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Nisus Software has released the most significant upgrade yet to its unique Nisus Email client software. One of the most significant new features is support for SMTP authentication, which facilitates sending mail through Apple's iTools mac.com SMTP server and other email services that require this protocol.

The other big news is of course OS X support, and I look forward to checking the X version out. I'm addicted to Nisus Email's quick send and preview features, and OS X support fills in another piece of the software mosaic I will require in oprder to switch to X for production work.

However, I have been using beta builds of Nisus Email 1.6 for several months now, and I can affirm that the SMTP authentication works like a charm, and the program even in prerelease versions has proved admirably stable.

New in this version:
• OSX version is now available.
• SMTP authorization supported (SMTP AUTH extension using the "login" and "plain" SASL mechanisms).
• Incoming emails with foreign character set encodings are displayed in the proper font if possible.
• Support for foreign character sets in both incoming and outgoing attachment filenames added.
• Email flags added (forwarded, replied to, and priority). Toggle using the contextual menu in EML.
• When sending emails, all emails that can be sent are sent, instead of stopping the whole process when a single email causes a problem.
• You may now change the "from" personality on Queued messages.
• Each user personality now has a reply-to address.
• Incoming file attachment names that must be limited to 31 characters now retain their file extension if they have one.
• The EML can now display by either date sent or date received (set in prefs dialog).
• Support for HTML entities that are defined by unicode code points added.
• Double-clicking attachment files now activates the associated application as well as opening the file.
• In the QuickMessage window, nicknames are auto-completed for the "CC" & "BCC" fields just like the "To" field.
• Opening an already open Queued email now brings the window to the front.
• Reply-all removes duplicate email addresses in "To" field.
• Enter key in the find window enabled.

Fixes
• Outgoing character sets are not mislabled when the TEC translates the requested character set into something else.
• Moving emails from an EML while the email was open could have caused a crash when the still open email was manipulated.
• Replying to an email with a reply-to field no longer incorrectly uses the "from" nickname.
• Japanese subjects are encoded properly when being sent out. (caused by English subject prefixes, eg: Fwd, Re)
• Removing a filter folder and then opening other folders "above" where the removed folder used to exist doesn't cause crashes.
• Decoding malformed BinHex attachments could have caused errors during parsing. This has been fixed.
• Bug fixed where incoming emails would not be sorted properly in the EML if the active sort was by subject.
• If a user had set up a custom attribution field to include certain fields, and they were not present in the email being replied to, Nisus Email could crash. This has been fixed.
• Moving emails between drives doesn't cause errors in certain situations anymore.
• Bug where emails would be incorrectly associated with contact icons has been fixed.
• "Off-by-one" updating problem under certain circumstances fixed in EML.
• Infinite looping in some filtering situations fixed. This occurred when there was a very large amount of whitespace (several pages) in the email to be filtered.

Miscellaneous
• You may now rebuild a table of contents file from plain text email files.
• Deleting emails is quicker now. Progress bar is also displayed when deleting a lot of emails.
• Custom vertical scrollbars removed. Standard appearance manager aware versions put in their place.
• Custom button bars replaced with standard bevel buttons.
• Tabbed interface added to preferences dialog.
• All non-alphanumeric characters are ignored when sorting data in the EML.
• Sorting by date in the EML has been sped up (other sorts also sped up marginally).
• Scrolling speed increased in the EML.
• Progress bar displayed when copying larger files.
• Nickname parsing changed: Items must now be comma/semicolon separated.
• The EML window is not unnecessarily refreshed when you open an email.

I rather liked the style of the interface and buttons in Nisus Email 1.5.1, but as noted, Nisus has replaced it with a more conventional Platinum appearance.

Nisus Email,in the Nisus tradition, offers features distinctly different from any other e-mail program.

Among these, the most unique are Nisus Email's ability to integrate its functions with virtually any text-crunching program, and to send chunks of dragged and dropped text or attached files with just a couple of mouse clicks.

Working from a word-processor or text editor of your choice, you have access to much wider variety of text formatting and proofing functions than even in powerful e-mail clients like Eudora 5.0.1.

Other Nisus Email features:
The preview window: see what's in your mailbox t before you download
InstantWindow: send emails quickly
QuickMessage window: compose emails quickly
Listing window: see mail you've downloaded
Personalities window: handle multiple accounts

One is that you can't queue up a one-off e-mail for sending later when you're offline without creating a new "contact" in the contact list. If you're online, a chunk of dragged text prefix with "to" and an e-mail address (EG: To: Bob Smith <smith@nisus.com>) can be zapped off instantly with one click, but this is not always convenient when you are a dial-up user. There should be a send later option without mucking about with the contact list.

Another minor gripe is that the "Command M" keyboard shortcut checks all accounts, and sends any queued email, although the "Check Mail" menu selection commendably checks only the "personality" currently selected in the Personalities menu. I would like a keystroke option that just checked mail and left the queued messages unsent, and another one for sending mail.

Nisus Email saves received and copies of sent e-mails As Nisus Writer text documents that you can open and read or edit individually with any word processor or text editor. However, this motif does result in an awful lot of small, individual files being added to your directory. The good aspect of this is that you can open and read or edit them with any text editor or word processor.

This program is a very interesting and innovative approach to email management, it is fast, and I really like it. The one-click or two-click send feature is reason enough to keep it on your hard drive.

The Nisus Email 1.6 update is free for those who have already purchased Nisus Email.

Nisus Email sells for $29.95.

A 14 day, free evaluation version of Nisus Email is available. This version is not disabled in any way, and allows you to try Nisus Email before making a purchase. If you do decide to keep Nisus Email, no additional downloads are required. Simply obtain a serial number and enter it into the version you already have.

Minimum System Requirements
• MacOS 8.5 and up or Mac OSX
• PPC 601 or greater
• 12MB RAM
• 10MB free disk space

For more information, visit:
http://www.nisus.com/Products/NisusEmail/

For my full review of Nisus Email version 1.09, visit:
http://www.applelinks.com/mooresviews/nisusemail.shtml

Charles W. Moore

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