Page updated 18 September 2008
The History of the UK Versions of nPOP
The development of the first English language version of nPOP, based on Tomoaki Nakashima's v1.0.1 code, was started by Paul Holmes-Higgin.
Bruce Jackson, undertook further work to produce the "UK fix-1" version, with Greg Chapman providing much of the improved translations, from the "Japlish" of Tomoaki's code. Amy Millenson compiled the code for additional platforms.
Matthew Pattman then developed the UK fix-1 code to produce "nPOPw v1.0.1.4 Beta 2" which became the next version fully documented on this site..
Around February 2005, Tomoaki Nakashima released v1.0.2, which included much of the UK translations and other improvements to the code that had been completed by Bruce Jackson. Towards the end of the year a stream of releases were issued on an almost weekly basis, reaching a stable version at v1.0.7.
Early in 2006, Bruce started work on a new "UK Fix". This merged features of the original UK fix-1, Tomoaki's v1.0.7 code, and that from nPOPw v1.0.1.4 Beta2. This was released to subscribers to the nPOPSupport mail list, for testing, as "nPOP 1.0.7 UK fix-1". Unfortunately, before that version was ready for release via this site, Tomoaki released v1.0.8 of his program.
At this point Bruce had other work to do but, by good fortune, a new volunteer programmer arrived on the scene. Geoffrey Coram managed to merge Tomoaki's v1.0.8 code with all that produced by Bruce Jackson, itself a merge of earlier official versions, Matthew's v1.0.1.4 beta2 and other developments of his own. He produced nPOP108uk4, released in August 2006
Once he'd started you just couldn't stop him! In October 2006 Geoffrey Coram came up with nPOP108uk5 that provided a long list of improvements, many not fully documented here as they were only pertinent to the various hand held platforms.
In January 2007 significant further enhancements were made, by Geoffrey, with the release of nPOPuk v2.0. (Confusingly, it was the first version to use the nPOPuk name!) Multiple Saveboxes meant that nPOPuk could truly begin to compete with mainstream e-mail programs, whilst retaining its unique portability.
This renamed version of nPOP used revised data structures to permit some of the new features. nPOPuk will read nPOP Mailboxes and convert the nPOP.ini file. (The intention is always to maintain this upgrade path.) However, it does mean that some Mailbox information may be lost if an older version of nPOP is later used to read the converted Mailboxes.
Before the end of the same month v2.04 was released. Its most significant additional feature was a command line option that enables it to be used by multiple users whilst keeping mail data private. It also helps those running nPOPuk from a flash memory device, by aiding portability.
v2.07 followed in July 2007. It was hoped that adopting MBOX as a file format for mail data would encourage users of other mail clients to test nPOPuk. Added to that was a worthwhile collection of improvements to the interface and functionality as well as further internal improvements to the coding of the program.
Version 2.08 followed in September 2007 and 2.09 on 15 January 2008. Version 2.10 was never released to the public, only being available to subscribers of the npopsupport mail list.
The current version is 2.11, released on 18 September 2008. Details of the improvements can be found on the Features page.