Version 3 Have The Following Been Fixed
Hello All, Can anyone verify if the following have been fixed: 1. Html editor actually working, along with spell checker. I know this is a generic question, but there are so many glitches that I'm not sure if I could list them all. As I recall when you go back and forth between the Micro Editor and HTML, the url's would be lost. You would physically have to re enter when you changed to HTML. That's just one I can recall. I know they fixed the phantom space on blank lines. Is the spell checker actually working in the HTML editor now? 2. Can you now create templates with HTML code that actually work? -- Best regards, Rusty Farabee Current version is 3.00.00 | 'Using TBUDL' information: http://www.silverstones.com/thebat/TBUDLInfo.html
Smileys - How Are They Viewed By Non Bat Mail Programs
Hello All, This is probably a really stupid question, but if I use a smiley such as :grin: and it is sent to someone who uses Outlook, will they see the smiley or word grin surrounded by colons. -- Best regards, Rusty Farabee Current version is 2.12.00 | 'Using TBUDL' information: http://www.silverstones.com/thebat/TBUDLInfo.html
Re[2]: Smileys - How Are They Viewed By Non Bat Mail Programs
Leif, Tuesday, July 20, 2004, 3:12:17 PM, you wrote: LG For the most part, they'll see the word grin with :: around it. LG However, someone with an IM client could most likely load the .MSL LG file and download the images, and they'd see it. Ok, last stupid question I hope. I had never seen an .MSL file until smileys appeared in The Bat. Is that a generic file format used by IM and any other app that uses smileys. Where would one go to download the .MSL file and how would one know they needed to. If you want to point me to some source I can read rather than taking up user list bandwidth, then feel free. I'm happy to go read elsewhere if you will give me a push in the right direction. By the way, I went to your website, and your daughter is cute. Looks like her mother! :grin: -- Best regards, Rusty Farabee Current version is 2.12.00 | 'Using TBUDL' information: http://www.silverstones.com/thebat/TBUDLInfo.html
Re[3]: composing html mail
jwayne, Saturday, July 10, 2004, 9:24:42 PM, you wrote: j Ya, know, I used to be a die-hard text-only email user and composer. But after j delving more into usability studies, the importance of font and layout control j in _email_ became very apparent. My experience also. j (And the pseudo-underlining of that previous j email is a trivial example!) I know that this is almost a religious topic to j many, but I hope that the TB authors recognize the importance of HTML email and j continue to improve its capabilities. Time will tell, but for now, it doesn't do either of us any good to bewail the obvious. Let me know if I can help. -- Best regards, Rusty Farabee Current version is 2.11.02 | 'Using TBUDL' information: http://www.silverstones.com/thebat/TBUDLInfo.html
Re: Fw: Html in Quick template
La, Friday, July 9, 2004, 9:26:13 AM, you wrote: LF Sorry to bother you again, but I'm in hurry. It is possible in the last LF version of TheBat! use Html or not LF in the quick template??? (see below) LF Thanks Martino In short, no. There is a rather laborious process to make it happen, however. Briefly, 1. Create a quick template with text, e.g., [INSERT] as a placeholder 2. Create the newsletter as an html message. 3. Export the email as a msg 4. Here is the hard part. You can either write a program or script to use with a text editor, or cheat like I do and use PowerGrep. It allows multiple search and replace sequences of multiple documents. You could copy the html code from your text editor, paste it into PowerGrep, save that particular action and then run a search and replace for all of your newsletters. 5. Import the messages back into your outbox. It's a bit hard on the front end to make it work, but once you have it worked out, it's very quick. I send about 50 emails per day in html format and it takes less than 5 minutes to do the export and import. Best of all, if you have to open an individual message and edit it, you don't lose the formatting. Hope that helps. There may be another way, but this is how I do it and it took a lot of work to figure it out. -- Best regards, Rusty Farabee Current version is 2.11.02 | 'Using TBUDL' information: http://www.silverstones.com/thebat/TBUDLInfo.html
Re: composing html mail
jwayne, Friday, July 9, 2004, 6:25:25 PM, you wrote: j If I compose within TB using HTML/Plain Text and then switch to HTML only, HTML j formatting is lost. I can't cut/paste from one HTML message into another. If I j import text with HTML into the plain text editor and switch to HTML/Plain Text, j almost all tags are lost (it somehow keeps li tags.) If I change a font or bold j a hyperlink, the URL info is lost and has to be re-entered. If j I'm doing a quick HTML message, the internal editor works ok. But j I'm finding it quite burdensome to maintain a more complex message j or - more importantly - to reuse code from previously sent messages. It's a mess. I have a work around that involves inserting the html code via search and replace, but it is cumbersome at best. What I have also done, which is fairly easy is to create my messages and