Messenger Pro 5 released | Drobe.co.uk archives

Messenger Pro 5 released

Published: 16th May 2007, 20:20:43 | Permalink | Printable

Better printing and more

R-Comp released this week Messenger Pro 5, the latest outing of its commercial email and usenet client. According to the publisher, the headline features include improved printing support, and better message searching and editing.

The software also includes various user interface tweaks, speed-ups and other improvements.

• R-Comp's NetFetch and UniPrint software has also been updated. NetFetch 3.02 has better RSS feed handling, Atom support, and improved spam filtering, according to R-Comp. They also said UniPrint 3.20 has better scanning support.

Links

R-Comp website - ordering details, etc.

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Discussion

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Quick "pre-empt".... I haven't had time to update the website to reflect v5 (apart from the ordering pages) pre-show - we've still got about 72hours of work to do and 48 hours remaining, so something has to give

Maybe if I have 10 minutes in between things tomorrow, I'll change some 4s to 5s.

arawnsley on 16/5/07 8:28PM
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Nice to see this excellent bit of software getting even better

Revin Kevin on 16/5/07 9:29PM
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Thanks Andrew for continuing development and good features added indeed.

And good that your ordering pages are https now, i.e. secure!

hzn on 17/5/07 5:41AM
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The printing emails feature will come in very handy - I still have to print out ones from my sister for the non computer literate old folks. I currently have to do it by copying in to Techwriter and changing the fonts of the header and signature (or they only ask why she's written that bit!)

Since version 4 was released there has been a huge number of improvements, I'm now using the built in editor rather than Zap Email, as it visually highlights spelling mistakes, so further enhancements in version 5 are very welcome.

This means no one should be coming home from Wakefield without at least two pieces of major updated software.

druck on 17/5/07 8:52AM
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I too look forward to the printing side as I have to drop any emails to Easiwriter to print them. Out of curiousity why is that they cant be printed via Mess Pro ?

Hairy on 17/5/07 3:45PM
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They can be printed directly with previous versions, but the formatting is no where near as good as in a word processor, that's what version 5 addresses.

druck on 17/5/07 4:03PM
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Well if I try to print the email the error about printer not supporting text printing comes up.

Hairy on 17/5/07 4:13PM
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Previous versions of Messenger Pro printed text emails as raw text (being as they were, well, raw text!). However, many modern printers don't understand raw text and expect to be fed graphically (most RISC OS apps print in graphics mode, even if you think you are printing text). Messenger Pro 5 now uses outline fonts and prints things graphically, allowing it to work on all printers. Additionally, it uses the extra functionality provided by graphical printing to embolden headings, and also dynamically scale long prints to fit on sensible numbers of pages. For example, if someone's signature spills 5 lines over onto the next sheet of paper, Messenger will now adjust the print size so that it all fits on a single sheet. Basically, I asked myself "why do I drag files into Impression to print" and Colin has tried to deal with my subsequent (sometimes crazy) requests.

arawnsley on 17/5/07 4:26PM
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Its great thats why I ordered it. Your email came at 12.46 about upgrade and I ordered it 12.59

Hairy on 17/5/07 4:36PM
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Yep Brian, you were the first, I think - although I have a feeling one of the telephone orders might be first in the pile, because I dawdled before printing it out

arawnsley on 17/5/07 4:44PM
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I wonder, if there is a demo of it available.

datawave on 17/5/07 6:23PM
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Fantastic news, it's good to see some software development on our favourite platform. Messenger Pro really is an asset to RISC OS. I'll be getting a copy at Wakefield on Saturday :-)

leeshep on 17/5/07 6:35PM
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Great news,I shall be buying a copy at the Wakefield Show.

Crick on 17/5/07 6:40PM
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datawave - please run a search on drobe/iconbar where I have explained many times why a demo of an email client is not something I wish to do. Mainly it has to do with support and correct installation - ie. for a demo, I'd be irresponsible if I didn't provide the same tech support/documentation as with the full version, which (obviously) is a bit mad. Given that MPro costs less than an Xbox/PS3 game.

arawnsley on 17/5/07 7:33PM
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hzn:Could you post a link to the secure ordering page? I can still only find the nasty old insecure one

adamr on 17/5/07 7:57PM
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arawnsley: While your aim is noble, there does appear to be a demo version of Gemini, the Windows version available. One assumes if somebody bought a copy and didn't like it, they could return it for a full refund? I don't think I've seen that made clear.

rjek on 17/5/07 9:10PM
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In reply to arawnsley: Basically, I asked myself "why do I drag files into Impression to print" I had never even considered that as MPro had always printed out on my 2 HP printers! The new features are a real bonus.

