PEGASUS MAIL FOR WINDOWS
VERSION 4.31

 

After the release David Harris shared his thoughts with the users on the pm-win list, click here to read it.

From: David Harris Organization: Pegasus Mail, Dunedin, New Zealand Subject: Pegasus Mail v4.31 released To: PM-NEWS@BAMA.UA.EDU Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2005 15:30:55 +1300 Pegasus Mail v4.31, an unrestricted public release, is now available for download from our Internet download sites in both English and German versions. To select a download site and retrieve the program, please go to: http://www.pmail.com/downloads.htm For information on what's new in the program, please go to: http://www.pmail.com/v431.htm Important note: This Pegasus Mail v4.3 full release includes fixes for some potentially exploitable bugs in Pegasus Mail v4.2x and the v4.3 public beta - for more information on these problems, please go to: http://www.pmail.com/newsflash.htm#secunia Because of the relative severity of one of the potential exploits, we recommend that all current v4.2x and v4.3pb1 users consider upgrading to v4.31 as soon as possible. I and my beta test team would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very safe and happy Christmas, and a refreshed, hopeful New Year. Cheers! -- David -- David Harris Author, Pegasus Mail.

From: David Harris Organization: Pegasus Mail, Dunedin, New Zealand Subject: Thoughts on v4.31 Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2005 16:00:06 +1300 I've just sent out a release notification for Pegasus Mail v4.31, although I'm informed that a number of you already found the archives over the weekend while I was stalled in the release process. :-) I just wanted to take a moment to share with you what has gone into v4.31, because in almost any measurable way, it is the the most complex and difficult release I've ever made. In the normal course of developing a new version of Pegasus Mail, I will put together around 15 - 20 beta versions that go out to my test team, sometimes a public beta, and then 3 - 4 "release candidates" - complete installers that might end up being suitable for release to the public. The previous record for number of betas was 29 for v4.2. By contrast, Pegasus Mail v4.31 has gone through 60 betas, a public beta, and no fewer than 14 release candidates. It has more than 1500 substantial code changes, and I estimate that I alone have spent more than 1000 hours purely doing debugging on it. Add to this that Martin Ireland has done more than 30 betas of the new "bear" HTML renderer, Sven Henze has spent at least 300 hours on translation and bitmap development, and that I've had to adapt no fewer than 5 revisions of the cryptlib SSL libraries and you'll start to get a feel for just how much work has gone into this. Yet it doesn't look much different from v4.21c. In a funny way, this is very disspiriting, because even though I know how much has gone into it, most users won't get any feel for that, and many may be be disappointed that so little seems to have changed. I know that many in particular will be disappointed that the Calendaring and Scheduling module for the program, which I have been promising for a number of years, still hasn't materialized. By way of explanation, let me point out that in January, Pegasus Mail will be 16 years old - by the standards of the Internet, this makes it something beyond venerable... And I have to say that a lot of the code in there was pretty venerable too - a huge amount of what has gone into v4.3 has been about correcting problems and tidying up code that has been around for many, many years; it's a task I've put off, and put off, until finally I couldn't put it off any longer. That's why v4.31 has effectively taken nearly two years to produce. The good part is that a lot of the internal changes now mean that the code is once more a reasonable platform for extended future development - it is once again a base onto which I can graft new things. Finally, I have an environment in which I can work on the Calendaring and Scheduling code - and indeed, that will be the first feature added to v5 (with a release all of its own). So it's been a painful couple of years, with 2005 being one of the worst in my entire life, but perhaps that's just the price I've had to pay to create a product that can stick around and offer service to its community for a few more years. I really hope you enjoy v4.31 - in a way that no previous version of the program has ever been, it is a labour of love, and it has had a painful birth. I hope only that it will serve you well and faithfully. As a final note, I would like to take a moment to offer my thanks, praise and admiration for my beta test team, who have had to put up with some fairly pyrotechnical tantrums from me at times in the course of developing v4.31, and who, with unparalleled generosity, funded replacement hardware for me earlier this year when my old server destroyed itself. Sure, I write the code for the program, but these guys are the only reason that code is any good at all. Great work, guys - thank you for everything. Cheers! -- David -- ------------------ David Harris -+- Pegasus Mail ---------------------- Box 5451, Dunedin, New Zealand | e-mail: David.Harris@pmail.gen.nz Phone: +64 3 453-6880 | Fax: +64 3 453-6612