save them in a subfolder. You could save them anywhere. I then copy them to my outbox, change the subject, recipient, and whatever else I need to modify and then resave them to the outbox. I can't tell you how, but when I do that, the message id changes, and of course the date changes. I haven't lost any formatting when I've done this and for me it's faster than adding the mailto information and adding the url if I have included one. Where it doesn't work very well is with respect to replies, and its references to other messages, which I assume are used for threading. It's a PIA, but until they fix the html editor, whatever we will do will be a work around. Hope this helps. Oh, I won't mention the fact that on longer messages I have to copy the message into another program to spell check. I have never used outlook, so I can't comment on whether its easier or harder, but I did check PocoMail and Becky and a number of others and for my purposes concluded that The Bat is still a better choice. I think the HTML editor and rendering is just way down on their list of things to fix, but trust that they will finally devote the resources to fix it. I'd be happy as a clam if they would just fix the spell checker. Until then, I'll just keep banging my head against the wall. :headbanger: -- Best regards, Rusty Farabee Current version is 2.11.02 | 'Using TBUDL' information: http://www.silverstones.com/thebat/TBUDLInfo.html
Re[2]: Rogue Smileys - Bug or as Intended?
Robin, Thursday, July 1, 2004, 12:18:30 AM, you wrote: RA If you edit these lines to read RA Smiley = .\beer.gif, 0, :beer:, beer RA Smiley = .\coffee.gif, 0, :coffee:, coffee RA Smiley = .\lunch.gif, 0, :lunch:, lunch RA Then open TB! (or close and reopen it if not already closed) you will RA find the problem you described has been removed. Thanks, it worked like a charm. -- Best regards, Rusty Farabee Current version is 2.11.02 | 'Using TBUDL' information: http://www.silverstones.com/thebat/TBUDLInfo.html
Rogue Smileys - Bug or as Intended?
Hello All, Has anyone that views html messages (so that smileys are visible) noticed that some letters enclosed in parens sometimes, but not always, appear as smileys. For example, in an incoming message Open Paren b Close Paren (b) shows up as a beer mug, Open Paren c Close Paren (c) looks like a cup of coffee, and Open Paren f Close Paren (f) maybe a plate with a fork. When you look at the source of the incoming message, the letters are lower case. If you copy and paste the smiley, the letters are upper case. If you are viewing this in html, then you probably see the smileys. With respect to the outgoing email it doesn't seem to matter if you type an uppercase or lowercase letter. If it is a bug and hasn't been reported, I'll be happy to report it, but where. Is that a problem with respect to HTML rendering or HTML editor? I would assume the former, because it is an unintended result from an incoming message, that also happens in an outgoing message. I will be so happy when they finally fix all of the HTML problems. What a pain. -- Best regards, Rusty Farabee Current version is 2.11.02 | 'Using TBUDL' information: http://www.silverstones.com/thebat/TBUDLInfo.html
Recommendation for Regular Expressions
Hello All, Before you get to the text, does anyone know why this message, which originally was sent in html format was bounced? I've now changed it to all text. I think. I meant to mention this earlier when I was fighting my way through macros, filters and regular expressions. For those of you who are not experts on regular expressions and have an extra $30, I highly recommend RegExBuddy http://www.regexbuddy.com/ Unfortunately, it's not shareware, but you can return it and get your money back. I've bought a lot of tools from the creator, so I don't think you'll have any trouble. Also see http://www.regular-expressions.info/. It's done by the same guy, but has a lot of helpful information all of which is included in the help file that comes with RegExBuddy. I was clueless about regular expressions, which is probably still true, but with it I've been able to make my filters and macros work fairly quickly. It's especially helpful on testing because I can copy the email source and test against it. It's almost paint by numbers. Hope it helps. -- Best regards, Rusty Farabee Current version is 2.11.02 | 'Using TBUDL' information: http://www.silverstones.com/thebat/TBUDLInfo.html
Messages Appearing In Chat Folder
Hi Tbudl, I was testing some outgoing filters by sending messages to myself. The filter appears to be working, but a copy of the outgoing message is showing up in a chat folder, which I don't even recall creating. Is this a bug or as intended? If intended, why? -- Best regards, Rusty Farabee Reply Mail To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Current version is 2.11.02 | 'Using TBUDL' information: http://www.silverstones.com/thebat/TBUDLInfo.html
Re[2]: Filter Question