DaveW on 17/5/07 9:33PM
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I'm one of the people that asked Andrew for a demo of MPro 4, he gave the same reason, i.e. could not support it, or provide information on correct installation. I respect that point of view, but disagree completely, because:

1) If your product requires support to set it up and install, then it's too hard. We're not talking about complicated server/enterprise stuff, we're talking about the most common consumer level type of software you can buy. But Andrew is right, I did need a bit of help setting it up.

2) I could not get a demo of MPro4, so I bought a copy anyway, on a chance it would meet my needs. As it turned out it did not meet my needs as it can only handle one IMAP account at a time, and without buying another R-Comp product, it won't work with the POP3 service provided by GMail. This meant R-Comp got a sale they would not have got had they provided a demo, whether this is a good thing or not depends on whether you are R-Comp or a customer.

3) Yes, MPro4 is about the same price as a PS3 game, I own a PS3, and I've played a few demos of games on it, they are freely downloadable. Not all games have demos of course, but it's becoming much more popular.

All that said, once I did buy a copy, Andrew bent over backwards to provide very good email support, unfortunately the problems mentioned in my second point meant that I can't really use it though.

thegman on 17/5/07 10:42PM
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gman, I think I provided a gratis copy of Netfetch didn't I? (my memory sucks) If I remember, I felt because of Gmail, POP3 with "leave mail on server" was actually going to serve you better than IMAP stuff, and would have done what you wanted?

arawnsley on 18/5/07 12:04AM
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Andrew, Yes you did offer a trial of NetFetch, did not realise it was completely gratis, that was very generous.

The POP3/GMail thing is basically that I wanted to access GMail on RISC OS without using Firefox, really a proper GUI client would have been best, the POP3 would have just been a workaround really. IMAP is really down to not having a choice, although I do prefer it to POP3, basically that's what work uses, so that's what I use, end of story I'm afraid.

thegman on 18/5/07 9:59AM
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thegman: Surely you didn't *need* NetFetch to use POP3, unless POPstar doesn't work with GMail?

stevef on 18/5/07 1:45PM
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stevef, I think the problem is that GMail uses POP3 over SSL, which as far as I know, on RISC OS, only NetFetch/Hermes can do. Even then, I don't really like the idea of having duplicates of all my mails stored locally on my RISC OS machine, I'd rather keep the whole lot on GMail, so I can access them anywhere, and the searching is very good too. Really, what I'd like to see is a GMail backend to MPro4/5 in the same way they have POP and IMAP backends.

Even then, MPro4 is still lacking for me, as it only handles one IMAP account at time, so you have to switch between your accounts to check for mail, compared to Apple Mail or Thunderbird, which support many IMAP accounts all at the same time.

If MPro6 appears with GMail support, and support for many IMAP accounts, then I'll upgrade from my MPro4.

thegman on 18/5/07 2:09PM
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In reply to thegman:- Have you tried tapirmail. It is a free mail client that allows you to view and read your mail whilst leaving it on the server.

sa110 on 18/5/07 2:10PM
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Reply to sa110, Yes, I actually really rather liked it, was trivially easy to set up and seemed to follow the KISS principle, which is great. Unfortunately, it's POP3 only, no IMAP support at all. If it worked with IMAP, would probably suit me just fine.

thegman on 18/5/07 2:15PM
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In reply to thegman: I have you tried emailing the author to ask if he would be able to add it?

sa110 on 18/5/07 3:30PM
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In reply to sa110, No I haven't, maybe I will, but that's quite a lot of work for him, for the chance of just one more sale. I think GMail support especially would be tricky, their are Python APIs and so forth, but none for C as far as I know.

thegman on 18/5/07 3:36PM
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I can access my google mail via messenger along with two other Pop mail accounts

Hairy on 18/5/07 4:16PM
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