nPOPuk

Program Features

• HOME
• FEATURES
• SET UP
• BASIC USAGE
• CONTROLS
• F.A.Q
• DOWNLOADS
• CONTACT US

• DEVELOPMENT HISTORY
• WHY USE nPOPuk
• WHAT'S MISSING
• WHAT'S COMING

• ---

  On this page:
• New in 2.11
• New in 2.10
• New in 2.09
• New in 2.08
• New in 2.07
• New in 2.04
• New in 2.00
• UK Fix Features

• ---

  Also try:
• Search Site

• ---

Page updated 29 November 2008

Introduction

This page describes the main improvements in successive versions of nPOPuk which was built on the earlier UKFixes to nPOP.  Further background and detail on the implications of some the program features are provided on the other pages in this section.

New in 2.11

Mailbox Management

• Added: Mailbox Pane to the Main Window (May revert to the old Drop-down list if preferred)
• Added: A Mailbox Summary dialogue. This allows various management tasks to be performed on selected Mailboxes and for each Mailbox displays:
  
  • New, unread and total mail
  • File size
  • Whether there is unsaved data
  • The Mailbox file name.

Message Management:

• Added: Flag for follow-up function
• Added: Global Filters
• Added: Filter actions to set the priority or to Forward a message
• Added: Find and Replace facility in the Mail Edit window
• Added: Conversion of Content-ID attachments for embedded images in text/html (still viewed in external viewer, not natively in nPOPuk) 

Message Editing:

• Added: Facility to reflow text (Useful for correcting poorly formatted quoted text and predicting where line breaks will occur when the message is saved)

Program Interface:

• Changed: The Address Book dialogue is now re-sizable
• Added: Option to display cursor in the Mail View Window
• Added: A simple progress bar on the status line that shows transmission of larger files
• Added: New toolbar buttons 
• • Flag for Follow-up
  • Find Next Text
  • Delete from List (Replaces a greyed out Mark to Delete button in Saveboxes)
  • Dialup Connect and Disconnect
• Changed: Toolbar icons Mark to Delete and Mark to Download act as toggles

Message Security:

• Added: An anti-snooping global option to scramble text in message data files (ROT-13)

Program Code:

• Changed: The server log file is now generated in the folder defined by the DataFileDir= setting in the nPOPuk.ini file.
• Changed: Improved Savebox handling for low memory situations
• Added: New features in the Command Line Options (changing the way some worked!)
• Added: nPOPuk.ini setting to avoid mail being deleted when GMail is having problems and it erroneously reports 0 messages.
• Changed: The program code has many other internal improvements

Support Downloads:

• Files to assist with multiple platform installations

New in 2.10

v2.10 was not a public release and was only made available to subscribers to the npopsupport mail list. Its features are incorporated into v2.11.

New in 2.09

Address Book:

• Added: Facility to allow immediate editing of addresses added from the Address Information dialogue

Address Auto-completion:

• Added: Facilities to ease address entry. Type the first few letters of an e-mail address or comment to jump to a matching address book entry. Pressing the space bar finds further matches. Typing a group name from the Address Book will enter all addresses in the group

Mail Filters:

• Added: Special codes to permit filtering by age of mail ("older than" and "newer than") and by an address's presence in the Address Book

nPOPuk.ini 

• Added: Settings to generate sounds when selecting various message types on the main window, designed to assist visually impaired users
• Added: A setting to add command line options to the application launched when a web link in a message is clicked (URLAppCmdLine=)
• Changed: nPOPuk.ini file comment lines may now start with either a semi-colon (;) or a hash (#)

Program Interface:

• Added: Indication on the folder list and status line of unsent mail
• Added: A pop-up (disabled by "disable warning pop-ups") for the backup dir going missing
• Fixed: Ctrl-C will now copy selected text from Sent mail in the Outbox
• Fixed: Problem with window size adjustment when swapping to a platform with smaller screen

Program Code:

• Added: Ability to salvage mail data received before an unexpected disconnection from a POP server
• Changed: The open/save dir defaults if the setting is not a directory:
  1) if it's an attachment, it'll go in DataDir/attach
  2) if it's a backup, this remembers its own path
  3) if it's saving a message, it goes in DataDir
  4) if it's opening, then it passes nothing to the open file routine, so windows makes up its own mind.
• Fixed: In outgoing mail, if the body is 7-bit, nPOPuk no longer generates a header claiming the body is q-p encoded (since the body is not encoded).
  
