Personas
The Personas notebook is accessed from the Tools menu in the
main mailer window or by using the
toolbar
button or the Tools menu option on the compose
window. Each Polarbar Mailer account
can have any number of different Personas. A Persona is a collection of
information about a user and how he wants himself to be presented
to the readers of his messages. The only piece of information that is required
in a Persona is the From address. Each Persona has three pages and can
contain any or all of the following information:
The Main Page
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Persona Name
-
A label by which you can remember who you are when you're using this Persona.
This name is shown at the top of every compose
window to remind you what Persona you're using while you're composing
each message. For example, you might have Personas named Work and Personal.
-
Set as default persona
-
If you select this checkbox, this Persona will become the default and will
be used each time you open a compose window.
You can change a particular compose window's current Persona at any time
by coming to this Personas notebook, selecting a Persona, and clicking
on the OK button at the very bottom of the notebook window. However,
any information you have filled in, in the compose window, before you change
to a different Persona, will not be replaced by the Persona information.
For example, if a Sent folder is already specified in the compose
window, the program doesn't know whether that was specified by virtue of
the previous Persona or whether you had specifically chosen it yourself.
So in that case, the new Persona's From and Reply-to information will be
used, but its Sent folder will not be.
If you don't want to have a default Persona, turn off this checkbox in
whichever Persona is currently your default. Thereafter, every time you
open a compose window, the program will automatically open the Personas
notebook for you to choose a Persona for the message.
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From/Reply-To Name/E-Mail
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The From address is mandatory. The From name and Reply-To name and address
are optional. There is little reason to specify a Reply-To name and/or
address unless you want people to reply to you at an address that's different
from your From address.
-
Signature
-
What you type here will go at the bottom of every message you send. If
you include the strings "{date}" or "{time}" (those are French curly brackets,
not parentheses or square brackets) in your signature, they will be translated
to the current date or time (according to your computer's system clock)
at the time you save the message to your OUTBOX
folder or send it.
-
Tagline File
-
This is where you can specify a file which contains a list of taglines.
A tagline is a funny or wise saying that is appended to each message after
the signature. Each time you open a
compose window
or select a Persona which has a tagline file specified, one line of the
tagline file is selected at random for the compose window's Tagline:
field. If the randomly selected tagline is not appropriate for the current
message, you can select a different one since this field of the compose
window is a dropdown selection field containing all the lines of the specified
tagline file.
The Compose Prefaces Page
At the top of each reply, forwarded message, or newly composed message
you create, the program can insert a line of text (or multiple lines) which
says something like "** Reply to message from John Doe on Fri, 07 Feb 1999
21:30:41 EST". This page is where you tell the program what you want these
"preface" lines to say. By default, each Persona does have such a preface
for replies and forwards, but not for new messages. Remember, if you want
to have a blank line between the preface and the rest of the message text,
just leave a blank line at the end of the preface you create here.
If you include the string "{from}" (those are French curly brackets,
not parentheses or square brackets) in a preface, it will be substituted
with the From name of the author of the message to which you are replying
or the message you are forwarding. The string "{date}" will be replaced
by the Date: header of that message. The strings "{today}" and "{time}"
will be converted to the date and time at which the compose window is opened,
according to your computer's system clock.
The Filing Page
This is where you specify the location where you will most often want
your messages, created using this Persona, to be filed after they've been
sent. Your selection here is what is used to fill in the default for the
Sent
folder: field on the compose window.
Attaching a Persona to an Address Book Entry
After you create a Persona, you can easily attach it to one or more
specific entries in your address book by entering the persona name in the
address book field labeled Persona.