Is Anyone Home At PocoSystems?

[juror56]

I continue to have problems with certain HTML mail and forwarding messages.

I sent at least 3 emails to PocoSystems in the last month, none of which have been acknowledged...not even a canned auto-reply...much less resolved.

This isn't the first time support questions have been poorly acknowledged and not resolved.

I would much prefer the bugs in the existing version be resolved before adding new features.

The deteriorating support for this product is disturbing and after several years of using this program, I am seriously considering alternate programs.

[Eric]

I continue to have problems with certain HTML mail and forwarding messages.

I sent at least 3 emails to PocoSystems in the last month, none of which have been acknowledged...not even a canned auto-reply...much less resolved.

Sorry to hear you didn't get a response from PSI on your problem.

I would much prefer the bugs in the existing version be resolved before adding new features.

The deteriorating support for this product is disturbing and after several years of using this program, I am seriously considering alternate programs.

While there are still some bugs left, I'm sure most of them will be adressed during the next beta run.
Make sure to apply to test the beta, so you can point them to the problem which needs fixing.

Your choice to chose another program, but Support is doing the best they can at the moment.
Send a PM to Slaven, if you want him to look at your problem ASAP, but you can't expect a fix immediately.

As for alternate programs I seriously hope you'll get 'better' support and that they don't have serious bugs.

Take care.

[Sandy]

I'm sure most of them will be adressed during the next beta run.

This is PolyAnna-ish drivel. You have NO way of knowing that. In fact recent history would indicate that many bugs found during a PSI beta are not addressed. It appears PSI doesn't even have a way to keep track of such discovered and reproducable bugs.

[Eric]

This is PolyAnna-ish drivel.

Never heard of that word.

You have NO way of knowing that.

Yes, I've no way of knowing that.
I expressed myself a bit wrongly.
I should have said that reported bugs will be looked upon during the next beta. Whether they will be fixed, depends on time and priority.

In fact recent history would indicate that many bugs found during a PSI beta are not addressed. It appears PSI doesn't even have a way to keep track of such discovered and reproducable bugs.

During the beta, bugs have been fixed and also some haven't been fixed. Maybe not enough time to address those reported bugs.

As for saying PSI doesn't have a way to track bugs, that's something I don't know.
Maybe they do, maybe they don't. It would be hard to believe that they don't keep track of reported bugs.
IMO They do track bug reports, but not with Bug Traction.
Same as with the former bug tracker, a bug gets a priority.

Mind you, only guessing on my part since I'm not a PSI employee.

[saoir]

I'm sure most of them will be adressed during the next beta run.

This is PolyAnna-ish drivel. You have NO way of knowing that. In fact recent history would indicate that many bugs found during a PSI beta are not addressed. It appears PSI doesn't even have a way to keep track of such discovered and reproducable bugs.

It seems to me that Eric is being helpful at every opportunity, but you are determined to be unpleasant.
Pocosystems have already explained at length their reluctance to encourage people to be fowarding html mesages with possibly dodgy code embedded. Personlaly I agree with them fully.
After using Pocomaila and Barca for several years in my personal and business dealings, I cannot imagine any serious minded user abandoning what is clearly the best email agent out their because of this minor and peripheral issue.

[Sandy]

It seems to me that Eric is being helpful at every opportunity, but you are determined to be unpleasant.

Helpful is one thing, being real is another. You call it unpleasant, I call it plain speaking.

Pocosystems have already explained at length their reluctance to encourage people to be fowarding html mesages with possibly dodgy code embedded. Personlaly I agree with them fully.

My comments have nothing to do with the forwarding of HTML msgs. That may be the OP's concern, but I, like you, think it is a good thing that Poco does not simply use some industry standard renderer (e.g., IE); I too agree that the security that Poco provides is well worth its lack of ability to deal with these complex msgs that to my mind way overuse HTML type formatting.

No, my point is the many bugs that have been reported, and that are easily reproduced, go on without being addressed -- in some cases for years. I have a rather long list of these reproducable bugs, some of which I have reported myself (and I never report a bug without providing reproducable steps). I have also seen on several occasions where PSI admittedly loses track of reported bugs, and have said that their policy is to simply ask the users to report the bug over and over again until it is fixed.