Hello Roelof, Wednesday, May 26, 2004, 5:53:25 PM, you wrote: RO I don't know the site you saw these filters, but TB allows you to copy RO and paste filters from the sorting office to a text editor and back. RO Go to the sorting office RO Select a filter RO Press Ctrl-C (don't use the 'copy'-button that duplicates the filter) RO Go to a text editor (eg a new message in TB) RO Press Ctrl-V . That's what I needed to know. Now it makes sense. I was beginning to wonder how you could type a really long string. -- Thanks for your help Rusty Farabee Current version is 2.10.03 | 'Using TBUDL' information: http://www.silverstones.com/thebat/TBUDLInfo.html
Reply Address - How To Insert From Template Using HTML
Hello To All, I have tried every way possible, but I cannot seem to have a working reply email address link except in the MicroEd Editor. I am trying to send out a group of mass mail emails to individuals (each addressed to an individual) and for reasons not worth getting into, I need to use HTML. I've searched through all of the archives and found no answer and haven't heard back from support. So far, it seems the only way to do that is to open each email individually and insert the URL for the email address using the toolbar. Is there some work around? Perhaps make one master email and in some way to use regular expressions to then send from the address book? I'm pretty much lost here. The templates work great with the MicroEd editor, but when you start trying to use them with html, you lose all of the benefits of html. I can't figure out how to format different parts of the text or otherwise do anything other than type in the message. While I hate to resort to Outlook, I'm beginning to think that may be my only solution, although I (strange as it may seem) have NEVER used it. Another learning curve. I am sending this request to both the TBUDL and TBTECH lists. -- Thanks in advance Rusty Using The Bat! v2.10.03 on Windows XP 5.1 Build 2600 Service Pack 1 Current version is 2.10.03 | 'Using TBUDL' information: http://www.silverstones.com/thebat/TBUDLInfo.html
Re[2]: Reply Address - How To Insert From Template Using HTML
Hello Leif, Tuesday, May 25, 2004, 10:59:38 AM, you wrote: LG Don't know if this will work, but create the HTML file outside of TB LG and save it (make sure it's just the page you want to display). Then LG in TB us the %PUT macro to PUT the external HTML file in. Thanks, but it didn't work. It pulls the text, but not the url. Rusty Farabee Current version is 2.10.03 | 'Using TBUDL' information: http://www.silverstones.com/thebat/TBUDLInfo.html
Re[2]: Reply Address - How To Insert From Template Using HTML
Hello Leif, Tuesday, May 25, 2004, 2:03:22 PM, you wrote: LG Maybe I'm not fully understanding what you mean. Could you maybe post LG an example or explain it a bit more. LG If you just want to make a hyperlink in an e-mail, the HTML should be LG a simple tag. LG Am I on the wrong tangent? One of us is. I am unable to insert html code directly into the email. The toolbar has to be used and when I try inserting through the template, that doesn't work either. I'm confused about the separator. I thought that's what the following was. It comes directly out of the template. -- Thanks for your help Rusty Farabee Current version is 2.10.03 | 'Using TBUDL' information: http://www.silverstones.com/thebat/TBUDLInfo.html
Re[2]: Reply Address - How To Insert From Template Using HTML
Hello Leif, Tuesday, May 25, 2004, 3:01:30 PM, you wrote: LG Whoops... Let's try again with proper paragraph markings. LG So, if you want to see what I did, on my previous post, select it and LG hit F9 to view the source. It's not quite proper HTML spec, but I was LG just trying to make the point. I've been trying for the last ten minutes to duplicate your results with no success, so I must be doing something stupid. I did exactly what you suggested, using a reply. I didn't want to inundate the list, so I sent email to myself. I even copied your source to an entirely new message with no luck. I created a new message and typed the information. So, given that I need to put this in a template. Can you duplicate your success using a template? I certainly cannot. I'm a bit frustrated. Any other ideas on what I'm doing wrong? For whatever reason, the source of your messages and mine is entirely different. Yours is very simple. Mine has a bunch of garbage about styles, etc. I'm lost. I've burned too much time. It could be time to change email programs. -- Thanks for your help Rusty Farabee Current version is 2.10.03 | 'Using TBUDL' information: http://www.silverstones.com/thebat/TBUDLInfo.html
Re[2]: Reply Address - How To Insert From Template Using HTML
HTML BODY a href=mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]Click Here/a /BODY /HTML Current version is 2.10.03 | 'Using TBUDL' information: http://www.silverstones.com/thebat/TBUDLInfo.html
Re[2]: Reply Address - How To Insert From Template Using HTML
Hello Leif, Tuesday, May 25, 2004, 4:12:20 PM, you wrote: LG Hmmm. Well let's start real basic like. Well, that didn't work for me either. Think I ought to reinstall? I've now had two messages kick back while screwing around with this. -- Thanks for your help Rusty Farabee Current version is 2.10.03 | 'Using TBUDL' information: http://www.silverstones.com/thebat/TBUDLInfo.html
Re[2]: Reply Address - How To Insert From Template Using HTML
Hello Allie,
Tuesday, May 25, 2004, 9:18:30 PM, you wrote:
AM You'll need to send an example for one of us to examine. Maybe it's
AM being altered in some way or you're making an error.
