail should always be regarded as unacceptable, and Whitelists, which identify senders from whom you always want to accept mail. Normally, Blacklists and Whitelists are regular Pegasus Mail distribution lists, which means that you can easily manipulate them using filtering rules, and with the right-click options "Add sender to mailing list" and "Remove sender from mailing list" while you are reading a message or browsing the contents of a folder. It is also possible to share system-wide Blacklists and Whitelists by putting them in a shared directory then entering the path to that directory in this window.

The Select button  Note that the Select button for Blacklists and Whitelists only allows you to work with your own Pegasus Mail distribution lists: if you want to use a system-wide list, or if you want to use your own file in here instead of a distribution list for some reason, then you will have to type in the path to the file manually.

Blacklist file   Enter in this field the name of a file in which Pegasus Mail should check for addresses and domains from which mail should always be regarded as unacceptable. The file need not exist already, and if you do not add a path, it will be automatically located in your home mailbox directory. Once you have entered the filename, you can edit the file by clicking the edit button next to the field. Within the blacklist file, you can use asterisks as wildcard characters to match entire domains or parts of domains: so, if you want to block all users from the domain spam.com, you would enter *@spam.com. Similarly, to block all mail from any user on any machine within the spam.com domain group, you would enter *@*.spam.com.

Whitelist file   Enter in this field the name of a file in which Pegasus Mail should check for addresses and domains from which mail should never be regarded as unacceptable. The file need not exist already, and if you do not add a path, it will be automatically located in your home mailbox directory. Once you have entered the filename, you can edit the file by clicking the edit button next to the field. You can use the same type of wildcard operations described for the blacklist file within the whitelist.


Content control editor, the "Message tests" page
The Content Control editor's "Message Tests" page

See also:	Detecting messages based on their content

Defining a Content Control set

Content control rules - syntax and usage

Use this page to maintain a set of rules that should be applied to mail messages that are not covered by either a whitelist or blacklist. The rules allow you to perform comprehensive tests on the actual content of the message, and can be linked together to create chains of tests. Each rule can have a weight, and after all the rules have been applied, Pegasus Mail adds up the combined weights of all the rules that matched the message: if the combined weight is greater than a value you specify, the message is marked as acceptable.

Content processing rules file   Enter in this field the name of a file containing rules written using the Pegasus Mail/Mercury content control filtering language - Pegasus Mail will apply these rules to any message that is not trapped by either the black or white lists. You can either edit the rule file by clicking the Edit button next to the field, or by using an external text editor.

Checking syntax  When you are editing your rule file, you can check that the rules you have entered are syntactically correct by clicking the Check Syntax button in the rule editor: if Pegasus Mail encounters any errors in the rule set, it will pop up a dialog describing the error and place the cursor on the line where the error occurred.

Weight at or above which this definition activates  Within the rule file, each rule can be assigned a weight, which is a numeric value; after all rules have been processed, Pegasus Mail adds together the weights assigned to every rule that matched the message - if the total weight is greater than or equal to the value you enter here, the message will be deemed "unacceptable" and will be subject to the action you define on the "Actions" page of the editor.

Check at most this many bytes in each message  If you enter a value greater than zero here, Pegasus Mail will only scan that many characters in each message when applying your content control rule set. This can reduce the time taken to perform content control, but can also result in less undesirable mail being detected. If you find that Content Control is taking a significant amount of time on your system (for instance, if you receive many large messages), entering a value of around 8000 in here will typically provide a good balance between speed and detection.

Note that when scanning multipart messages, Pegasus Mail adds together the size of each text section it scans to calculate the number of bytes it has scanned - it does not simply blindly read through the file.


Content control editor, the "Actions" page
The Content Control editor's "Actions" page

See also:	Detecting messages based on their content

Defining a Content Control set

On this page, you define what you want to happen to messages when they pass through the content control system. You can add headers to the message (which can later be detected by your filtering rules), and you can also choose other actions such as moving the message to a folder, forwarding it to another address, or deleting it.

If a message has a weight greater than the activation weight   When a message has a weight higher than the activation weight, either because it appears in the blacklist, or because its calculated weight after rule processing exceeds your predetermined value, the action you select here will be taken on the message. Some actions have a parameter (for instance, when you select "forwarding", the parameter is the address to which the message should be forwarded). The following actions are possible:

Take no further action  This action is useful if you want to turn off processing for a while, but still want the mail to be marked as "processed" in your new mail folder so there is not a vast delay in processing when you re-enable the set. This option is also useful if you only want standard headers added to messages as they pass through Content Control (see below for more information on adding standard headers) - you will typically select this case when you want to use filtering rules to handle such messages at a later stage.

Add an identifying header   If you select this action, Pegasus Mail will add an identifying header to the headers of the message but will not otherwise divert or alter the message. Whatever string you enter in the parameter field, Pegasus Mail will add as a header in the delivered message, completely unmodified (so, you must include the header keyword, the colon character, and the header body exactly as you want them to appear in the message). You can use this action as well as using the standard "graphical" and diagnostic headers (see below).

Forward the message, Forward the message then delete it   This action will divert the message to the address you specify in the "parameter" field. When you select Forward and delete, this action will cause all content control processing to terminate for the message, because it will be effectively removed from circulation.

Move the message to a folder   This action will take the message and save it in the folder shown in the "parameter" field. You can choose the destination folder by clicking the "Set" button. The message will then be deleted from the queue, and no further content processing or delivery will occur on it.

Move the message to a folder by name   This action is like the more normal Move operation, except that you provide a name for the folder and Pegasus Mail will create it if it does not already exist. This can be handy if you get into the habit of deleting the destination folder from time to time (for instance, before you exit from the program), since it's usually easier and faster to delete a whole folder of unwanted mail after you've given it a quick scan than it is to delete each individual message from a folder. Note that if you have two folders in your folder list with the same name but in different parts of the folder hierarchy, Pegasus Mail will use the first one it finds as the destination of this rule.

Delete the message   Just like it says - this action deletes the message, end of story. All content control processing ceases at this point, and the message is gone forever. We suggest you use this action with considerable care.

Header addition and advanced options

As well as taking the action you specify on the message, Pegasus Mail can add certain headers to mail to indicate the results of Content Control processing.

Add graphical X-UC-Weight headers for unacceptable mail  When this control is checked, Pegasus Mail will add a header called X-UC-Weight ("UC" stands for unacceptable content) to any message that has a weight greater than the activation weight for the set (see the Message tests page for more information on how the activation weight is calculated). The X-UC-Weight is graphical, in that it contains a little graph that indicates how unacceptable the message actually was. The graph consists of one to four hash characters, with the following meaning:

[####]	The message has been Blacklisted, or has a weight greater than 9990.
[### ]	The message's weight is more than three times greater than the activation weight for the set (in other words, it's a stinker).
[##  ]	The message's weight is more than twice but less than three times the activation weight for the set.
[#   ]	The message's weight is more than the activation weight for the set, but less than twice the activation weight.

After the graphic, the actual weight of the message is shown in brackets.

Add graphical X-AC-Weight headers for acceptable mail  It is possible to assign negative weights to a message during content control processing - in fact, this is what the whitelist does (it assigns a weight of -9999). If a message comes through the content control process with a negative weight, it is regarded as Acceptable - something important or desirable. If you have rules in place that have negative weights to promote the value of a message, you can instruct Pegasus Mail to add a header called X-AC-Weight ("AC" stands for acceptable content) to any messages that end up with a negative weight. This can be a very handy way of highlighting messages with important content - you can use filtering rules later in the process to detect the X-AC-Weight header and take appropriate actions. Like the X-UC-Weight header (see above), The X-AC-Weight header is graphical, in that it contains a little graph that indicates how acceptable the message actually was. The graph consists of one to four hash characters, with the same meanings as in the X-UC-Weight graph above, except that the values are negative: so, [### ] would mean that the weight of the message is less than (3 * the activation weight * -1). Similarly, [####] means that the message has been explicitly whitelisted, or has a value lower than -9990.

