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Pegasus Mail for Windows David J. Kocmoud, J. Matthew Pierce, and Michael O. Stegman 1996 | 500 pages ISBN: 132619008 |
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| $27.96 | Softbound print book | Out of print (?) | |
Introduction
"If you want to send a message, try Western Union."
Reputedly said by Sam Goldwyn, movie mogul, when asked if his movies had a message.
Now Sam Goldwyn would probably say to "try e-mail." Electronic messaging, electronic mail, e-mail, or whatever you call it, the written word is making a strong return where you'd least expect it: the frontiers of technology, the wide-open road of the info-highway. No longer content to play phone tag, we have returned to written correspondence in our business and personal lives. Love letters, notes, business letters, epistles to the Corinthians, and others, letters have a long and glorious tradition. Since e-mail is more often delivered to the person who reads and must directly respond to it, even business correspondence may have a more direct personal connection beyond the perfunctory flourish of a signature.
Without the delay of surface mail and without the missed opportunities and implied imposition of the phone call's peremptory interruption, e-mail moves communication along at a faster pace. Often these letters shuttle back and forth within the same day rather than overnight. Reading and responding to them becomes a matter of personal choice rather than an interruption. But this convenience and speed are not new. In the early part of this century there were two mail deliveries daily. Often a letter written during the early morning in New York City would travel to, say, Hartford, Connecticut, and be on an executive's desk in time for a reply to be sent back in the afternoon mail to arrive in New York City before the end of that same business day. True, distance would complicate this, but two daily deliveries of the mail was a commonplace once. Now we've had to wait until nearly the end of the century to return to that primitive convenience and efficiency. Should the parties require it, e-mail's near instantaneousness can turn letter writing into a transcripted dialog.
Even discounting the hyperbole of words like flood and explosion to describe this mail phenomenon, there's more of it. Into this brave new world of letter writing comes the software to manage it and, in particular, David Harris's Pegasus Mail for Windows, DOS, and Macintosh platforms. This book will concentrate on the latest revision of Pegasus Mail's Windows version. While we may not refer directly to the other platforms, you can easily transfer the principles of personal productivity that we will present. True, there may me some skips and misses because of the extensive work that has gone into the Windows version, but this book's major tips and techniques should cover all three platforms well enough to make your work day with any recent version of Pegasus Mail more efficient. Pegasus Mail is also ideally suited for networks, whether they are local area networks within an office or the Internet itself.
This book's first goal will be to explore how to improve the efficiency with which you handle your correspondence. Helpful tasks such as address books, distribution lists, and ways to filter your incoming messages are only the start of how Pegasus Mail can be your ally. Pegasus Mail can even save money if you must phone into a commercial provider to read your mail since you can compose messages off-line for later mailing, and quickly download messages and read them off-line. Finally, Pegasus Mail offers the bonus of an integrated spelling checker. This short list of features only hints at its power.
Who needs this book?
If you're already using Pegasus Mail or if you've just started, this book can help you to increase your personal productivity. Seasoned hands will find a thorough discussion of Pegasus Mail's features, some new and some that improve older features. If you're new to Pegasus Mail, but not to e-mail, then this book will help you make a fresh start. You can use this switch to Pegasus Mail to do some real housecleaning of your bad habits and the jury-rigged solutions that you always meant to do something about. This book offers you insights into how to revamp and retool your old habits and inefficient practices. If you are just launching your first missions into cyberspace, the book will help you set an efficient course from the very start. Finally, network managers can consult this book to learn how to set up Pegasus Mail for use in distributed environments. We've done the homework and combed the discussion groups for the best ways to integrate Pegasus Mail into a network.
That about covers it. In short, this book is for anyone who uses or is thinking about using Pegasus Mail. You can dip into it at any topic you wish to find helpful information, quick tutorial sessions, and tips to inspire you.
Overview by chapter
This book is organized into three sections. Each section targets a particular level of expertise. Part I helps new users or those who are looking for a fresh look at e-mail basics. Part II elaborates on the first part's basic principles and shows how to wring out the most from Pegasus Mail. We'll be tapping into Pegasus Mail's most powerful features, especially its sophisticated automation options. Part III focuses on those issues that will benefit a network administrator, or someone who wants to understand how to optimize Pegasus Mail's network configuration. The appendices feature an interesting perspective on Pegasus Mail's international presence and extensive coverage of how to troubleshoot Pegasus Mail's most frequently encountered questions.
As we go along we will include recommendations for increasing your efficiency, detailed illustrations, and practical examples to demonstrate how you can implement the book's suggestions immediately.
Part I. Getting Started with Pegasus Mail
This section covers basic mail techniques and how to accomplish them with Pegasus Mail. Chapter 2 does, however, provide a thorough discussion of how to set up Pegasus Mail for standalone and network uses.
