RIP Pegasus Mail :: Email client recommendations?
Wednesday, 3 January 2007 15:53![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pneProbably my first contact with email software was with Pegasus Mail back in 1992; I imagine our company had chosen it because it integrated well with the Novell network we used back then.
Since I was already familiar with that program, and since it was free, I installed it at home as well; I think I used "Microsoft Internet Mail and News" (the precursor of Outlook Express) for only a couple of months before I migrated to Pegasus at home, probably in late 1992 or early 1993. I've been using Pegasus Mail as my mail client ever since, for about fourteen years.
Every now and then I've toyed with moving to another program (especially since Pegasus Mail didn't support UTF-8 for a long time), but the amount of mail I had saved in Pegasus format, and the fact that I was used to it, always put me off.
Now Heise Online has reported (in German) that Pegasus Mail will no longer be developed. Apparently, David Harris had considered releasing Pegasus Mail completely for free (including the manual, which one used to have to pay for, as one way of donating), while Mercury, a mail server, would become a "semi-commercial" product, but it seems that plans have changed: the front page says that Pegasus Mail and Mercury will both no longer be developed.
Pegasus Mail can still be downloaded for now, but the download page is no longer linked to from the front page.
A pity.
I believe that David Harris had originally made the program available free of charge because he had the philosophy that basic Internet software should be free, and that people should cooperate with one another—the kind of spirit that was, I suppose, more prevalent during the early days of the Internet, before it became ubiquitous. (Another example of that kind of spirit is in SMTP: little concern for things such as authentication, as mail sites tended simply to trust one another.)
Sic transit gloria mundi. (That's Latin for "Gloria threw up in the bus on Monday.")
Perhaps I shall have to consider a bit more seriously moving to another email program. I do use Webmail a whole lot more than I used to (especially Gmail and Fastmail.FM), but I still read messages at home, and having a program that's still being maintained may be useful—even though Pegasus Mail still works for me.
Does anyone have any recommendations for an email client for a Windows machine?
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no subject
Date: Wednesday, 3 January 2007 15:02 (UTC)no subject
Date: Wednesday, 3 January 2007 15:10 (UTC)Thunderbird
Date: Wednesday, 3 January 2007 15:19 (UTC)I've considered Thunderbird, but I wonder how many people use it because it's part of the nebulous Mozilla thingy, or because it's the geek thing to do, rather than because it's actually better.
What made you choose Thunderbird?
Re: Thunderbird
Date: Wednesday, 3 January 2007 15:26 (UTC)My dad, however, switched from Outlook to Thunderbird after he heard too many stories on auto-executions of malicious files and security problems and whatnot, and he says for him it's a very similar experience, but he has really come to enjoy Thunderbird more, because the Address Book function is much better (it's supposedly a lot easier to add recipients to a newly composed email, etc). It's also relatively lightweight and clean, and loads faster. He also says the interface is pretty intuitive (at least to someone who has used Outlook ;)
I suppose from a security point of view, Thunderbird is definitely superior to Outlook.
I did use it once, it was an older version and I was pretty content with it, until I quickly realized that I simply prefer webmail, because it's instantly accessible wherever I am.
Thunderbird
Date: Wednesday, 3 January 2007 15:16 (UTC)Is there anything about Thunderbird you like specifically? Or any advantages you see over other programs?
What made you choose it? What made you stick with it?
Re: Thunderbird
Date: Wednesday, 3 January 2007 15:16 (UTC)Read: are worth the bother. I'm not saying en-GB localisations automatically suck, just that I'm not sure whether there's much point in getting them; what things would be different, and would those matter to me?
Re: Thunderbird
Date: Wednesday, 3 January 2007 15:26 (UTC)Thunderbird is very stable, is being actively developed by Mozilla, and does exactly what I want (grab IMAP email, filters/junk mail detection, strip HTML) without getting in my way.
Re: Thunderbird
Date: Wednesday, 3 January 2007 15:28 (UTC)Re: Thunderbird
Date: Wednesday, 3 January 2007 15:37 (UTC)Re: Thunderbird
Date: Wednesday, 3 January 2007 15:40 (UTC)Ah, so it is more like labels, then. (If you use Gmail, is it like what it has?)
But if a message is in one label, it acts much as if it were in one folder, which should be fine.
Oh -- does Opera do nested folders? That's something I kind of rely on to be able to navigate my collection of probably a hundred folders now.
