Address: Nisus Software Inc. P.O. Box 1300, Solana Beach, CA 92075-1300
I Introduction
Terminology 1
What Is Nisus Email? 1
How Is It Different? 1
Hardware and System Requirements 1
II Getting Started
Installation 2
Setting Up Your Account 2
Setting Up Apple Remote Access 2
The Floating Post Office 3
Contact Icons Overview 3
Creating Contact Icons 4
The Preferences Overview 5
Listing of Preferences 5
Filters & Folders 7
III Receiving Email
Getting Email 8
Using Email Listings 9
Summary Of Folders And Listings. 10
To Preview Your Waiting Messages (Security Feature) 11
Reading Messages 12
Managing Email 13
IV Sending Email
DragSend 14
Send On Save (SOS) 15
Send Clipboard 15
V Redirect or Forward & Send Again
Redirect or Forward 16
Send Again 16
VI Rules For Headers In Nisus Email
Overview 16
Headers Defined 17
The Header Components 17
Requirements For Text To Be A Header 18
VII Examples Illustrating Use of Headers
Example 1 - No Header 19
Example 2 Empty Subject Component 19
Example 3 Valid “To:” Header 19
Example 4 Header Without Address 19
Example 5 Empty Bcc Component 19
Example 6 Using Attachment Field 20
Example 7 Error In Address Field 20
VIII Using Nisus Writer Or Another Word Processor
General 20
Overview 20
Nisus Writer Macros Overview 21
Nisus Email Macros Listing 21
IX Appendix
Nisus Email Folders & Files 23
I Introduction
Terminology
The root-word “check” has a very large number of common meanings, including the adjective “checked” describing the state of a “checkbox” in a dialog.
To avoid any confusion between meanings, we have chosen instead to coin the word “x-ed” for that particular adjective meaning. The corresponding verb would be “check” meaning “click on the checkbox to change its state to being x-ed.” That too is confusing in the context of many descriptions so we have coined the verb “x” as in “x this item to have your email downloaded automatically.” There may be better alternatives but they escape us at this time.
What Is Nisus Email?
Nisus Email is a complete email client with a unique approach. With it you can send email from within any application program, quickly and easily and with a minimum of actions and interruptions.
You can also use Nisus Email to receive all your emails and manage all your archived emails efficiently and easily, using Nisus Email’s filtering and the Finder’s folder system.
Each Nisus Email message is a separate document, saved as a file. It is automatically named. The name of each message is the subject of the message, abbreviated if necessary.
Nisus Email further allows you to use your favorite writing tool (a word processor or text editor) to prepare, format and manage all your messages - sent and received.
It is designed to be very flexible, allowing you many different ways of doing things, letting you choose that which is most suited to your needs.
How Is It Different?
Nisus Email is very different from all the present email clients. It is designed to be used easily with other text processing programs and requires a minimum of actions to send a message.
To send an email using any other email program, you have to activate or start the email program, choose the “New Message” menu command, address the message, type in a subject, type the message and then click the Send button. Only then can you switch back to what you were doing.
Nisus Email gives you the DragSend™ option - when you are in any program (which supports Drag & Drop) select the text you wish to send and drag it to the Nisus Email “Floating Post Office” or Floating PO. It is immediately sent. That’s the “One-Click Send.” If it is not pre-addressed, you will need one additional click on a contact icon to complete the addressing process. That’s the “Two Click Send.”
There are three other methods of sending email which are described in detail later : Send On Save (SOS), the Quick Message, and Send Clipboard.
SOS sends any file saved or moved to the “Dispatch” folder, either as an attachment or as a message or both.
Using Quick Message, click on the Nisus Email Floating PO which opens the Instant Window with all your frequent Contact Icons. A click on your contact icon opens a Quick Message window ready for your message. Another click sends the message.
You can think of the Nisus Email Floating PO and the “Dispatch” folder as the two Nisus Email PO boxes, each with its own purpose and special functionality.
Hardware and System Requirements
Nisus Email runs on any Macintosh computer based on a Power PC processor, with System version 8.0 or higher. It will also work with older systems but with some minor loss of functionality. You must also have some form of connection to your email account. Usually that would be an Internet connection. Connectivity requires special software and hardware not included with Nisus Email.
II Getting Started
Installation
To install from a CD, drag the “Nisus Email” application from the CD to your hard drive, copying it. If you have downloaded it off the Internet, you should find it in the folder you have allocated for your downloads in your browser’s preferences.
Decide where you want to locate Nisus Email. It needs a separate folder in which it will create a number of other folders and files which it needs. You can either create a folder yourself, choosing its name, or leave Nisus Email on the desktop, or in the main directory of your disk, where it will create its own folder named “Nisus Email Folder.”
To install just double-click the Nisus Email icon. Nisus Email is one of the first applications to be self-installing. The first time it is run it creates all the necessary files and folders it needs. If it is not in its own folder, it will create a new folder, named “Nisus Email Folder” and move itself into that folder, then create all the necessary folders and files, including a macro file called “Nisus Email Macros Vol1.”. It will also create an alias in the Apple Menu folder (so you can start it from the Apple Menu) and one on the desktop.
If you want to have Nisus Email always available for sending emails, you can set its preferences to start automatically when you start your computer.
On first startup you will be asked to enter your serial number. If you have purchased a CD the serial number is on the CD cover. If you have downloaded it off the web, it will be emailed to you.
You can use Nisus Email without the serial number for 14 days from start, just click the “Later” button. Without the serial number, each time you start Nisus Email, you will get the request for a serial number.
If you want to enter the serial number while Nisus Email is running, choose the About Nisus Email menu command from the Apple menu.
Setting Up Your Account
Having started Nisus Email, you should set up your email account information. Choose “New” from the “Personalities” menu .
You need to know the following things to set up your account:
1 Your email address. This is usually of the form: smith@domain.com where “domain.com” stands for the domain name where your account is located.
2 The email server name for sending email - your outgoing email server. This is often something like “mail.domain.com” or “mailserv.domain.com” where “domain.com” stands for the domain name of the server.
3 The email server name for receiving email - your incoming (POP) mail server. Very often this is the same as the outgoing email server.
4 Your log-in name. This is the name by which the mail server recognizes your account.
5 Your password.
Fill in the form on the screen with that information. The other parts of the form are not critical - they are up to you to choose.
The Nickname is how you will see your account or Personality listed in the Personalities menu. If you have more than one account, you should choose each personality nickname so you can easily distinguish each account.
Once you have completed the information, click “Save” and your Personality will appear on the Personalities menu. You can continue creating additional Personalities the same way for other accounts.
Setting Up Apple Remote Access
If you are already set up for connection to the Internet, then you do not need to read this section.
If you are using a dial-up modem connection, and you have not yet set up your dial-up Apple Remote Access connection, you must do it before Nisus Email can send or receive email.
Your Apple Manual describes the set up procedure for Apple Remote Access, which lets you connect to your provider of service or to your network remotely. The set up is independent of Nisus Email and is also needed for you to connect to the Internet.
For reference, here is a brief summary of the set up procedure. Details may differ for different versions of Apple Remote Access. The description is appropriate to that version of Apple Remote access which comes with system 8.6.
• Start the Apple Remote Access control panel, either from the Control Panels menu or Find the Remote Access command on a pop-down in the Control Strip
• Choose the Open Remote Access menu command
• Complete the resulting form dialog with your user name, password and the telephone number. X the Remember Password checkbox, if you don’t want to have to enter the password each time to go online.
• From the Remote Access menu, choose the AppleTalk menu command.
• In the resulting dialog choose from the pop-down, the Remote Only option.
• Close that dialog.
• From the Remote Access menu choose the Modem command.
• In the resulting dialog, from the pop-down Modem menu, choose the modem script appropriate to your make and type of modem. Choose the other options or leave them to their defaults.
To set up automatic connection:
• Click the Options button.
• In the resulting dialog, choose the Protocol Tab.
• In the Use Protocol pop-down, choose the PPP menu command..
• X the checkbox marked: “Connect Automatically when starting TCP/IP applications.”
• Close the Options dialog.
