yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] GardnerMS:
Anyone else experience this? "Scrambled Icons"

First of all, a bit about myself... I have been a Treo 650 user for almost a year... however, after having to warranty exchange it 3 times, I've kicked it to the curb. My other options were either a Blackberry 8700c (too much uncertainty for me) or a HP hw6515 (ability to run WiFi and multitasking is what interested me)

Yes, I know this device runs WM2003SE (and NOT WM5); I know that there doesn't exist a true "push-email" like I had with ChatterMail (hogwarts, I say now.... I love VGSMail -- it's exactly what I wanted, since i miss chattermail.

However, one minor glitch.... I look @ the bottom of the screen and notice that the icons are 'scrambled', meaning that they are no longer discernable as to what they are (such as reply, reply all, forward, delete)... granted, I can use the menu, but just wanted to see if this was experienced by anyone else.

Please keep up the good work... you've may just found a convert....

mG
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] geoffreycross:
GardnerMS:

This is a problem I have seen a few times but it is very sporadic and I have also encountered it without vgsmail installed. There seems to be some bug in the WM2003 kernel.

A soft reset will fix the corrupted icon database.
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] GardnerMS:
Thanx for the info about icons..

Can you elaborate how often the sw should run when the pda is not being used? It seems like it ran twice within 10 minutes, but then didn't run again while I was watching it... (I know.. a watched phone never gathers email)..

I love the possibilities...

mG
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] Izzard-UK:
GardnerMS, what do you mean by "run"? Are you watching the vgsmail control's status and judging by the 'idle' time?

Basically, an IMAP client that uses the IDLE featue (like this one) establishes a connection and then *keeps it open*. Ideally it will do *nothing* until the server tells it. I.e. it is supposed to sit there being idle (and not using any data) until the mail server notifies it there is mail.

However, assuming no mail arrives, I would only expect you to see absolutely nothing happening in a perfect world. In reality the software may need to reconnect occasionally. I'm guessing this is the activity you're referring to?
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] GardnerMS:
Me so confused.... ;-)

OK.. i understand that VGS shouldn't do anything unless new mail is available.. I've sent myself a test email and it still has not appeared on my phone... I have the vgs control running (icon in lower right-hand corner has a green dot)... when i tap on it, it says IDLE, and that's all it does...

What am I doing wrong? What is a reasonable time to wait for email to arrive?

BTW, Eddie Izzard is one of the funniest comedians I've seen.

mG
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] GardnerMS:
Nevermind... emails show up -- no popup msg though (nm)

OK... emails are showing up... i'm just not seeing a message popup indicating new email... looking @ today screen shows increase in message count.
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] Izzard-UK:
For me it is instant. When a new mail arrives my phone goes 'ping' (and the new message count increases' and Thunderbird (on my PC) get the new mail at the exact same instant. If I read the mail on my PC, the new message count decreases on the phone instantly. It's perfect!

Are you sure you've got "notifications" ticked in vgsmail control. If you have ..are you sure you've got it configured to display a message in 'Sounds and Notifications" in Settings?
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] GardnerMS:
Ahh.. that might be the problem...

I'm running this on a HP hw6515 that uses Windows Mobile 2003SE..

The screen is 240x240 ..

I bet that I am not seeing some buttons because of the screen resolution and that it's designed for a 240x320 screen..

Am I "up-the-river"? anything I can do?

mG
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] k_kirk:
Following Izzard's guidance I loaded vgsmail on my Dopod 900 (WM5). I do get the new mail alerts. I can't start the Inbox (Messaging) anymore though. when I attempt this my pda slows to a crawl. Did I miss an instruction step? Regards & thanks.
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] Izzard-UK:
Make sure you've got the four Registry keys mentioned, then soft-reset.
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] mhoepfin:
I can confirm that I've gotten this working nicely on on a Sprint PPC6700. Man, anxiously waiting support for more than just the Inbox.

