The statement of WaltS48 that "I don't think anyone knows what it is you
want to do" is a bit dismaying but also no real surprise. I long ago
stopped counting the number of times I have heard a support engineer say to
me "I've never learn of anyone trying to do that". With deference to
Philip Taylor encouragement that I limit my remarks simply to what I wish
to do, part of the problem with software developers is that they don't
always used the terms that are standard to the industries for which the
software is being targeted, an excellent example being PageMaker using the
term "fill" to refer to the process where an image overlays text (or vice
versa) in a manner where the image is readily discernible and the text
readable for which the standard term in the industry is "screening",
something I learned from working on the staff of my high school year book
and then a newspaper while in college years before PageMaker was even
imagined. To respond to MCBastos, with my stipulating that I work with
"PC"s, I would have thought it was obvious that I meant only Windows, as
my understanding is that Windows software will not run on a Mac and vice
versa without the use of an emulator, and the proprietary nature of the
Mac architecture, and the resulting high cost, is reason enough from my
perspective never to consider that switch. I may have misidentified the
ultimate "parent" of one or more of the email clients mentioned in my
prior message, but with the exception of Internet Explorer, I tried all
the "mainstream" browsers (my experience with Internet Explorer has been
limited to my using someone else's computer and that computer having only
Internet Explorer on it), and found their email clients would not allow me
to work the way I want. Until quite recently, my primary reason for
searching has been to find an email client that would allow me to work in
the manner I wish, but with changes to Opera over the last few years,
primarily that it overwrites the bookmarks I have created along with the
customization in how they are organized, I am ready to abandon it for a
suite, and if I can do so with a "suite" that provides me with the email
client I want, all the better--Opera discontinued its email client some
time ago and while it had one, I was never able to configure it to work at
all, much less the way I wanted. Given that SeaMonkey is supposed derived
from Netscape and also has its origins in Linux, very much appeals to me
as it means that it should not have the "mindset" of programs that have
always targeted either Microsoft or Apple. It would also like to state it
is also unclear to me how I might reply in a manner that conforms to the
protocols of this forum while maintaining the necessary coherence I
believe is needed. I have already established that simply replying to this
message doesn't work, at least not if I am replying only to a "sender" who
is also an individual. Hopefully that will be corrected by "reply to all".
I am also noticing that bullets that were included in my first attempt to
send this are now missing with my copying the contents of the copy in my
"sent" folder to this "new" message. Personally, I find using a thread
both annoying and even difficult to follow at times, because it is
"conversational", thus maintaining a clear syntax can be next to
impossible when different individuals are responding to different
components at different times. Posting them as seems to be done here, one
must read not only through the entire post to have any hope of
understanding a subsequent remark, but would likely need to do so
repeatedly to recognize how the components integrate. Posting all messages
speaking to a specific point together, however, risks a loss of the "flow"
of the original post. Being new to this specific forum, it is also unclear
to me whether I am expected to include both my original post and WaltS48's
reply in this response to him or it will be added after the fact, not to
forget whether the formatting I am using will not just be retained when
the same is presumably posted to the forum, but in a manner in which it
maintains what I believe to be its coherence, specifically my use of
bullets. I typically do not echo messages I receive in my responses for a
variety of reasons, primary of which is that with my having a typing speed
of more than 85 words per minute as well as having started working with
computers in the days of DOS when many "short-cuts", and especially those
which are mouse-driven, were not incorporated into programs, I don't have
the problems many others do of composing messages as though I am using a
pen/pencil or typewriter, thus it is ultimately easier for me not just to
incorporate much smaller portions of the message received as a I respond
rather than doing a "cut and paste", especially when I might find myself
"repeating" the other person. That said, I want an email client that
will allow me to compose messages off-line and then be able to send
them, as well as receive; to clone a working hierarchy of at least the
data to other drives if not operating systems; to have identical names
to
the "root" directory and identical location for that root directory; and
to avoid default integrations with other software that cannot be
changed
or even eliminated. As Philip Taylor, stated with what I have given
above, perhaps it would not be necessary for me to state my reasons for
wanting these features in an email client to be provided a way to achieve
the same or told that it simply cannot be done, at least not with the
architecture I am presently using. If that is indeed true, then there may
be no need for anyone to read any further, but to be safe, I will
elaborate. Before I do so, however, I will respond to WaltS48's
question about how I "hacked" Netscape. First, I installed it not
only to a place other than the default, but in a directory that is closer
to the root than would normally be the case, making it easier to find when
I wish/need to clone its structure to another drive or machine. Some may
not consider this a true "hack" as it was an option in the standard set-up
and didn't require that I go into the registry to add or remove code.