Re: Thunderbird
Date: Wednesday, 3 January 2007 15:59 (UTC)On messages in multiple folders, it works "under the covers" as creating a symlink or shortcut -- all messages exist as a single copy in the "All Messages" pseudofolder, but may be "copied by reference" into one or more folders, and have their reference removed from the "Main" folder. They appear for all purposes like full copies, but aren't technically so. So, yeah, I guess that's deeply isomorphic to labels, but the surface form is different.
Opera does do nested folders. I haven't investigated the full range of features and functions available, but I just physically confirmed that it is capable of creating, moving and deleting them.
Re: Thunderbird
Date: Wednesday, 3 January 2007 15:44 (UTC)Opera
Date: Wednesday, 3 January 2007 15:38 (UTC)I didn't know that, no.
I can't really get used to the filtering thing over actual folders. It just didn't suit me.
I didn't know this bit about Opera.
So it just has virtual folders or something, which are actually searches? Or what?
Does it also have an "All Mail" filter?
Of the two webmail clients I use, one (Gmail) has filters/labels and one (Fastmail.FM) has folders, and they both seem to work; filters seem to me to act rather like folders, except that messages can be in more than one "folder" at once, so I'm not sure whether it would matter much.
But I suppose it could be a preference thing, just knowing what's under the hood? (Or did the difference manifest itself in the user experience?)
Re: Opera
Date: Wednesday, 3 January 2007 15:47 (UTC)I have talked about using Opera as my primary browser before, I'm quite sure... perhaps you forgot, though. ;)
Re: Opera
Date: Wednesday, 3 January 2007 15:49 (UTC)Most likely!
Re: Thunderbird
Date: Wednesday, 3 January 2007 15:48 (UTC)Does Thunderbird let you nest folders or otherwise set up some kind of hierarchy, or is it merely a flat list?
Re: Thunderbird
Date: Wednesday, 3 January 2007 15:50 (UTC)Re: Thunderbird
Date: Wednesday, 3 January 2007 16:08 (UTC)Another thing I thought of: does it do threading?
(And if so, is it switchable on and off?)
I was wondering what would happen, for example, to the comment notifications for this post -- would they be grouped by who replied to whom (something that's sadly missing from Gmail's "conversation" view, which groups messages together but doesn't do a tree-structure), or would you have to sort by date or subject?
None of the mailing programs I've used so far have supported threading, but I know that some do, and it would seem like a useful feature to have.
Re: Thunderbird
Date: Wednesday, 3 January 2007 16:11 (UTC)Yes, and yes. I don't like it, so I have it off.
Like I said, I've never used Gmail, so my ability to compare is limited. Also, I haven't used threading in Thunderbird in several versions, so I haven't paid attention to whether it's improved, but last I checked, it groups together LJ comment notifications all together unless they have a title->subject line, like this thread does.
Re: Thunderbird
Date: Wednesday, 3 January 2007 16:14 (UTC)(Though since threading message headers are less wide-spread in email programs compared to newsreaders, I suppose it seemed like a reasonable compromise to the developers to use only the subject to thread by.)
But if you can switch it off, I'd be at least no worse off than I am now, and if the behaviour has improved, that would be so much the better.
Re: Thunderbird
Date: Wednesday, 3 January 2007 16:19 (UTC)no subject
Date: Wednesday, 3 January 2007 15:22 (UTC)I first moved to Opera as a mail client for linguistics sites and mailing lists, since the Unicode support is nonpareil, but I've grown to use it as my single Internet interface in almost all situations.
As a fellow (former) Pegasus user (back all the way to version 2.x on DOS), I have to say my only gripe was with the flitering mechanism, which at first seemed utterly alien, and more to the point primitive. With time, I've realized that it's just as capable of being programmed as Pegasus, and very capable indeed when it comes to learning auto-filter rules based on your behavior.
Another great thing is that, while the config and mail files are obviously in different formats, Opera is just as friendly to manual config hacks as Pmail was (which was always my number one reason for recommending Pmail). If you convert your Pmail folders to standard Unix format, you can import them into Opera quickly and transparently.
The integration of the other components (NNTP and RSS) into the unified, consistent message center UI is tremendously helpful, and the additional stuff, like the Web Browser, Bittorrent client, and Widgets, also tightly and well integrated into the same UI is a huge boon.
The browser has all the "modern" features: tabs (with greater functionality than either Firefox or IE7), phishing protection, pop-up blocker, ad-blocker, secure password store, and so on, with easy-to-access (and use) per-site settings for cookies, CSS, security, content, and such. It has a Transfers tab instead of the per-transfer dialogs in IE (incorporating Bittorrent transfers into the list with traditional protocols), but again it's superior to Firefox, since you can tell that tab to always stay in the background, or even to always stay hidden and simply display a subtle notification when downloads complete.
