-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hello Miguel,
Thursday, May 9, 2002, 2:16:08 PM, you wrote: I should mention first I think TB! is a good email program. Whether it be an email program, news reader program, or a CIS OLR, to me they are all a tool. These tools gather information, then I can use the information for whatever. I do NOT want others who read this thread to get defensive. My initial question and subsequent replies are NOT intended to be offensive to either TB! users or RitLabs. Miguel, as you are well aware since I've made my decision to try programs other than VA, I am learning to use both TB! for email, Agent for news groups, and continue to use VA for CIS forums. To be honest I do not consider myself an expert on either of them. My responses here may reflect my experience from use of either or all of them. I don't consider myself to be a computer expert, just a pretty darn good computer user. Give me some time to learn it, and I'll use it pretty darn good given the limitations of the hardware and software used. IOW I only speak for myself. MAU> What options are you thinking about? #1, the prune option in VA as you mentioned in IMHO is a GREAT feature of VA, however I think it can be made BETTER. How many times have you deleted a message(s) and regretted it? I speak only for myself and state that VA's ability to restore from the "prune.old" file has saved me a few times in the past. Miguel you may know more here than I, however if IIRC you had to restore to the same location. Since I restored more than I actually wanted, it created more work because I would have to again go through the deletion process. I remember users of VA over long periods of time stating that they would use the prune option as a way to archive messages by burning the "prune.old" file to CDRs. I look at the message DB as a resource, and a searchable one. Presently TB! is primarily an email program that recently implemented news reader capability. Depending upon the news group you are a member your volume of messages can jump quite large when moving into the news group arena. The ability to take the message DB off-line (i.e. off hard disk) and restore to another location, I feel would enhance the capabilities of TB!. If you communicate with email professionally and given TB! integration with security software such as PGP, GPG, & S/Mime this capability could CYA. #2, I miss the "Ignore" function in VA, however implemented at a SUB-THREAD LEVEL in TB!. In VA just hit "I" and all further messages received on the thread are marked as read. The functionality I'm looking for is MORE than what VA had. How many times have you seen threads in this list go off on tangents. Some of the branches of the tree maybe of interest to me, so I would be interested in new messages on those branches. Unless I have something configured wrong in VA, I hit "I" and all messages in the thread are marked read. What about that other branch I'm still interested in? #3, I can not select multiple folders to change properties for all of them at the same time. In Agent I can. From what I can tell you have to set each folder's properties individually. This is okay when you have to set up the folder individually and your a new user. I go through a learning curve and learn how features are inter-related, then latter decide to change configuration on folders. By being able to change properties on multiple folders at the same time saves time. #4, better shortcut documentation. Why not place all shortcuts to the right on the menus? When I learn a new UI I typically read what I need out of the manual, then use the program. I learn more from using the program, then reading the manual. To my knowledge TB! has no manual, so your forced to use the on-line help or TBUL. Since I'm a relatively new user to TB! this may be a conscious decision by RitLabs due to the speed of the development. IMHO as a user I think better documentation of the shortcuts on the menu is still needed. #5, a "manual correction" of threading. How many times have you read a thread where someone changes the topic in the middle of thread. This to me is a separate thread which should be separated. If and when TB! implements an "Ignore" capability and how it is implemented, may determine the importance of this request. See my discussion on sub-thread management capabilities. #6, better management of downloading "headers only" versus the full message. If possible, downloading of headers versus the full message should be decision at the folder level. For those "full message downloads" delete them from the server on the initial pass, and those "header downloads only" leave the messages on the server until they are deleted from the trash or another flag to trigger the delete on the server. This request may be limited by hardware and software used by the server the messages originate from. Others may want to expand functionality here. I raise this point from my experience of using Agent where I am a member of multiple news groups on the same NNTP server. To my knowledge TB! present options that only exist at the account level. Under Account | Properties | Mail Management | in the "Message Management" group you can select to download headers when message exceeds a certain size. In the "Mail Dispatcher" group you can select to download a number of lines in the body with the header. I have