Send Text Messages to Wireless Pagers from OS/2
WPS-enabled ChipChat Wireless communicator combines the power of OS/2 with the Freedom of Wireless Messages...
PMMail v1.5- by Noah Sumner

What do I really need in an e-mail application you ask? Well at least I asked myself that when I got a SLIP account and got onto the Internet. I came up with a simple list of answers to this question. I needed a program that could send and receive mail, however it had to be able to send via SMTP and receive via POP. I also wanted the ability to uuencode/uudecode (to attach files) and the ability to check my spelling.

I quickly found that the list of e-mail applications for OS/2 that would do these things wasn't very long and Ultimail was excluded (no SMTP support). In fact, until now only Post-Road mailer did all these things and you had to pay for the speller. Until now. I have found the new PMMail v1.5 to be all I need, and much, much more. By the time you read this, you will probably be able to see what I mean.

PMMail v1.1 was a small and relatively inexpensive program and had a simple interface but it was rather limited. PMMail v1.5 takes that small relatively inexpensive program to the next level. Authors Robert Novitskey and Evan Goldring have completely rewritten the program from the ground up to revamp the interface, add much needed features and tune the performance and the result is a winner.

Performance

The first obvious difference between PMMail v1.5 and the old version is the size. The original program's executable file was only about 350k so even the most limited of machines seldom had trouble running it. While the new version is certainly much larger at 650k, it should still load and run quickly on most systems, even those with limited memory. On an 8 meg test machine it was still snappy in loading and performing standard functions. Likewise, sending and receiving mail is very efficient and you'll be more constrained by your ISP or the speed of your Internet connection than by PMMail.

Like other competent e-mail clients, PMMail v1.5 uses separate threads for sending and receiving mail so both can take place simultaneously. Of course, this means it is also possible to open a new message or the address book or do practically anything else while mail is being sent or retrieved. Throughout the beta program which wrapped up during the writing of this article, it proved to be a fairly stable application and by the time you read this, even the cosmetics should be completely polished.

The Interface

What about the cosmetics (gif 13.5k), you ask? PMMail v1.5 is certainly visually different from the original! As I mentioned, the program has been rewritten from the ground up and this includes new icons and a new chiseled look which was a much needed improvement. More important than the looks of the interface though, is its new functionality. Users can now organize their mail using folders within folders! There is also a new Trash folder a-la-Eudora for those who like to have a little insurance when deleting messages. The other thing you're likely to notice about the folders is that one click now opens them instead of a double click. This can be disconcerting or even confusing at first but overall it speeds things up.

More important than the enhancement to the folders is the addition of drag and drop to this version of PMMail. Moving and copying messages can still be accomplished through menu items or buttons but who will want to now that you can drag and drop them to their destination folders? PMMail uses standard OS/2 drag and drop techniques to accomplish moving or copying (dragging while holding the Ctrl key).

Other nice enhancements to the interface include an enhanced info window at the bottom of the screen indicating what number message in the list you are downloading when receiving mail, how many messages in total are coming through and what percentage of the message has been retrieved so far. The send information also indicates what percentage of the message has been transmitted. The compose and read windows have been redesigned too. Again, this will throw many users off for a few days if they are used to the sparseness of PMMail v1.1 or another program, but it is very easy to get used to and overall, a nice layout.

Features

Another one of the biggest improvements to PMMail v1.5 is its improved address book (gif 8.5k) with drag and drop moving and copying of addresses between books and to message fields (To:, Cc: and Bcc:) in the compose window. Copying an address to multiple books does not duplicate the information in the database, it simply indicates to the address book manager that it should be listed in both books thus saving hard disk space if you want to copy addresses to multiple books.

The address book entry screens have also been greatly overhauled and now contain adequate slots for most information. There is now a field for an "alias" which will be automatically expanded to the person's e-mail address if you type only it in any address field when composing your message. There is also an expanded, multiple line notes field as well as areas for entering address and phone number information for both home and work.

Not only can users drag and drop addresses or enter aliases, they can also choose to have individual addresses in a book added to a right-click menu available from the message compose window. It is also possible to mail to an entire book for mass mailings. Of course, a migrate feature is provided to move your data (not just address books, but folders, accounts and groups too) from v1.1 to v1.5.

A fairly robust search function has been included in the new interface which allows you to search various parts of messages in definable folders for instances of text. A nice addition to this would be the ability to search address books but it is not implemented. Other utilities include, rexx exits, beefed up filters and canned replies all of which perform as expected.

I personally like the fact that PMMail v1.5 has built in uuencode/decode features which work very well. It also includes MIME support which also works well in my small bit of experience with it and for those who need it, it also handles BinHex attachments. These features, however, have all become almost standard in e-mail clients today. The attachments (gif 11k) are handled nicely in messages, with a separate window containing icons named for each attachment (multiple attachments are supported). Decoding attached messages is not automatic as it is with the Windows app, Eudora, but it is simple.

Thankfully PMMail 1.5 includes spell checking! However, the spell checker doesn't work very well right now; it gives recommended spellings for errors but not once has it chosen the right words for me. Unfortunately there is no thesaurus included at this time.

Many people ask for support for multiple e-mail accounts and PMMail v1.5 addresses this too. The ability to have multiple accounts works very well; I have been running two accounts for a while and still haven't found a single bug in this feature. You can even receive mail for two accounts at startup! Each account has its own "utilities" settings.

Many people get massive amounts of e-mail everyday and don't want to download every piece, especially because some of them might contain large files. Just for them is the "remote control" facility. Users can connect to a pop server and see that date, size, subject header, sender and any attached files of messages without having to download their mail!

Finally, Novitskey and Goldring have thrown in a few cool extras. Highlighting text in an open message window and then right-clicking on it will bring up a pop-up menu of options to perform. PMMail extracts any e-mail addresses and WWW URLs it finds in the marked text (and it does a good job of getting them correct) and allows you to quickly add them to your address book, mail to them or pop open WebExplorer to view an URL.

Problems

Unfortunately there are still a few problems with this application. The original configuration can be a little tricky. The interface is great and certainly very powerful, but not as simple as Post Road Mailer's interface. Perhaps it should be more configurable (although I wouldn't configure it to be like Post Road either). The default font is rather small and requires dragging from the OS/2 font palette to update.

It would be nice to be able to drag and drop folders to rearrange their tree structure. Since they are just standard directories, or WPS folders, it is possible to manipulate them from the WPS and the next time you open PMMail the changes will be reflected, but this is not an elegant solution. Also, you can't have multiple folders open at once like PRM. And you can't have multiple e-mail addresses and aliases for one address book entry.

Conclusions

PMMail is still shareware. For those of you that have registered PMMail v1.1 the upgrade to v1.5 is free. As you can tell I certainly believe that PMMail v1.5 is a feature packed application. In fact, I think it is probably the best mail program available for OS/2. I suggest that all of you check it out as soon as it is widely available on April 15th--this is really a dynamite product!
 * PMMail v1.5
SouthSide Software
Authors: Robert Novitskey and Evan Goldring
Registration: US$30
Noah Sumner is a student at York Mills C.I. in Toronto, Ontario and a member of the Toronto OS/2 Users Group, as well as the shareware disk of the month editor.

Send a letter to the editor.

Our Sponsors: [Bianchi Software] [BMT Micro] [ChipChat] [SPG] [Stardock]


Back to Contents | ® Previous Article | Next Article ¯


This page is maintained by Falcon Networking. We welcome your suggestions.

Copyright © 1996 - Falcon Networking