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The Compose Window

The compose window can be accessed from the program's main window via the toolbar button, the Message menu, or the right mouse button menu of the message list panel of the main window. Like the J Street Mailer's main window, the compose window also has a toolbar; unless you have the main window's toolbar turned off. The options on the compose window's toolbar are also available on its menu bar; see below.

The Addresses: field lets you specify the address(es) to which you want to send your message. You can type the address(es) yourself, type the nickname of an entry from any of your address books, use the Last 15 button to select from the list of the last 15 addresses to which you've written, or use the Address Tool dialog or open an address book from which to select one or more entries. If you are typing multiple addresses manually, or using multiple address book nicknames, place a comma between each one and the next, and include to:, cc:, bcc:, and news: tags as desired (though to: is the default, so you don't need to type that). For example, you might specify "cc: address1@domain.com, bcc: address2@domain.net, to: address3@domain.gov". If you type the nickname of an address book entry, it will be expanded to the full address when you press the Enter key or when you close the compose window. If you make the program expand nicknames (by pressing Enter) or if you use an address book group or an Address Tool Distribution List, or otherwise add a lot of text to the Addresses: field via the Address Tool or address book, such that the result is a total of more than 200 characters in this field, then the program will put the information from this field into the Address Tool, and replace this entry field with an Address Tool button, so that you must use the Address Tool dialog to add or alter your addresses for that message from that point on. Unless you subsequently remove enough text from the Address Tool so that the Addresses: field goes back to being under 200 characters, at which time the Address Tool button will turn back into an entry field.

If you want to attach a file to your message, use the + button to the right of the Attachments: field to select one. If your attachment style (the default for which is specified in the General Settings, but can be overridden for any specific message via the compose window's Attachments menu) is MIME, you can select as many as you want. You can view the list of attachments you've specified for a message by clicking on the down arrow at the right end of that dropdown list box. To remove an attachment from the message before sending it, select it from the dropdown list box and press the - button to the right of the Attachments: field. If your attachment style is MIME, then after selecting each file, you will be allowed to choose whether you want it to be base64 encoded as a binary file, or sent as straight ASCII text; unless the file is larger than 500,000 bytes, in which case the program will send it as binary regardless. Files that you attach to a message are not actually "attached" to the message until send time. So if you tell the program to send the file C:\DIRNAME\FILENAME.EXT with a message, then FILENAME.EXT needs to still be located in the C:\DIRNAME directory by the time you send the message, or else the program will not be able to send the file along with the message. So if you want to delete a file after sending it to someone, don't delete it after you close the compose window; wait until the message has been successfully sent instead.

The Sent folder: field's default contents are taken from the Persona you're using, unless you've addressed the message using an address book entry which has its own Sent folder specified. Or you can use the Select button to specify any folder to which you want the program to file the message after the program has sent it. If you select the TRASH folder or the Do not file message radio button from the Select a Folder dialog or remove the entry from this field entirely, then your message will be moved to the TRASH folder upon sending. If you select the File message to the current month/year folder radio button from the Select a Folder dialog, then the message will be moved to a folder named 1997Dec, 1998Mar, etc., depending on your computer's system clock when you send the message.

If you're using a Persona for which you've specified a tagline file, then the next field on the compose window will be the Tagline: field. A tagline is randomly selected for each message, from the specified tagline file, but you can always select a specific one yourself for any particular message, from this dropdown list box.

You can use your mouse to drag the panel divider between the above fields and the text entry area below.

When a compose window is opened for the purpose of replying to an existing message, the compose window will have two text areas instead of one. The text, of the message to which you're replying, will appear in the upper one. If you select text in that text area, and press the Quote button on the toolbar or use the corresponding menu bar item, the selected text will be copied to the bottom text entry area (where you enter your reply text), at the current cursor position, with a quoting character (>) at the beginning of each line. If you use the Quote function while there is no text selected in the upper text area, the entire text will be quoted then. You can use your mouse to drag the panel divider between the two text areas, or even hide the upper text area entirely. The position of this divider will be saved, so you can choose how much compose window space you normally want to spend on the upper text area of your reply windows.

The bottom line of the compose window is the status line, which sometimes presents you with status or informational notices.

Every sixty seconds, whatever you have typed into the compose window is saved in a temporary file, named AutoSave.Fil, in your account directory. When you close the compose window gracefully, the temporary file is deleted. If the program or your operating system suffers a fatal interruption, the file will remain. Then, the next time you open a compose window, since that temporary file already exists, the program will give you one opportunity to restore the contents of that file to your compose window so that you can finish the message on which you were working before the interruption occurred. If your compose window is opening due to your instruction to start a reply or forward, at the time the AutoSave.Fil file is found and you elect to restore and finish the previous message, then the reply or forward action you were initiating will be cancelled.