I love it, in short, and I'm sure it'll suit your needs as a mail client, and pretty confident it'll supplant your browser of choice over time.
Opera
Date: Wednesday, 3 January 2007 15:34 (UTC)Ah, I don't remember that, but I'm glad I got a voice from an Opera user. (I think the email client is/was called M2?)
I first moved to Opera as a mail client for linguistics sites and mailing lists, since the Unicode support is nonpareil, but I've grown to use it as my single Internet interface in almost all situations.
Ah, interesting.
As a fellow (former) Pegasus user (back all the way to version 2.x on DOS)
Wow!
I think we started out with 2.x, too, but on Windows 3.1 (ish).
I have to say my only gripe was with the flitering mechanism, which at first seemed utterly alien, and more to the point primitive. With time, I've realized that it's just as capable of being programmed as Pegasus, and very capable indeed when it comes to learning auto-filter rules based on your behavior.
...at first I thought your comments of "primitive" applied to Pegasus, which confused me, since it prided itself on its filtering capabilities: not only the time they were introduced but the extent of what was possible.
Though I'll admit I haven't touched my Pegasus filters in years.
If you convert your Pmail folders to standard Unix format, you can import them into Opera quickly and transparently.
Ah.
Is there a way to mass-convert my folders? Or do I have to create a "shadow" folder in Unix format for each Pmail folder and then copy or move the messages from one to the other?
(One change in Pegasus that annoyed me was when you stopped being able to specify the filename for the folder... my oldest folders have semi-recognisable names when you browser the file system, too, while newer ones are things like P1394792734.pmi that only a mother could love.)
The integration of the other components (NNTP and RSS) into the unified, consistent message center UI is tremendously helpful
Opera does NNTP now, too?
I've been using Forte Agent for that; started off with Free Agent, then upgraded to paid Agent 1.93 or so. I've paid for an upgrade to 3.x but haven't installed it yet :)
Partly because I fear I'd have to re-learn how to use it, since quite a few things have changed (and 4.x is out now), multiple server support being just one thing. (I have several Agent data directories corresponding to several NNTP servers at the moment, and would have to unify those somehow.)
Agent also lets you do email, and I'd vaguely considered moving to that, but I'm not sure whether I would.
On the other hand, I tend to use Usenet so little these days that I'm not sure what I'm going to do in that direction. (I used to read a lot, but in the past couple of years, I think I've only opened the instance that reads from Gmane.)
pretty confident it'll supplant your browser of choice over time.
That might be difficult :)
Opera was my browser of choice for a while, and I still use it for doing LiveJournal (7.54 here at work, 9.something at home), but for various reasons I use Firefox for many other things. I've kind of got used to the two-browser model. But we'll see.
Re: Opera
Date: Wednesday, 3 January 2007 15:35 (UTC)I even paid for it, back when it was still shareware!
I think that was even before the banner ad stage, but I'm not sure. Version 6.x, I believe, was the first I used.
Re: Opera
Date: Wednesday, 3 January 2007 15:52 (UTC)Ah, I don't remember that
Unsurprising, with hindsight, as it it would have been on The List, and I'd imagine you don't automatically mentally associate one persona with the other. Plus, it would have been a while ago, back when The List still had Unicode problems.
Is there a way to mass-convert my folders?
According to the File/Import menu, Opera 9.10 can import the following mail formats...
Opera 5/6 (it reads 7 and later natively)
Eudora
Thunderbird
Netscape
Outlook
Generic mbox
Converting from Pegasus to one of those formats is a question best left for users of the current version of Pegasus, I'm afraid. I am far from an expert at this stage.
OTOH, given the ludicrously readable format of PMI and PMM files (as I recall), it ought to be possible to monkey together a bit of Perl to mass-convert the message text at least to mbox format. Such a script probably already exists on one of the pmail user fora, I imagine.
Opera does NNTP now, too?
I only use the NNTP features for the company-internal private NNTP server, but having everything "right there" is a clear boon.
That might be difficult :)
The Widgets have kept me from Firefox, though I'm still waiting for a Greasemonkey Widget (which would seal the deal). Well, the Widgets and XUL too, but I've been able to use XULrunner for those rare times I use an XUL application. An XULrunner widget would be quite cool, I suppose...
Re: Opera
Date: Wednesday, 3 January 2007 16:05 (UTC)I think Pmail can read mbox, so I wouldn't be surprised if it could write it, too. Would have to look.
no subject
Date: Wednesday, 3 January 2007 15:35 (UTC)no subject
Date: Wednesday, 3 January 2007 15:42 (UTC)With the result that I overlooked some important-ish messages that only got sent to my "home" address, since for the past several months, I checked it rather infrequently.