AM If you're using MicroEd you shouldn't be getting all that extra code
AM that you say that you're seeing.
Well, I finally figured it out thanks to the help of this list. I have to say,
however, that it is bassackward. Here is what I learned, and I'm posting this
for the next poor fool that is trying to accomplish what I wanted. And I would
remind all of those reading that what I originally wanted was a template for
mass mailing that would be viewed in HTML.
1. It cannot be done if you set your editor preferences to use the html editor.
2. You must use the MicroEd editor.
3. You have to hard code the html code in the message or template. When you save
or send the message it is apparently automatically converted to the format I
wanted. In other words, it looks pretty. If you have set your editor preferences
for viewing to see both html and text, you will actually see the message in both
formats and it looks clean.
4. The process is not intuitive, because after you have created the message, you
see the html codes and only through the intervention of this list would I have
seen this through. It didn't make sense to me that you could have an html (and
template) editor that you couldn't use for creating html.
5. Once you have saved the email as a draft or put the email into the outbox,
YOU CANNOT REOPEN OR YOU LOSE FORMATTING. As best I can tell, once you reopen
it, some sort of automatic conversion takes place and the html code is changed
to a more extensive set of options. The source that originally had only the
simple HTML and BODY tags looks (at the beginning) like the following:
!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC -//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN
HTMLHEADTITLE/TITLE
STYLE type=text/css!--
BODY {
margin: 5px 5px 5px 5px;
background-color: #FF;
}
6. In my particular case, when I saved and reopened, the font became one point
larger and the paragraph returns /p disappeared. I could have changed the
message format to microed and re inserted the html code, but elected not to.
7. That's about it. I would add that I think more thought needs to be given to
the template editor by The Bat programmers. If you are going to provide the
ability to edit in html, then you should be able to write templates in html
without having to hard code. I would also think that losing the formatting and
html code when you reopen a draft and change it is a bug. Of course, if the
reply address had not lost its url when I used a template, I wouldn't have had
to go through this process.
The good news is I will be able to accomplish my goal. I was just getting ready
to spring for PocoMail, when this finally clicked and I was able to make it
work. As an aside, the PocoMail appearance is very pretty and feature rich in a
lot of areas, but I quickly discovered that in order to write a template that
does more than include a few fields from the address book, you have to learn the
scripting language. And forget about importing all of your address book. You
can get about 9 fields imported, but to get the rest of the fields, you have to
learn their scripting language. Of course, importing into The Bat address book
is not much better. In order to get fields like prefix and suffix (which are
reversed) and gender, I have to import and then export as a vcf file and then
run a laborious vba macro in excel (which was easiest for me) that inserts
gender and then copy all of the text into a text editor, save it and reimport as
a vcf file. You can't save it in excel because it somehow screws up the vcf
file.
Ok, I'm rattling, but this has taken most of my day and I'm punch drunk. In
retrospect, I can see why some of the more experienced users probably thought I
was playing with half a deck. That may be true, but this was not a particularly
intuitive process.
Thanks again to all and especially to Leif, who had the patience to stay with
me.
--
Thanks again for your help!
Rusty
P.S. I hope the separator is working.
Current version is 2.10.03 | 'Using TBUDL' information:
http://www.silverstones.com/thebat/TBUDLInfo.html
