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Personas

The Personas notebook is accessed via the toolbar button or the Tools menu option by that name on the compose window. Each J Street Mailer account can have any number of different Personas. A Persona is a collection of information about a user and about how he wants himself to be presented to the readers of his messages. The only piece of information that is required in a Persona is the From address. Each Persona has three pages, and can contain any or all of the following information:

The Main Page

Persona Name
  A label by which you can remember who you are when you're using this Persona. This name is what shows at the top of every compose window, to remind you what Persona you're using while you're composing each message you write. For example, you might have Personas named Work and Personal.
Set as default persona
  If you select this checkbox, this Persona will become the default, and will be used each time you open a compose window. Of course you can change a particular compose window's current Persona at any time by coming to this Personas notebook, selecting a Persona, and clicking on the OK button at the very bottom of the notebook window. However, any information you have filled in, in the compose window, before you change to a different Persona, will not be replaced by the Persona information. For example, if a Sent folder is already specified in the compose window, the program doesn't know whether that was specified by virtue of the previous Persona or whether you had specifically chosen it yourself. So in that case, the new Persona's From and Reply-to information will be used, but its Sent folder will not be.

  If you don't want to have a default Persona, turn off this checkbox in whichever Persona is currently your default. Then, every time you open a compose window, the program will automatically open the Personas notebook so that you will always be reminded to select the right Persona for each message you begin to create.

From/Reply-To Name/E-Mail
  The From address is mandatory. The From name, and Reply-To name and address are optional. There is little reason to specify a Reply-To name and/or address unless you want people to reply to you at an address that's different from your From address.
Signature
  What you type here will go at the bottom of every message you send. If you include the strings "{date}" or "{time}" (those are French curly brackets, not parentheses or square brackets) in your signature, they will be translated to the current date or time (according to your computer's system clock) at the time you save the message to your OUTBOX folder or send it.
Tagline File
  This is where you can specify a file which contains a list of taglines. A tagline is a funny or wise saying that is appended to each message, after the signature. Each time you open a compose window or select a Persona which has a tagline file specified, one line of the tagline file is selected at random for the compose window's Tagline: field. If the randomly selected one is not appropriate for the message you're sending, you can select a different one, since this field of the compose window is a dropdown selection field containing all the lines of the specified tagline file.

The Compose Prefaces Page

At the top of each reply, forwarded message, or newly composed message you create, the program can insert a line of text (or multiple lines) which says something like "** Reply to message from John Doe on Fri, 07 Feb 1998 21:30:41 EST". This page is where you tell the program what you want these "preface" lines to say. By default, each Persona does have such a preface for replies and forwards, but not for new messages. Remember, if you want to have a blank line between the preface and the rest of the message text, just leave a blank line at the end of the preface you create here.

If you include the string "{from}" (those are French curly brackets, not parentheses or square brackets) in a preface, it will be substituted with the From name of the author of the message to which you are replying or the message you are forwarding. The string "{date}" will be replaced by the Date: header of that message. The strings "{today}" and "{time}" will be converted to the date and time at which the compose window is opened, according to your computer's system clock.

The Filing Page

This is where you specify the location where you will most often want your messages, created using this Persona, to be filed after they've been sent. Your selection here is what is used to fill in the default for the Sent folder: field on the compose window.