This is really nice.
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] k_kirk:
Izzard, thanks! I did have them in place. It was the transport dll version. Here's an update. Loading the 30/12/05 version of the transport from the vgsmail website as opposed to the 15/12 version I can now get into the Inbox application and see the new message received. It still is slow to come up though compared to before loading vgsmail related stuff.

Additionally, after starting & exiting the Inbox application the VGSMail Control applet icon on the tray disappears. I then have to go to the remevant Start menu entry to restart the vgsmail control.

In the vgsmail control the time stamps for the actions seem to be in GMT timezone. Not sure if this is an issue or not. Just an observation.

When I reply to a message received on VGSMail transport it does not seem to be getting sent. Neither are my deleted messages getting deleted on the IMAP mailbox. I delete them on the handheld and then keep getting notified about them as if they are new mail.

Someof the messages received are indicated as Unknown Sender.

I fully realize this is alpha software not even meant to run on WM5 so please do not take the above as whining! I am very impressed with the work so far and only providing this as input given that Geoffrey has asked for brave souls with WM5 devices to try out his software.

Best Regards
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] Izzard-UK:
Hmm, you should not be having these issues with the current version (they are the symptoms of using older versions on WM5). Using the two files currently available at http://www.vgsmail.com/ppc I can set up a perfectly working system. Perhaps you have the old transport still registered. I suggest starting again.

To get it working, you only need http://www.vgsmail.com/ppc with a small change, as follows:

Before installing the vgsmail client (the second file), use a registry editor to ensure you have all four StringValues:

IncomingServer

OutgoingServer

Username

Password

That's all you need to do. I know because I just flashed my phone's ROM so I installed vgsmail from scratch as above and it's working perfectly. (W00! :))
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] k_kirk:
Thanks. This is probably true. I used the WM5 specific transport posted on the 15th December first. This involved copying a dll to my Windows folder and then using the supplied .exe to register it. I then used the version on http://www.vgsmail.com/ppc released on the 30th December but seems like something still is a miss. I was just playing around anyways and will wait for Geoff's return from sunny SA and his next release. This is looking good!
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] m.zielinski:
Working under WM5 HTC Universal...

For me this thing works.

I installed the packages from 30.12.2005 and added the registry keys as described earlier.

It works fine with GPRS COnnection - i only have the problem that the Control sometimes ends itself without further notice. It seems one reason is when i try to delete more than one message ore receive more than one message at a time.
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] geoffreycross:
Hi all,

I'm now back from my holiday and one the jetlag has worn off I'll be restarting active development of vgsmail. While I was away my XDA Atom arrived, but it seems to be unable to connect to GPRS and so I'm afraid it's going to go back... :(

I have just pushed a minor release onto the website which includes a number of improvements including a delay of 60 seconds before starting up after a reboot.

Next major change will be attachment support and full SMTP (authenticated and non-authenticated) support.

Geoff.
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] Izzard-UK:
Ah! Great idea, because it does always interrupt me between punching in the phone password and the SIM PIN.
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] oltp:
Hi Geoff,

Welcome back. I was thinking of the possibility to have the incoming & outgoing addresses to be stored in seperate reg.keys. The more sophisticated (read fa tmail users) can use a correct & fully specified different smtp address in the future too.

Going for your newest release, looks good.

Cheers, M
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] oltp:
Btw when I shutdown vgscontrol I loose a tray position. Seems like a handle isn't released on shutdown.

Cheers, M
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] m.zielinski:
Much better stability

Well - i startet the new control today in the morning and it worked whole 7 hours without any problems.

But how do i delete the messages ? when i delete them in POutlook they only get marked as deleted at the server and when reconnecting the control tells that there are new mails... - i would like to delete the Messages at the Server (There shall be an imap command called Purge ?)

But hey - this software is amazing!!!!!

