Hello Allie, On Mon, 20 Jan 2003, at 14:06:30 GMT -0500 (1/20/2003, 1:06 PM -0500 GMT here), you wrote in <[EMAIL PROTECTED]">mid:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> I did have a look at VA. When? I should explain why I decided to switch to TB from VA. First and foremost VA quit development although is going open source on SourceForge. The last I checked the open source initiative has struggled a bit. Second VA's editor did not wrap properly which caused problems on signature verification with PGP. Miguel was the one who talked me into TB. I'm glad he did. > It was similar to Forte' Agent. I do not agree. VA has a steep learning curve into more advance feature set like TB, but IMHO to this day had the simplest approach to email out of the box. The default folder for inbound AND outbound messages was the "Messages" folder. So in a single email with multiple recipients VA would start the thread and maintain a record in one location, the "Messages" folder. If you had no rules for inbound (i.e.filters) that applied, the receipt of a reply went to the "Message" folder. So VA maintained a thread without the user intervention on simple email conversation without user's intervention. Both TB, Agent, & BTW OE maintain separate folders for inbound and outbound messages. > A nice application for News ......... and btw, e-mail. I use Agent for news. Agent does news well. I can't speak with a lot of experience with email, but the main reason I continued to look for an email client was Agent can NOT handle multiple email accounts. You had to have multiple instances of Agent, or use an external program. IIRC the external program most recommended at the time was Hamster. Anyhow about that time I was starting to look at Eudora and Pegasus when Miguel lead me to TB. > Though the e-mail support may be adequate for many, it's hardly as > robust as what TB! provides. I agree TB is better than VA in ways most TB users feel very strongly about. I include myself in TB email users, so pun was intended. :-) BTW I do NOT consider myself an experience TB user because from what I can see I've hardly scratched the surface. The ability to learn TB's advance features is the single most important reason why I decided to go with TB. I had an upside to use TB with no ceiling in sight. TB's most evident benefit is the editor. I hope I don't get jumped on here after reading all the threads on editors because this is MY OPINION. Now TB developers are providing options to users with the editor. I think that is great for those options to exist for those other users with different opinions. Even though I've barely scratched the surface TB's filtering coupled with macro and regex capabilities probably just plain BLOWS the competition away. This is the ceiling I couldn't see that I referred to above. TB's "View thread by" options is extremely handy when members of certain mail lists use clients or post via web without the proper headers. VA's message management was better. In VA you had a "prune" option. Very similar to folder properties in TB. The big difference was even though a message was removed from the message base, removed messages were stored in a file rather than trashed without the ability to recover. You had the ability to restore from the file which I did use a few times. I have not used the external program MailBag, so the functionality with MailBag probably far exceeds VA, however it is separate. TB search capabilities are fine and on the face the search features are more extensive in TB than VA, but VA you could save the results in a visual container called Bookmarks. You could save up to 20 bookmarks, and refer to them at any time without running the search again. In TB you can rerun the last 9 searches, but how many times do you have to re-run a search with slightly different criteria to find what you are looking for? This can be replaced in TB with color groups and search function. > Miguel is already using TB! for reading news and feels that it already > has most of what's needed for news reading. It's this perception > that's the problem. What is your problem with this perception? The fact the individual is complacent with accepting the feature set that may be less than what it could be? I do not understand your statement. I look at computers and the software as a tool. Some tools I use more than others, so the feature set is more important to me. If I have 2 tools I use a lot like email & a news reader, I would like to have as similar an interface as possible because it minimizes my mistakes. For example Ctl+N with TB is new email, whereas Ctrl+N with Agent is send message. I'd rather use the keyboard than the mouse, so different short cut keys can be a problem because I have to slow down and think what program I'm using. > I disagree strongly with this and this is likely why I have the > opinion that no Windows client combo out there really does news and > e-mail WELL. I think this is a matter of opinion which is a function of your perspective. I might agree with you if I wanted to have the best programs for both email and a news group. Personally to me the email program is more important than the news reader. I gain value when the interface between the 2 programs is the same, so I might forego news reader functionality to have the same interface. Probably the area we both agree is Ritlabs focus and resources. TB is one heck of an email program which I wouldn't want jeopardized by spreading resource to thin to support the development of a news reader and foregoing development of new functionality that pertains to TB as an email program. BTW if I'm way off base, please correct me. -- Best regards, Greg Strong TB! v1.63 Beta/4 on Windows XP Service Pack 1 ________________________________________________ Current version is 1.62 | "Using TBUDL" information: http://www.silverstones.com/thebat/TBUDLInfo.html
