Pegasus Mail


 * This article is about the e-mail software; for the unrelated spyware, see Pegasus.

Pegasus Mail is a mail program for PC/MS-DOS and Windows. It has been around since the early 1990s, and is still being developed. It is distributed free, but is not open-source. It is owned by its developer, David Harris, with no affiliation to any corporation or organization. A wide range of files are used for storing messages, message folders, configuration settings, address books, and other things. The files will usually be found beneath a root-level directory named PMAIL. One feature of Pegasus Mail is its ability to run on any compatible system without needing to install anything into its operating system or hard disk, so the program and data for Pegasus can be stored on a thumb drive or other movable unit and run on different PCs.

A program called "Rescom" is used to compile resource files for Pegasus; advanced users might need to use it to do things like set up embedded quote files.

Queued outgoing messages are stored in  files which are in the Internet e-mail message format with a few extra Pegasus-specific headers.

The Mercury mail server was created by the same author/publisher.

.pmr (Address Book) structure
TAdrBookHeader = packed record  (* first record *) Title: array[0..39] of char; fill1: array[0..23] of char; Left, Top, Right, Bottom: word; fill2: array[0..55] of char;

TFullAddress = packed record  (* second and subsequent records *) fill0: word; Alias: array[0..39] of char; (* common name *) Company: array[0..39] of char; Key: array[0..11] of char; Street: array[0..59] of char; Post: array[0..56] of char; fill1: array[0..2] of char; Phone: array[0..23] of char; Fax: array[0..23] of char; Notes: array[0..79] of char; Address: array[0..99] of char; (* email address *) fill2: longint; Picture: array[0..8] of char; (* aaaaaaaa *) fill3: array[0..2] of char; end;

.top files
According to some discussion on the Pegasus Mail mailing list, files with a .top extension sometimes get generated during the process of handling mail filtering rules, but are temporary files not intended to stick around; they can be safely deleted if they do accidentally persist. No further information on their format has been mentioned.

File format info

 * A guide to Pegasus Mail files

Tools and utilities

 * Mail::Pegasus module for Perl (reads Pegasus Mail files)
 * Tools for maintaining Pegasus Mail files
 * PMVCARD: import vCard data into PM address book

Other links and references

 * Pegasus Mail (Wikipedia)
 * Pegasus Mail official site (with free downloads, etc.)
 * Switching from Pegasus to Outlook
 * Discussion of address-book importing
 * Guide to copying mailboxes between systems