Another glitch has to do with the HTC Universal - i often rotate the screnn from portrait to landscape and vice versa - the control behaves strange at this turning around...
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] geoffreycross:
m.zielinski:

Yes, you are right. Currently messages are simply marked for deletion and will not be deleted until an 'expunge' is sent to the server (most clients will have this option). I did this because I didn't want to risk loosing messages whilst testing. Ideally vgsmail would move deleted messages to a 'Deleted Items' folder. I'll add this to my to-do list.
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] oltp:
Geoff,

I can see the sender in the mail notification again, very nice.

Thnx, M
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] zsizsi:
Hi all,

since gmail is not yet supporting imap could someone recommend a free email service supporting imap?

thanks

a
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] Izzard-UK:
Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. I don't know what is different between such e-mails.
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] oltp:
I use fastmail.fm, but you need to change the vgs user account in the registry to mention [your username]@fastmail.fm otherwise you're kicked out by end of january.

cheers, M
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] geoffreycross:
Izzard-UK:

The notifications should contain the sender if there is only one new email and if there is more than one new email they will look say 'You have 3 new e-mails'. This imitates the operation of the internal IMAP client which ships with Pocket Outlook.

oltp:

Yes, with fastmail you'll always need an @ in the userid. I am currently working on a setup application which will fix this and a number of other problems (including the WM5 registry problems). Expect this by the end of the weekend.
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] Izzard-UK:
Oh, I mean sometimes (when a single e-mail arrives) it will say "unknown sender".
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] dmsny:
VGS Mail Questions

Geoff,

Can your application:

1) Monitor multiple IMAP accounts at the same time

2) Allow for multiple "From" fields. So that I can select which "Reply to" I want to use for that message.
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] marcuss:
I've read the entire thread and I really appreciate all the work.

I've just installed the vgsmail at my QTEK 9100 with Swedish WM5. It seems to be working (manually adding the IncomingServer and OutgoingServer entries to the registry), I think, however it seems like its trying to sync -all- the mail in my mail inbox (that's 16 665 mails).

I marked the "only check new mails form the last 3 days" in Pocket Outlook but it does (appearantly) not seem to work. Not sure if the restriction should be dealt with from your application or is in fact a problem that I need to solve within Outlook in some way?

EDIT:

Just a small note for your bugfix list. When I change from viewing a landscape perspective to portrait the vgsmail-log window were still stuck in the "middle" of the GUI.

Anyway, great work!
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] geoffreycross:
Izzard-UK:

Strange. I assume you are using the most recent version. I'd appreciate a log file if you can catch this happening consistently enough.

marcuss:

The "only check new mails form the last 3 days" feature is not supported by vgsmail at the moment. It will probably be supported at some point in the future.

dmsny:

1) I have a plan to support multiple IMAP accounts, but I want to release a WM5 version first.

2) This is something which would have to be supported by Pocket Outlook rather than vgsmail. Unfortunately the current version of PO doesn't support multiple originators for a single 'profile'.
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] dmsny:
looking forward to the official WM5 version. When do you think that build and full attachment support would be ready? Multiple account support would be really cool too!
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] geoffreycross:
Hi all,

I'm trying to get an idea of which networks and which phones ARE working with vgsmail. Can anyone with a working (i.e. able to connect and receive push email for >1 hour) vgsmail install please email their network (contract / pre-pay?) and phone model to ppcbugs@vgsmail.com. I will collate the results and post them here from time to time.

Thanks!

Geoff.
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] tdaubign:
Done !
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] marcuss:
I should probably clarify that I've not been able to decide how the vgsmail client work for me on my QTEK 9100 with the intended features such as push notification and such since I'm still trying to sync my 16000 mail. I'm up at 1000 this faar so I guess it's going to take a while...

