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                           YAM - Version 2.8
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About YAM
---------
YAM (Yet Another Mailer) lets you send and receive electronic mail (e-mail)
over the Internet and maintain archives  of messages in your computer via a
graphical  user interface.  The idea  came to  the original  author (Marcel
Beck)  back in  1995  when  he first  tried  using  e-mail. The  programmes
available at the time were either powerful but complicated to configure, or
else  used a  too  limiting user  interface. The  goal,  therefore, was  to
program a  cross between AdMail and  AirMail, with a few  ideas coming from
Pegasus Mail.

While  earlier  versions  of  YAM were  developed  closed  source,  today's
versions are developed  by an independent open source  community. Since the
year 2000 a group of mixed developers maintain YAM and release new versions
from time  to time.  While these  versions are all  targeted for  the Amiga
platform,  versions of  different AmigaOS  incarnations are  supplied. This
includes native  PowerPC ports to  modern Amiga platforms like  AmigaOS4 or
MorphOS.


Before you start the installation
---------------------------------
YAM 2.5+ not only uses newer  configuration files, the files  used to store
separate emails are named differently  as well. Therefore, before you start
the  installation  script to  overwrite  your  existing installation,  it's
strongly recommended that you create a backup of your old YAM installation,
including all folders  and configuration files. Afterwards  you can install
the update into your old YAM directory  if you wish. On  start-up, YAM 2.5+
will automatically convert  your old  configuration files  to the  new 2.5+
format,  and after  being  started,  YAM will  rename  your  old emails  as
necessary,  always under  your control.  It  is also  recommended that  you
re-save your  configuration as  soon as  possible in  order to  update your
.config  file to  the new  format, which  will reveal  all the  new options
available.

In addition,  please note  that since  YAM 2.5 no  YAM: assign  is required
anymore. That means, you may even install it in a new location and start it
right  away from  there  without  having to  touch  your old  installation.
Afterwards you  may manually import  the mails from your  old installation.


What's new
----------
Here's a  list (in  alphabetical order)  of the  brave developers  who have
contributed   to    this   release    since   the   last    official   one:

              Jens Langner
              Thore Boeckelmann

And here's a  PARTIAL list of the  changes in this version  with respect to
the previous official 2.7 update:

- updated translations for czech, french, german, italian, swedish, spanish,
  turkish and english-british language.
- integration of online documentation system and removal of obsolete
  amigaguides, see http://docs.yam.ch/
- general performance improvements and general bug fixing.
- moved CC and BCC as well as Reply-To: address field from separate
  "Options" tab to the first page of the write window and made it
  user-configurable.
- integrated a multi-identity system which allows to define an unlimited
  number of identities and link SMTP servers to each identity so that
  different settings per identity are possible (including different
  signatures).
- implemented unlimited signature support through new multi-identity
  system integrated in YAM.
- multiple and unlimited SMTP-Server support. Now users can define any
  number of SMTP servers and link them to the new identity management
  system.
- implemented new "Drafts" folder system to allow to put autosave files
  as well as storing mails on hold into a separate folder commonly used
  in other mail clients.
- All Themes, Certificates, user configurable Spamfilters and the Gallery
  directory are now per default stored in a PROGDIR:Resources sub directory
  to not clutter the PROGDIR: directory too much. In future more and more
  user configurable setting directories will move there, too.
- YAM will now trust certain external SPAM filter engines (e.ġ.
  Spamassassin) when retrieving external emails and trying to identify
  SPAM. Own external spam filter rules can now be configured in
  PROGDIR:Resources/Spamfilters if necessary.
- Added full SSL certificate authentication support. If connecting to an
  SSL secured mail server (POP3/SMTP) YAM will now verify the certificate
  and compare it against official certificate chains. If a certificate is
  identified to be not trustable a warning will be presented to the user
- autosave mails now contain receivers and sender information so that
  upon recovering those mails the full entered information is presented
  again.
- Full support for the new "Mail-Followup-To:" and "Mail-Reply-To:" header
  fields which are commonly used for mailing lists.
- Sent mails can now be replied as well.
- implemented own mail download intervals per POP3 server along with
  individual mail size limits per POP3 server.
- implemented new arexx command to search for messages via message ID.
- added a string gadget to the "no subject warning requester" so that
  a missing subject can be immediately be added.
- improved Daylight Saving recognition and removed irritating DST switching
  warnings for systems known to behave correctly when DST are switched.
- large restructuring of the configuration GUI to match new identity and
  multiple SMTP feature. In addition, things belonging to the Look&Feel
  of the GUI had been moved to the corresponding config item.
- fixed certain PGP related problems causing signature check failures.
- fixed a bunch of problems related to the autocompletion features in
  the recipient string objects of the write window.
- lots of other improvement we don't remember right now (keep in mind:
  one year of development was put into YAM 2.8!) :)