• Close and Save the Remote Access dialog.
Once you are connected, you can send and receive email.
The automatic connection option described above, should automatically dial-up and connect you when Nisus Email, or any other program tries to send or receive email or make any outside connection.
The Floating Post Office
When Nisus Email is first started, you will see a very small Floating Icon of an envelope. We call this the Floating PO (Post Office). The top part is used for moving it. Any other part of this Floating PO when clicked, opens the Instant Window, filling your screen with all your Contact icons. A further click anywhere outside of any of the Contact icons, closes the Instant Window. You will read more about using this Floating PO.
Move the Floating PO to a convenient, out-of-the-way location on your screen. To move it partly off-screen, you may have to move it several times in small steps. Its location will be remembered the next time you start Nisus Email.
The Floating PO will always be accessible, as it always floats above any other normal window. Nisus Email does not need to be active for the Floating PO to be visible and active, ready to receive your messages and files.
Now wherever you are, in your word processor, another application, or in the Finder, you can drag and drop text, a file or a folder of files on this Floating PO and it will immediately be sent or queued, depending on the preferences setting.
Contact Icons Overview
To have the ability to address your email with just a single click on an icon, you need to create Contact icons.
Click the Floating PO and the Instant Window opens, initially showing you just one contact icon - the “New Contact” icon.
You can choose between two types of icon shapes: the “Clouds” and the “Mailboxes.” Initially you will see clouds. To switch when the Instant Window is showing, hold the Shift key down while you click anywhere but not an a contact icon.
You can create new contact icons for each of your email addresses in your address book from your previous email client, such as Eudora or Outlook Express. If your previous address book contains a large number of addresses, you may want to create icons only for each of your frequent correspondents, so you can easily find them.
Each Contact, is represented by an icon. When you drag text, a file, or a folder of files, you address the email you are sending by clicking the icon representing the recipient.
Creating Contact Icons
You should create a contact icon for each of your frequent correspondents. Then, you will be able to address your email just by clicking the appropriate icon.
Importing Addresses. You can import email addresses by first copying them from any other application, to the Clipboard, and then using the “Import Contacts from Clipboard” menu command from the File menu.
The separator between email addresses can be any character that is not allowed to be part of the address, but the obvious ones are commas, spaces, tabs, semicolons and Returns.
New Contacts. You can create a new contact either when in Nisus Email by choosing the menu command “New Contact” on the File menu or when in any other application, using the following steps:
Assuming that Nisus Email is running, though it need not be active.
• Click the Floating PO.
• Click and hold the New Contacts icon to open a pop-down menu (when you can let go the mouse)
• Choose the menu command “Create New Contact”
• Type the nickname of the contact in the resulting form
• Type their email address as instructed
• The rest of the form can be left without change, or can be edited to include a special greeting to that contact and a special signature. You can also change the wording of the standard message that will be sent with dragged attachments.
• Click OK when you have finished
The result will be a Contact icon in the Instant Window. To see it, click once on the Floating PO. Now click in the Instant Window, but not on any icon, and the window closes.
Eudora Import Special. The form that you filled out to create a Contact icon, can also be used to import all your email addresses from your Eudora address book - one at a time or all at once.
If Nisus Email recognizes the file format of your version of Eudora’s address book, it will display all your address book nicknames on a pop-down next to the first entry.
Next to that pop-down is a button labelled “Import All” with which you can import your whole address book. To import one address, choose it from the pop-down.
The latest version of Eudora changed to a completely different address book format and Nisus Email no longer recognizes it.
To import your email addresses from another program or from more recent version of Eudora:
• Open the address book
• Select All the addresses, or just those you want to copy
• Copy and switch to Nisus Email
• Choose the menu command “Import Contacts From Clipboard” from the File Menu.
Each of your email addresses in the Clipboard will create a Contact icon. Each Nickname will be created automatically by picking the first part of the email address - the part up the “@” symbol. You can edit any part of each contact information, using the context pop-down menu from the corresponding contact icon.
Group Addresses. You can enter any number of addresses in one Contact icon, separating them with a comma or a Return, creating a Contact icon representing a group.
The Preferences Overview
Nisus Email allows you to customize certain features. Whichever way you set the preferences, you can always change your mind after you have used the program. If you are not sure about some preference, then don’t change it - each of the preferences is pre-set to what we believe is the most commonly preferred state - we refer to it as the “Default Setting.”
To open the preferences setting dialog, choose the Preferences menu command from the Edit menu. Most of the preferences in the resulting dialog should be self-explanatory. All of them are explained below.
Documents of Type Text. As is evident from the following preference explanations, the way Nisus Email treats the sending of a document depends on your preferences settings and whether the document is of type “Text” or not.
Documents of type Text are a special class of documents. They are created by text editors, such as Simple Text. Word processors can also create such documents, but most of them only do this if you specifically save your document as “Text” otherwise they are not of type text. When you save a document as text in a word processor, all your formatting and graphics are not saved.
In that and other respects, our word processor, Nisus Writer, is different - it always creates documents of type Text with full graphics and formatting. It also has the option of saving a document as “Text” and when you choose to do this, and then it removes the formatting and the graphics. When using Nisus Writer with Nisus Email, all Nisus Writer documents are always of type Text while preserving full formatting and graphics. This enables many useful features without the need to specifically save the file as “Text.” When using other word processors, however, if you want features that rely on text files to work, you must save the files as text.
Therefore, any Nisus Writer document, however saved (as “Text” or normally) in the Dispatch folder can be automatically sent as a message, without an attachment. If you try the same with another word processor’s document, it can only be sent as an attachment, unless you explicitly save it as “Text.”
Listing of Preferences
Choose the Edit menu command “Preferences...” to set your preferences. The following explains each of the preferences in the order they appear in the dialog.
Sending Email:
1 Using DragSend, send a text file as an attachment only (else its text will be sent as a message only).
A document of type text can be treated differently than other documents when dragged and dropped on the Floating PO, that is, using DragSend.
If this item is x-ed, a text document will be treated like any other file and will be sent as a file attached to the standard message.
When this item is not x-ed, the text contents of such a text file will be copied and sent as a message without any attachment.
2 Send copy of "Dispatch" folder text file as a message - no attachment.
The Dispatch folder is very special - it is constantly checked for the presence of any files or folders.
Documents of type text when moved to, or saved in this special folder can be treated differently from other documents.
If this item is selected, any text document found in the Dispatch folder will be used as the source of the message. That is, its contents will be copied to become the message and there will be no attachment.
The only way to deselect this item is to select the next one. So read-on for the alternative.
3 Send copy of "Dispatch" folder text file as a message, also attaching the file.
This item, when selected, deselects the previous one and sends a document in the Dispatch folder as an attachment to a message which consists of the text copied from the document. With this option, you can automatically send a fully formatted Nisus Writer file as an attachment, while the accompanying message is an unformatted text-only version of that file.
4 Send files in the "Dispatch" folder only when activating Nisus Email.
Normally the Dispatch folder is constantly checked and whenever a file or folder is found it is dispatched, which means it is sent or queued.
When this item is x-ed, no constant checking of the Dispatch folder takes place. The only time it is checked is when Nisus Email becomes active.
Nisus Email becomes active when it is first started, or when you activate it while it is running, by choosing it from the applications menu or by clicking in any of its open, non-floating windows. Note that the Floating PO is a Nisus Email floating window, so when clicked it does not activate Nisus Email.
This item and the following one are exclusive of each other. That is, when one of them is x-ed the other one is not.
5 Check for and send or queue files in the "Dispatch" folder every <3> second(s).
When this item is x-ed, the previous one is not, and the Dispatch folder is checked or polled at intervals determined in seconds by the number you type into the box (in place of <3>, above.).
6 Queue all messages (sent only with "Send Mail" or “Receive & Send” or “Receive & Send All”).
When this is x-ed, no messages are sent until you choose one of the three commands from the Emails menu: Send Mail, Receive & Send, and Receive & Send All.
To see your queued messages in a listing window, choose “Show Queued Emails” from the Emails menu.