Chapter 1. "Introducing Pegasus Mail" covers Pegasus Mail's contribution to electronic messaging and the solutions it can offer for the deluge of electronic communications. A quick tour of Pegasus Mail's menus will provide a roadmap to the features that later chapters in the book will cover in detail.
Chapter 2. "Installing Pegasus Mail" provides detailed information for setting Pegasus Mail up on a standalone computer. Each section will define the options available and recommend configurations that will get you off to a solid start, one that also leads you to consider how to optimize your configuration.
Chapter 3. "The Pegasus Mail Desktop and Menus" walks you through the Pegasus Mail interface and covers a simple mail session so that you learn how to launch the program, create and send new mail, retrieve your mail and reply to it , and close down Pegasus Mail. The chapter will help brand new users of both Pegasus Mail and electronic mail with its comfortable and successful introduction to the basic principles and procedures they will use most often.
Part II. Power Techniques for Pegasus Mail
This section shows how to tap into the full power of Pegasus Mail's automation and personal productivity capabilities. Chapters will also cover some of the finer points of style and personalization available, and explore the various way Pegasus Mail manages advanced mailing techniques including sending and receiving files and its own Noticeboards, a sophisticated bulletin board system.
Chapter 4. "A Place for Everything" introduces those elements of Pegasus Mail that help you to organize information. The chapter explains how to send mail using address books for individuals and distributions lists for groups. For incoming mail, the chapter covers Pegasus Mail's folders and trays which allow you to sort your mail in various ways.
Chapter 5. "Advanced Message Writing" shows how Pegasus Mail operates on your machine as you go about your other work. The chapter will cover the complete range of editing tools available, including formatting text and spell checking. We'll cover how to dress up your messages and your replies so that they look their best before we show you how to send them on their way using Pegasus Mail's advanced messaging options. This chapter covers how to increase your efficiency by storing messages as boilerplates and saving smaller snippets of text as a glossary. Finally, we'll cover how to manage a mail queue to save you connect time charges.
Chapter 6. "Automation Techniques" covers how to run Pegasus Mail in the background and have it notify you of new mail automatically, how to automate adding random quotations to your signature and how to exploit Pegasus Mail's facility for creating filtering rules for your mail. You will learn how to create a basic list server for distributing and handling mail and even create a "Help Desk" for users who request information from you. These sophisticated handling procedures will demonstrate Pegasus Mail's real value as a personal productivity tool.
Chapter 7. "Sending and Receiving Files via Pegasus Mail" takes a close look at how to include or attach files to a message. Pegasus Mail can handle a number of different types of files for transmission across LANs and the Internet using several popular encoding schemes such as ASCII, BinHex, UUENCODE, and MIME. This will allow you to send mail across platforms, including from PCs to a Macintosh and back without problems.
Chapter 8. "Noticeboards" discusses how you can use this Pegasus Mail feature as a community bulletin board, as a place where you can share information more openly across a network, and so on. If you are using Mercury, you can even post notices to a Noticeboard via the Internet.
Chapter 9. "Extensions and the Extension Manager" will touch on the opportunity that Pegasus Mail offers for add-on utilities and programs.
Part III. Pegasus Mail and the Network Administrator
While this section of the book may seem to target network administrators only, you may wish to consult it to understand how Pegasus Mail works on a network. With these ideas, you might be able to suggest some changes to your system, or even do them yourself with the assistance of a network administrator.
Chapter 10. "Installing Pegasus Mail on Networks" focuses on Novell Netware installations. There is also a section covering non-Netware networks.
Chapter 11. "System-wide Options for Pegasus Mail" considers how to establish address books, distribution lists, folders, and noticeboards that share this information throughout an entire network, or for multiple users on a standalone installation.
Chapter 12. "Configuring Pegasus Mail for Gateways" covers how to configure Pegasus Mail for three major gateways that Pegasus Mail supports: SMTP gateway, Charon SMTP gateway and the Netware MHS gateway. The chapter also discusses how to configure other user-defined gateways.
Appendices. The appendices feature an article by Henning Stams on how to run Pegasus Mail's international language modules, a command line dictionary, Pegasus Mail file structures and filename extensions, and a complete guide to troubleshooting Pegasus Mail along with an extensive FAQ list.
Where to obtain a copy of Pegasus Mail
Pegasus Mail is proprietary software that is distributed without charge. It is not public domain software, nor is it shareware. The author, David Harris, does sell manuals for the program in order to support development costs, but manual purchases are strictly optional. An order form for manuals is provided within the on-line WGUIDE.EXE README file that comes in the Pegasus Mail distribution file. You can download Pegasus Mail from the anonymous FTP site listed below. To get to this site, you'll need access to the Internet. You can use CompuServe, America Online, or Prodigy to accomplish this. If you are already wired to the Internet, then you can use a program like the Windows Sockets FTP client or NSCA Mosaic or Netscape to access the site.
| Site: | risc.ua.edu
|
Directory: | /pub/network/pegasus
| |
If you have a web browser, you can simply point your browser to the following URL: ftp://risc.ua.edu/pub/network/pegasus/
The file you want to download (at the time that this book was written) is: winpm223.zip
Make sure you specify binary transfer mode for downloading the compressed binary file. Pegasus Mail is also made available on CompuServe in the NOVUSER forum. Search on the word "HARRIS" to find it.