The Menu Bar

The File Menu

Send later
  Places the message into the OUTBOX folder, to be sent at a later time.
Send later/invoke custom program
  The same as Send later, except that it also executes the fifth Custom Program. This option does not appear on the menu unless you have specified that setting.
Send now
  Sends the message now.
Print
  Prints the message.
New
  Deletes the current message from the compose window so you can start over.
Open draft
  Lets you open, finish, and send a draft message that you had created and saved earlier. When you use either the Send later or Send now option to finish the message, the draft file will be deleted. If you want a draft that will not be deleted when you finish and send it, the Templates feature is what you're looking for; see below. You can also delete a draft without sending it, via the button on the Open a Draft Message dialog. The compose window will remind you, each time you open it, whenever you have draft messages waiting to be finished, via a notice in its status line.
Save draft as
  Lets you save the message you're currently composing, as a draft (see above).
Save as template
  Lets you save the message you're currently composing, as a template (see below).
Import text file
  Lets you import the contents of an ASCII text file into the compose window's text area at the current cursor position.
Exit
  Closes the compose window. If the text entry area has been modified, the program will ask you to confirm that you want to close the window without saving your message.

The Edit Menu

Cut
  Removes the selected text in the main text entry portion of the compose window and copies it to the clipboard, if you're using an operating system which has a clipboard.
Copy
  Copies the selected text in the main text entry portion of the compose window to the clipboard, if you're using an operating system which has a clipboard.
Paste
  Inserts the contents of the clipboard at the cursor position of the main text entry portion of the compose window (replacing the selected text, if there is any), if you're using an operating system which has a clipboard.
Paste quoted
  Inserts the contents of the clipboard at the cursor position of the main text entry portion of the compose window (if you're using an operating system which has a clipboard), inserting the > quoting character and a space at the beginning of each line of the pasted text.

  If the clipboard contains what appears to be a newsgroup posting, this function does much more than that. This makes it easy to reply to newsgroup postings on web sites such as http://www.dejanews.com and http://www.hotbot.com, without using a full-fledged news reader application. In your web browser, just select the entire text of the newsgroup posting, beginning with (but not before) the Subject: header and including all of the text you want to quote in your reply, and copy the selected text from your browser to the clipboard. Then use Paste quoted in the J Street Mailer compose window. The program will place the newsgroup name into the Addresses: field; the subject line into the Subject: field; and if the main text entry area of the compose window is blank at the time you use Paste quoted, then your Persona's Reply Preface will be used and the From: and Date: fields from the newsgroup posting in the clipboard will be substituted if your Reply Preface contains {from} and {date} references. The program will remember the newsgroup posting's Message-ID: header and use it in a References: line in the finished message that you send, so that news readers and newsgroup web sites will know how to properly thread your reply to the newsgroup posting to which you are replying. And then of course whatever's in the clipboard after the newsgroup posting's header lines, will be inserted into the main text entry area of your compose window, with the > quoting character and a space at the beginning of each line.

Word wrap
  When this setting is toggled off, the text entry area will have a horizontal scroll bar and will not wrap from one line to the next when you reach the right margin of the window; you'll have to press the Enter key yourself at the end of each line. This is particularly appropriate when you want to import an ASCII text file, which is already formatted in a particular way which you want preserved, and which is wider than your compose window. However, this is inappropriate when you're sending ordinary paragraphs of prose (unless you do use the Enter key to keep your lines short), because the result will be very, very long lines of text, one line per paragraph, and it is not uncommon for a receiving mail program to be unable to correctly deal with such lines. When this setting is toggled on, the text you type (or import) wraps to the next line whenever it reaches the right margin of your compose window, regardless of how wide or how narrow you make the window. This has no effect on the locations of the line breaks in the message that will be sent to your recipients, however. The length of the lines as they will be sent to the recipients, is determined by the Word wrap value setting (see below), not by the width of your compose window or, therefore, the width of the lines as you see them in your compose window. Whether or not your lines are wrapped in the compose window (by the absence of the horizontal scroll bar) does affect whether or not your outgoing lines will be wrapped, but it doesn't affect the width at which they'll be wrapped.
Word wrap value
  This is where you specify the line length for the messages you send from the compose window, when the Word wrap setting (see above) is turned on. The minimum value that will be accepted in this setting is 20.
Font
  This is where you can specify the font for the text entry area.
Spell check
  This option brings up the Spell Checker dialog and checks the text in your compose window's text entry area.
Quote original text
  This function is enabled only when the compose window is being used to reply to an existing message. If you select text in the upper text area, and use this option, the selected text will be copied to the bottom text entry area (where you enter your reply text), at the current cursor position, with a quoting character (>) at the beginning of each line. If you use this function while there is no text selected in the upper text area, the entire text will be quoted instead.
Remove line feed characters from selected text
  This option changes single line feeds to single spaces, within the block of selected text, which has the effect of reformatting paragraphs from their original width to your compose window's width as if you had typed them into the compose window yourself with the Word wrap setting turned on. This is useful after you import text into the compose window using the Import text file option above; or when you use the Alter a composed message option to edit a message that's already been saved (with line feeds) to your OUTBOX folder, before sending it; or when you type text using carriage returns and then decide you want to change the width of your compose window and reformat the text to that new width. This function ignores quoted text; that is, lines which begin with the > character.
Addressing approach
  Lets you override the corresponding Advanced Setting, just for the current message.