Btw, what does the check box "GPRS dial" mean in reality?
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] Houser:
Another email push service

I have tried another email push service for pocket pcs. it is called Pocket X-Press. you can access your pop3 and imap4 mail server even with ssl and get a realtime push without checking from device in an interval.

you can download a trial version for wm 2003 and 2005 under: www.pocketxpress.com

has anybody experience made with this?
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] geoffreycross:
For the record, there are a number of alternatives if you want IMAP or POP3 push email. Here is a list of the ones I know of:

http://alwaysonmail.com/

Blackberry Connect

Intellisync

http://www.pocketxpress.com

However, they all require and provide a 3rd party server which effectively acts as an intermediary between your email server and your phone. I don't like this for a number of reasons (and that is why I wrote vgsmail):

1) As far as I know, they all have ongoing costs as they can charge you to have access to their server. This is often in the form of a monthly or yearly cost.

2) As the email takes a further step, it is potentially slower to be pushed and there is one more thing to go wrong.

3) It requires you to give your email credentials to a third party. This has obvious security implications.

In contrast, vgsmail connects directly to your mail server and I (as owner, developer...) have no control over your email. Therefore even if I wanted to, I cannot charge you by the month and I have no access to your email account. And there is no intermediary to go wrong.
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] pfluger:
I have been able to succesfully install vgsmail on my WM2005 (which is a VPA compact II) and manually added the profile to the registry.

Vgsmail starts fine, but now I get an error: "The trial of vgsmail expires. Please register". I just installed it yesterday? Is vgsmail time limited?
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] oltp:
Noticed this morning the same & send a mail to geoffrey, there's a new download available on his site, but can't find a register section.

Cheers, M
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] geoffreycross:
The registration will come at some later date. Sorry for not updating the expiry earlier; I forgot. The new version will expire at the end of January, but there will inevitable be further releases before then.
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] oltp:
hi geoffrey,

thanks for the quick reply. On sorting out my prob. I noticed that I had two lnk's in the startup folder. The new & the old, this probably caused extra slowlyness on my magician now I deinstalled the previous version & installed the latest one. Usually I just install it over the old version & didn't understand the concept off the delayed start. It was the old lnk istantly starting the client.

Well let's see what the future will bring us, the expiration code definitely works.

Regards, M
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] geoffreycross:
Thanks for the double link report. I suggest everyone checks in /windows/startup and ensures that there is a link to "vgsmail startup" and no link directly to "vgsmail control".
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] pfluger:
I just downloaded the latest version. Still getting the "trial expired" message.

I think the zip file contains the wrong file versions? The files inside the zip archive are still dated 01/11.
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] geoffreycross:
pfluger:

The files look fine to me.b
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] pfluger:
sorry geoff, seems like my firefox cached the file :oops:
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] marcuss:
How does everybody else solve the fact that vgsmail does not support limitation of the emails that should be synced?

A bit hard for me to believe I'm the only one that has several thousands of emails saved (and doesnt sort the emails into folders) :)

Do you still try to sync your whole inbox (keeping just a few emails there) or do you have any other solution? Since it is very slow to sync emails it would take indefinte time to retrieve all emails for me...
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] geoffreycross:
Just a quick note to apologize to everyone expecting the WM5 release as I promised 'before the end of the weekend'. Unfortunately the end of the weekend is here and I'm not quite finished. Please be a little patient... you'll have it shortly.

For those willing to do the registry changes, I can now confirm that the everything does seem to working fine with the exception of this registry problems. I've been running the client for the last 24 hours on my brand new o2 xda atom and everything is working.
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] ak98102:
Keep up your good work, we will be waiting :)
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] dmsny:
Geoff,

Will the WM5 official version include the attchnment support as well?
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] cseilern:
@geoffreycross:

Like Marcuss, I have a ton of mails in my inbox which I dont need to sync. I also have a ton of mails in other folders I would like to sync as well. Finally, my Hosted Exchange service provider has an unreliable SMTP implementation.

I know you are working on a WM5 version, but do you also plan to implement multiple folders syncing sync limits and separate SMTP server credentials? if you are, how high on your to do lits are these?