Add a diagnostic header showing which rules were matched  When this control is checked and a rule generates any non-zero value after Content Control processing, Pegasus Mail will insert a header called X-CC-Diagnostic into the message: this header contains a summary of the rules that triggered during processing, and is a useful way of working out why a message was given the weight it received. Each rule is written into the header in an abbreviated form, unless it has a Tag defined, in which case the tag is written into the header instead. For each rule written, the weight associated with that rule is shown in brackets as well.


Content control rules - syntax and usage

See also:	Detecting messages based on their content

Pegasus Mail and its companion mail server, Mercury, share a content control rule language that has been designed to be powerful, yet also simple and flexible: it is based on the use of regular expressions, which describe patterns of text within the message.

Syntax and Semantics

A rule set consists of a sequence of tests applied sequentially to the message. You can use the following tests:

IF SUBJECT CONTAINS "string" WEIGHT x

IF SUBJECT MATCHES "regular_expression" WEIGHT x

IF SENDER CONTAINS "string" WEIGHT x

IF SENDER MATCHES "regular_expression" WEIGHT x

IF RECIPIENT CONTAINS "string" WEIGHT x

IF RECIPIENT MATCHES "regular_expression" WEIGHT x

IF HEADER "headername" CONTAINS "string" WEIGHT x

IF HEADER "headername" MATCHES "regular_expression" WEIGHT x

IF BODY CONTAINS "string" WEIGHT x

IF BODY MATCHES "regular_expression" WEIGHT x

IF EXISTS "headername" WEIGHT x

You can negate a test by using IFNOT instead of IF: similarly, you can link multiple tests together by using AND, ANDNOT, OR or ORNOT instead of IF in each test following the first.

Any test that uses the CONTAINS qualifier does a simple string search instead of a regular expression match: this is a little faster and a little easier to understand than the regular-expression based versions of the rules. Note that CONTAINS tests are completely literal - no regular expression matching of any kind occurs. CONTAINS tests are always case-insensitive - so, the strings "foo" and "FOO" are identical as far as a CONTAINS test is concerned.

Wordlist tests - HAS and HASALL  There are also some more specialized tests you can use to test for groups of words in a message - HAS and HASALL:

IF xx HAS "wordlist" WEIGHT x

IF xx HASALL "wordlist" WEIGHT x

(Note that "xx" can be "subject", "sender", "recipient", "header" or "body") Both of these tests accept a list of words separated by commas as their parameter. The HAS test will succeed if the message contains any of the words in the list, while the HASALL test will succeed if the message contains all the words in the list, in any order.

Example: to detect a message containing "viagra", "prescription" and "erectile"

IF BODY HASALL "Viagra, prescription, erectile" weight 50

Specialized tests  Pegasus Mail has a number of specialized tests that are specifically designed for detecting spam (unsolicited commercial e-mail); these tests examine special characteristics of the message that could not otherwise be easily detected using standard regular expressions. Specialized testing can trigger on things like Lazy HTML content (messages containing links to graphics instead of the graphics themselves), excessive use of HTML comments and other telltale signs of spam. For more information on the specialized tests, click here.

Negating and linking tests (NOT, AND and OR operators):  You can negate a test by using IFNOT instead of IF: similarly, you can link multiple tests together by using AND, ANDNOT, OR or ORNOT instead of IF in each test following the first.

Substring matching vs Regular expressions:  Any test that uses the CONTAINS keyword to perform a substring search does a simple string search instead of a regular expression match: this is a little faster and a little easier to understand than the regular-expression based versions of the rules. Note that CONTAINS tests are completely literal - no regular expression matching of any kind occurs. CONTAINS tests are always case-insensitive - so, the strings "foo" and "FOO" are identical as far as a CONTAINS test is concerned.

Detecting obfuscated text:   A common trick in spam is to embed unusual characters in words that commonly trigger anti-spam routines - like "vi@gra", or "pen1s"; indeed, this technique is now becoming so pervasive that Pegasus Mail includes a special keyword just to handle it. When defining HAS, HASALL or CONTAINS rules, you can add the keyword OBFUSCATED (you can abbreviate this to OB if you wish) before the WEIGHT keyword in the rule - like this:

IF SUBJECT CONTAINS "viagra" OBFUSCATED WEIGHT 51

This rule will detect any of the following words in the subject line of a message: "viagra", "v-i-a-g-r-a", "vi@gra", "V 1 -@- G R A" or even "_v$1&@(G*r*A".

If you want to test for a phrase when using the OBFUSCATED keyword, you must enter the phrase in the rule without spaces: so, if you wanted to check for any obfuscated version of the phrase "increase the length of", you would have to enter it like this:

IF CONTENT CONTAINS "increasethelengthof" OB WEIGHT 51

Note that you cannot use the OBFUSCATED keyword on a MATCHES test - if you do, Pegasus Mail will simply ignore the keyword and match using the expression you provide.

CAUTION  You should exercise a certain amount of caution when using obfuscated tests, because there is a slightly increased risk of false positive matching (i.e, having two adjacent words which while harmless on their own, add together to form a trigger word).

Tags are optional, and can appear instead of or after a WEIGHT statement. The name parameter to a Tag statement must always appear in double-quote marks, as shown in the example above.

Weights   Each rule can be assigned an optional weight, which is an indication of how much value the rule has in the overall assessment of the message. When rule processing is complete, Pegasus Mail adds together the weights of all the rules that triggered successfully and compares the result with the activation weight you specified in the Content Control definition (on the Message tests page of the editor). Weights can be either positive or negative: a negative weight can be used to adjust the ranking of a message that might otherwise be classed as unacceptable. Negative weights can also be used to pick out important or significant mail - Pegasus Mail has a facility for adding a special header identifying such "acceptable" mail.

Weights are the key to the power of Pegasus Mail's Content Control, because they allow you to build an assessment of a message based on many criteria then look at the aggregate of those criteria for a result. So, tests that might indicate that a message is spam when seen in conjunction with other indicators can be given low weights, allowing the additive effect of several rules to damn a genuinely unacceptable message without discriminating against a message that simply contains one unfortunately-chosen word.

Tags  Any rule can have a Tag, or a name used to describe it: the tag is used by Pegasus Mail when you have told it to construct a diagnostic header for messages, and is useful when the test that the rule is performing is either very verbose or very obscure, or when the actual text of the rule may contain offensive material.

Example:

IF BODY HAS "Fuck, Shit" Weight 100 Tag "Offensive language"

In this example, when Pegasus Mail prepares the "X-CC-Diagnostic" header in the message, it will format it as  Offensive language (100)  instead of  Body Has "Fuck, Shit" (100),  which may be offensive to some people.

Tags are optional, and can appear instead of or after a WEIGHT statement. The name parameter to a Tag statement must always appear in double-quote marks, as shown in the example above.

Case sensitivity and layout  The rule language itself is not case-sensitive, so the following tests are both semantically valid:

If Sender contains "foobar" weight 80

IF SENDER CONTAINS "foobar" WEIGHT 80

Furthermore, whitespace is ignored, so you can layout your tests in whatever way you feel is clearest: as an example, the following is a completely syntactically valid test:

If sender

contains "Foobar"

Weight 80

The only restriction is that neither a string nor a keyword can cross a line boundary; so, the following test is invalid:

If sender con

tains foobar Weight 80

Examples:

1: To detect a message where the sender's address contains "spam.com"

IF SENDER CONTAINS "spam.com" WEIGHT 50

2: To detect a message where the sender's address contains "spam.com" and the body of the mesage contains the word "viagra"

IF SENDER CONTAINS "spam.com"

AND BODY CONTAINS "viagra" WEIGHT 50

3: To detect a message where the sender's address contains "spam.com" and either the subject field or the message body contains the word "viagra"

IF SENDER CONTAINS "spam.com"

AND SUBJECT CONTAINS "viagra"

OR BODY CONTAINS "viagra" WEIGHT 50

4: To detect a message where the sender's address contains "spam.com", the message has no "Date" header, and the Subject or the Body contains "viagra"

IF SENDER CONTAINS "spam.com"

ANDNOT EXISTS "Date"

AND SUBJECT CONTAINS "viagra"

OR BODY CONTAINS "viagra" WEIGHT 50

Making the most of regular expressions

The CONTAINS test does a simple string search, looking for the exact text you provide anywhere in the message. Often, however, you may want to look for patterns of text rather than exact strings: you can do this by using a MATCHES test instead of a CONTAINS test, because MATCHES tests use a special pattern-matching mechanism called a regular expression to describe the general form of text you want to find.