• Many other internal changes to the code to enhance efficiency, remove memory leaks, etc.

New in 2.08

Attachments:

• Added: Attachments of the type message/rfc822 may be opened directly in nPOPuk (This is type of attachment is generated by nPOPuk when an entire message with its attachments is forwarded)
• Added: The components of a multipart/digest message are handled seamlessly, as if separate messages
• Added: Ability to shift-click on an attachment listed on the extended Mail View window Edit menu, bypassing the Attached file dialogue

Forwarding Messages:

• Changed: The default action is to forward all attachments (other than text/html attachments) that have been fully downloaded.
• Added: The original text may be quoted or sent as an attachment (or both!)
• Added: Messages forwarded as an attachment do include any text/html part.
• Changed: The default header for forwarded messages includes "From: %F"

Address Book:

• Added: The entries can be sorted by column
• Added: Ability to make an "incremental search" on either the Mail address or Comment column by typing a few letters
• Added: On opening, the entries displayed can be limited to a named group
• Added: "Jump 10 entries" buttons to the Address Book window

Other:

• Improved: The Recipients dialogue, replaces the Cc/Bcc dialogue, allows To,: Cc: and Bcc: addresses to be selected.
• Added: Option to display the Cc: line only if the Cc: is non-null in the header for Replies and Forwarded mail and when viewing message headers
• Added: "Paste as quotation" option to the Edit menu of the Mail Edit window
• Added: Setting (in nPOPuk.ini file) to warn, when nPOPuk is closed, if there are messages marked for sending or sending failed.
• Fixed: Copy/Move filters are reapplied on full download of messages
• Fixed: Many internal improvements in the code

New in 2.07

• Message Data Format: MBOX format is available as an option (MBOX is a non-proprietary format supported by a number of popular e-mail clients.  Exchange of message data with alternative programs becomes possible)
• The Find dialogue: Can search the Outbox and there are additional facilities for InBoxes
• Command Line Options:
  • /q  Launches nPOPuk, checks for mail and exits
  • /s  Launches nPOPuk and sends a predefined message
• nPOPuk.ini:
  • [GENERAL] settings:
    • CheckEndExecNoDelMsg= behaviour has changed and new options added. This setting controls the dialogue that appears when updating the server.  Now the default provides 3 options (Yes, No, Cancel); Cancel aborts the server update, No should just download and send, with Yes deleting messages marked for deletion. 
    • CheckQueuedOnExit= controls a warning dialogue that appears on exit, to indicate that there is mail in the SendBox that is marked for sending.
    • TimeoutInterval= value is now in seconds, not minutes
  • [MAILBOX-X] section settings:
    • Filename= define Mailbox file name
    • StartInit= will initialise individual accounts (Previously only documented as a [GENERAL] setting)
• Account Settings dialogue:
  • Filter tab:  The two conditions for a filter item can be combined with AND, OR or UNLESS operators
  • SMTP tab:  Renamed "Always Bcc" setting adds an option to control the address that may be automatically blind copied
  • Add Mailbox dialogue: Added an Import Savebox option
• Global Options dialogue:
  • Added:
    • "View" tab:  Options to control the scanning and skipping of messages 
    • "Advanced" tab:  Options to control the loading and format of message data files
  • Dial-up tab:  Wording change: "Force connection to check mail at start" becomes "Auto-connect to process mail"
  • Sort tab:  Added option to allow swapping of the Subject and From columns in the Main Window
  • Check tab: Added a checkbox for "Update after check" with a range of options available for handling mail marked for deletion

• Main Window:
  • File Menu: "Backup files..." now saves all data files (including the address book) to the specified directory
  • Mailbox menu: The Initialise Dialogue has a "Fill in" option that allows synchronisation of Mailboxes with servers that renumber mail (e.g. Yahoo!Mail)
  • Status Line:  View and Server size is reported
  • Outbox: When selected, CTRL-M will move a message

• Mail Edit Window:
  • Edit Menu: Added Find and Find next options

• Mail View window:
  
  • File Menu: Added  "Mark as read" and "Mark as unread" and a matching pair of keyboard shortcuts.  Added a Delete from List item
  • Improved navigation to new Mailboxes when viewing first or last messages in a Mailbox

• Many internal improvements to the code

New in 2.04

• All user-data files can be backed up to a user-defined folder that also provides a quick way to browse archived mail.

