Advanced Settings
  • Character Set Settings
  • Printing Settings
  • Addressing Approach Settings
  • Custom Program Settings
  • Web Browser Settings
  • Time Zone Settings

    This notebook is accessed via the Advanced submenu option of the Settings option on the program's main window Tools menu or the OK-Goto Advanced button in the General Settings notebook.

    The Character Set Page

    This page allows you to specify character sets for high ascii character for inbound and outbound messages.  This is also where you will specify how you want messages with high ascii characters to be decoded after download.

    The Printing Page

    These settings only have an effect when printing messages, not anywhere else in the program such as the online help.

    Font
    This option lets you select the font that will be used for printing messages.
    Top Margin
    This option lets you select the size of the top margin for printing messages.
    Bottom Margin
    See Top Margin, above.
    Left Margin
    See Top Margin, above.
    Right Margin
    See Top Margin, above.
    Page eject after each message
    The program will always send a page eject after a print job, so this setting applies only when there are multiple messages in a single print job. With this setting turned on, each message will have at least one page to itself. With this setting off, if one message ends before the bottom of its page, the next message will begin in the remaining space rather than not starting until the next page.
    Print footer on each page
    With this setting turned on, the bottom of each page will have a horizontal line, the date and time of printing on the left, and the page number on the right.
    Use the following value for dots per inch
    On some systems, when the program asks Java for the printer's page size, the response that Java returns is incorrect. This setting lets you tell the program to ignore Java's answer and use the information you provide instead. If your printout is missing its end, and the top and left margins are bigger than they should be, that means the program is being told that an inch is bigger than it really is, so you need to tell the program to use a smaller number when calculating how much space equals an inch. If your printout's bottom and right margins are too big, that means the program is being told that an inch is smaller than it really is, so you need to tell the program to use a bigger number instead, in this setting. The window in which your Java virtual machine is running will contain a notice after each print job, which will tell you what the program used for the dots per inch setting for that print job, so you can tell what number to start with when increasing or decreasing the value in this setting. Just look where it says "1 inch=".
    Wrap lines which exceed the right margin
    You can turn this checkbox off if you want the program to not bother checking the width of each line in the message file before printing it. If your messages don't have any long lines, then your printouts would not be losing text off the right edge of the page even with this setting turned off, so this check is a waste of your time and CPU power if you're using that particular printer driver. Therefore, you would want to turn this setting off.
    The Addressing Approach Page

    When you send a message to multiple recipients, you could have either of two different and incompatible objectives in mind. You may want the recipients to be able to see the names of all the other people who received the message or you may want them all to be hidden from each other. This setting lets you decide which of these results should be your default and the Edit menu of the compose window lets you change that default for any particular message you're sending.

    Send as a single message to all addressees with non-bcc addresses disclosed
    A single message will be sent. All of the To and/or Cc addresses will be listed in the message headers, but none of the Bcc addresses will be listed in the message headers.
    Send as multiple messages, one per addressee, with single address disclosure
    A separate message will be sent to each addressee with only one To, Cc, or Bcc address listed in the message headers of each message.

    Note: When sending a Bcc copy, an RFC-compliant outbound mail server will strip the Bcc address from the message headers and because there is no To or Cc header, the mail server will insert a blank Bcc header.

    Send as a single message for non-Bcc and as multiple messages for Bcc
    A single message will be sent to all non-Bcc addressees. Multiple messages with be sent to Bcc addressess, if any, one for each bcc addressee. All copies of the message get the full set of To and/or Cc addresses in the message headers, but the Bcc copies also include an individual Bcc address. This addressing approach is the default for new accounts.

    Note: When sending a Bcc copy, an RFC-compliant outbound mail server will strip the Bcc address from the message headers. If there is at least one To or Cc address, no other address header changes will be made. But if there are no To or Cc addresses, then the mail server will insert a blank Bcc header.

    Send as a single message to all addressees, with no addresses disclosed
    A separate message will be sent to each addressee. None of the To, Cc, or Bcc addresses will be included in the message headers. Instead, a single To address, set to "Undisclosed Recipients ", will be included in each copy of the message.

    Note: RFC-compliant outbound mail servers will change the localhost part of the To address to refer to the mail server (i.e., gets changed to something like ).

    Selecting Display Quoted Message to the Right moves the quoted text window in the reply window from above the text input window to the right of the text input window.

    The Custom Programs Page

    These settings let you specify a program that you want the Polarbar  Mailer to execute for you at the beginning of a mail retrieval or send,  at the end of either of those, or after composing a message. You might want to have the program start your internet dialer program and wait 90 seconds at the beginning of each send. If you press the Send button and the Retrieve button at the same time, then you need the retrieve to also wait for 90 seconds before it tries to connect, so that your dialer can get connected first. Then after the send, you might want to make your dialer hang up. And after the retrieve, you might want to do something that you want to have done when no mail is retrieved (since the Filter feature can't help you with that because it can only act when a message is received). The first four Custom Program settings can fulfill all of these functions.