Using regular expressions, you can detect extremely complex patterns of text within the messages you filter. Pegasus Mail's regular expression uses what is known as a metasyntax to describe the pattern you want to match: in the metasyntax, certain characters have special meanings that Pegasus Mail applies to the text it is testing. The following special characters are recognized in your expressions:

*	Match any number of any characters

?	Match any single character

+	Match one or more occurrence of the last character

[ ]	Encloses a group of characters to match. Ranges can

be specified in the group using '-'.

/w	Match zero or more whitespace characters

/W	Match one or more whitespace characters

/c	Toggle case sensitivity (case-insensitive by default)

/s	Toggle whitespace stripping - ignore all whitespace in the source

/b	Match a start-of-word boundary (including start-of-line)

/B	Match an end-of-word boundary (including end-of-line)

/x	Toggle "ignore-non-alpha" mode - ignore non alphanumeric characters

/X	Toggle "ignore-spam" mode - ignore non-alphanumeric except @ and |

You can use any number of metacharacters in an expression - so, for example, to detect all users at any system within the domain "spam.com", you could use the regular expression

*@*.spam.com

The set operation is especially powerful, particularly when combined with the repeat occurrence operator: so, to detect a message where the subject line ends in a group of three or more digits (a common indicator of a spam message) you would use this expression:

Subject:*[0-9][0-9][0-9]+

In this expression, we use the "*" operator to match the general text within the subject line, then we use the set "[0-9]" three times to force a minimum of three digits, and a "+" operator to detect any extra digits following the third one. Because there is no "*" at the end of the expression, the digits must therefore be the last characters on the line - if there is any text following them, the expression will fail.

Normally, Pegasus Mail compares all text on a case-insensitive basis - that means that it will regard "hello" and "HELLO" as being the same. In some cases, though, the case of the text you're matching can be important, so the "/c" operator allows you to toggle Pegasus Mail between case insensitive and case-sensitive comparisons. So, to detect the string "FREE!" anywhere within the subject line of a message, you would use this expression:

Subject:/c*FREE!*

In this expression, the expression will only succeed if the word "free" appears in uppercase characters.

Important note: matching anywhere within the target text   Pegasus Mail's regular expression parser is designed to start at the beginning of the text it is evaluating and to stop matching at the end. As a result, if you want to find a regular expression anywhere within the text you are examining, you need to start and end the expression with an asterisk operator (*). To illustrate why this is necessary, consider the following three regular expressions:

Wearing a fedora hat

Wearing a fedora hat*

*Wearing a fedora hat.

The first will only match if the target text consists only of the string "Wearing a fedora hat": if there is text before or after the string, the match will fail. The second will match only if the text starts with the string "Wearing a fedora hat". If there is any text before the string, the match will fail, but the "*" at the end ensures that any text following the string will not prevent a match. The last example will match only if the text ends with "Wearing a fedora hat" - again, the "*" at the start of the expression will match anything prior to the string.

If you want to find the expression anywhere it occurs in the target text, you need to enter it as

*wearing a fedora hat*

If you forget to add the leading and trailing * operators, the rule will typically not work, and this error can be quite difficult to spot when you're simply reading the source file.


Specialized Content Control Tests

See also:	Detecting messages based on their content

Content control rules - syntax and usage

Pegasus Mail has a number of specialized tests that are specifically designed for detecting spam (unsolicited commercial e-mail); these tests examine special characteristics of the message that could not otherwise be easily detected using standard regular expressions.

Specialized tests are entered like any other rule in the rule set, and have the following general form:

IF TEST "Testname-and-parameters" WEIGHT x

The name of the test and any parameters it requires are entered as a single string after the keyword TEST: doing things this way allows tests to be added in future without breaking existing copies of Pegasus Mail. Tests are case-insensitive unless specifically noted below.

The following tests are available at present:

LazyHTML  This test will trigger if the message is an HTML message that contains an IMG link to a remote graphic - apart from being extraordinarily rude and annoying, this type of link is a very reliable indicator of spam. Two parameters are available for this test - Tolerant and Strict;  the Tolerant parameter tells Pegasus Mail that a message may contain one (and no more than one) Lazy HTML graphic link without triggering, while the Strict parameter tells Pegasus Mail that any Lazy HTML is to cause a trigger.

Example:	If Test "LazyHTML Tolerant" weight 51

HasIFrame  This test will trigger if the message contains an HTML IFrame tag - this is an almost 100% certain indication of a virus-generated message containing viral payload designed to take advantage of an infamous activation bug in Microsoft Outlook. There is no imaginable justification for a valid e-mail message to contain an IFrame tag. This test takes no parameters.

Example:	If Test "HasIFrame" weight 51

HTMLComments  This test allows you to trigger if a message has more than a certain number of HTML comments. Spam often uses HTML comments to break up keywords that would otherwise be detected as "naughty": because Pegasus Mail strips HTML tags before applying content control testing, this type of trick won't work with it, but the presence of all those comments is a dead giveaway that the message is spam. The parameter to this test is the number of comments above which Pegasus Mail should trigger the test.

Example:	If Test "HTMLComments 20" weight 51

Garbage  This test simply counts the number of characters in the message that are not standard ASCII characters: if the percentage of non-ASCII characters is higher than the value you specify, the test will trigger. This test is an almost infallible way of detecting Russian and Asian spam, but you will need to be careful if you receive legitimate mail from these regions (we recommend whitelisting senders who might need to send you messages like this). The parameter to this test is a percentage value of the whole message that must be non-ASCII before a trigger occurs.

Example:	If Test "Garbage 25" weight 51

Other arbitrary tests may be added in future versions of Pegasus Mail.


Content control and General filtering compared

See also:	Detecting messages based on their content

On the surface, it may seem strange that Pegasus Mail includes both a well-established general filtering system and also a content-control system: a casual analysis suggests that the two systems end up doing pretty much the same things. In fact, though, while the two systems have quite a lot in common, they aim to achieve different results.

Content control is focused on building up an overall impression of the contents of a mail message: the weight calculation it does is the key to this, since it allows you to collect different aspects of the message incrementally and judge the whole based on the sum of its parts. While it would be possible to do this using general-purpose filtering rules, it would be very complex to manage and significantly slower.

General filtering, on the other hand, is intended to catch specific attributes of a message, such as its size, or sender information; where the content control aims to produce a broad picture of the message, general filtering tends to focus on the specifics. It is true that you could use a content control set to identify messages from particular people and file them in your folders, but it's an ungainly and slow way of doing it.

In short, then, the two different filtering mechanisms are optimized for different tasks - they are designed to complement each other, having strengths and weaknesses that balance out to produce a well-integrated whole.

In practical terms...

Here are the primary practical differences between filtering and content control in Pegasus Mail:

*	Content control is substantially slower than filtering, because it always has to check the entire body of the message.
*	Content control is only ever applied to a message once - if the message is still in the folder the next time the content control definition is applied, the message will be excluded from the check; filtering, by contrast, is applied to every message every time.
*	Content control is optimized to handle multiple conditions in a single test using AND and OR Boolean operators. Filtering rules can use these operators, but not as easily.
*	Content control allows you to build up a weight for the message based on the number of conditions that are matched, and allows you to give some conditions more weight than others. General filtering has no exact equivalent of this.
*	General filtering allows a much wider range of actions than content control.
*	General filtering provides easy ways to test almost every attribute of a message, including size, age, formatting and headers.
*	General filters can be tied to any folder, where content control only applies to the new mail folder.


Message Templates

Imagine that you're the webmaster for your Internet site; you receive a huge amount of mail, for much of which the answers are essentially the same... You laboriously reply to each message, removing the pieces you don't want, typing in your canned response, then sending the message. Wouldn't it be good if there was some way of automating all of this? Well, there is -- Message Templates.

A Message Template is simply a type of script that tells Pegasus Mail how to compose a mail message. The template script commands allow you to set any address or feature field, include the original message for replies (or a portion of the message), change or modify addresses, add attachments and generally give you complete control over the shape of your automatically-generated message. What's even better, you can define variables in templates: when you use the template, Pegasus Mail will prompt you for values for the variables it contains; the script language can then take the values you enter, manipulate them, and insert them seamlessly into the generated message (think of this as a kind of mail merge, where Pegasus Mail prompts you for the text you want to merge into the message).

