General Settings
This notebook is accessed via the toolbar
button by the same name, the General submenu option of
the Settings option on the program's main
window's File menu, or the OK-Goto
General button in the Advanced Settings
notebook. These two settings notebooks hold most of the program's
settings, but many others are found instead in the location where you
use them. For example, the main window's Message menu
remembers things such as your Word wrap, Decode
attachments, Headers, and font settings; the
compose window remembers your word wrap and font
settings; etc.
The Mail Servers Page
The first option lets you specify whether your mail server is a
POP3 server or an IMAP4 server. If you
select IMAP4, two extra settings, Mail Folder
and Mailbox Name will appear; see Preview IMAP4 Mail for their explanations as well as
information about the other ways in which the program will act differently
based on whether an account is configured
for POP3 or IMAP4.
If you leave blank any of the next three fields here, the program
will prompt you for all of this information each time you try to
retrieve mail from the server. This can be useful if you don't want
your password to be stored on your hard drive (even though the program
does encrypt it before storing it), or if you often like to retrieve
mail from other mail accounts into one J Street Mailer
account. (However, you probably don't want to
leave the User Name field blank, because unless you have
the Personal Post Office feature enabled, the
program will open the General Settings notebook
automatically each time you start it if there's no User Name
filled in here, and that would be annoying.)
- Server
- The address of the POP3 or IMAP4 server from which this
account gets its mail.
- User Name
- The userid by which your POP3 or IMAP4 server knows this
account. Very often, the piece of information that goes here is the part
of your email address before the @ sign.
- Password
- The password used to make your POP3 or IMAP4 server provide
access to this account's mail.
- Connection Timeout
- How many seconds the program should wait for a
connection. Of course, it will stop waiting sooner than this if TCP/IP
returns an error or if the connection is made.
- Port
- Usually 110, the port number to which the POP3 server will
respond. Or for an IMAP4 server, this setting is normally 143.
- Use SMTP instead of POP3 to send messages
- If you turn off this
checkbox, the program will attempt to send your mail via your POP3
server. Of course, this will only work if your Internet Service
Provider's POP3 server supports the XTND XMIT command. Many POP3 servers
do not; and many of the ones which do support it do not support it very
well! Most ISPs and most users prefer to send via an SMTP server
instead, even when they have access to a POP3 server which does have a
proper XTND XMIT implementation.
- SMTP Server
- The address of the SMTP server to which this
account should send its mail, if the Use
SMTP instead of POP3 to send messages checkbox is turned on.
- Port
- Usually 25, the port number to which the SMTP server will
respond.
- Alternate
- A second SMTP server which the program can try to use,
any time there is no response to an attempt to connect to the first one.
- Port
- The port number for the Alternate SMTP server.
- Connection Timeout
- How many seconds the program should wait for a
connection. Of course, it will stop waiting sooner than this if TCP/IP
returns an error or if the connection is made.
The Retrieving Page
- Retrieve new mail only
- This setting applies only
when mail is being retrieved from a POP3 or IMAP4 server, not from the Personal Post Office directory. When this checkbox
is turned on, the program will only retrieve messages that it thinks you
haven't already read. You might use this setting if you like to leave your
mail on the server for safekeeping or for future reference. The way in which
the program will decide which messages you have and have not read, depends
upon the state of the Mail server supports the UIDL command
setting, below. Unless the account is configured for an IMAP4 server, in which
case the UIDL method will be used since it is unquestionably better and all
IMAP4 servers support it. The only reason for the existence of the high
message counter method, is for those few POP3 servers which don't support
UIDL.
If that setting is turned off, so that the UIDL identifiers can't be used,
then the program will only retrieve messages whose message number is higher
than that specified in the Last message number setting, and it
will update that setting each time it retrieves a message. (This applies to
normal mail retrieval, not anything done by the Preview Mail feature.) Do not use this setting if
you use another program or the Preview Mail feature to retrieve mail from the
same server on the same account, unless you manually adjust the Last
message number setting accordingly.
If the Mail server supports the UIDL command setting is turned
on, then the Last message number setting will be ignored, and the
program will instead determine whether or not to retrieve a message based on
whether or not the server's Unique IDentification Listing for that message is
already stored in the account's UIDL.IDS
file or not.
- Last message number
- When the Retrieve new mail only
setting is in use but the Mail server supports the UIDL command
setting is not, this number is what tells the program which messages to
retrieve from the server. For example, when this setting says 6, the program
will retrieve message 7 and anything thereafter. If the program finds that
there are only 6 messages in the account on the mail server, it will think
there are no new messages to retrieve. If it finds that there are 5 or fewer
messages on the server (for example, if you have used Preview Mail or another program to delete some),
then it will retrieve all of the mail since it obviously can't rely on a high
message counter that's higher than the last message in the server! However, if
you use Preview Mail or another program to delete some mail but some other new
mail arrives too, so that the number of messages in the server is still as
high or higher than this high message counter, the program will not retrieve
all of your new mail. For example, if the setting says 6, you've deleted 2,
and 3 new ones have arrived, so the server now contains 7, then messages 5
through 7 are new, but the program will only download message number 7 since
that's the only one that's higher than the high message counter. If you
remembered to reset this setting to 4 after you deleted the two messages from
the server, though, then everything would be fine and the program would
download all of the right messages.