Receiving Mail:
7 Automatically check for and download new Email every <30> minute(s).
When this is x-ed, Nisus Email will automatically connect to your email server and download new emails, at regular time intervals determined by the number of minutes you enter into the box (in place of <30>).
8 On checking mail, show the email list for me to choose what to download.
This is the Preview option. If this is x-ed, when you use the Check Mail or the Receive & Send or the Receive & Send All menu commands, you will get a listing of all the emails on the server. You will then be able to choose those you want downloaded and those you want deleted. The two left columns are filled with checkboxes, one is headed “Get” meaning download the corresponding email, the other “Del” meaning delete the corresponding email from the server. Of course those emails for which you “x” both checkboxes will first be downloaded and then deleted from the server - the normal, default process.
Any emails that are not x-ed to be deleted will remain on the server, whether downloaded or not. Those that have previously been downloaded will not be downloaded again when you get your mail directly, without going through the preview option, and will not be automatically x-ed for downloading when you do use the preview option.
The way to download an email once more, having previously downloaded it and left it on the server, is to use the preview option and then to explicitly choose it (by x-ing the corresponding checkbox) to be downloaded.
9 After downloading, leave messages on server.
When this is x-ed, downloaded messages will remain on the server after being downloaded once, and can only be downloaded a second or subsequent time using the Preview option.
When this option is x-ed, the Preview option will not allow you to delete any email from the server.
When this option is not x-ed, on the next connection to the server, all previously downloaded messages will be deleted from the server.
10 Flash Nisus Email's icon when email arrives.
This is one notification option when messages are downloaded.
11 Beep when email has arrived.
This is another notification option for arrived emails.
12 Display a message when new email has arrived.
This is the third notification option for arrived emails.
Subject Generation:
13 Omit common words when automatically generating the Subject.
When a message is sent it is not necessary to provide a subject field. If no subject field is provided, Nisus Email will extract the subject from the first lines of the message. If this item is x-ed, Nisus Email will use the provided list of common words and omit those words from the text of the message when creating the subject. A comma is inserted in the subject line for each omitted word.
If this item is not x-ed, the subject will be literally the first part of the message, omitting a short greeting.
14 Limit the length of generated subjects to <60> character(s).
The number characters in the subject will be determined by the number you type into the box (in place of <60>).
Miscellaneous:
15 Automatically start Nisus Email when my computer starts.
When this is x-ed, Nisus Email on quitting will create an alias of itself in the Startup folder in the System folder. This will start Nisus email automatically when your computer is started.
16 Delete all V-Card attachments to any email immediately upon downloading.
Some email clients attach a file to each message containing information about the sender. This attachment is called a V-Card.
When this item is x-ed, any received email with a V-Card attachment will have its attachment deleted immediately after download.
17 Move read emails over <20> days old to the Trash.
When this is x-ed, any emails older than the number of days typed into the box (in place of <20>) will be moved to the system trash. You can still retrieve them until you empty the trash.
Filters & Folders
You may not need to use filters until you start getting a lot of emails from many different groups and need to have them automatically sorted, when they arrive, into separate folders.
As each email message is received, Nisus Email creates a message file and then checks for the presence of any specified text within it. The file is then routed into whichever folder you have assigned, dependant on that text.
So for example, you may get a lot of email from your Golf group and you do not want it to overwhelm the relatively few of your other important emails. If the group’s address is GolfBuddy@golf.com, then you would set up your filter to check for this address in either the “From:” or the “To:” field and if found, to move that email to the special folder named “Golf Buddy”. Here is how you would do that:
1 Assuming Nisus Email is running, bring it to the front, if it is not the front application already, by choosing its name from the right-most menu, called the Applications menu, on the menu bar.
2 Choose the “Filters…” menu command from the Edit menu.
3 Type the filter name : “Golf Buddy.” The filter name does not have to be the name of the folder you will assign to it, but it helps to keep things neat if it is.
4 Hit the Tab key to take you to the next entry box, the “Search For:” field.
4 Type the email address “GolfBuddy@golf.com” that you want to find.
5 X the checkboxes “In From Field” and “In To field.” to indicate that if the text (in this case the email address) is found either in the “To:” field or in the “From:” field the message is to be diverted to the folder you are about to choose.
6 Click the button “Add Folder” and use the resulting file locating dialog to navigate to the folder you want to use for these emails. If instead you want to create a new folder for the purpose, then you should click the “New Folder” button and create a new folder wherever you want. (Note: The “New Folder” button is not available on older systems which do not include the Navigation Manager. You will have to use the Finder to create a new folder.) Once you see the folder in the locating dialog, select it and click “Choose.”
7 Once you have added a folder, you can find it in the pop-down labelled “Move To:” You can of course pick more than one folder, because you do not have to use any of the picked folders for filtering. They will simply appear on the Emails menu and on the “Move To” contextual menu and allow you to move messages to and from them. Choose the folder “Golf Buddy” from the pop-down labelled “Move To:” and to complete the folder creation click the button “Save.”
8 Close the filters window.
Notice that the new folder now also appears on the Emails menu and can be chosen to list its emails.
Any folder on any drive can be chosen. It will then appear on the Emails menu and on the contextual menu in an Email Listing (EML) window, allowing you to move into it any emails.
In this way, you can group your emails with other correspondence in the same folder.
III Receiving Email
Getting Email
Checking For Email. To check if you have email in the currently selected Personality account, choose the menu command “Check Mail” from the Emails menu. If you choose the “Receive & Send” menu command, it will additionally send any emails you may have queued, whereas “Check Mail” only receives.
The “Receive & Send All” menu command checks for emails in all your Personalities or accounts and then also sends any queued emails.
When connecting to your service provider through another provider’s connection, most providers will not allow you to send email (called “relaying”) because their mail servers do not check for passwords when sending - only when receiving- they are concerned about unauthorized sending of email from your account. Some providers have therefore arranged to allow sending relayed email only within seconds of receiving email. That is why Nisus Email first receives and then sends when using the “Receive & Send” command.
Assuming that the preferences are set to download all emails (the “default” setting) you will see a download progress dialog. When that closes, you will be notified (in any of the ways chosen by the preferences settings) how many messages you have.
Each email received by Nisus Email is a text file which can be read by any application that reads text., Your email will end up in the Unread Emails folder within the folder whose name begins with the year and month of the email, unless you have set up your filters
Using Email Listings
Overview. You can list your received or sent messages in Email Listing Windows, or EML Windows. Each EML Window is displayed using one of the “Show...” menu commands on the Emails menu.
When you first begin, the only EML Windows you can access are accessed using the following menu commands:
Show Sent Emails
Show Read Unfiltered
Show Unread Unfiltered
Show Queued Email
If there are no messages in a listing, the corresponding menu command is greyed to show that it is disabled.
Once you have added more folders to Nisus Email’s listings through the filters dialog, each such folder will contribute a corresponding “Show..” menu command.
With just two exception, each of the menu commands, referred to as EML commands, is associated with a correspondingly named folder in which the message files, belonging to that folder, are located. All these message folders are located within the main Nisus Email Folder, where the Nisus Email application is itself located.
The two exceptions are the menu commands “Show Read Unfiltered” and “Show Unread Unfiltered.”
The folders which contain both the “Read Unfiltered” and “Unread Unfiltered” messages are inside the “Received Emails” folder. Each month’s unfiltered email is in a separate folder named by year-month, with four digits for the year and two for the month.
The corresponding Read and Unread EMLs are in separate windows, and once a message is marked as Read, it disappears from the Unread EML and appears in the Read EML.
The other listings, specifically listings associated with folders you have chosen and added to the list, are accessed using the menu commands on the Emails menu which correspond to the folder’s name. Both Read and Unread messages are shown in the same listing and a bullet in the first column of the listing is used to identify the Unread messages.
The section on Filters describes both how to add a folder and how to use Filters to automatically route certain emails to specified folders.
If you prefer not to have separate Read and Unread listings for your unfiltered messages, you should define an “In Box” folder which can have any name. To do this, choose the menu command “Choose In Box Folder” from the Edit menu.