Using a message template, you can generate a complex mail message and send it with only a couple of keystrokes.

The two types of message template

Using message templates within Pegasus Mail

Creating templates using the template editor

Template script language reference


Message templates,The two types of message template
The two types of message template

See also:	Message Templates

Creating templates using the template editor

Pegasus Mail supports two types of templates - those used to create new messages from scratch, and those used to create replies to messages. Template files are simply plain text files containing template script language commands, one per line.

Templates used to create new messages have the extension .PM5; the name portion can be anything you wish. Templates used to create replies to messages have the extension .PM6; once again, the name portion can be anything you wish. Generally, you do not have to be worried about the actual details of the template name or extension - Pegasus Mail's template editor will handle them for you.

For both types of template, the script language's TITLE command must be the first line in the file, so that Pegasus Mail can show the name in its selector window. Pegasus Mail will not burrow through a template file looking for a TITLE command if it is not on the first line.

Template files can be located in your home mailbox directory, or may be placed in the same directory as the Pegasus Mail executable program, in which case they become system-wide and are made available to all users running that copy of the program. There is no effective limit on the

number of templates you can define.


Message templates,Using message templates within Pegasus Mail
Using message templates within Pegasus Mail

See also:	Message Templates

Creating templates using the template editor

You can create a new message using a template by selecting Template... from the New Message submenu of the File menu, or by pressing <Ctrl+F7>. This will open a dialog listing all the templates available on your system. Select the template you want to use by highlighting it and clicking Open, or by double-clicking it. A window will open prompting you for any variables the template uses; at this point, you can choose whether to open a new message editor window filled out with the message created by the template, or simply to send the message without further ado.

You can use a template to create a reply to a message in one of two ways:

1: Right-click the message and choose Reply using template... from

   the popup menu that appears.

2: Highlight the message, then hold down <Shift> as you press the

   "Reply" button, or else hold down <Shift> and press the R key.


Message templates,Creating templates using the template editor
Creating templates using the template editor

See also:	Message Templates

Template script language reference

Creating a template script is essentially a simple form of programming. If you have ever used a script language such as Visual Basic then the Pegasus Mail template script language shouldn't be very challenging for you, but even if you've never done any programming at all, the process should be significantly simplified for you by using Pegasus Mail's template editor.

The template editor allows you to edit your template script in an editing area, and also has a list of the possible script language commands at the left-hand side of its window. Double-clicking any of the commands in the list will open an Editing Assistance Dialog, which will prompt you for each of the pieces of information required by the command and will then insert the completed command into the script buffer for you.

Using the Editing Assistants simplifies template creation considerably because you no longer have to remember the syntax for the commands, and any special handling (such as quoting string literals or filenames that contain special characters) is done for you automatically.

To use the template editor, choose Template editor from the Pegasus Mail Tools menu. A dialog will open asking you what type of template you want to edit - choose either a template used to create new messages from scratch, or a template used to generate replies to other messages. You will then be able to select a template from those already present on your computer, or create a new template.

Once you have selected a template to edit, the template editor dialog will open. The script of your template will appear in the large editable area on the right of the window, and the Editing Assistance list will appear on the left of the window. You can either type commands and text straight into the editing area, or else you can create a template command by double-clicking the command you want to create in the list. When you use the Editing Assistants, the new command you create will be inserted at the cursor position if the cursor is at the start of a line, or on a line following the current line if the cursor is anywhere else.

Once you have finished creating your template, click the Save button to save the changes you have made. You can use your modified template immediately in any of the ways supported by Pegasus Mail.


Message templates,Template script language reference
Template script language reference

See also:	Message Templates

Creating templates using the template editor

General topics:

String literals and filenames

Optional or omitted parameters

Textual substitutions

Descriptions of specific script commands:

Title <string>

Helpfile <filename> [section]

String <name> ["Default"] ["Prompt"] [len] [flags]

Creating list variables using the STRING command

Set <field> = <"value">

Set variable <variable_name> = <"value">

Insert <"string">

Inserting a block of text - the Body/EndBody commands

Include <filename> [count] [flags] or Include message [count] [flags]

Attach <filename> [type] [encoding] ["Desc"]

Picture <flags> <filename>

Text <flags> <"string">

The extract command - decompose an address

Lookup <"string"> <var1> <var2> <var3>

Chain <"filename">


Message templates,String literals and filenames
String literals and filenames

See also:	Message Templates

Template script language reference

String literals

Most template script commands in the language accept strings as parameters. String literals of this kind must be entered in quote characters if they contain spaces or special characters.

For example, if you want to use the "insert" command to write the string

Mary had a little lamb

into an outgoing message, you would need to enter the command like this:

insert "Mary had a little lamb"

since otherwise, only the word "Mary" would be inserted.

If your string contains a quote character, or a backslash character, then you will need to perform a small amount of conversion. So, if you want to insert the string

Mary had a "little" lamb

you would have to enter the "insert" command like this:

insert "Mary had a \"little\" lamb"

These rules for string construction apply in all places throughout the script language. If you are using the Pegasus Mail template editor to create your templates, it will perform all the necessary conversion and quoting of the string for you, saving you the trouble of remembering to do so.

Filenames

Filenames are treated as strings by the script language, and as such are subject to the same rules. In particular note that long filenames containing spaces will need to be quoted, and that '\' characters will need to be doubled in file paths... So, if you wanted to use the include command to include the file

c:\docs\Mary's "little" lamb

You would need to form the command as

include "c:\\docs\\Mary's \"little\" lamb"

Once again, the built-in template editor will take care of these conversion issues for you as required.


Message templates,Optional or omitted parameters
Optional or omitted parameters

See also:	Message Templates

Template script language reference

Some script commands are shown as having "optional" parameters. This notion needs some clarification... A parameter may be omitted only if all the parameters following it are also omitted - it is not possible to omit only one parameter from the middle of a list.

So, using the "include" command as an example, if you wanted to include a file in quoted format, you would have to include the "0" value for the count parameter as well.


Message templates,Textual substitutions
Textual substitutions

See also:	Message Templates

Template script language reference

Practically any string parameter to a script command can contain textual substitutions: these are special character sequences that are replaced by variables or other information when they are encountered. Pegasus Mail recognizes the following textual substitutions in any place where they may be used:

~vvariable_name~	The current value of a template script variable
~z	A single newline (CR/LF)
~f	The "from" field of the original message
~s	The "subject" field of the original message
~r	The preferred reply address for the message
~kheadername~	Any header from the original message
~n	The current user's basic username
~i	The current user's Internet e-mail address
~8	The current user's username truncated to 8 chars
~p	The current user's personal name preference
~d	A random integer expressed as 4 hex digits
~y	The current date and time in RFC822 format
~%name%	The value of environment variable %name%
~lname~l	The user's address looked up from a synonym file
~a	The Pegasus Mail executable directory
~h	The current user's home mailbox directory
~w	The current user's new mailbox directory
~~	A single tilde (~)

Examples:

Assuming that the current user's name is "david" and the variable "sub" has been assigned the value "your order", the string

"This is a message from ~8, regarding ~vsub~"

would yield the following string after substitution:

"This is a message from david, regarding your order."

Command substitution is the single most powerful feature of the scripting language used for templates, and a good understanding of what it can do is essential for writing useful scripts.


The TITLE command

See also:	Message Templates

Template script language reference

Syntax:  title <string>

Set the title for the template file. string can be any string up to 50 characters in length, and can contain all command substitutions except for variables, which are not defined at the time this command is processed.

This command must be the first command in a template and must be present.


Message templates,The HELPFILE command
The HELPFILE command

See also:	Message Templates

Template script language reference

Syntax:  helpfile <filename> [section]

Set the help file which should be accessed when the user clicks the Help button in the variable prompt dialog. filename should be a full reference to any valid Windows Help file (*.HLP) on your system, and may contain all command substitions except for variables, which will have not been defined at the time this command is processed. section is an optional integer value that indicates the context help section within the help file that should be presented when the help button is pressed. If it is absent, section 0, the table of contents, is presented.