The easiest source for Pegasus Mail for Windows is, of course, the disk provided with this book. Slip the disk into your machine and after copying the winpm22x.zip file there to a suitable directory on your machine, unzip it according to the directions we provide in Chapter 2.
You'll also need an unzip utility, such as PKWare's PKUNZIP to decompress this file and consult the WGUIDE.EXE readme file there since it specifies some command line parameters that you must use to properly install Pegasus Mail with all directory structures intact. All of this is covered in more detail in this book's Chapter 2, "Installing Pegasus Mail."
When you get a chance to read David Harris's comments about Pegasus Mail in the WGUIDE.EXE help files, you'll soon realize what a remarkably generous person he is. After all, how many people insist on giving away a major software application and promise to maintain it as long as people want to use it? Although he never requests that you purchase the printed manual he produces, we urge you to fill out the order form and send him the money to support his development costs. An order form ships with the program. Print it out today. Don't put it off any longer. We know the real value of this program far exceeds the cost of its manuals. So do you. It's Niker time.
What you need to run Pegasus Mail
To run Pegasus Mail successfully, you will need the following:
Standalone or non-NetWare network installation.
Dial-up modem users (e. g. from home):
- A machine capable of running Windows 3.1, or higher.
- An Internet Service Provider (ISP).
- A modem (9600 baud and higher speeds are recommended).
- A Windows Sockets (WINSOCK) v1.1 compliant TCP/IP protocol that
can handle SLIP or PPP dial-up connections (e.g. Trumpet).
- An e-mail account on the Internet--this can be provided by your
Internet Service Provider (ISP) or through a network server (e.g.,
Windows NTAS) that has POP3 and SMTP server software installed.
- A machine containing a network card and network software for
access to the network and that is capable of running Windows 3.1,
or higher.
- A Windows Sockets (WINSOCK) v1.1 compliant TCP/IP protocol (e.g.,
Trumpet or LAN Workplace for DOS).
- An e-mail account on the network--this can be provided, for
example, by a UNIX mail host at a university or by a corporate Windows
NTAS server that is running POP3 and SMTP server software.
NetWare installation:
- A NetWare file server.
- Each client user requires:
-
a. An account on the NetWare file server for e-mail.
b. A machine containing a network card and network software for access to the file server and that is capable of running Windows 3.1, or higher.
-
a. An account on the NetWare file server for e-mail.
| Site: | risc.ua.edu | |
| Directory: | /pub/network/pegasus/FAQs |
DESCRIPTION
Pegasus Mail, the top-rated noncommercial e-mail program, is used by an estimated 4 million users across three platforms. Pegasus Mail for Windows will help you spend less time organizing and sorting mail and assembling mailing lists, and more time composing thoughtful messages.
Included are chapters to help a network administrator or workgroup manager configure Pegasus Mail for use within a network or workgroup. The companion diskette contains:
- Pegasus Mail for Windows software
- Many helpful extensions, including applets to convert your existing Eudora and Pine address books
Written primarily for a user of the Windows version of Pegasus Mail, the book's abundant practical tips and examples apply also to the DOS and Macintosh versions. Included is a Foreword by David Harris, developer of Pegasus Mail.
Note:
Please note that this book was published in 1996 when v2.31 of Pegasus Mail for Windows was first released and, while much of the content still applies, a lot has happened in the years since. While major parts of the book remain unaffected, many new features have been added to Pegasus Mail for Windows in a plethora of version updates (currently v3.12a, as of October 1999) and many limitations and bugs of that version have since been removed. Due to the Authors' lack of time we have been unable to provide you with an updated edition.
WHAT THE EXPERTS SAY ABOUT THIS BOOK...
"Pegasus Mail is one of the most flexible e-mail programs for Windows
users to connect to the Internet, and this book will help you get
connected from both office and home--it's a gold mine of useful tips
for beginners and experienced users."
--Andrew Morrow, Director of Software Development, Dataradio, Inc.
"This book is wonderfully well done. Beginners and experienced users will find
it very useful. I have learned things I didn't know while reading it."
--Jocelyn Nadeau, Centre d'informatique et CIDIF, University of Moncton
ABOUT THE AUTHORS...
David Kocmoud and Matthew Pierce are Network Administrators at Texas A&M University and members of the beta test teams for both Pegasus Mail for DOS and Pegasus Mail for Windows. Michael Stegman is the author of 5 books on programming Windows applications.