Show Unread Unfiltered. Look on the Email menu and assuming that you have received some unfiltered email, notice that “Show Unread Unfiltered” menu command has a bullet and a check mark against it.
The bullet means that there is unread email, the check mark means that there is unseen email.
Unread email means that you have not opened the email. Unseen means that you have not seen the email listed in any Email Listing (EML) Window. Clearly there is a difference between seeing a list of emails by their subjects, senders and date received, and actually opening them to see their contents. In the first case you know who sent you email and its subject, though you do not know its detailed contents. In the second case, you can read its contents.
Unseen email, when listed is shown in blue. When you quit and restart Nisus Email, all emails are assumed to have been seen.
Note that the first column lists the “To:” address. This is not always your email address. Some emails are addressed to what is called a “List Server” which sends them to a whole list of email addresses.
There are other emails, the so called “junk email” which are sometimes addressed to a non-existent email address. Just by looking at that column you can tell what kind of email it is. If you have a lot of email you can sort the listing by that column, or any column just by clicking the column header. The first time you click the sorting is in decreasing order. The second time you click the order is reversed.
The second column shows the sender’s email address. The other two columns are the subject and the date received. The date sent, which depends on the local time-zone, is shown only when you open the email for reading.
We have chosen to list by date received because of numerous problems with the accuracy and consistency of the date sent in emails. On rare occasions when the sender does not realize that their clock is not working, you can easily not even know you have just received an email listed by date sent, because its date is so old.
Our choice of listing by email addresses as opposed to the “nicknames” or first or last name of the sender, or recipient, is similarly dictated by the inconsistency of the way these names are included in emails - even emails from the same person. Although email addresses also change, they are of necessity much more consistent.
Received Emails Folder. If you do not have a filter set up, all your emails are saved in a folder called. ”Received Emails” inside a separate folder for each month. The inner folder name is of the form 2000-05 Emails, The first four digits represent the year and the last two the month.
If you do set up one or more filters, the emails that do not end up in the filtered folders will end up in this Received Emails folder, unless you designate a folder as an In Box.
Unread & Read Unfiltered. Associated with the Received Emails folder are two EML Windows accessible using the menu commands “Show Unread Unfiltered” and “Show Read Unfiltered.” As the names suggest, the first lists all the unread, unfiltered emails and the second the read, unfiltered ones.
Once you have opened an email from the Unread listing, after closing, it disappears from this listing and is available in the Read Unfiltered Emails listing.
To see the Read emails choose “Show Read Unfiltered.”
Filtered Email Listings. The filtered listing commands also appear on the Emails menu by the names of the folders you have chosen. Emails in the filtered listings are not moved after being read. If you choose to designate an In Box folder (“Choose In Box Folder” from the “Edit “menu) which you can choose to be any folder, by any name, all unfiltered emails will end up in that folder which will behave just like any other filtered folder.
The Emails menu shows all the folders you have chosen by their name. When a new Email message is received it is considered both Unread and Unseen and shown in blue when listed in an EML.
Bullet & Check mark in Menu. The presence of at least one Unseen message in a folder is indicated, in the Emails menu, by a check mark against the respective folder name. In the EML Window, Unseen messages are shown in blue. The presence of at least one Unread message in a folder is designated by a bullet against the respective folder name and by a bullet against the respective message in the EML window.
Summary Of Folders And Listings.
• Show Unread Unfiltered menu command normally lists all unread emails that have not been filtered into another folder.
• Show Read Unfiltered email listing, in the absence of a choice of an In Box folder, shows all the unfiltered messages that have been read.
• Received Emails Folder. Unless you have chosen another folder as your In Box (read below) both the Unread and Read Unfiltered messages, that is messages remaining after all your filters have done their filtering, are in the Received Emails folder inside an inner folder whose name depends on the date and time of the messages. The inner folder’s name begins with four digits for the year, followed by a dash, then a two digit number for the month the messages were received. That means that a new inner folder is automatically created at the beginning of each month when the first messages arrive.
• Filtered folders are named by you or chosen from existing folders. Use the Filters… menu command on the Edit menu for creating a filter and for adding a folder to Nisus Email’s list of known folders. Each of the filtered folders holds all the messages that meet the filtering criteria. No new inner folders are created. When opening an EML window for any such folder, all emails, both read and unread, in that folder are listed. The Unread ones are marked with a bullet, the Unseen ones are shown in blue.
• The In Box folder is a special optional folder which when chosen, replaces the Received Emails folder with its inner dated folders and its different behaviors of the Read and Unread associated listings. Choose the menu command “Choose In Box Folder” to make that choice. This In Box Folder receives all emails that are not filtered by any filter.
• Sorting - in any EML window, click on a column heading to sort by it. Click again to sort in reverse order. The small triangle in the header shows the current direction of sorting.
• Selecting - in any EML window, you can select an individual email with one click, multiple contiguous emails with the usual shift-click, and multiple non-contiguous emails with command-click.
• Moving - selected emails in an EML window can be moved to any folder listed on the Emails menu. Command-click the selection and choose the folder to move to, from the resulting contextual menu.
To Preview Your Waiting Messages (Security Feature)
Email messages arrive on a server and wait there until you check them and choose to download them to your computer. Normally when you download the messages for reading, your email program deletes them from the server because you now have them on your computer. If you choose your preferences so that after downloading the messages are left on the server, Nisus Email keeps track of the messages you download, so unless you choose to, it does not download the same messages twice.
As a special security and convenience feature, Nisus Email allows you to preview what is waiting for you on the server before downloading anything to your computer. This is useful when you are using a slow modem or are on the road and have a connection for a limited time. There is nothing more annoying in those circumstances then to find that someone has sent you a several megabyte attachment! You may never get to the important message waiting for you.
Previewing is also useful if you are concerned about receiving viruses. Look for messages which are larger than the others in size, with subjects that are suspect or senders that are unknown. Senders are sometimes involuntary, so just because they are known does not mean they sent you the email voluntarily!
After previewing the list of waiting emails, you can x the checkboxes, choosing for each email one of the following options:
• to download it and leave it on the server,
• to leave it on the server without downloading,
• to delete it from the server after downloading,
• to delete it from the server without downloading.
The Preview Listing. To see the preview, do the following:
• Open the preferences dialog - choose the Preferences menu command from the Edit menu.
• X the preference “On checking mail, show the email list for me to choose what to download.”
• You will not be able to delete any messages from the server if you also chose the preference “After downloading, leave messages on server.”
• Close the Preferences dialog.
• Choose “Check Mail” from the Emails menu.
Following a short display of progress, you should see a listing displaying a preview of all the messages on the server.
The Checkboxes. The two leftmost columns of checkboxes, in the preview listing, let you determine the fate of each message. A “x” in the checkbox in the first column determines those messages you want to download, and in the second column those you want to delete.
So here are the possibilities for the message corresponding to the checkboxes:
Get Del
Means do not download and do not delete, that is, leave on the server.
Means download and do not delete, that is, leave on server.
Means do not download and delete from server.
Means delete from server after first downloading.
Above the first two column headings (“Get” and “Del”) are two buttons. These are to help you with longer lists. If the button shows an “x” in it, clicking it will put x’s in all the checkboxes in that column. If the button is empty, clicking it will clear all the checkboxes in that column.
The third column, labelled “K,” represents the message size in kilobytes. The other columns are clearly labeled in the header.
When you have set all the checkboxes as desired, click the button “Proceed” to carry out the settings of the checkboxes, or “Cancel” to do nothing if you change your mind.
The preview cannot let you read the contents of any particular message until you download it, but you can see the sender, the subject, the date sent and the size of each message.
Without actually decoding the message, there is no way to know if an attachment is in the message, so all you can do is to check the number of kilobytes in the message and if it is large you can assume that an attachment is the cause.
Any number in excess of about 30 K is almost certainly an attachment. If you have several emails, just compare their sizes and any one that is much larger than the others should be suspected, even if it is smaller than 30K. Most messages are in the single digit range.
Reading Messages
Using EML Window. To read a message in a Nisus Email window, open the EML Window which lists it , then double-click the message, or click to select a message, then click the button “Open.”