Message templates,The STRING command - declaring variables
The STRING command - declaring variables

See also:	Message Templates

Template script language reference

Syntax:  string <name> ["Default"] ["Prompt"] [len] [flags]

Define a variable for use within the script. A maximum of 20 variables may be defined for any script. name is the name for the variable; it must not contain spaces, and is not case-sensitive (so var1 and VAR1 are considered the same). All the parameters following the name parameter are optional, and you can end the string early if you wish (you cannot omit a parameter if you need to supply a parameter following it on the line). "default" is a string which should be used as a default value for the variable: if it contains spaces or special characters, it must be enclosed in quotes (see String literals and filenames for more information). If this parameter is omitted, the default value is an empty string. "prompt" is the string Pegasus Mail should place next to the editing field in the variable prompt dialog. If omitted or zero-length, Pegasus Mail will not prompt the user for a value for this variable. "len" is an integer defining the maximum allowable length of this variable. If omitted, the default is "no limit". "flags" defines the format and type of the variable: the following flag values are available:

multiline	creates a multi-line variable
address	creates an e-mail address variable
filename	creates a filename variable
password	creates a password variable
list	creates a list - click here for more details
uppercase	specifies that the variable must be all in uppercase

Only "uppercase" may be used with other values.


Message templates,Creating list variables
Creating list variables using the STRING command

See also:	Message Templates

Template script language reference

When you use the list flag in a string command, you create a variable that has a list of possible values from which the user can select. list variables require that you provide a default value for the variable, which contains the list of possible values the variable can have. The first character in the default value should be the character used to separate the list items from each other, and the remainder of the default value should be the items, separated by that character.

Example:

You want to allow the user to select from the values "Red", "Green" and "Blue", contained in a list variable called v1: your string statement would look like this:

string v1 ";Red;Green;Blue" "Select a colour" 0 list


Message templates,Using the SET command to set message fields
Using the SET command to set message fields

See also:	Message Templates

Template script language reference

Syntax:  set <field> = <"value">

This form of the set command sets a field within the mail message being generated by the template to the specified value. field may be one of the following:

1: fields that accept a string value

to

cc

bcc

reply-to

subject

identity

2: fields that accept a 'Y' or 'N' value:

urgent

confirm-reading

confirm-delivery

copyself

volatile

mime

3: fields that accept a special value:

header (a fully-formed e-mail header including the keyword)

encrypted ("encryptor_name", "password", "flags")

When encrypting a template message, use the encrypted field with the set command. "encryptor" is the name of the module that should be used for encryption - to use the Pegasus Mail built in encryptor, use the name "builtin". "password" is the password for the message - this can be up to 96 characters in length. "flags" controls the type of encryption performed; to encrypt a message, set it to 1; to add a digital signature to the message, set it to 4; to perform both operations, set it to 5. Note that you cannot set the encrypted field using Pegasus Mail's template editor's assisted editing feature - you must do it by manually typing it into the editor area.

The "volatile" parameter tells Pegasus Mail to write the message directly to final form when sending using the built-in SMTP transport. You will need to set this to "Y" if you are attaching files that will be deleted once the template has been processed.

All textual substitutions are supported for the value parameter. To copy the value of one variable to another, use an expression containing the ~v textual substitution, like this:

set variable v1 = "~vv2~"


Message templates,Using the SET command to assign values to variables
Using the SET command to assign values to variables

See also:	Message Templates

Template script language reference

Syntax:  set variable <variable_name> = <"value">

This form of the "set" command changes the current contents of any defined variable to the value you specify in value.

All textual substitutions are supported for the value parameter. To copy the value of one variable to another, use an expression containing the ~v textual substitution, like this:

set variable v1 = "~vv2~"


Message templates,Using the INSERT command to add data to a message
Using the INSERT command to add data to a message

See also:	Message Templates

Template script language reference

Syntax:  insert <"string">

Write data into the body of the message being generated. string can contain any command substitution: if it does not contain a ~z substitution to force a line break, then the next insert command will write data onto the same line in the body. A single insert command may not insert more than 1024 characters into the message body.


Message templates,Inserting a block of text - the Body/EndBody commands
Inserting a block of text - the Body/EndBody commands

See also:	Message Templates

Template script language reference

Syntax:	Body

<text>

EndBody

The Body and EndBody commands provide an easy and convenient way of entering a large chunk of multi-line text into the body of the mail message being generated by the template. Start the block of text with Body on a line of its own, then enter the text you want to appear in the message, exactly as you want it to appear. You do NOT have to quote strings or follow any of the requirements for string literals and filenames in the text you enter, and you can include any textual substitution you wish in the block of text. When you have finished entering the text, start a new line and place the word EndBody on that line, on its own.

Example:

Body

This is a sample of text. These two lines

will be entered exactly as shown here.

EndBody


Message templates,Including a file or the text of the original message
Including a file or the text of the original message

See also:	Message Templates

Template script language reference

Syntax:	include <filename> [count] [flags]

or	include message [count] [flags]

Include either a text file, or the body from the message to which a reply is being generated. The text from the file or message is included as-is into the message body - textual substitutions are not performed on the included data, but if you are including a file, the filename parameter may contain any valid textual substitutions. If count is present and non-zero, only that many lines of the included file or the body of the included message will be read. The flags item can be any combination of the following values:

quoted	"Comment-out" the included text using "> "
noheaders	If the inclusion is a message, omit its RFC822 headers
keyheaders	If the inclusion is a message, include only "significant" headers
nobody	If the inclusion is a message, omit the message body
message	Use when including files that contain data formatted as a mail message.


Message templates,Attaching files to a message
Attaching files to a template-generated message

See also:	Message Templates

Template script language reference

Syntax:  attach <filename> [type] [encoding] ["Desc"]

Attach a file to the message being generated by the template. Only "filename" is a mandatory parameter - the others can be omitted and are sensibly defaulted. Any valid textual substitution can be used in the filename. If the filename contains spaces, it must be quoted according to the rules described in string literals and filenames  Type is any string describing the type of the file - for instance, "RTF_FILE". It must not contain spaces and is not constrained to the list of possible values inside Pegasus Mail itself. Encoding is an integer value that specifies how the file should be encoded for transfer; the following values are defined

0  (Pegasus Mail decides),

1  (No encoding - very dangerous)

2  (ASCII text),

3  (UUencoding)

4  (BinHex 4.0)

5  (Basic MIME encoding)

Unless you are very sure of what you are doing, use 0 for encoding. Desc is a textual description of the file; it may contain any text, including spaces, and is truncated at 63 characters.


Message templates,Adding a picture to the prompt dialog
Adding a picture to a template's prompt dialog

See also:	Message Templates

Template script language reference

Syntax:  picture <flags> <filename>

Add a picture at the top of the variable prompt dialog. The picture specified by filename must be a Windows BMP file in 16 or 256 colours: owing to quirks in the way Windows handles 256 colour bitmaps, we strongly recommend that you use 16-colour bitmaps if your display runs in 256 colour mode or lower. For the Win16 version of Pegasus Mail, the bitmap must not be larger than 60,000 bytes. You may use any textual substitution in the filename parameter. The bitmap is centred horizontally in the display and the dialog will adjust size to fit the vertical dimensions of the image. Exactly one image may be added to the dialog.

flags will be used in future to offer extra formatting options. For now, it is unused, must be present, and should be set to zero.

Note: if the filename contains spaces or special characters, it must be quoted according to the rules described in string literals and filenames.


Message templates,Adding text to the prompt dialog
Adding text to a template's prompt dialog

See also:	Message Templates

Template script language reference

Syntax:  text <flags> <"string">

Add a line of descriptive text to the dialog presented to prompt for script variables. The line of text is added above any variable editing fields, and below any picture defined using a picture command. You may specify up to 10 lines of descriptive text, and each line may contain any valid textual substitutions. The flags parameter will be used in future, but should currently be set to zero.

To introduce a blank line between groups of lines, use a text statement with an empty quoted string - like this:

text "".