The Attachments Menu

The default for this setting comes from the General Settings, but you can change it here for any specific message. This setting tells whether any selected attached files will be sent in UUencoded format; or MIMEd using base64 encoding, or no encoding (which works for ASCII text only, and only for files less than 500,000 bytes in size); see above. Files which are not plain, ordinary ASCII text need to be encoded in some way, before they're sent across the internet, so that they end up containing nothing but ASCII text, because most internet servers can't handle anything other than ASCII text. UUencoding and base64 encoding are two common ways of encoding files, that most email programs know how to do at the sending end, and how to undo at the receiving end.

The Tools Menu

Address tool
  This dialog lets you specify more addresses than would be convenient by typing them yourself. The entry field at the top is where you type each address or nickname that you do want to manually type. Pressing the To:, Cc:, or Bcc: button on the right puts the address in the entry field into the list box below. If you select an address that you've placed into the list box, and press the Edit Address button, the address moves back up into the entry field so you can change the address or the tag (To:, Cc:, Bcc:, or News:) with which it is to be used. Or you can select an address and press the Remove Address button to delete it from the list box. The Address Book button lets you select address book entries to be placed into the list box. The Distribution List button lets you enter a list of addresses from an ASCII text file. Another way to import an address list from an ASCII file is to type "file:d:\dirname\filename.txt" (that is, the string "file:" followed by the full pathname to the file) into the entry field at the top of this dialog and then press the To:, Cc:, or Bcc: button on the right. When you're done putting all of your desired addresses into the list box, press the OK button, and they'll be copied from this dialog into your compose window's Addresses: field.
Address books
Search a directory using LDAP
  This option lets you search an LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) server for an email address or other information about someone's LDAP directory entry. You can select among the last few servers you used, or type in a new one. If the server is password-protected, you can enter your userid and password, and tell the program whether or not it should save that password (encrypted, of course) with the server's name so that the next time you use that server the program will supply the password for you.

  Once the program has logged onto the LDAP server, you are presented with the search dialog. There, you can modify or re-use the search criteria from your last LDAP search on that server, or use the Clear button to erase all the fields so you can more easily type entirely new criteria. Some servers will refuse to give you any results unless you enter certain information into each field, so you may need to get instructions from the administrator or other users of the server you're using, or do some trial and error in order to figure out what your server wants you to type.

  For example, one university's LDAP server won't give you anything unless you type the university's name, with correct capitalization, into the Organization field and type "Students" or "Faculty", with correct capitalization, into the Organizational Unit field. And it won't show you the "Smith" entries if you type "smith" in the Last Name field. If your server has a non-standard required field that doesn't appear on this dialog, it's likely that you can perform a search anyway, by inserting that field's contents into one of the existing fields on the dialog. For example, if your server wants a search request to contain "st=Massachusetts" between "o=Unnamed College" and "c=US", you can type "Unnamed College, st=Massachusetts" into your Organization field.

  The Max Returns field tells how many entries you want to find. If you want the server to stop the search before it gets to 100, or if you want it to return more than 100 matches, change the number here. Some servers will ignore that instruction though.

  When you're ready to start the search, press the Search button. The results will be returned in the list box on the left of the dialog. If a server does not use the standard labels for its fields, the program will ask you what it should do with the information returned. For example, if a server's returns have no "mail" field, the program will show you what fields it does have, and let you choose which one you think must be the email address field. You might choose "uid" (for "userid"), if such a choice is available. Normally though, the server will be using the standard field names and you won't be bothered with such a question.

  If you click on an entry in the left hand list box, the entire contents of the entry will be displayed on the right. If you wish, you can select part or all (using the tiny Select All button) of the entry and copy it (using the tiny Copy button) to the clipboard if you're using an operating system that has a clipboard. You can select entries in the left hand list box and use the To:, Cc:, and Bcc: buttons to send the addresses to your compose window. You can use the Add to Address Book button to add a selected entry to a J Street Mailer address book of your choice. Or you can perform another search, or close the dialog.

  Note that if you press the Cancel button or try to close the dialog during a search, the program will not try to close the window yet. First, it will just halt the search. Because often, if a search is taking too long or the server has hung (the way some servers do if you ask them to do a search involving wildcards), the program can still show you the results that have been found so far, if you halt the rest of the search. But in cases where it cannot, or if you've decided that you don't care to see the results anyway, a second press of the Cancel button or a second attempt at closing the dialog will really close it this time.

Personas
Templates
  This option lets you open, modify, and send a message based on a template that you had created and saved earlier, using the option on the File menu. This feature is much like the draft feature (see above), but is to be used when you will want to send multiple messages, made from that template, instead of just one. For example, a form letter or a monthly report. You can also delete a template, via the button on the Open a Message Template dialog.

The Help Menu

Contents
  This option brings up the online help window.