A Nisus Email window opens (unless you have set the toggle menu command “Open Emails In <Nisus Writer>”) allowing you to read and even edit the message. You can close it with the Close Box or using one of the two buttons “Mark As Read” or “Leave As Unread.” If you have edited the message, you will be asked if you want to save the changes. Click “Don’t Save” to preserve the original message.
Using Instant Window. Click on the Floating PO. If you have received some email, some Contact icons will show the presence of unread emails from the corresponding contacts. The presence of unread messages is indicated by a change of color of the associated contact icon - yellow for the “clouds” icons and red for the “mailbox” icons. The New Contact icon shows the presence of emails from contacts whose icons are not in your Instant Window.
• Click and hold the contact icon. A pop-down menu will open, listing by subject, the emails from the corresponding contact. Once the menu opens you can stop holding the mouse, but you only have a very short time to decide to do that.
• Choose the listed email you wish to read.
The menu closes, the Instant Window closes and the email opens for you to read.
Using Your Word Processor. To read your messages in your designated word processor or text editor from an EML Window, do the following:
• Make sure you have chosen your word processor or text editor, unless it is Nisus Writer, which does not need choosing as it is pre-chosen. The choice is made in the Preferences dialog, by clicking the button “Choose The Word Processor For Reading Emails.”
• Select the message or multiple messages you want to read in an EML Window.
• Click the “Open In WP” button, near the right bottom of the EML Window.
If the menu command “Open Email in Nisus Writer” from the Emails menu, is set, (where the name “Nisus Writer” may be replaced by the name of your chosen word processor or text editor) then any method of opening the emails, such as double-clicking an email, selecting and clicking “Open” or using the Instant Window, will open in your chosen word processor.
Using Nisus Writer. If your word processor is Nisus Writer, you can use the Catalog to list your emails, each of which is a file.
The Catalog enables a number of features. You can:
• open any number of emails simultaneously in separate windows;
• drag an email from the Catalog and drop it into your current document, adding its contents;
• create a search list of any number of emails, so you can use the PowerFind and PowerFind Pro search tools to search for text and/or text patterns.
Using The Finder. Each email is a file in a folder whose name is one of those appearing in the menus on the Emails menu list. You can open the folder in the Finder, list the emails as usual for files, and you can open any email with a double-click. The email will open in the word processor you have chosen in the preferences. The default word processor is Nisus Writer.
Because each email message is a separate text file, you can use the Sherlock indexing features built-into more recent Apple Systems, allowing you to search very quickly for content with Sherlock through all your emails, as well as through all your document files.
Managing Email
Without defining folders and filters within Nisus Email, you can easily manage a fair number of emails and when you are just starting, you may not think that planning for a large number is necessary. Begin just by using what is provided. Those who want to be prepared for a large number of received emails should define as many folders as is necessary and the corresponding filters.
Not Using An In Box Folder. Without defining the In Box folder, Nisus Email lists the Unread emails in a separate EML Window, and when a message is read it is automatically removed from that listing, appearing only in the Read EML Window. This forces you to dispose of all unread emails, by reading them, because if you don’t, your listing of unread emails will get more and more cluttered with old Unread messages - a definite reminder that you are not doing what you should be - disposing of all messages in a timely manner.
If you don’t like that method of listing and prefer seeing both Read and Unread messages in one listing, you can define your own In Box folder, which will list all incoming emails that are not filtered. As in all listings, Unread messages are marked with a bullet.
Using An In Box Folder. To define the In Box folder:
• Choose the menu command “Choose In Box Folder” on the Edit menu.
• In the resulting Dialog, there are two radio buttons to choose where the “Received Emails Should be Put.“ Click the radio button ..”in a custom folder that I choose.”
• If you have not yet added any folders, the only available folder will be Trash. We doubt that you want all your emails to go there, so you should click the button “Add Folder” and then proceed to either find an existing folder to add to the list or create a new one. (In older systems which do not have the Navigation Manager, you will not be able to create a new folder from that dialog. You will have to switch to the Finder to create a new folder, then switch back to Nisus Email to choose it.)
• The chosen folder will now appear in the list of available folders. To choose to put all your incoming emails there, select its name and click “Save” or just close the dialog.
You can choose any descriptive name for the In Box folder. If you use filters for all your expected emails, you could call this folder the “Unexpected Messages” folder. Most of these messages will be “junk email” though very occasionally you may find here an email from a long lost friend!
Just a reminder, to avoid any misunderstanding: the In Box folder and any other folders you make Nisus Email aware of, which may be used for filtering your messages, are ordinary System folders that you can see in the Finder. The only thing special about them is that Nisus Email is made aware of them, so it can track them and the emails it puts there. If you move any of those folders, Nisus Email will not look for them and will create new ones (if it needs to put emails there) in their original locations. If you move any message files outside of their folder, you will not be able to read them, nor list them, using Nisus Email, though you will always be able to read them using any text editor or word processor.
So whenever you want to move email messages, use the EML Window in Nisus Email and the contextual menu commands as described in the Section “Summary Of Folders And Listings” in Chapter III “Receiving Email.”
Deleting Messages. You can choose your preferences to delete all email older than the specified number of days. These older message files will be automatically moved to the Trash. Until you empty the trash, in the Finder, you will still be able to retrieve them.
You can also move messages to the Trash folder using the “Move..” contextual menus, unless you empty the trash, you will still be able to recover them.
IV Sending Email
DragSend
To minimize interruptions, you should have Nisus Email running all the time, and you can choose to have it start automatically when you start your computer. See “Choosing Your Preferences.”
The One Click Send. You can be typing in your word processor when you decide that you should share a thought, and perhaps ask a question of you colleague or friend. Email is the obvious way to do it, but you are reluctant to interrupt yourself with the trouble of preparing and sending a message.
As you are typing in a document, type the message to your friend, beginning it on a new line with the email address field:
To: Bob Smith <smith@nisus.com>
(You can use your word processor glossary as an address book, so you don’t have to remember the address - just the name or abbreviation.)
Follow this with a new line and your message, containing any amount of text.
When you have finished, select the whole message, with the first line containing the address field, and drag it to the Floating PO.
That’s it! If you are online, your email is immediately sent, with a “Swoosh” sound confirming that you have deposited the message in the Floating PO.
A copy of the sent message is saved in your Sent Emails folder, and can be listed in an EML Window by choosing the “Show Sent Emails” menu command, from the Emails menu.
This is called the “One Click Send” because that is all it takes to send - just one click and drag.
You can use other fields in addition to the simple “To:” field when using the One Click Send or indeed any of the methods of sending email. All the various fields are described with examples, in Chapter VI “Rules For Headers In Nisus Email.”
The Two Click Send (Message). Select some text, text you have written in a word processor, or text you have read while browsing the Internet, and drag it to the Floating PO, If the text does not begin with the “To:” field (or include the “To:” field within the header) you will get the Instant Window to click the contact icon.
While the Instant Window is open, move the mouse pointer (but without pressing the mouse) over the top part of the icon and note that it reads “Send.” Move it over the bottom part of the icon and it reads “Edit.”
If you click the icon when it reads “Send” the message is immediately sent (or queued if you have turned on queuing in your preferences) and the Instant Window is closed.
If you click the icon when it reads “Edit” the Instant Window closes, Nisus Email is activated, and a simple message editing window opens with the text you dragged, pre-addressed to your contact, ready for you to edit, then click “Send” to complete the mailing.
The Two Click Send (Attachment). Just like the Two Click send of a text message, you can drag any file or even a folder of files, on the Floating PO to send attachments.
If you choose the “Send” option on your second click, the attachment will be accompanied by the standard message you may have prepared or edited when preparing that contact information.
If you choose the “Edit” option, you can edit the standard message that goes with the attachment, type a new message or paste one.
The Three Click Send. We also call this the Quick Message, though the previous two ways of sending are even quicker. This is useful when you want to send a quick message but you are not in any text writing application.
Click the Floating PO to open the Instant Window. Click the icon of your contact. Nisus Email is activated and a Quick Message editing window opens with the greeting, if any, you have pre-defined for your contact, and the “To:” field pre-addressed.