Message templates,Using the EXTRACT command to decompose addresses
Using the EXTRACT command to decompose addresses

See also:	Message Templates

Template script language reference

Syntax:

extract address <var1> <var2>

or 	extract text <var1> <var2>

or 	extract user <var1> <var2>

or 	extract domain <var1> <var2>

Extract a component from an e-mail address. var1 refers to the variable containing the address to be manipulated. var2 is the variable where the result of the manipulation should be placed - it can be the same as "var1".

extract address	yields the minimum form of the e-mail address
extract text	yields the personal name field from the address
extract user	yields the simple user name portion of the address
extract domain	yields the domain portion of the address


Message templates,Looking up values in lists
Using LOOKUP to get a text item from a list variable

See also:	Message Templates

Template script language reference

Syntax:  lookup "string" <var1> <var2> <var3>

Attempt to locate the string string in the list variable var1; if a match is found, note the position in the list where the item was matched, then copy the item at the same ordinal position in the list variable var2 into the variable var3. It is an error for either var1 or var2 to be anything other than a list variable. If string cannot be found in var1, variable var3 is not changed.

Example:

list variable v1 contains "Monday", "Tuesday" and "Wednesday"

list variable v2 contains "Open", "Closed" and "Open".

The command

lookup "Tuesday" v1 v2 v3

will result in variable v3 containing the value "Closed".

A common form of this command will use the current value of "var1" as the string parameter, using the command substitution "~vvar1~".


Message templates,Connecting two templates together
Using the CHAIN command to run one template after another

See also:	Message Templates

Template script language reference

Syntax:  chain "filename"

Execute another template when the current template completes. filename should be the path to a valid template file, and may contain textual substitutions. The filename must conform to the rules for string literals and filenames. Only one chain command may be present in any template. If the current template is cancelled by the user, the chain command will not be executed.


Grouped views in folders
Grouped views

Pegasus Mail provides numerous different ways of sorting your folders, but sometimes sorting simply isn't enough to make it easy to navigate your mail, especially if you receive a lot of it: sometimes you want to group your messages together in ways that are more complex than simple sorting allows. Enter Grouped Views.

A Grouped View is a way of combining related messages together in groups within your folders. For example, you may want to group all the messages from Winston Churchill together in one group. Where a Grouped View improves on simple sorting, though, is that it creates a hierarchy - each group of related messages can be collapsed to a single entry in the list, making it much easier to find and work with specific classes or types of message. When in a grouped view, each group in the list has a caption, which is a kind of heading bar identifying the contents of the group. The caption has a standard collapse/expand box at its left allowing you to expand or collapse the view of that group within the overall message list.

Grouped views are essentially a layer that sits on top of a sorting method, and as such, selecting a grouped view may change the sorting method of your folder. Pegasus Mail offers the following grouped views:

Group by day	Messages sent on the same day are grouped together. The group's caption shows the date.
Group by week	Messages sent in the same week are grouped together. The group's caption the week covered by the group.
Group by month	Messages sent within the same month are grouped together. The group's caption shows the month covered by the group.
Group by subject	Messages with the same subject are grouped together. The group's caption shows the common subject for all the messages in the group.
Index by subject	Messages are grouped based on the first letter of their subject lines. The caption shows the index letter for the group.
Group by thread	Messages are grouped on subject, and sub-sorted by reverse date, so that the newest messages appear at the top of the group. The caption shows the common subject for the thread.
Group by thread activity	The same as grouping by thread, except that the groups themselves are sorted again based on which groups contain the newest messages. Groups that contain new mail are sorted above groups that contain only read mail. This is an incredibly handy and useful way of dealing with discussion groups, mailing lists and other situations where several topics are under discussion in the same forum at any time. The group's caption shows the common subject for the thread.
Group by sender	Messages are grouped by the name of the person who sent them. The group's caption shows the name of the sender.
Index by sender	Messages are grouped based on the first letter of the sender's name. Each group's caption shows the index letter for the group.
Group by colour	Messages are grouped by the colour you have selected for them. Each group's caption shows the colour common to the messages in the group.

Note that when you turn off grouped views, the sorting mode that applied to the grouped view remains active in the list: so, if you switch to a Thread Activity grouped view then press Ctrl+Shift+0 to return to a normal, non-grouped view, the message list will be sorted by thread.

Turning on a grouped view  How you turn on a Grouped View depends on whether you run Pegasus Mail in Preview mode (with the 3-pane view) or in Classic mode (where each folder opens in its own window).

In preview mode	Choose the grouped view you want from the Grouped View submenu of the Messages menu.
In classic mode	Choose the grouped view you want from the Grouped view submenu of the Folder menu.

Alternatively, and much more quickly, you can switch between grouped views using the following special hot-key sequences:

To switch to this view	Press this hot-key
No grouped view (normal view)	Ctrl+Shift+0
To group messages by day	Ctrl+Shift+1
To group messages by week	Ctrl+Shift+2
To group messages by month	Ctrl+Shift+3
To group messages by subject	Ctrl+Shift+4
To group messages by thread	Ctrl+Shift+5
To group messages by thread activity	Ctrl+Shift+6
To group messages by sender ("From" field)	Ctrl+Shift+7
To index messages by sender	Ctrl+Shift+8
To group messages by colour	Ctrl+Shift+9


The Addressing Centre

See also:	Addressbooks

Addressing your message

The Addressing Centre is a window you can use to organize, add and remove addresses from any addressfield in the program. Anywhere you see the Addressing Centre icon [image] next to an addressing field in the program, you can click that icon to open the Addressing Centre window.

The Addressing Centre consists of a current addresses list at the top of the window which contains each address in the addressing field on a line of its own, and a group of tabbed dialogs at the bottom of the window in which you can add addresses from your addressbooks, distribution lists, or from those addresses to which you have recently sent mail.

To add an address to the addressing field  select the tab for the source of the address you want to add: the possibilities are:

Addressbooks	Switches to a view of all the addressbooks available to you: select the addressbook containing the address you want to use and its contents will appear in the lower list. You can double-click a single address to add it to the addressing field, or you can select multiple addresses by holding down <Alt> or <Ctrl> as you click on them. When you have selected the addresses you want to use, click the Add button next to the list of current addresses in the field. Typethrough: You can type the first few characters of the name of the person whose address you want to use and the list cursor will move to that entry in the list. This is known as typethrough, or speed-searching.
Recently-used	Switches to a list of addresses to which you have recently sent mail. As with the Addressbooks view, you can use typethrough to select an address by typing the first few characters, and can select multiple addresses using the <Alt> and <Ctrl> keys. You can delete any recently-used addresses you no longer need by selecting them then pressing the <Del> key. The list of recently-used addresses shown in the Addressing Centre is the same as the one used by the address autocompletion feature, and any deletions you make here will also affect that feature.
DLists	Switches to a list of the Distribution Lists available on your system. You can use any Distribution List in the addressing field by double-clicking it, or by clicking it once and clicking the Add button next to the current addresses list.

To remove an address you don't want from the list of current addresses  Simply select it and click the Remove button. Note that this only removes the address from the current addresses list: if you originally selected the address from any of the tabbed addressing controls at the bottom of the Addressing Centre window, the original will not be affected in any way by this.

When you are satisfied that you have organized the addresses in the current addresses list the way you want them, click the OK button and the contents of the list will replace the current contents of the addressing field associated with the window. Clicking Cancel will discard any changes you have made to the current addresses list and will leave the associated addressing field control unchanged.


Automated mail processing

See also:	Table of contents

Pegasus Mail offers extensive facilities for automating common tasks with your e-mail. There are two primary mechanisms you can use to set up automatic mail processing - Ruled-based Mail Filtering, and Content Control.

Rule-based Mail Filtering   allows you set up collections of rules that Pegasus Mail applies to your messages. A "rule" consists of two parts - a test that compares some part of the mail message with a value you provide, and an action that Pegasus Mail should perform if the message matches that test. Using rule-based filtering allows you to do almost anything you could ever imagine doing with your mail, from simply filing messages from mailing lists into a specific folder, right up to purging messages older than a certain age or automatically generating replies.

Click here for more detailed information on Rule-based Mail Filtering

Content Control   allows you to set up arbitrarily complex tests on the content of mail messages. Content Control is primarily aimed at automating the detection and removal of spam (unwanted commercial e-mail), but is general enough to be used for almost anything that requires evaluation of the contents of a message as a whole. Content Control is similar to rule-based mail filtering, but is more specifically targeted at dealing with the entire content of a message, and is heavily optimized for this task. Pegasus Mail ships with a Content Control definition that will catch a significant amount of common "spam" as it arrives on your computer - you can use this definition as a starting point for creating your own set of content control rules.

