Talk:Pegasus Mail

Does Pegasus Mail really prevent the user from doing a "reply-to-all"?
The text now says: "Version 5.0 is now scheduled to be released in the beginning of 2006. It remains to be seen whether it will fix the 'feature' that prevents a user from doing a 'reply all' and forces the user to re-enter recipients individually" (where "now" means March, 2006). As far as I understand this description, I think it is not correct. When using Pegasus Mail, you may want to follow these steps and find out for yourself: One of those options enables the user to choose to whom the reply is to be sent. You can choose either "All recipients of the original message" or "Recipients selected using the controls below" (when choosing the latter, you have some additional options to choose from). The first option should do a reply-to-all. Pegasus Mail's help file contains a similar description. Its help page titled "Options for replies" says that the first option "tells Pegasus Mail to attempt to send your reply to every person who received the original message." To answer the question: I think Pegasus Mail does not prevent the user from doing a reply-to-all. --Thomasnimmesgern 21:10, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) Open a message (either in preview mode or in the Message Reader window)
 * 2) Start a reply
 * 3) Read the options offered in the "Reply options"-window
 * What I initially said was not totally true, but it's close. My contact who uses Pegasus has told me that (1) there is no reply-all button and that (2) you can indeed start a reply and then select all recipients. The issues are that (1) the lack of a reply-all button requires you to do this extra step every time and that (2) you cannot set the default to reply-all. My contact asked the creator of Pegasus about this some time back. If the creator had said this was to prevent viruses and worms from exploiting the feature, that would be an acceptable explanation. Instead, the creator said "I've always regarded 'reply-to-all' as the single most abused feature on the Internet, and I've never wanted to make it too easy to use". I contend that it should be up to the users to determine how to use their e-mail in a way convenient to them, rather than the way its creator thinks they should. Wahkeenah 16:07, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
 * DHS flunks e-mail administration 101, causes mini-DDoS describes what a reply-to-all can cause when incorrectly set. Thomasnimmesgern (talk) 20:13, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

---

I have been a Pegasus Mail user for over 10 years, and while I agree that "it should be up to the users to determine how to use their e-mail," in practice all too often e-mail clients do that for them and produce results not intended by the user. Outlook Express is particularly notorious for that: one of the many issues I have with that program is that its design always underestimates users' intelligence and "decides" many things for them, or at least does not make clear what exactly it is going to do.

In that respect, the "reply-to-all" feature is particularly emblematic: I have lost count of how many times I saw someone (not incidentally, mostly an Outlook or Outlook Express user) send a message to many people at once (not using "Blind carbon copy" as would be advisable in such cases), then one of the recipients meant to reply to the sender, but the reply was sent again to all the original recipients instead. This can be very irritating, not to mention wasteful of resources and a potential cause of social embarrassment and security breeches (as sensitive personal comments and confidential information can reach people who were not meant to read that).

I believe this is what David Harris meant by saying that "reply-to-all" is "the single most abused feature on the Internet." Having been annoyed and clogged by such messages countless times (including a particularly nasty case this very week, when I got TENS of replies I did not want or need to read), I can hardly disagree, even though "abused" would imply that users do that on purpose, which is often not the case.

Pegasus Mail was not originally intended to be an e-mail client for "power users," but the way things happened throughout the years, it ended up being exactly that - and, in my opinion, it remains the best e-mail client for users with special needs and with knowledge to harness the extremely powerful features it offers. Those niche users are knowledgeable enough to let Pegasus Mail reply only to the sender by default and perform that extra operation only when needed - which should be an exceptional and occasional case, rather than the rule, otherwise e-mail would be simply not the best means of communication for that user's needs. Setting up a discussion group or on-line forum (for example) would be more appropriate in most such cases.

The latest Pegasus Mail version at the time I'm writing this (4.41) still does not include a "reply-to-all" button. I hope version 5.0 does not, either! :-)

--UrsoBR 15:45, 14 November 2007 (UTC)