Another change I made that was a true hack was to substitute "#" for "@"
in the protocol for out-going mail server. That worked until my ISP
upgraded its mail server by moving it to a higher grade of encryption about
2 years ago. Concerning the first point, receiving message which can
then be read off-line doesn't seem to be a problem except to the extent
they either contain images whose format my email client doesn't recognize,
generally overcome by adding the proper identifying code to the beginning
of the message then saving it as a separate file with the proper file
extension, or is an image itself, for which I have found no way to
circumvent other than to do a cut and paste of the content as displayed in
my web-mail client from my web-mail client into MessageCleaner which
allows me to save the same in a format Netscape Messenger "understands");
Concerning the second point, I work with a variety of computers, all having
IDE architecture with the exception of my laptop. Thus, when the amount of
space available for the swap file reaches the point where the swap file no
longer works properly, the "too small" drive can only be swapped for
another used drive, presuming I can find one that is indeed larger short of
my adding a controller card and additional drives by that means, presuming
that my power supply would handle the same, the mother board has an
available slot and the case would provide a slot for mounting it, among
other things. Therefore, one resort to avoid running out of space is to
minimize my use of software that have duplicate functions.
Accordingly, I do not have MicroSoft Office or OpenOffice, finding that
PageMaker provides me with virtually everything I need. When I first
started to work with computers, I needed something more powerful than a
word processor because I was publishing a number of different magazines
and quickly discovered that with the equipment I had preparing the
contents of a magazine in a word processing program for formatting in a
desktop, then formatting the content in a desktop publisher took, because
of my typing speed, twice as long as simply scrapping the word processor
and doing a direct input of the content into my publisher, formatting as I
went. My initial publisher was a program called Avagio.The primary
appeal was how inexpensive ($100, though I seem to recall that was a
discounted price) it was, and for most things I needed to do in it, quite
easy to do, though I eventually discovered that when I ventured into such
things as flowing text around an image, it not only wasn't very forgiving
of any errors I made, but I did not discover the errors until/unless I
tried to add more content, but also that the only way to undo the error
was to attempt to make further changes, be unable to do so and explore the
reason why. If I saved the file and closed it, it would not reopen, and I
could not recover the contents even using an ASCII editor because what
displayed when I opened the file wasn't the text with its formatting code
or even machine language, but the word "UNISON". I continued to use
Avagio even when it was sold to a competitor because when I discovered an
error with the program still open its technical support was always able to
help me undo the error and I was assured by support at the new owner that
support and development for the program would continue, but when I next
had a problem, roughly a year later, and called support for help, the
technician said he had NEVER HEARD OF THE PROGRAM. I switched to
PageMaker, then and for a good time afterwards considered the "Rolls
Royce" of desktop publishers. As with Avagio, I found that it was faster
to input the raw content directly into PageMaker formatting as I went
rather than import then format with the exception of images--at the time,
PageMaker didn't have some of the drawing tools Avagio did, though they
were added in subsequent upgrades. I continue to use PageMaker even
though it has been "retired" for two reasons: a)with the exception of one
laptop, my PCs all have an IDE architecture, so I no longer have the ready
option of replacing a "small" drive with a larger one--space is a real
concern and having two program with essentially the same function would
only reduce the available space for my data; and b)converting roughly 15
years of work product to an office suite supported by I.E. or whatever
would likely take me a year or more even if done to the exclusion of other
work. Making the conversion as needed isn't much more appealing as I
wouldn't have the option of searching the older content to identify what I
actually needed. MessageCleaner allows me to conserve hard drive space
by stripping mime, html and even up to 90% of message headers from emails.