Click here for more detailed information on Content Control


Public (System-wide) folders

In normal use, two different users cannot access the same Pegasus Mail mailbox at the same time (indeed, they must not do so, because it practically guarantees loss of data). The need for several users to access a set of folders simultaneously, however, is quite common and quite reasonable, so how can it be done? The answer is via public folders.

A public folder is a directory in which each message is stored as a single file. Pegasus Mail has special code that controls access to these files, ensuring that multiple users can be working in the folder at the same time. To the user, public folders work just like their own private folders, except that they have their own entry in each user's mailbox list.

To define a public folder tree, simply select Public folders from the Pegasus Mail Tools menu. In the dialog that opens, click the Add tree button. Pegasus Mail will prompt you for a Descriptive name for the tree, which is the name that will appear next to the top-level entry in the user's mailbox list, and a path where the mail folders should be created. The path should be the name of a directory, and need not exist (Pegasus Mail will create it if it does not). Once you have added a Public folder tree, it will appear in your folder list immediately, and you can begin creating folders in it at once. Anyone else running the same copy of Pegasus Mail will also see the new folder tree the next time they run the program - for this reason, public folders are easiest to use when you run a single copy of Pegasus Mail centrally installed on a file server. If each user has his or her own copy of Pegasus Mail, each user will need to go through the Add tree process once in order to add the Public folder tree to their list.

Public folder trees are added to each user's mailbox list in the order they appear in the Public folders dialog. You can rearrange this order using the Move up and Move down buttons - although changes in the order of definitions will not take effect until you restart the program.

A single copy of Pegasus Mail can have up to 15 different public folder trees active at any time. This is particularly useful if you have a corporate structure where each department needs its own public folder trees but may wish to access public folders from other departments as well.

Creating public folders

To create a public folder, simply select the top-level Public folder entry where you want to create it (or any other folder within it), and click the Add folder button in the folder manager window, just like you would for one of your own folders. When you create a Public folder, however, there are a couple of extra steps.

Firstly, Public folders are different from regular Pegasus Mail folders in that they can contain both messages and other folders (a normal Pegasus Mail folder can only contain messages, or folders, but not both). For this reason, you typically need to tell Pegasus Mail whether it should create the new folder within the selected folder in the list, or at the same level as the selected folder. Do this using the Choose position for folder options at the bottom of the Add folder dialog.

Once you have given your new public folder a name and told Pegasus Mail where to place it, click the OK button: a second dialog will open, asking you to specify the way the folder should manage attributes and annotations. Each folder in a Public Folder tree can behave in one of two ways:

Global attributes:  In this mode, messages in the folder have a single set of attributes and a single annotation, which are shared by all users... So, if one user reads a message, it will be marked as read for all other users of the folder as well. Similarly, if a user creates an annotation for a message in a Global attributes folder, that annotation will be visible to all other users, and all other users will be able to modify or delete it as well. Global attribute folders are perfect in shared-task situations, such as helpdesks or project discussions.

Personal attributes:  In this mode, each user has his or her own private view of messages in the folder. Even if another user reads a message, the message will still appear unread for other users who have not yet read it. Equally, each user can create annotations to the message without them being visible to other users, and other users cannot alter or delete those annotations either.

The attributes that are affected by the folder's behaviour mode are Read, Answered, Forwarded, Urgent and Colour.

Aside from the specifics of their attribute management mode, Public folders behave in every way like your own personal folders - you can create filtering rules that move messages into them, can preview them in preview mode... Whatever you can do with one of your own folders you can also do with a public folder.


List Display Preference Options

See also:	Preferences overview

The items in this dialog allow you to customize the way Pegasus Mail presents many of its primary lists of items to you.

You can turn on Banding, or the display of alternate pairs of lines in the lists in different colours, in the following lists in the program:

The list of folders in the Folder Manager window

Within lists of messages in a folder, in either preview or classic modes

The list of addressbook entries in the Addressbook Manager window

Banding is a visual aid that usually makes it slightly easier to scan a list of items by giving your eyes a visual reference point. The default colours in the dialog are designed to work well with the standard colour palettes in Windows 98, 2000 and XP, but you can change them if you wish. You should be aware that the colours will typically need to be very pale - far paler than you might expect. Quite subtle differences in colour are all that are required to allow effective banding.

To enable banding in a list, click the checkbox associated with that list. To select a banding colour, click the button at the right of the checkbox, which will be displaying the colour currently selected for that list.


IMAP Folder Information

See also: 	IMAP, and working with IMAP folders

Much of the information provided in the "Folder information" dialog for an IMAP folder is primarily aimed at system administrators, but it also includes information that the end user may need to interact with from time to time.

The General Information section contains, as its name suggests, general information about the folder, including whether or not it is mounted online or offline, its IMAP name, and the internal identifier by which Pegasus Mail uniquely recognizes it.

The Local Cache Information section presents information about the way Pegasus Mail is caching the headers and contents of this folder. Caching is the process by which Pegasus Mail keeps local copies of information so it can avoid having to download that information again the next time it is requested. The IMAP protocol gains enormous performance benefits from carefully-managed caching, and in Pegasus Mail, the caching process is automatic.

Cache directory   This field tells you where Pegasus Mail stores the cache files associated with the particular IMAP profile that controls this folder. Each profile will have a separate cache directory, the name of that directory being an attribute of the profile itself. Pegasus Mail creates and maintains the cache directory by itself - you do not have any control over it.

Header cache file   This tells you the name of the file in which Pegasus Mail stores the headers of the messages in the folder. Each time you connect to the IMAP profile, Pegasus Mail enters a conversation with the IMAP server to determine what messages are new or changed since the last connection, and downloads only the headers of those messages. All other unchanged messages are retrieved from the header cache file, greatly improving connection time. Clicking the Clear button will delete the contents of the header cache, forcing Pegasus Mail to download the headers for all messages in the folder the next time it connects. You should usually only clear the header cache on instruction from your system administrator or Pegasus Mail technical support.

Body cache file   This tells you the name of the special file in which Pegasus Mail stores the message bodies you have seen from this folder. As with the header cache, the body cache allows Pegasus Mail to avoid unnecessary downloads from the remote server, and it is a critical component in the performance of your IMAP connections. The Verify button will perform a check on the integrity of the cache file; if it reports errors, you should use the Clear button to empty the cache. It is safe to clear the body cache at any time if you wish to do so, although it will impact on performance until the cache is rebuilt.

Forcing messages to be cached   You can right-click any IMAP folder and select Cache all messages to force Pegasus Mail to download all messages in that folder to the local cache. You might want to do this if you plan to use the IMAP profile in Offline mode, because it will ensure that all the messages in the folder are available to you while offline.

Cache storage   Cache files can be quite large - sometimes even larger than the actual size of the data on the server. The rationale for caching is that disk space on your local computer is very cheap and that it is always preferable to sacrifice some disk space to gain faster performance. The IMAP body cache is what is known as a grow-only file: it will only ever increase in size, even if you delete messages from it. Deleting a message frees up space within the cache file, and that space will be re-used before the file is enlarged, but the cache will never reduce in size, even when items are deleted. For this reason, if you have a folder from which you have deleted a significant number of messages that are unlikely to be replaced, you could consider clearing the body cache to recover the space it occupies.


Introduction to the Pegasus Mail Message Reader

This tutorial describes the basic functionality of the Pegasus Mail message reader.

Click on each of the numbers for a description of that item - we recommend that

you click on the numbers in order the first time you use this tutorial.

You can click the tabs in the graphic above to switch the focus of this tutorial

to the description of that page.

Remember, you can always get help in Pegasus Mail by pressing the F1 key.


The view selector tabs

Clicking these tabs will change the "view" Pegasus Mail gives you of

the message.

Message:	Shows you the contents of the message body

Attachments:	Shows you the structure of the message, including

any attachments it has. This tab will be greyed-out

if the message has only a single part.

Annotations:	Allows you to add notes to the message

Raw view:	Shows you the message in its raw form.