If  you want  to have  a more  detailed technical  information on  what was
actually  changed, please  have a  look at  the included  'ChangeLog' file.
You can also consult the official YAM homepage for more information on the
changes done with YAM 2.8 (e.g. see http://yam.ch/milestone/YAM%202.8)

What is still missing?
----------------------
- lots of translators! YAM 2.4 featured lots of different languages, but
  due to the large amount of changed texts these catalogs are completely
  outdated. Especially support for such common languages as Danish,
  Finnish, etc. is currently missing. If you are a native speaker
  of a language that YAM does not offer (anymore), then please contact us.
  See http://yam.ch/wiki/Localization for more information.
- lots of documentation! As with the translation, the documentation largely
  lags behind. Again, if you are a native speaker (even for English) and if
  you are interested in updating/writing YAM's documentation then please
  contact us. Now that with YAM 2.8+ we have switch to a pure online-based
  documentation system people are welcome updating the online documentation
  which can be found at http://docs.yam.ch/ and is based on a public wiki
  engine.
- now that YAM 2.5+ comes with a new themes management, users are free to
  create own themes in a fashion that allow them to exchange them with
  other users. So go and create your own themes and submit them via
  AmiNET&Co! :)

Source code
-----------
Due to lack of time and motivation, Marcel Beck stopped working on YAM back
in 2000, but the sources were released under the GNU General Public License
at SourceForge.net. If you want to  help developing this program further or
perhaps you are considering a port  to a different operating system, please
consider joining the YAM Open Source team  instead of doing it on your own.
Our  home page  is  at http://yam.ch/  from which  you  can obtain  all
necessary  information   to  contact  us.   We  want  to  hear   from  you!

Donations
---------
If you  like the development of  YAM and you  want to give our  open source
developers an additional motivation to continue  to update YAM in future or
if you simply want to say "Thanks", the YAM project accepts money donations
via PayPal.  All the  donations during  a release  cycle are  collected and
divided by considering  the activity of each developer during  the time the
development lasted. This way we hope  to attract more developers in future,
which   in   turn  should   give   you   a   new  version   more   quickly.

   http://yam.ch/wiki/Donations

So in  case you  want to support  our efforts to  develop a  modern up2date
e-mail client  for modern AmigaOS-based  systems, please consult  the above
URL for more information on how to donate to us.


Online resources
----------------
As  YAM is  an  open  source development  effort,  we  have several  online
resources cover your daily YAM needs:

   http://yam.ch/          - Official Support Homepage
   http://download.yam.ch/ - Direct path to the download page
   http://docs.yam.ch/     - Online documentation system
   http://faq.yam.ch/      - Online Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
   http://bugs.yam.ch/     - Bugtracker and Feature Requests
   http://forum.yam.ch/    - Web-based online forum

   For Developers:

   http://nightly.yam.ch/  - Access to automatic nightly developer
                             snapshots
   http://svn.yam.ch/      - Web-based source code SVN access
   http://stats.yam.ch/    - Daily updated development statistics