Hello Dierk,
On Sat, 24 Feb 2001 21:06:39 +0100, you wrote:
>> (BTW, you really ought to have a look at Agent as well!)
>
>As a mailer? I am always recommending it as a newsreader. In this area
>it is very good. As mailer? No internal PGP support, no subfolders ...
>can't remember other shortcomings (there were some more).
It has lots. But, to me, there is no doubt whatsoever, that it is one
of the three best e-mail clients on the market (the two other are, of
course, TB and Becky!). But, when this is said, I stress that I am
*not* in the process of converting! The recent threading-discussions
in TBUDL and TBTECH merely inspired me to have a closer look at Agent
as an e-mail client.
And what have I found? Well, as you say, Agent has it's short-comings.
But, IMHO, the ones you mention are not among the serious of them.
Personally, I am sick of folders. To some extent, they are necessary,
but I much prefer good search-facilities - and Agent has those! And,
as Karin has stated, the PGP-issue can be met as well.
Some would say, that it's lack of support for multiple accounts is
*the* most serious short-coming. But, as should be clear from the vast
majority of my posting to the various TB-lists (or so it feels!), I
think this "problem" belongs to the past.
It seems to me, that Agent's biggest limitations are it's lack of
template support and it's poor address-book. But, in fact, some of
it's very attractive features are connected to these same areas:
Template support:
I do not use TB's quick-templates a lot (yet), but it seems to me that
much of the functionality of this feature (apart from macros, of
course) can be achieved with Agent's "Signature"-feature. A
"signature" in Agent can, of course, be just about anything - and it
is, at least, as easy to ad as a quick-template: place your cursor,
press Ctrl+I, choose your "Signature", press "Enter", done. Very
elegant.
Address book:
Agent does not have "auto-complete", but a feature pretty much like
the one just mentioned: ctrl+K, choose a handle [, choose a field],
Enter, done. In my opinion, this is much more attractive than TB's
tedious "auto-complete".
And then to the final show-down (:-)):
I am no great fan of the "virtual folder" of TB's mail-ticker. I like
to see my new messages in their thread-context, and I do not want to
open a window for every folder with new messages to be able to do
this. In Agent I can set "View" to "Unread messages" (V, "Unread
messages")and sort by thread. New messages then appear in their
folders neatly placed in their threads without anything to distract,
and I can now work my way through them - message by message, folder by
folder - with Agent's oh-so-neat navigation keys! In fact, I love this
feature so much, that I sometimes find it hard to imagine returning to
TB as primary mailer!!!
The same goes for the presentation of search-results:
Quite often I would also like to be able to view search results in
their thread-context. In TB this is just as tedious as viewing new
messages in their thread-context. In Agent I just choose "View all" in
my search-window, highlight the message of interest, press Navigate |
Full thread (or *), and I've got the context without leaving the other
search results. This is *very* addictive!!!
The pros and cons of Agent's threading has been discussed at length
several times on TB-lists in recent times, so I'll end my little
review here - with this remark: Of course, Agent's biggest
short-coming - when compared to TB - is it lack of macro-support. This
is what keeps us all in awe of TB. But this shouldn't discourage us
from trying to *improve* TB - and in that respect, I certainly think
Agent has something to offer.
>One caveat: It could be that the 2.0 version, which seems to be in the
>works, will bring us the requested features and some more. But till
>now we only know that Mark works on a new version (maybe just 1.9, a
>bug fix).
Permit me to quote from the following message from
alt.usenet.offline-reader.forte-agent:
From: Jeffrey Kaplan (Agent Support)
Thread: New Version in the Works!!!!!!
Date: 09-02-2001 8:22:51 GMT
Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
"Yes, there is indeed work being done on Agent now. In the near
future, you can expect a new free maintenance release to fix a select
few bugs recently found. I don't know what the version number will
be, but judging by the version number history, expect it to be 1.9.
Beyond that, there WILL BE a version 2.0 of Agent!
We do not have a feature set decided on as of yet, nor a projected
release date, but it WILL BE done."
These remarks has led to the threads present volume of 123 messages!
--
Best regards,
Jannik Lindquist
The Bat! 1.49
Windows 98 4 10 2222 A
--
______________________________________________________
Archives : <http://tbudl.thebat.dutaint.com>
Moderators : <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
TBTech List: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
You are subscribed as : [email protected]