Within this tutorial's main page, you can click on these tabs to switch

the focus of the tutorial to that view.


The toolbar

The toolbar contains buttons that give you easy access to the most common tasks

you will perform with your mail. You can either click the buttons or else press the

capitalized letter in the button's text to activate the function.

The next and previous arrows at the left of the toolbar allow you to step through the

contents of a folder. Holding down the Ctrl key as you click these buttons moves to

the next or previous unread message in the folder. You can use the + (or =) key to

activate the next button, and the - key to activate the previous button.

The green arrow at the right of the toolbar indicates that more buttons are available -

click the green button to scroll the extra buttons into view. Buttons do not have to

be in view to be activated by a keypress.

You can change the layout of the toolbar by right-clicking anywhere within it: you

can select the text and graphics version (shown above), a graphics-only version,

or a text-only version. Pegasus Mail remembers this setting once you have changed

it.

Other options are also available by right-clicking in the message itself.


The header display area

This area displays the headers of the message, which tell you who sent the message,

when, to whom and other information. By default, the header area displays approximately

four lines of header - you can resize the header area if you wish: simply move the mouse

cursor over the lower border of the header area until it changes into a sizing cursor then

click and drag the header area to the size you want.

Alternatively, you can quickly switch between the standard header area and an expanded

view by pressing the "Z" key.

E-mail addresses and web links are underlined in the header area - you can double-click

them to start new mail messages or to activate the link in your web browser.

You can copy text from the headers by selecting it with the mouse and pressing Ctrl+C.


The message body

Mail messages may be plain text, formatted text, or a special type of message that

contains both plain and formatted versions (such messages are marked with a black

triangle in the folder window); Pegasus Mail will choose and display the most

appropriate section from the message in this area.

Mail Digests (messages that contain a collection of other mail messages) will display

here as a list of messages: you can open an individual message in the digest by double-

clicking it, then use the next and previous buttons in the reader window that opens to

step through the messages in the digest.

You can select a portion of the message body using either the mouse or the keyboard.

When a selection is active, you can copy it by pressing Ctrl+C, print it by pressing <P>

or clicking the "Print" button, or reply using only that text by pressing <R> or clicking the

"Reply" button. If you have created special reply templates, you can generate a reply

using a template by holding down <Shift> then pressing <R> or clicking the "reply" button.

Pressing the <Space> bar will move through the message body a page at a time.

If the message has long lines, you can force them to wrap by pressing <F5>. This

setting is "sticky" - Pegasus Mail will remember it from message to message.

More options for working with the message are available on the Reader menu, or by

right-clicking within the message body.


The message status indicators

This bank of small buttons reflects the status of the message. Each button indicates

whether or not a particular condition applies to the message - if the button is coloured,

then the condition applies; if the button is greyed, then the condition does not apply. As

you step through a folder using the next and previous buttons, these indicators will change

to reflect the status of the message being displayed.

The buttons are as follows:

Indicates that the message has attachments. Clicking the button will switch to

the Attachments view (the same as clicking on the Attachments tab)

Indicates that a reply has been sent for this message. Clicking the button

removes the indication from the message.

Indicates that the message has been forwarded to someone else. Clicking the

button removes the indication from the message.

Indicates that the message has been marked read-only and cannot be deleted.

Clicking the button removes the condition and allows the message to be deleted.

Indicates the folder display colour chosen for the message. Clicking the button

allows you to choose a new colour code for the message.

Indicates that the message comes from a mailing list that supports subscription

management commands. Clicking the button opens a dialog allowing you to

manipulate some aspects of your subscription to the mailing list.


The Message Reader's Attachment View

This section of the tutorial describes the reader's Attachment view, in

which you can examine the attachments and structure of your mail messages.

Click on each of the numbers for a description of that item.

You can click the tabs in the graphic above to switch the focus of this tutorial

to the description of that page.


The Message Reader's Annotation View

This section of the tutorial describes the reader's Annotation view, in

which you can attach dated notes to your mail messages.

Click on each of the numbers for a description of that item.

You can click the tabs in the graphic above to switch the focus of this tutorial

to the description of that page.


The Message Reader's Raw View

The Raw view simply shows the message in its raw, unexpurgated form, including

all header information and MIME preludes and epilogs. If the message contains

HTML data, the raw view will show the actual HTML tags; similarly, messages

containing attachments will show the attachments in their transit format (usually

a special format called BASE64 in modern mail).

Most users will not need to use the raw view often, but for advanced purposes

it provides an extremely useful way of viewing the message at a very low level.

You can switch between the raw and normal views by pressing Ctrl+H.

You can select text in the raw view using the mouse or keyboard, then copy it

by pressing Ctrl+C.


The Attachment Toolbar

The attachment toolbar contains buttons that give you easy access to the most common

tasks you will perform with attachments. Like other toolbars in the program, you can

change the layout of the toolbar by right-clicking anywhere within it. The toolbar buttons

are as follows:

Open	If there is an application on your system that can open the currently-selected

attachment, clicking this button will open the attachment in that application.

CAUTION! Use extreme care when opening attachments - although Pegasus

Mail itself is completely immune to viruses and other nasties, other

applications may not be. You can create viewer definitions in Pegasus Mail to

protect you from inadvertently opening dangerous attachment types - see the

Pegasus Mail preferences help for more information on how to do this.

Save	Save the attachment to a file on your computer's hard disk.

Delete	Remove the attachment from the message permanently. This option is

currently only available for mail that is still in the new mail folder.

Print	Print whatever is currently being displayed in the preview area.

Reply	Generate a reply to the message using the contents of the selected section

as the source text for the reply.

Forward	Forward the selected sections to another address.


The attachment list and structure diagram

This section of the window contains a list of all the various parts of the message.

Traditional e-mail consisted of a "body" and possibly some "attachments", but

modern e-mail can have much more complex structure than that - for example, you

will often encounter mail messages that contain other mail messages, which in turn

may have their own "body" and "attachments". Pegasus Mail's attachment list lets

you find your way around even the most complex messages with ease.

The Type column displays the type of data in each section; if a section can be

opened using an application on your system, Pegasus Mail will display the icon

and description appropriate for that application.

Where a section of a message has an identifiable filename, Pegasus Mail will show

that in the Filename column. Not all sections of a message will have identifiable

filenames.

The Description column contains any descriptive text associated with each section

of the message. Pegasus Mail will generate descriptions for some sections, such as

the mail message body, automatically. Not all sections will have descriptive text.

The Size column contains an approximate estimate of the size of the section.


Splitter bar

You can resize the relative sizes of the attachment list and the

preview area by moving the mouse cursor over this divider bar until

it changes to a resize cursor, then clicking and dragging until the

panes are laid out the way you want them.


The attachment preview area

Pegasus Mail can preview many types of data without assistance from other

applications - including most graphic types, Microsoft RTF (RichText) format

documents, HTML, and any purely textual data. If a section can be previewed

it will automatically appear here when you select it in the attachment list.

The Print button on the attachment toolbar will print whatever is currently

displayed in the preview area.

For most types of data in the preview area, you can select a portion using

the mouse or keyboard, then copy it and paste it into other applications or

windows.


The annotation toolbar

Save	Saves your annotations. Annotations are also automatically

saved when you close the window or load another message.

Delete	Removes your annotations from the message.

Export	Allows you to save the text of your annotations in a file on

your computer's disk. The file is plain text and can be read

using practically any application.

Import	Loads a plain text file into your annotations.

Timestamp	Inserts the current date and time at the cursor position.


Formatting your annotation text

Annotations are basically intended to be textual in nature, and only

limited text formatting is possible. The buttons on the toolbar allow you

to change the paragraph alignment and indentation, and to check the

spelling of your text.

Future versions of Pegasus Mail will allow you to store formatted text,

including pictures and tables, in your annotations.


The annotation editing area

Simply type in any comments you want to store with the message

in this area. The text you type will be saved automatically if you

close the reader window or load another message, or if you prefer,

you can explicitly save them by clicking the Save button on the

annotation toolbar.

Annotations can be any size, and will move with the message if

you transfer the message to another folder. Annotations are not

forwarded when you forward a message. When the message is

deleted, its annotations are also deleted.