I have little need for the "pretty" formatting or images that is
increasingly incorporated into email, and when there is reason to retain
an image, I prefer to do so by saving it to a separate location, if not
crop the "frame" such files invariably have, which often has the ultimate
effect of increasing the size of the actual content of the image while
reducing the number of bytes to the file. There are a number of other
ways that I conserve hard drive space, but I do not believe identifying
them or how I use them further contributes to what I want to be able to do
with SeaMonkey and why. Regarding my third point, it is perhaps nothing
more than a restatement of the second, but I delayed upgrading from
Windows 98 until I was no longer able to find system boards that would run
Windows98 because I was concerned about stability. I have every reason to
believe not just Internet Explorer, but the extent Microsoft insisted it
be integrated into all other areas of Window were the primary cause of
stability issues in Windows98 and its successors given my own experiences,
having upgraded from Windows3.11 to Windows 3.11 for Work Groups, to
Windows 95 to Windows 98, and being able to upgrade to Windows 98 WITHOUT
installing Internet Explorer. I had relatively few problems with stability
in Windows 98 because I used a program I recall was developed by a company
called VertiSoft and called BombShelter that would allow me to close, and
sometimes even to save a frozen/crashed program without having to shut
Windows down. Nuts & Bolts, the suite which contains BombShelter was
acquired by McAfee, and a subsequent upgrade made Internet Explorer its
interface. I did not learn this until it was already installed as there
was nothing in the packaging that stipulated Internet Explorer was
required and I was not informed of that during the installation and given
the option to abort the installation rather than allow it to include
Internet Explorer as part of the installation. I immediately began to have
persisent rather than intermittent stability problems so removed Nuts &
Bolts and investigating my option wound up going with Norton Utilities
from Symantec. You see, Internet Explorer was NOT required for Nuts &
Bolts to work, but rather a specific dll that Microsoft made a point to
package with Internet Explorer and it was never clear to me whether it
would not make that specific dll available to developers of other software
without special licensing or most were to lazy to write the additional
coding that would allow installation of that dll anywhere other than
within Internet Explorer. Concerning my fourth point, it is likely that
my "issue" is more with Windows itself than my browser or email client,
but I do find that the integration tends to be the most pronounced with my
browser and email. I may have misidentified the ultimate "parent" of
one or more of the email clients mentioned in my prior message, but with
the exception of Internet Explorer, I tried all the "mainstream" browsers
(my experience with Internet Explorer has been limited to my using someone
else's computer and that computer having only Internet Explorer on it),
and found their email clients would not allow me to work the way I want.
Until quite recently, my primary reason for searching has been to find an
email client that would allow me to work in the manner I wish, but with
changes to Opera over the last few years, primarily that it overwrites the
bookmarks I have created along with the customization in how they are
organized, I am ready to abandon it for a suite, and if I can do so with a
"suite" that provides me with the email client I want, all the
better--Opera discontinued its email client some time ago and while it had
one, I was never able to configure it to work at all, much less the way I
wanted. Given that SeaMonkey is supposed derived from Netscape and also
has its origins in Linux, very much appeals to me as it means that it
should not have the "mindset" of programs that have always targeted either
Microsoft or Apple. I began this reply before seeing some of the
responses, but with my having responded to those that came in while I was
composing this message, hopefully there will be none to come in before
this post is up. I also want to express my appreciation and thanks for the
feedback I have received.
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