Type the message and click the “Send” button.
Send On Save (SOS)
Dispatch Folder. The second, completely different way of sending email is by saving a file in a specially designated location - the “Dispatch” folder. You will find a folder named “Dispatch” in the same location as Nisus Email.
Anything you either move there or save there will be a candidate for being sent as email. Whether it is sent almost immediately or it waits till you activate Nisus Email, depends on your preference settings. By default, the preferences are set to send it immediately.
If the file you save is not pre-addressed with the appropriate “To:” header, the Instant Window will open inviting you to point out the recipient’s icon. If the file is pre-addressed, it will be sent (or queued if preferences are set to queue) after you are notified with a “swoosh” sound.
Files of Type Text. If the file you save, or move to the Dispatch folder is of type “Text,” its contents will be copied and will be sent as the message. Your preferences can be set also to include the original file as an attachment. Sending also the attachment is useful when you want the recipient to receive a fully formatted file of your message. However, at this time only Nisus Writer files are of type “Text” while being also fully formatted. Other word processors can save files “As Text Only” and thus create files of type “Text,” but these do not include formatting. Therefore the option of also adding the attached file should only be used when corresponding with others who use Nisus Writer.
Non-Text Files. If the file is not of type text, it will be sent as an attachment only, with a standard, attachment message (editable if you choose the “Edit” option when clicking on your contact icon). The standard message can be changed for each of your contacts by editing the Contact Information. The “Edit Contact Info…” menu command is the first command on the context menu (Control-Click the Contact Icon).
Send Clipboard
This feature is useful when you are using a browser on the Internet and want to send someone, or even yourself, a copy of an article. Often a browser will not allow a drag-and-drop. In that case a Copy followed by the Send Clipboard command will work equally well.
To send the contents of the Clipboard as an email message, do the following:
• Copy the message (which can be any text in any application) to the Clipboard
• Click the Floating PO to bring up the Instant Window
• Click and hold (until the context menu pop-down opens) the appropriate Contact icon (or the New Contact icon) choosing the upper portion of the icon if you want to send without editing, or the lower portion if you want to edit before sending
• Choose the menu command “Send Clipboard” or “Edit & Send Clipboard” from the pop-down, as appropriate.
The message is sent to the contact whose icon you clicked. If you click the “New Contact” icon, you will have to address the email before it is sent.
The Clipboard may contain a header, and if that contains a valid “To:” field, you must use the “New Contact” icon for sending, otherwise the address in the “To:” field will be included as part of the message.
V Redirect or Forward & Send Again
Redirect or Forward
There is no menu command to redirect or forward email because there is a very simple drag & drop way of doing that. When you see an email you have received in an EML Window, just select it and drag the selection to the Floating PO. The Instant window opens and you can then click either the “Send” part or the “Edit part” of the icon in the usual way. In Nisus Email no distinction is made between redirect and forward - in both cases the whole message is sent without change, except for any editing you have done.
Send Again
If you have sent an email and you want to send it to someone else or to correct an email address, use DragSend or drag & drop the listing from the EML Window to the Floating PO. For example suppose your sent email got Returned because you got the address wrong.
To correct the address and send it again, assuming you have created a contact icon with the correct email address, proceed as follows.
• Choose the menu command “Show Sent Emails” from the Emails menu.
• Select the listed email in the Sent EML Window.
• Drag it to the Floating PO.
• When the Instant Window opens, click on the contact icon. You can still choose to preview the message (click the “Edit” part of the icon) or send it without preview (click the “Send” part of the icon).
Here is an alternative if you have not created a contact icon with the correct address.
• Choose the menu command “Show Sent Emails” from the Emails menu.
• In the resulting EML Window find and open the email you sent which got Returned.
• If the headers are not showing, click the checkbox at the top left of the window to “Show Headers.”
• Select the whole “To:” field and copy it.
• Click at the very top of the message body and paste the header.
• Edit the header to correct the address.
• Add any comments you want, then choose Select All from the Edit menu.
• Now DragSend it as usual, then close the editing window.
VI Rules For Headers In Nisus Email
Overview
All Nisus Email Headers (which are totally optional) have to be typed, pasted, or glossary expanded by you as the first part of the email message.
Nisus Email searches the very first lines of an email for text with the special meaning of email “headers.” The recipients address, the subject, the “carbon copy” address and the “blind carbon copy” addresses as well as the character set encoding and attachment specifications are all optional header components.
The “character set encoding” allows proper treatment of foreign language characters between different encoding systems. The Macintosh and the Windows platforms each have different encoding of non-English characters. (Specifying the encoding is not necessary if you have set your font in a Nisus Email editing window, to the one supporting your language.)
You can use the “Attachment” field to instruct Nisus Email to attach a file or a folder of files to your message when it is sent.
Each of these fields can be typed in by you when preparing the message. Nisus Email interprets, as a Header, any sequence of header components up to the first interruption of the sequence with any non-header component (or an illegal header component) or empty line.
Headers Defined
The header consists of header components. Each component must begin at the very beginning of a line (no spaces allowed) either beginning the document or following another header component. That is, there must be only a “Return” character between header components, nothing else is allowed between components.
The header must begin at the very beginning of the message. Anything other than a recognized header component at the very beginning of a message, such as a space or a blank line (Return) will prevent Nisus Email from recognizing anything following it as a header.
For example, if a document begins with the following:
To:sales@nisus.com
Subject: Nisus Email for a friend
Cc: nesybeta@software4usa.com
Bcc: smith@aol.com
Charset:ISO-8895-1
Attachment: MyDisk:Desktop Folder:Order Details
Gentlemen,
Regarding my order for Nisus Email......
it is using all the available header components, and all of them will be interpreted and acted on by Nisus Email, whichever method of mailing you use.
Notice that there is no need for an extra line between the Attachment component and the greeting - the header stops automatically after the Attachment component because the greeting is not a legal header component.
The Header Components
The following lists all the supported header components. Each component must begin at the very beginning of the line. If a space begins a line, the component is not valid and the whole header is assumed to end there.
The addressing components:
To:
Cc:
Bcc:
Any one of these fields can be followed by the email address of the recipient. The email address can be preceded by the first and/or last name of the recipient, for example:
To: Fred Barnaby <fbarnaby@yahoo.com>
or alternatively
To: “Fred Barnaby” <fbarnaby@yahoo.com>
or even
To: Fred Barnaby fbarnaby@yahoo.com
The field designators, that is the words “to” or “cc” or “bcc” or the others, are all case-insensitive. The capitalization shown in the examples is only for esthetic reasons - it is not required.
The Subject Field
Subject: The text of the subject goes here
When the subject field is present and is not empty, it will be used and the automatic subject generation will be suppressed.
The Character Set Field
Charset: <Designation>
Each character in a computer is assigned a number code. Unfortunately the code numbers assigned to foreign characters on the Windows platform and on other platforms are not those used on the Macintosh. Therefore for correct transmission of foreign language emails between the Macintosh and the Windows platform (and other platforms) code conversion is necessary. This conversion is dependant on the language being used. The language, in turn determines the font being used. This field is used to tell the receiving program which character codes are being used. Normally, if you are sending non-English language emails, you should do the following:
From the Emails menu, the “Outgoing Email Character Set” submenu, choose one of the character sets appropriate to your language. This sets the destination encoding to be used by Nisus Email.
Send the email in any way you want - no need for the Charset field as that will be filled out by Nisus Email. If you do specify a Charset field, then the setting of the Outgoing Email Character Set menu will be ignored.
All email in English which uses only the standard US characters, including the Plain quotes (not the “Smart quotes”) can be transmitted by email between computers with no change of character codes and so no encoding (the “None” option.)
When communicating with other Macintosh contacts, no character set encoding is needed for any language, if the user preference “Send Emails using Quoted-Printable” is chosen. Because Nisus Email automatically chooses a character encoding from the menu settings and the font being used, to not use any encoding you must use the following header:
Charset: None
or choose “None” from the menu.
Note however that non-English characters sent to non-Macintosh users will then turn into other characters than the ones you want. English characters, however, will have no problems.