Rather that attempting to convince you of all this, I will give you one good example. This bug has no connection to HTML, and I, for one, am sick of dealing with it (I have also reported it at least 3 times -- including as a beta tester). Something as simple as the duplication of an address on the To: line needs to be fixed. Try this:

--------------------------------
1. Create a Reply to a msg.

2. Note the sender's address is on the To: line as expected. Now type in a comma after that single email address (a comma + space does just as well)

3. After the comma, type in enough of a new name into the To: line until Poco comes up with a unique single email address.

4. Tab away from the To: line

5. You will note that the email address you added has been duplicated on the To: line.
--------------------------------

[Sandy]

Sandy wrote:
This is PolyAnna-ish drivel.

Never heard of that word.

Here's what my dictionary says (sorry for the misspelling):

polliannaish = Pleasantly (even unrealistically) optimistic

drivel = A worthless message

(I admit that "drivel" is a bit strong, but it reflects my frustration with these oh so nice but pointless replies.)

[juror56]

While there are still some bugs left, I'm sure most of them will be adressed during the next beta run.
Make sure to apply to test the beta, so you can point them to the problem which needs fixing.

I have applied for the past 2 betas at the time of the public invitations and received no response what so ever, not even the courtesy of "Thanks, but we have everyone we need."

Your choice to chose another program, but Support is doing the best they can at the moment.

I was afraid of that.

Send a PM to Slaven, if you want him to look at your problem ASAP, but you can't expect a fix immediately.

Is Slaven the only one working at PSI? I understand it is a small company, but should we have to page the owner for every problem?

As for alternate programs I seriously hope you'll get 'better' support and that they don't have serious bugs.

For my modest e-mail needs, Courier, WPMail, Becky! & Tbird seem to work pretty well, tho all have quirks. And with the exception of WPMail, support is non-existent for these. (As a long time user of Courier/Calypso I have never needed support. It seems the most bug-free.)

I like the feature set of Poco, the ease of use, and mostly like the interface. I do, however, find some PM's quirks maddening, too.

Thanks for the reply, Eric.

~ Added quote tags ... Eric ~

[juror56]

Pocosystems have already explained at length their reluctance to encourage people to be fowarding html mesages with possibly dodgy code embedded. Personlaly I agree with them fully.

I think that portion of the message was meant for me. I have never heard anything about forwarding html messages, but that's not what I am complaining about. My gripe is:

When I receive an html e-mail message that at cannot be read by Poco (or reads incorrectly), but comes thru just fine in at least four other e-mail programs (WPMail, Thunderbird, Courier, & Becky!) it seems to me the problem lies within PocoMail. As Mom used to say, "Everybody else in the world can't be wrong." Complaining about "dodgy code" doesn't cut it.

After using Pocomaila and Barca for several years in my personal and business dealings, I cannot imagine any serious minded user abandoning what is clearly the best email agent out their because of this minor and peripheral issue.

"Clearly the best" is subjective. I have used Poco for several years as well, and it has many strong attributes. But it also has some maddening quirks. For example, I frequently copy text from an e-mail and paste it into a document. Every other e-mail program I have ever used allows the use of the shift and arrow keys to highlight text, but in PocoMail you cannot do this unless you open it as a reply or forward. You have to highlight with the mouse.

Not being able to read certain html mail is not a "minor and peripheral issue" to me. More and more mail these days comes thru in html format. The emails in question were not from some teen aged kid. The last one I got that didn't read correctly was from Xerox Corp. asking for the readings from my office copier.

I don't expect the software to be perfect, but as I said in my initial post, my gripe is with the lack of response from PSI when a problem is reported. This is not a new problem, as I have received "we'll get back to you" replies in the past, but no one did, and the "this will be fixed in ver. 4" but wasn't.

[JohnM]

Rather that attempting to convince you of all this, I will give you one good example. This bug has no connection to HTML, and I, for one, am sick of dealing with it (I have also reported it at least 3 times -- including as a beta tester). Something as simple as the duplication of an address on the To: line needs to be fixed. Try this:

--------------------------------
1. Create a Reply to a msg.

2. Note the sender's address is on the To: line as expected. Now type in a comma after that single email address (a comma + space does just as well)

3. After the comma, type in enough of a new name into the To: line until Poco comes up with a unique single email address.

4. Tab away from the To: line

5. You will note that the email address you added has been duplicated on the To: line.
--------------------------------

I tried to reproduce this with PocoMail 4.1 running under Windows 98SE.