• The Mail View Window has menu options and keyboard shortcuts to permit Copying and Moving mail to and between Saveboxes.
• New settings in the nPOPuk.ini file control what is displayed after mail is deleted, marked for deletion or where there are no further messages to view.
• Additional command-line option to define the location of the nPOPuk.ini file. (This both allows mail data to be stored in a user's own area and inaccessible to other users of the computer and to install various nPOPuk versions on a flash memory device to use used on a range of platforms and accessing the same mail data.)
• Multiple Saveboxes and additional mail filtering options that permit sorting of mail, on receipt, into user-defined folders.
• An icon in the main mail list window to indicate messages whose only attachment is an HTML version of the message
• The left panel on the status line now includes file size of the local (View) and remote (Server) Mailboxes

New in 2.00

This was the first version of nPOPuk to be released.  Based on the previous "UK Fix", the following were new features:

• Most html-only messages are made readable through stripping of HTML tags (May be reversed through a new nPOPuk.ini setting)
• Ability to group addresses in the address book, and show addresses based on their group membership.
• Overlays in the main mail list window to indicate whether a reply or forward has been executed on a message.
• Correct indication of whether a message has been fully downloaded, even if nPOPuk is set to download only the first N lines. (Previously, nPOP would indicate partial download when set to download only N lines, even if the message was in fact shorter than N lines.)
• The size column in the Outbox includes the attachments, so upload time can be better estimated
• The message composition (Mail Edit) window now has separate icons and menu items for "Send now", "Save to Outbox", and "Save and Mark" to send later (on the next update of the account) (This feature replaces the AutoMarkSend global option.)
• Option to quote only portions of a message when replying or forwarding by selecting the desired text in the Mail View window before initiating the Reply/Forward
• On the Main Window, menu options have been added to change between folders.
• The left panel on the status line now resizes. (This has no impact in the Win32 environment but improves things for users of platforms with a narrow screen width.)
• Dates now display correctly, regardless of the time zone of the sender and recipient.

UK Fix Features

nPOPuk is built on nPOP UK Fix, itself an extended version of nPOP.  The final UK Fix was based on Tomoaki's v1.0.9 source code and extended the program combining the following features:

nPOP Features

• An ultra small e-mail client (A typical initial installation takes less than 280kb of disk space)
• Portability (May be run from flash memory devices, or a floppy disk as it does not write to the Windows registry and leaves no trace on the host computer.)
• Clearly displays, and optionally logs, its communication with mail servers (Ideal for managing mail on the server, making easy the deletion of spam and preventing the need to download large file attachments simply to enable that or following mail to be read)
• Operates with the following servers and protocols: POP3, APOP, SMTP,  SMTP-AUTH and SSL / STARTTLS (The last requires additional DLL files be installed with the program file)
• Support for multiple accounts (together with multiple mail boxes (folders) for saving mail)
• Complex mail filter facilities available for automatic processing of mail waiting on the server  (Includes: rejection, acceptance, deletion, copying and moving of mail between Mailboxes)
• Automatic checking for new mail at a user-defined frequency
• An optional threaded display of mail
• Provision of a simple address book
• A choice of connection methods, including LAN and Dial-up

UK Fixes

• Many revised translations in menus and dialogues throughout the program.
• Mis-spellings corrected in nPOP.ini file settings.

• Improved word-wrap for English text (The original nPOP is for Japanese Unicode): Line breaks no longer happen at punctuation or non-English characters. Extra spaces at the beginning of lines are removed, and quoted lines are broken before having the quotation mark ("> ") added.
• Headers are no longer visible in a text-only message, unless View Source is performed when the Global Option "Include header lines" is checked.
• The Reply-To address may be selected from a drop-down list.
• Filters are correctly moved with accounts when reordering (Move up/down).
• Messages that include lines starting with "from" (regardless of case) are handled correctly.
• Sent mail can no longer be edited.
• The Help/About dialogue includes a reference to the nPOP UK Support web site.
• New icons and toolbar button images.
• A mail forwarding facility with additional Global Option settings
• Global Options to allow:
  • Disabling of Warning Popup Boxes
  • Control of Mail List Sorting
• An option to "Save all" working files without exiting.
• Support for mail priorities (High, Normal and Low).
• Support for read and delivery receipts.
• The quotation string for replies and forwarded mail is "> " rather than ">" in new installations