The Attachment Field
Attachment: <Complete Path to the file>
For example, if your disk drive was named “Macintosh HD” and on it you had a folder named “Nisus Documents” and this folder contained a document named “Instructions For Joe” which you wanted to attach to a message using the Attachment Field (simple DragSend is of course easier, but less flexible) you would add the following to your email header:
Attachment: Macintosh HD:Nisus Documents:Instructions For Joe
If the folder “Nisus Documents” is on your Desktop, then the attachment field would be:
Attachment: Macintosh HD:Desktop Folder:Nisus Documents:Instructions For Joe
If you want to send more then one file using the Attachment field, you have to put them in a folder and specify the path to that folder.
Requirements For Text To Be A Header
The first part of the email text which you type will be recognized as a header if it consists of any number of the header components, with nothing else in between, and begins the email with a valid component on the very first line of the email. If a space, or a Return or anything other than any one of the following:
To:
Subject:
Cc:
Bcc:
Charset:
Attachment:
begins the document, Nisus Email assumes that there are no headers and will treat the whole text as the message - no matter what it contains.
This is done to give you the flexibility to choose when the beginning of your message is to be interpreted as a header and when it is just a quote of a header and should be sent as part of the message body.
So for example, to send email, to a friend explaining all about using Nisus Email headers, quoting examples, just as done here, without any concern that these will be interpreted as actual headers, begin the email either with the header you want to be interpreted or with a blank line, if you do not want any header to be interpreted, and then follow with at least one non-header piece of text. After that, even if the text you type is a legal header, it will not be interpreted as one.
VII Examples Illustrating Use of Headers
Example 1 - No Header
Dear Fred,
I have just discovered another useful feature of Nisus Email..
Comments: This start of an email message indicates that there is no header. When you send it in any of the ways offered by Nisus Email, you will be presented with the Instant Window of Contact icons to point and click to your contact. The subject will be automatically extracted from the first part of the message.
Example 2 Empty Subject Component
Subject:
Hello Fred,
I received your file......
Comments: This start of a message indicates that although a header component (“Subject:”) is present, it is empty and so will be ignored, and will be treated just like the message in Example 1. Similarly, if any other header component is present but empty, it will be ignored. However, an empty header component does not break the sequence of headers, so other non-empty components can follow.
Example 3 Valid “To:” Header
To:sales@nisus.com
Thank you for your prompt reply to my request.....
Comments: The start of the message here indicates that the recipient is to be “sales@nisus.com” so when you send it, in any way allowed by Nisus Email, you will not be interrupted with the Instant Window - this email message is “pre-addressed.” It will be sent (or queued, if your preferences are set to queue your mail) with a “swoosh” sound indicating the action, but with no other interruption. Because there is no subject field, the subject will be automatically extracted from the first part of the text.
Example 4 Header Without Address
Cc:support@nisus.com
Subject:New way to use the Dispatch Folder
Dear Bob,
It was fun customizing my mass mailing emails with mail-merge and the Nisus Email program...
Comments: This message start has a valid “carbon copy” header field and a subject field, but it does not have a “To:” field. When sent, it will display the Instant Window for you to point to the recipient icon.
Example 5 Empty Bcc Component
To:sales@nisus.com
Bcc:
Subject:Please send product list
Gentlemen,
Please send me a list of your products....
Comments: This message is pre-addressed and so will be sent or queued without any interruption. It has a valid, though empty, “blind carbon copy” or “Bcc:” header field and a valid subject field. The subject field will be used. As the Bcc: field is empty it will be ignored.
I enclose a drawing of my suggestion for adding a new feature to Nisus Email.......
Comments: This message is pre-addressed, and so will be sent or queued without interruption. The “cc:” field will be used and the Attachment field means that the file named “Example Drawing,” which is on the Desktop of your “Main Drive,” will be attached to your message.
If the path to the file should be incorrect, you will get a message that it cannot be found, and the message will not be sent.
Example 7 Error In Address Field
To:sales@nisus.com
Gentlemen,
Please send me your wonderful Nisus Email program. I enclose.....
Comments: This email, which looks like it is pre-addressed, in fact has no valid header because there is a leading space in front of the “To:” field component. This will be treated like any email which needs addressing: when sent in any of the possible ways, you will be presented with the Instant Window of Contacts, to point out the recipient. The first part of the text “ To:sales@nisus.com” will be sent as part of the message, as if it were the greeting or any other part of the message. Subject extraction will begin with “Gentlemen” which would normally be omitted from the extraction, because in this case, the first short part of the text (“To:sales@nisus.com”) is excluded from the subject extraction, being assumed to be the greeting!
If there was any other valid field component following the first line, it would also be ignored, because the first component is not valid.
VIII Using Nisus Writer Or Another Word Processor
General
Nisus Email works best with Nisus Writer as your word processor, but many, if not all, Nisus Writer features are available in other good word processors and some features not in Nisus Writer are in others. Nisus Email is designed to be open to the various features in word processors which can help you make emailing both a pleasurable and a very efficient process. It is up to your creativity to find ways to make emailing and email management easier and more fun.
This chapter describes the various ways you can use Nisus Writer features with Nisus Email. If you are using another word processor then you can check for each similar feature in your word processor, or if another feature it has, can be used in a similar way. DragSend is available from any word processor that supports Drag-and-Drop. If Drag-and-Drop is not supported, use the equivalent “Send Clipboard” feature in Nisus Email, by first copying the message to the Clipboard.
Overview
When you do most of your writing in your word processor, you can continue to work while sending email in one of at least four ways: the One Click or Two Click methods using DragSend or the two ways using Send On Save: the pre-addressed SOS and the unaddressed SOS.
In using both DragSend and SOS methods when the email includes the “To:” field, that is it is pre-addressed, your send is the most efficient, because Nisus Email then does not have to interrupt you with the Instant Window of contact icons. Therefore any feature that allows you to easily address your email is useful.
The Glossary is an obvious feature that most word processors have. Therefore create a glossary of email abbreviations expanding to the field designation “To:” followed by the address.
The Macro feature in a word processor can automate many tasks. One of those is the so called “attribution” line in a reply email - the line that quotes who said it and when. This can be easily automated together with the necessary changes in the header and quotation marks to prepare a reply. How to do that depends on the Macro features available. It is possible in Nisus Writer, and such reply Nisus Writer macros are shipped with Nisus Email and described in the following sections.
Nisus Writer Macros Overview
Many macros and glossaries can speed-up and make more reliable the preparation of email.
We provide you with a few macros that should get you going and we invite you to create your own and to edit the ones we provide if they do not do it exactly the way you like.
As macros become available, we will let you download them from our web site. We invite you to visit our web page (www.nisus.com) to find out about the latest developments in our products and the latest available email macros.
Loading Macros. To “Load” a macro file in Nisus Writer, find it in the Catalog, in the Open Dialog, or just in the Finder, and double-click it. The name of the macro file will appear on the Macros menu, which is the menu just to the left of the Help menu, designated by a cogwheel icon. The file name is the submenu name which opens with the names of the individual macro commands.
Open Macro File. To open a macro for editing, hold the Command key down while choosing the macro from the menu. Each macro is fully commented explaining the action of each command. You can read the comments, when you open a macro for editing.
Nisus Email Macros Listing
The following macros are included with Nisus Email and can be found in a file called “Nisus Email Macros Vol 1.” They are in the same folder as the application program Nisus Email, but can be moved to an convenient folder.
Each macro works only in Nisus Writer and acts on the currently active file.
We list the name of the macro command (which appears on the Macros menu when the Macro file is loaded, and follow with a description of its functionality.
Addresses from Files Works on all the files listed in the Catalog. Opens each file in turn. Extracts the addresses from the file. Closes the original file, and does the same for the next file. The result is a new document with all the extracted email addresses alphabetized, and all duplicates removed.