(Some weeks I was away on business and had no access to it, and when I was home, I was afraid how many messages had piled up in the meantime that I didn't check the box and sort things!)
But I'm not sure whether I'm ready to move to webmail completely.
I must say that Gmail's searching has come in handy occasionally, though.
no subject
Date: Wednesday, 3 January 2007 18:17 (UTC)So I use TB for my Gmail account, and the web-based Yahoo! for that email. And with my browser, I use Firefox, because it is most like Safari (I love having tabs. It's so incredibly nice.) However, I have to keep IE on my computer because some sites are IE only.
no subject
Date: Wednesday, 3 January 2007 19:58 (UTC)Yes. There exist a sadly over-large set of sites that rely on standards-noncompliances in IE (and increasingly those in Firefox, too) to render things that can be rendered correctly (but apparently not created as simply, or at least not by the popular tools) on any given browser. Case in point: Opera has been proven more standards-compliant than the w3c's own reference browser, and yet us users of it are often rudely told to "upgrade" our browsers due to web-coder laziness.
no subject
Date: Wednesday, 3 January 2007 22:17 (UTC)no subject
Date: Wednesday, 3 January 2007 22:57 (UTC)no subject
Date: Thursday, 4 January 2007 06:49 (UTC)What I found a little amusing sometimes was reading reviews of various email clients in magazines; they nearly always marked Pegasus Mail down for not having a 3-pane interface (folder tree, message folder, message).
??
Just because Outlook does it doesn't mean that it's the only way to use an email client... I *liked* having multiple message folders open at once and being able to arrange them on my screen, with different sizes, etc.
(Though David Harris built in a 3-pane view at some point, possibly to appease those people. I still stuck to my multiple-window view, which was fortunately not dropped.)
no subject
Date: Thursday, 4 January 2007 03:49 (UTC)I now use web mail almost exclusively, but I have one GMail account that I use with Thunderbird. I NEVER see spam or any unwanted e-mail. EVER. EVER. EVER. EVER. It doesn't download the messages that are put in the Spam folder. Conceivably, there might be messages in the Spam folder that you wanted and would miss, but I do check and I haven't run across that yet.
I look for a good filtering feature with any e-mail client, because I filter my messages up the wall and down the other side. Thunderbird is pretty good with that. The ability to have multiple conditions, set criteria for any possible bit of an e-mail message and for it to ACTUALLY FILTER THINGS CORRECTLY is hugely important to me. I'm constantly on the verge of dropkicking Outlook off the roof for the kind of BS that it gets away with as a commercial application but I'm required to use it at work =P
I look for foreign character support in the message content. Thunderbird doesn't do this well. It acts like a browser that's not very good at it. But there are manual workarounds and the lack of Spam is big enough of a plus to keep me. I do have faith that it will get better. =)
Thunderbird
Date: Thursday, 4 January 2007 06:54 (UTC)Oh! That surprises me, and I would have expected more.
Can you tell me more about the shortcomings you've seen and the workarounds you've found?
Re: Thunderbird
Date: Thursday, 4 January 2007 07:04 (UTC)My family in China writes to me in Simplified Chinese, but I get garbled text. It won't show the Simplified characters even when I set it to "Auto-detect all Chinese encodings". I have to explicitly go and change the encoding to GB myself. =P
I would have expected it to be able to at least display the Simplified characters properly. What would be even better is if it automatically translated the Simplified to Traditional for me, but that would take Developers who cared enough to do it. =)
Re: Thunderbird
Date: Thursday, 4 January 2007 07:19 (UTC)And an algorithm that was sophisticated enough to Do The Right Thing :) Since Simplified characters can map to more than one Traditional character (in the opposite direction, this is apparently also true sometimes, but much more rarely), so a simplistic algorithm that always maps 1:1 will mean, for example, that either "departure" or "hair" will look weird in Traditional.
NJStar Communicator does this, though. It can display text in Chinese even without Chinese support, and you can select autodetect, GB, and Big5, as well as Traditional/Simplified. So you can view GB text with Traditional characters or Big5 in Simplified! And from the few times I've tried that, it does a decent job. (The program is payware, though.)
Re: Thunderbird
Date: Thursday, 4 January 2007 16:34 (UTC)Re: NJStar does it.
Yes, this is how I read just about everything =) OpenOffice 2.0+ has this feature in Writer(? whatever the word processing tool is called)... I haven't investigated the accuracy of the conversion in OOo though.