 * The next version of Pegasus Mail (which will probably be 4.42) will be likely to have such a button.
 * The current version has the "Reply"-button that opens the "Reply options"-window when clicked on. As Wahkeenah described, the user has to choose what options should be valid for the current reply; a "reply-to-all" has to be chosen manually.
 * The next version will (probably) allow you (a) how to handle the current reply, and (b) to define what the "Reply"-button does:
 * (a) The "Reply"-button will let you choose whether to open the "Reply options"-window or to start a Quick Reply (i.e., a reply without the "Reply options"-window) that automatically uses the last reply options or to start a reply-to-all using the last reply options. You can choose even before a "Reply options"-window pops up, so you can prevent that window from appearing if you do not like it.
 * (b) You can set one of the three options mentioned in (a) as the default behaviour of the "Reply"-button. An example: if you are sure that your reply options are the same for almost all replies you send, you can set the "Reply"-button to start a reply without the "Reply options"-window; when set that way, the "Reply"-button would immediately open a reply as soon as you click the button.
 * Thomasnimmesgern (talk) 20:02, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Version 5.0 to be released in the beginning of 2006
The text now says: "Version 5.0 is now scheduled to be released in the beginning of 2006" (where "now" means March, 2006). That is programmer's time :-). At the time of writing, Pegasus Mail 4.31 has been released, and David Harris is working on the new features of Pegasus Mail 5, especially the calendaring- / schedule-module.--Thomasnimmesgern 21:10, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Just for your information: the next version of Pegasus Mail will probably be 4.42. Some of the changes will be: an internal change of how internal programming objects are handled, a new "Reply"-button, a help system that can also be used under Windows Vista (since Microsoft has turned off the WInHelp supoort in Vista, making the help files of a lot of applications useless) and some more. Thomasnimmesgern (talk) 20:07, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I have been running Pegasus Mail without a glitch on Windows Vista (no administrator privileges or XP compatibility mode needed, except the former on install), and the help system has not been a problem: Microsoft has given up deprecating old Winhelp files completely, at least for now - apparently, there were still too many programs using them. So, Microsoft has recently released a free installable Winhelp engine for Windows Vista. It can be obtained from download.microsoft.com.


 * That was not really necessary, though: if one copies the WINHLP32.EXE file from a Windows XP installation to Windows Vista's C:\Windows\System32 folder, voil&agrave;: Winhelp support is restored. That simple. Works perfectly! It should be noted, however, that this procedure may constitute a violation of Vista's EULA, since it's technically a "system modification" - even though it's highly unlikely that Microsoft would make a fuss for such a trivial operation. --UrsoBR (talk) 14:46, 28 February 2008 (UTC)


 * On the Download page of Microsoft there is a Barrier to make the Download more difficult.Turm (talk) 23:26, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Changes to the development of Pegasus Mail and Mercury
On November 30, 2006, David Harris posted an announcement [], which says that he is scaling back his involvement due to financial concerns. It appears that version 5 is postponed indefinitely. Instead, "...a Vista-ready version of Pegasus Mail v4.4 will also be made available. This work will be completed by the end of January 2007." I applaud his efforts, and wish him good luck.

Now, as for the version 5 entry, I think we can dispense with that and put in something about "Vista-ready" instead. Also, I wish to remove the remark concerning "reply all," since it is written in a non-neutral manner. Rbstrand 01:44, 1 December 2006 (UTC)


 * You will now have seen the announcement on the article page that David Harris has now totally ceased all development and distribution of Pegasus Mail as of January 2007. Rather sad. Dsergeant 18:33, 6 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Should we really be pasting huge sections of the Pegasus Mail website about the development status/uncertainty on WP? I thought that was not allowed. Now that the future development problems seem to be resolved surely we can now reduce it to a simple statement that development was stopped for a short while in 2007 then resumed? The intricasies of it are not really a WP issue. Dsergeant 07:48, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree that the development history is not relevant to a WP article and the text from the website should be removed. Alan 01:08, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Apparently development has resumed. -- T HE F OUNDERS I NTENT  PRAISE 15:05, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

History section
Pegasus Mail is one of the very early email clients designed for both technical and non-technical audiences, and is thus one of the trailblazers of modern email. I'd like to add a (modest) history section to this article about Pmail and its technical ecosystem. Are there good reasons not to do so? Wefa (talk) 17:03, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 16:52, 14 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Pegasus Mail Wine.png

Pegasus Mail 4.80 has been released. The Wikipedia article should be updated.
The announcement by David Harris, the developer, is here, at https://community.pmail.com/index.php?u=/topic/11559/pegasus-mail-v4-80-released

The download page, updated for version 4.80, is at here, at http://www.pmail.com/downloads_s3_t.htm

I have downloaded and installed it, and it seems to be working fine, so the Wikipedia article should probably be updated.

Thanks. Tireisias (talk) 10:48, 2 March 2022 (UTC)