Thanks.
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] pfluger:
I got vgsmail working with 1&1 (German Webhosting Provider) on my WM5 device. Updates in my INBOX are correctly pushed to the device and I get notified about new mails.

Some of the mails are empty though. They only show 'NIL' as message content. Sender and subject are correct.

Any ideas?
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] cseilern:
@pfluger

imap seemed to work fine for me at 1&1 (usa), but smtp was flaky (no logon) - i.e. receiving was fine, but sending was not.

as for your problem, i initially get the same thing, although i do no understand why. however, when i wait a little, i also get the bodies of the emails.
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] geoffreycross:
New version online now. This one includes a few minor fixes and a more complete set of registry options for outgoing email. These are only for those of you with a registry editor (this will change very shortly), but here is the full list:

Root: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\VGS\Profiles\PROFILENAME

IncomingServer REG_SZ

OutgoingServer REG_SZ

// IMAP server login details

Username REG_SZ

Password REG_SZ

// current ignored

Domain REG_SZ

// email address and full-name on outgoing messages

FullName REG_SZ

EmailAddress REG_SZ

// 0 = smtp server doesn't require authentication

// 1 = smtp server requires authentication

SMTPAuthenticated REG_DWORD

// 0 = use SMTPUserid, SMTPPassword for authentication

// 1 = use Username, Password for authentication

SMTPAuthenticatedIMAP REG_DWORD

SMTPUserid REG_SZ

SMTPPassword REG_SZ
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] oltp:
Downloading it right now....
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] geoffreycross:
pfluger,cseilern:

The IMAP implementation downloads the message headers (From, To, Subject, Date) first and you will see those appear in Pocket Outlook almost immediately. The client then queues a request to download the first 1k of any message and this will be added to the message once it is returned. If you're working on a very slow network, you will probably see this happening in sequence; if the network is fast you will probably happen before you get a chance to open Pocket Outlook.

A bug / feature of Pocket Outlook is that if you have a message open and the client appends data to this message, the new data will only appear after you close and re-open the message.
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] fripa:
Geoffrey:

Seems like it is going to be a very good program but I can not understand that it should be so hard for you to add the inbox limit ?? It has to be very easy just to set a limit of the number of emails to download at least before you add the day limit !?

I can also not use your program before you have added that feature. Can you please answer the question when you will implement it instead of just igonore ??
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] dmsny:
i'm sure he is just trying to get the basic functions (sending and receiving) of the application working reliably at this point. when that's solid I would assume he will complete the other necessary capabilities:

attachments

mail download filter
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] dmsny:
can anyone confirm if deleting mail from Messaging also deletes mail from the server? Does sent mail from Messaging show up in sent mail from the server? In other words, does everything stay in sync between the WM5 device and the IMAP server?

Geoff, can the body download limit of 1K be adjusted as well?
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] paulg1981:
Hello everyone I am new here and have been using the app with little problems! I love it! I do have a couple of questions for you all though.

1. Is there a way to adjust the download limit to retrieve the entire message?

2. When sending mail i am unable, after sending an item, to open the inbox for a few tries? I can always eventually get it to open but not immediately.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. FWIW I have a PPC 6700.
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] micaman:
Has anyone been able to send or receive attachments? Geoffrey mentioned he was working on this but I wasn’t sure if there have been further advances since.
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] oltp:
Hi Geoff,

Now some positive news: after shutting down the client the position in the tray becomes vacant again, thanks for sorting that out. It was annoying in combi. with phm traylaunchet.

Tomorrow I'll give the config. off a separate smtp server a go.

Overall thumbs up!

Cheers, M
[JAM, MDA Compact, S100 General] cseilern:
@geoffreycross

just to say thanks for vgsmail. the fact that this topic has become one of the most popular magician threads just goes to show how much ppc owners need/want mobile easy email without the hassle of a "service provider". Keep up th good stuff!