never used these options within TB! but just looking at them intuitively it is an all or nothing decision at the account level. Give me only messages headers when they exceed a certain size, or I will use the message dispatcher to determine after reading the few lines on the initial pass. I would imagine you would use the dispatcher with the capability of leaving the message on the server until the message is removed from trash. Unless I'm missing something here with the dispatcher method you have to micro manage through the mail dispatcher which wastes time. For example in Agent I am a member of multiple news groups on the same NNTP server. One of the groups is nothing more than a announcement group for the other groups where you just receive the message and do not reply. I always receive the header and full body of the message on the announcement group. On the other groups I always just receive the headers only, but I do so on the same pass as the announcement group. On the second pass I only receive the bodies of those I've selected. MAU> When I see one that I think I may be interested in referring to MAU> in the future, I Park it so it won't be deleted when it is older MAU> than 15 days. Good point! Roelof's message will be handy. See #4 above. MAU> But I think this is not what you are looking for, I think you are MAU> missing (like me) some of the options Virtual Access has, aren't you? Yes. See #1, #2, & #5 above. MAU> I will mention some of the options that I think your are missing (I MAU> certainly am) also with the intention that perhaps "someone" may be MAU> "listening" and take note. Hopefully! <VBG> MAU> - I think your are missing that in VA, for each folder, you can select MAU> the delete (prune) options to: Never (not even manually), Only MAU> Manual delete or Prune when older than... Yes, see #1 with improvement on restore location, IIRC. MAU> - I think you are missing that in VA, because it does "real threading" MAU> (I will comment on this later), even if you have selected "Prune MAU> when older than..." NO message in a thread will be deleted/purged as MAU> long as there is ONE message in the thread that is "younger" than MAU> the number of days specified. MAU> - I think that your are missing that in VA, in your preferences, you MAU> may select that "siblings" in a thread inherit certain flags of the MAU> "father", like Keep (park), Ignore, etc. Duh! I never really checked in VA after prune. If I wanted to keep, I always selected all the messages in a thread, and while selected hit "K" to mark all. Looks like I did more work than necessary. <ROFLOL> Sounds like I'm still learning VA. <g> MAU> - I think you are missing... VA. Period. :-) Yes and No. Yes because of what features I miss and mentioned previously. No because I think TB! editor is MUCH better than VA. I've seen others degrade this issue in TB!. It takes a little getting use to it. I know there are features in VA I don't know. I know there are features in TB! I don't know. Even though VA is going open source, there would have to be MAJOR improvements before I would switch back to VA from TB! for email solely due to the editor. >> Now I know I could write a macro... MAU> A macro? How? As far as I know, in TB's context, macros are only MAU> usable in templates, right?. A macro, to me, would be some way to MAU> "code" or "record" a number of key strokes (menu options selections) MAU> and assign it to a single Hot Key or button in a user configurable MAU> toolbar. My wording was incorrect. I should have said a "filter" with hot keys. Still more work than "Ignore". >> How about an "Ignore" switch? MAU> I am experimenting with a somewhat emulation of VA's Ignore function MAU> in TB. It's working, but I still want to try to tweak it a little bit. MAU> It will never be as easy to use as in VA. Let me see it when your done. >> I must be missing something here because there has to be an easier >> way. MAU> I think you are missing... VA. ;-) Yes in many ways especially in message DB management. This is why I started this thread. <VBG> With CIS forums email, and newsgroups for me we were talking a message DB that probably easily averaged in the tens of thousands. I never really tracked it, but have heard of individuals exceeding 100K messages regularly. This point leads me to my closing comment. IMHO and with all due respect I believe TB! is a good email program. However, if RitLabs is serious about treading into the news group software market with the recent implementation of news group capability, RitLabs will have to improve with regard to managing large message DB's. - -- Best regards, Greg Strong Using TB! v1.60c Windows 98 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6-2 (MingW32) - GPGshell v2.28 Comment: Greg Strong (Email KeyID 0x78834C32) Fingerprint Comment: 25E5 9158 5DAB 9CBD 32D7 77A0 64AB 99C9 7883 4C32 iD8DBQE82xFHZKuZyXiDTDIRAsntAJ43UeZEUdyP+MtXQaAW2jQdo5V+IACgoGPG 4Qb9C9sIzZMRLJFW2JP6Zs4= =0bpS -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ________________________________________________________ Current Ver: 1.60i FAQ : http://faq.thebat.dutaint.com Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archives : http://tbudl.thebat.dutaint.com Moderators : mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] TBTech List: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Bug Reports: https://bt.ritlabs.com