Check Domains Works on the active open document assuming that it is a list of either email addresses or URLs, one per line. It finds and selects all the lines with a valid domain zone. (The domain zone is that part of the domain name past the last period. For example “.com” or “.net” or “.org” etc.) Then the selections are reversed, that is everything that is not selected gets selected instead. Then the selection is “Cut” and put into a new document named “Bad Domains.” You may then be able to correct some of the domain zones by looking at them. The common errors include a period at the end of the domain, commas instead of periods, and missing last letters. The total number of possible domain zones is quite large and may increase in the future. This macro uses a rather long “Find All” expression which includes the list of all possible domain zones separated by the “OR” which in PowerFind Pro is the vertical line “|.” If new domain zones should be added, all you have to do is add them to that long “Find All” expression in a similar way. This macro is useful if you have a long list of email addresses or URLs and want to clean it up.
Get Addresses Works on the active open document. Finds all email addresses, opens a new document window called “Collected Addresses” and pastes the found addresses, one per line.
Quote Selection Make a selection of the text, then run this macro (Key equivalent Command-QS) and each paragraph start in the selection has the email quote “>” added to it. Useful when for any reason you are not using the reply macro.
Remove HTML Tags For those occasions when someone sends you an HTML formatted email and you want to read it free of the tags.
Remove Line Breaks Removes unnecessary Returns from received email. The rule is that if a Return at the end of a line of text is followed by a line of text of reasonable length, it will be removed, if it is followed by another Return (blank line) then it will be left alone.
Remove Quotes Selected Select the “>”quoted text and run this macro to remove all the quotes. Useful when you get an interesting longer piece of text sent to you from an email client which puts quotes when you re-direct.
Replace > with " Replaces the email style quotes with the more literary style (straight) quotes.
Reply (This is a modified version of a macro first written by Patrick James.) This converts an email to a standard reply. First it checks if an attachment field is present to pick up the attached file name for the attribution line. Then it removes the remaining header details. Then it picks up the attribution text and the “reply to” address if present otherwise it uses the From address. It puts reply quotes at the beginning of each paragraph of the original message, puts that text in the “Ignore Spelling” style, color codes each part of the new header, and places your insertion point past the header but just before the attribution. Now you can type your reply. Having typed it, you can use any one of the methods to send it. The simplest and quickest is the One-Click DragSend method, unless you do not want to lift your hands from the keyboard, in which case use the SOS macro with a key assignment.
Reply To All This is just like the Reply macro but addresses the reply to all the recipients, that is including any “cc:” field.
Save Temp Before this macro can work, you have to open it for editing and change the words in red “Your Hard Drive Name” to the name of your hard drive. This macro saves your open file under the name “Temp” to the desktop. It has the keyboard shortcut “Command-ST” assigned to it. It is very useful when you are preparing a reply and you do not want to overwrite the original message, but do want to temporarily save your work in case you get distracted or your machine crashes and you forget what you were doing. The same name file can be used over and over, but each new save overwrites the previous one, so it is strictly temporary. Once you have sent the email, there will be a copy of it in the Sent Email folder.
Send On Save Before this macro can work, you must find your “Dispatch” folder in your “Nisus Email Folder” and determine its path starting with your hard drive name. Then open the macro for editing and type or paste that path in place of the text in red: “Your Disk Name:Desktop Folder:Nisus Email Folder:” such that the whole line in single quotes up through “\C9” represents the path to your Dispatch folder. If any part of the path contains the single straight quote as part of a file or folder name, then you will have to type that quote twice when typing it into the macro path. The symbols “\C9” represent the contents of Clipboard 9 where the file name is stored. Once prepared with your path, this macro will save the current file in the Dispatch folder, naming it either with the subject (if there is one defined in a subject field) or with a portion of the text. If Nisus Email preferences are appropriately set, this act of saving the file will send it activating “Send On Save.”
Split Merged Mails This macro acts on the open file which consists of any number of individual emails, separated by explicit page breaks. Such a file is created after using a mail-merge to customize a number of emails to many different recipients. The macro takes each message and saves it in its own file, naming it with the address of the recipient. Before you use this macro, replace the text in red with the complete path to where you want to save the individual files. Make sure that the path ends with a folder name followed by the colon “:” followed by the “\C1” as currently in the macro. The path begins with your disk name, followed by the colon “:” followed by the folder name, and so on. If the disk name cannot be found, you will get an error message. If the disk can be found, but the folder names are incorrect or do not exist, Nisus Writer will create them and use them.
IX Appendix
Nisus Email Folders & Files
The first time you start Nisus Email, it will check if it has the right folder and files within its location (folder). If it senses that not all the required files are there (or even if none are there) it will create all the necessary files, including this manual file, and the Nisus Email Macros file. If you have located Nisus Email in its own folder, it will install all the necessary files and folders within that folder. If you have put it together with other files and folders, it will create its own separate folder named “Nisus Email Folder” and then install itself and all needed files and folders within that.
The following is a list of all the folders installed by Nisus Email and the files within them, with a short explanation of the functionality of each file.
Folder Attachments Received
Folder Attachments Sent
Copies of all received and sent attached files are stored in the above respective folders.
Folder Cancelled Mail
Stores all email files that have been cancelled after sending has commenced.
Folder Dispatch
Any file or folder moved into this folder or saved in it will be sent as specified in your preference settings.
File Mail Debug
A text file of the most recent activity of sending or receiving email for use in tracking down problems. If you have a sending or receiving problem, please send this file as an attachment or as part of the message. First check it yourself to see what you are sending. We observe strict confidentiality of all information sent in that file. We will never use it for any purpose other than helping diagnose a problem. The file may contain the email address of the last recipient or sender, the subject of the email, and sometimes even the text of the message. If any of that information is too sensitive for you to transmit to us, just delete it, but tell us that you deleted it.
File Menus & Dialogs File
This text file contains the numerous messages, file names, folder names, item descriptions in dialogs and other text parts of the program. They are in an easily readable format to allow localization into other languages.
Folder Nisus Email Files
Contains a the following files needed by Nisus Email:
Backup Contacts A text file that is a list of all your contacts as a backup, should your Contacts file be lost or damaged. To restore all your contacts, or just some of them, open the file in any word processor or text editor, edit it if necessary, select all the text, choose Copy, then go to Nisus Email and use the File menu command “Import Contacts From Clipboard.”
Charsets A text file with the definitions and menu names of the various character set destinations foe encoding the various languages. You can add new character encodings and menu names, if you know what you are doing.
Common Words A text file containing the list of common words to be omitted when extracting the subject from the message. You can edit it at will.
Contacts This is a non-editable data file containing the contacts you have defined and the identifiers of the currently unread emails from each contact.
Downloads Left On Server A text file containing unique identifiers of all downloaded messages, for each personality, which were left on the server. If you delete this file, previously downloaded messages left on the server will be downloaded again as if they were new.
Email Filters A text file defining each of your filters, the paths to each folder to be used with each filter, and the text to be searched. The number identifiers of each filter must increase from the beginning of the file in sequence, without gaps, otherwise Nisus Email will not read it, identifying it as “corrupted.” If this happens, you can try opening it and editing it.
Email Listing Settings A data file, not editable, used by Nisus Email to store all the parameters associated with the email listing windows (EML).
Email Stationery This file is present only if you create it and put it there. It is only useful if you are using Nisus Writer as your word processor to read emails. (Its alternative name is “Email Template”). Set up the font and style you want your email to appear when you open it in Nisus Writer. You can put any text you like in the file, because it will be replaced by the message.
Nisus Email Preferences A non-editable data file with your preferences settings.
Personalities A text file with all your personalities defined in a simple, obvious way. If you know what you are doing, you can edit this.
Row to Delete A data file for keeping track of removed emails from listings.
Window Locations A data file storing the last locations of all windows.
Folder Received Emails
Contains all unfiltered received email files in folders, one per month, named by the year and month of the email. The file “Table Of Contents” should never be removed or edited as it contains the information needed to be able to list these emails in a Nisus Email window. If it is destroyed or lost, the emails are individual text file so you can always list them in the Nisus Writer Catalog, in the Finder and open them in Nisus Writer or any other word processor.
Folder Sent Emails
Contains all sent email, in folders, one per month, named with the year and month of the email. Like the Received Emails, this also has its own Table Of Contents file.