My first attempt to reproduce the behaviour failed to do so. That was yesterday. I tried again today, after printing out the step-by-step instructions, and this time I did reproduce the behaviout.

After a little bit of thought, and one test, I found that the failure to reproduce the behaviour the first time, was due to not following instructions to the letter. Having entered the 2nd address, I just did (without thinking)what I would normally expect to do in similar circumstances - I hit the ENTER key to confirm the proposed address, thus completing it. Then I tabbed out of the "To:" box.

When I did reproduce the behaviour described, I followed the instructions to the letter, so as soon as the unique e-mail address was displayed, I tabbed out without confirming the address as being the one I wanted. Then, it did indeed add 2 copies of the address.

I don't personally see this as a big issue, for a couple of reasons. 1st, my immediate "instinct" is to his the ENTER key to confirm the proposed address if it's what I want. In that case, tabbing out of the "To:" box produced only one copy of the address - which is the expected behaviour. The other reason, is that I don't use this mode of address completion very often, I tend to add addresses from the address book of whichever program I am using.

Just my 2 cents worth on this one specific matter. Since there is a reasonanble "work-around", I would find it hard to get very worked up over it.

Cheers

John

[Maximus]

John, I respect your opinion. However, I do strongly agree with Sandy that this is indeed a bug. And it has been bothering me since the early beta time of version 4. And I am quite upset, too that this has not been fixed yet, even though we have reported this behaviour several times.

BTW: Poco should follow standards used of an operating system. Therefore tabbing out of a combo box should automatically insert the selected address, even without hitting the enter key first.

Cheers
Adi

[imtrobin]

I feel there are more important bugs to address than this tabbing issue, but I do agree Slaven should hire more help.

[webtech]

Poco systems gives no attention at all, think about the localized version

- coming soon......... what is soon? 2008? Me and my friend give poco systems a lot of help. No thank you at all!

[Sandy]

I feel there are more important bugs to address than this tabbing issue......

Folks you are taking my point out of context. I never said "this tabbing Issue" was the most important problem in Poco. In fact, I don't think fixing it is all that important at all. I used it as an example to counter Saoir's claim that I am up to no more than "determined to be unpleasant".

No, my point is simply that PSI does not track bugs effectively and it does not fix many known bugs in its products. I gave the "tabbing issue" as just one example of my view. In fact, I picked that particular one because it was so minor and clearly easy to fix. I have many other examples of reported and reproducable bugs that were uncovered during the last beta that were simply never fixed (I found I had to keep a list of them since PSI apparently does not). I only bought the whole unfortunate subject up in the first place in response to Eric's (again I will say it) polliannaish claim in the spite of PSI recent history that:

"I'm sure most of them will be adressed during the next beta run."

[Eric]

I have applied for the past 2 betas at the time of the public invitations and received no response what so ever, not even the courtesy of "Thanks, but we have everyone we need."

Sorry to hear you weren't accepted to beta test. Only those who are accepted, will receive notice. I do agree that those that didn't get accepted, should also receive a response to let them now they didn't make it.

I was afraid of that.

That's the only answer I can give at this stage.
Why? That's something only PSI can communicate, although I do now the reason.

Is Slaven the only one working at PSI? I understand it is a small company, but should we have to page the owner for every problem?

No, Slaven is not the only one working for the company, but like you said it's a small company, so they don't have much personnel.
Normally you shouldn't have to PM Slaven, since Support should be taken care of it, which isn't happening at present. Slaven does take support seriously, so that's why he also takes care temporarily of all support problems I reported to him. It's also your best chance to get a straight answer.

For my modest e-mail needs, Courier, WPMail, Becky! & Tbird seem to work pretty well, tho all have quirks. And with the exception of WPMail, support is non-existent for these. (As a long time user of Courier/Calypso I have never needed support. It seems the most bug-free.)

They all do have bugs and as for Courier, the future is unknown.

I like the feature set of Poco, the ease of use, and mostly like the interface. I do, however, find some PM's quirks maddening, too.

I can only tell you to hang in there. Poco/Barca are really my favourite email clients to use and I hope those support problems will be resolved pretty soon.

Thanks for the reply, Eric.

My pleasure juror56.

The rest of my response will have to follow later.
Not enough time to respond to everything, so it does get a priority number too.