Only headers on check, xxx line when viewing mail

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CyGho
Posts: 14
Joined: 21 Mar 2005, 18:20
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Only headers on check, xxx line when viewing mail

Post by CyGho »

Hi Christian,
I'm glad to see the developing of Popman is going on and doing great.

A request though:
As it is now there is one setting for downloading a number of lines (default 200). So also when I just check for new headers, Popman will download those 200 lines per mail.
What I like to see is a possibility to disable the download of lines when I'm just checking the new headers, but when I double click on a header then download the 200 lines (if set to 200 of course)

I know I can set the nr of lines to 0, but when I do that and double click on a header, nothing will be downloaded because of the 0 line setting.

In short: seperate the number of lines setting for checking and viewing.

Thx in advance :)

Edit: I thought about this some more. A nice addition would also be to be able to add a senders address to a white list. And then have an option in the advance settings for accounts to "download mail completely for white list addresses".
Software: should we be aware because it's soft ? I like to think not !
Darkbee
Posts: 37
Joined: 02 Mar 2005, 15:30

Post by Darkbee »

I have some related questions and then possibly some requests depending on the answers.

Does Popman know, after it has downloaded emails (or as it downloads each email), if some are longer than the default 200 lines?

I've often come across the behaviour for emails with attachments where only the first file's name followed by (??) is displayed. I assume this is because Popman hasn't downloaded the full email and so has no idea how many files are attached or how big they are. In order to download the attachments I must click on the first one and THEN Popman reveals to me how many files and how big they are (once it has download the email fully).

Another question: Is there any other way to make Popman download a particular email fully? Suppose I have an email with no attachments but lines of text beyond the default limit. How would I know or download that email?

so, depending on the answers to the questions above it might be useful to:

Highlight emails that have no attachments but are more than 200 lines long. Perhaps by highlighting the entire line, in the message list, of the specific email. You could simply invert foreground and background colours to avoid having unecessary columns. You probably don't need to bother doing this for emails with attachments since the column "attachments" will hint to the user that there is probably more to download.

Perhaps a toolbar button or right click menu option (or both) to "download selected email completely" or similar would be good.

Am I missing the point completely? Sorry in advance if this is a nonsense posting.
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Christian
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Post by Christian »

Does Popman know, after it has downloaded emails (or as it downloads each email), if some are longer than the default 200 lines?
PopMan knows the size of the email but there is no exact relation "email size" vs. "line count", since not all lines have the same length. Basically, you can only be sure that the email is complete after you have retrieved it completely. Therefore, another account setting may be useful: "Retrieve message completely, if smaller than XX KB" (a 200 line chunk is about 16 KB).

This way about 80% of your messages would be known to be complete without additional download overhead. It might be better, if the state of completeness is visibile in the preview pane/message view (in form of an icon). Then you can trigger a complete reload of a particular uncomplete message when clicking this icon/button. There may also be an option "When opening message window, retrieve email completely/download the first YY lines" to address the request of CyGho ...
Christian Hübner
Darkbee
Posts: 37
Joined: 02 Mar 2005, 15:30

Post by Darkbee »

Your solutions seem good. The problem is not really a huge one for me but I do tend to use Popman almost exclusively without a mail client so it would be good to know that I'm always getting the complete email.

I think the idea of downloading a message completely when opening the email in a separate window is a good one because I often just use the preview pane to read emails. MOST of the time, I do not need to open a separate window because the emails are very short.

If you combine the above with the fact that Popman would have already downloaded messages of xx size then it shouldn't be too disruptive at all.
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