    The program that you can execute upon leaving the compose window (the fifth Custom Program setting) can be used as an alternate editor, or can be used to "scrub" your messages in any way you like before sending them. Just remember not to ever make the Polarbar Mailer send your mail while this Custom Program is still running! The program will send the messages in the OUTBOX folder when you tell it to, without regard to the fact that one of them might still be "in use" by this Custom Program or alternate editor at the time. Also, make sure your "scrubber" or "alternate editor" doesn't do something that ruins your messages, because the program is just going to send them without examining them first. For example, if you remove the blank line between a message's header lines and its body text, and the first line of your body text happens to begin with a space or tab character or with a word that ends with a colon, then the SMTP or POP3 server to which you send the message will think that line of body text is still part of the message's header lines and will act accordingly. The only way the server will realize that the client has stopped sending header lines and started sending body text without the blank line which is supposed to signal that transition, is if it receives a line of text that doesn't start with a space or tab or a word that ends with a colon. So you'll have message body text that will be treated as headers, the results of which can be distressing and especially confusing to the recipient.

    In these settings, you can use the Find buttons to select your executable file or type its name yourself.  Add whatever parameters you want to pass to that program. The Polarbar Mailer will ask Java to execute the exact string you've typed, whatever it may be.

    Under the operating systems on which we've tried this feature, Java cannot execute anything other than *.EXE files and, in the case of Windows 95, the START command. If you need to execute a non-*.EXE file under Windows 95, insert the word START at the beginning of the command. Under OS/2 or NT, insert CMD.EXE /C START instead. Using these methods to start the program in a separate session is also necessary for many character mode (that is, non-GUI or non-graphical) programs which need a "console" for input and output, particularly batch files and REXX programs.

    Under OS/2 and Windows 95, even when you do use START or CMD.EXE /C START to run the program in a separate character mode window, in order to run a batch file or REXX program, the session's STDIN and STDOUT (standard input and standard output) has been redirected to some unknown location. In order to get a batch file to take input from the keyboard, you have to redirect STDIN back to the keyboard and the same goes for STDOUT and the monitor. For example, instead of having the batch file execute PAUSE, it has to execute PAUSE < CON, and instead of ECHO HELLO, it must be ECHO HELLO > CON. In REXX, you can't use SAY and PULL; you might use LINEIN("CON") and LINEOUT("HELLO","CON") instead.

    If you want the program to wait, between starting a Custom Program and doing whatever it would do next (like if your Custom Program is an internet dialer and you need to give it time to connect before the Polarbar Mailer Mailer should try to connect to the server), then insert the string "delay=60;" (that is, the word "delay", an equals sign, the number of seconds, and a semicolon) at the beginning of your command line. In this case, the program will tell Java to execute whatever comes after the semicolon, instead of telling Java to execute the whole command line. If you want a delay but no Custom Program (as in the example above, where you initiate a send and a retrieve at the same time and you have configured the send to start your dialer, so you need for the retrieve to just wait until the connection has been made), you can say "delay=60;" without any program name after it.

    For the fifth Custom Program, the one that you can run when leaving the compose window, there is a special parameter: The name of the file that has just been created by the compose window will be passed at the end of the command line, unless you specify that you need that filename to be passed at some other location within the command line. To do so, just place the string "{file}" at that location. That is, the word "file" in French curly brackets.

    Once you have filled in the fifth Custom Program setting here, your compose window will stop using its original toolbar and start using an alternate one. This one has an additional button, which is the way in which this Custom Program is activated. When you want to send a message just as it is in the compose window, press the normal Send Later button or the Send Now button. When you're done with the functions of the compose window but you want your Custom Program to be executed against the new message before it is sent (whether the Custom Program functions as an alternate editor or any other kind of scrubber), press the Send Later/Execute Custom Program button instead. (The same function is also available on the File menu of the compose window, in case you have the toolbar turned off.) The message will be placed into the OUTBOX folder just as if you'd pressed the Send Later button, but then the fifth Custom Program will be executed.

    Separate Custom Program settings are maintained for each platform that you run a single copy of Polarbar on.

    The Web Browser Page

    This setting lets you determine what type of browser window will be opened when you doubleclick on a URL in the program's main browser panel. These programs are executed in the same way as the Custom Programs; the Polarbar Mailer will pass the command exactly as you've typed it here (with the selected URL at the end), to the operating system, using Java's method of starting native programs. If you need to use a CMD.EXE /C command or a START command or something to get your specified program to run as a Custom Program as described above, then you need to do the same thing here as well.

    Separate Web Browser settings are maintained for each platform that you run a single copy of Polarbar on.

    The Time Zone Page

    This page allows you to set up an alternate Time Zone if the default Time Zone that Java picks for Polarbar is not correct for your location.