- Mail server supports the UIDL command
- The program will automatically
turn this checkbox off, if your server returns an error code in response to
the program's attempt at using the UIDL command (see Retrieve new mail
only, above). If your Internet Service Provider installs new server
software that does support UIDL, or you change to an ISP whose server does,
turn this checkbox back on. You can also turn this checkbox off even if your
server does support the UIDL command, if you think you will not be wanting to
use the UIDL feature any time soon, and you don't want the program to waste
time retrieving the UIDL identifiers if you're not going to be using them. If
this checkbox is on, the program will retrieve the UIDLs even when
Retrieve new mail only is turned off, so that once you do turn it
on, the program will already know which of the messages on your server you've
read up to that point. The program keeps the UIDL records of all the messages
that are currently in your POP3/IMAP4 server account each time you retrieve
mail, in the UIDL.IDS file in your account
subdirectory.
- Delete retrieved messages from server
- With this checkbox turned on, the
program will delete messages from the server after successfully retrieving
them.
- Retrieve mail automatically every [ ] minutes
- With this checkbox
turned on and a number of minutes specified, the program will automatically
retrieve new mail whenever the account is
open, after each time the specified number of minutes elapses. To temporarily
turn it off, or to make automatic mail retrieval occur on all accounts so
configured instead of only the open account, see Popper.
- Provide a warning for messages larger than [ ] kilobytes
- With
this checkbox turned on and a number of kilobytes specified, the program
will not retrieve a message larger than that size. Instead, it will
retrieve only its headers. The message that ends up in your
INBOX folder will contain a notice from the
program, to the effect that you need to use the Preview Mail feature to retrieve the entire message.
This way, you know the sender and the subject line of the message, so
that you can decide when to retrieve the message at your own convenience
rather than having your system tied up by a large download when you
weren't expecting it.
- Play an audio file when new mail is received
- With this checkbox
turned on and a valid audio (.AU) file selected via the Find
button to the right, the program will play that audio file
instead of making the normal beep sound, when a mail retrieval action
results in new mail being received.
The Messages Page
- Prompt before deleting messages
- With this checkbox turned on, the
program will ask you for confirmation each time you delete a message
from a folder.
- Prompt before permitting addresses without domains
- With this
checkbox turned on, the program will ask you whether you're sure you
haven't made a mistake, each time you try to leave the
compose window with an addressee which is not
formatted like a legal internet address and is also not found as a
nickname in one of your address books. Turn this
setting off, if you need to be able to address messages to other users
on your own network without having to specify the domain name as part of
the address, often enough that the prompt would irritate you.
- Include message headers when forwarding
- If you turn this setting
on, then when you forward a message, its header
lines will be included instead of only its message body text.
- Default word wrapping ON/OFF for all composed messages
- This
setting lets you specify whether you want the Word wrap
setting on the Edit menu of the compose window to be on or off by default.
- Default MIME/UUENCODE as the method of encoding attached
files
- This setting lets you specify whether you want the
compose window's Attachments menu
setting to default to Mime or UUencode.
The Cleanup Page
- Maintain the Transaction Log
- With this checkbox turned on, the
program will monitor the size of the message
transaction log file, and remove the oldest entries in order to make
it adhere to the Maximum Number of Log Items setting. This
action is taken each time you close an account,
either by switching to another account or by closing the program.
- Maximum Number of Log Items
- If the Maintain the Transaction
Log setting is turned on, the program will remove the oldest
entries from the message transaction log file in order to keep only this
number of entries in the file.
- Maintain the Trash Folder
- With this checkbox turned on, the
program will monitor the size of the TRASH
folder, and delete the messages that have been in it the longest, in
order to make its size adhere to the Maximum Number of Trash
Messages setting. This action is taken each time you close an
account, either by switching to another account
or by closing the program.
- Maximum Number of Trash Messages
- If the Maintain the Trash
Folder setting is turned on, the program will delete, from the
TRASH folder, the messages which have been in it the longest, in order
to keep only this number of messages in the folder.
- Do Not Copy Discarded Messages to the Trash Folder
- With this
setting turned on, the program will actually delete all messages you
tell it to delete, immediately, instead of ever moving them to the
TRASH folder as it would normally do.
The News Page
If your only use of internet newsgroups is by web sites such as
http://www.dejanews.com or http://www.hotbot.com, you don't need a news reader application.
Those web sites let you read all the newsgroup postings you want, and they
even let you write a reply, but not easily. The J Street Mailer provides an
easy way to write newsgroup postings and replies, so you can interact with
such web sites in both directions, without using a full-fledged news reader.
To write an original posting, just type NEWS: and the newsgroup name as the
addressee, in the compose window. To reply to a
posting on a newsgroup web site, see Paste
quoted.
- News Server
- The address of your news server.
- Port Number
- Usually 119, the port number to which the news server will
respond.
- Interpret addresses containing a period (.) but no (@) as
newsgroups
- If you leave this setting on, then you don't have to type NEWS:
before a newsgroup name in the Addresses: field of the compose window. The program will assume that any
address that has a period without an @ sign is a newsgroup and will send the
message using your news server. (If the message also has other addressees that
don't look like newsgroup names, the program will send the message to those
addressees using the SMTP or POP3 server; it will only send the message to the
news server for those addressees that look like newsgroup names.)
Note: This setting applies to you even if you never want
to use the J Street Mailer for newsgroup postings or replies. If you need to
be able to send an email message to an address which does not contain an @
sign but does contain a period (for example, another user at your own domain
so that you want to leave off the @ sign and the domain name, but his username
has a period in it), then you have to turn this setting off or else the
program will always try to send that message to your news server (and if you
don't have your news server setting filled in, the program is going to prompt
you for it at send time). With this settings turned off, the program will
never try to send anything to the news server unless you type NEWS: in front
of the address in the compose window.