As I said earlier in this chapter, UUCP/Connect supports multiple mailboxes (see figure 15.34).
Figure 15.34: UUCP/Connect Newsgroups and Mailboxes.
You can add and delete mailboxes and newsgroups, move them around, empty them of messages, get info about them, and check for new ones automatically by using the buttons at the top of the window. At the bottom of the window, you see the number of messages and the number of those that are unread. Like the icons next to the messages in a mailbox window, the icons to the left of the names have several states. At a glance, you can tell whether a mailbox or newsgroup has messages in it and whether any of them are new.
Note: Again, using QuicKeys you can define a macro that saves a message in a specified mailbox automatically.
I think I've given you a sufficient glimpse at UUCP/Connect's interface so that you should understand the power behind it. Again, despite its few faults, I used UUCP/Connect for years to handle the massive quantities of mail that I send and receive every day.
Speaking of lots of messages, I forgot to touch on how UUCP/Connect handles large quantities of Usenet news. There's no point in showing you a newsgroup window because it looks exactly the same as a mailbox window, but UUCP/Connect does provide threading in an interesting way. Because reading a message involves opening a window, UUCP/Connect selects all messages in a thread if you hold down the Option key as you click on any article. If you want to read those messages, press Enter to open all of their windows in chronological order. You can also press Delete to delete them all at once, which is the same thing as using the kill function in other newsreaders.
Note: The same Option-click shortcut also works in mailbox windows, which can be handy for selecting all the messages in a discussion that you've had with someone.
There are two drawbacks to this method of reading news. First, UUCP/Connect slows down when it tries to open a mailbox containing hundreds of messages. Second, it can take quite some time to open more than about 15 windows, and it's certainly possible to have a thread with more than 15 articles. So, although UUCP/Connect works fine for reading a number of newsgroups, you must read them regularly to prevent them from becoming unwieldy. A different interface for news might be appropriate for a future version, although the program has changed so little over the years that I don't have much hope for a major update.
Note: A free program called ThreadSorter sorts articles in UUCP/Connect newsgroup files by thread. Although UUCP/Connect's Option-click shortcut for selecting the articles in a thread is useful, sometimes it's nice to see them properly sorted as well. ThreadSorter lives in:
ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/pub/tidbits/tisk/uucp/
After you've read and replied to your messages, you need to call your host to send them. Remember that because UUCP is by default a noninteractive protocol, UUCP/Connect simply stores your messages in a spool folder until you call out. You have two basic ways of calling out, manually and automatically. For a manual connection, you use the commands in the Comm menu (see figure 15.35).
Figure 15.35: UUCP/Connect Comm menu.
Selecting Call Mail Server from the Comm menu immediately calls your mail server to send and receive all of your mail. I have only one server for both mail and news, but you can select either, depending on what sort of messages you want to send and receive. Alternatively, if you have yet another machine to which you can connect, it appears in the hierarchical Call Other Server menu.
Note: If you press the Option key while you're selecting one of the servers from the Call Other Server menu, UUCP/Connect brings up that server's configuration dialog box rather than calling it.
Along with various calling options and commands that enable you to terminate dialing or a connection, you also can set UUCP/Connect's log level (because I'm still using a differently named version of UUCP/Connect called uAccess, the menu command is called Set uAccess Log Level). Leaving this on the default setting works well in most cases, but you can increase it to higher numbers, such as 20, that record the slightest movement of a packet of information. If you set it to 100, it probably tells you what the electrons are doing as well. You need the detail when troubleshooting a connection; otherwise, stick with the default or you quickly fill up your hard disk with a massive log file.
I prefer to use UUCP/Connect in unattended mode, in which it calls out at scheduled times. If you go to the hierarchical Configuration menu in the File menu and select Background Tasks from the very bottom, UUCP/Connect displays the Background Tasks configuration dialog (see figure 15.36).
Figure 15.36: UUCP/Connect Background Tasks configuration.
You can create tasks to call any server at any time, repeating or not, and you can even tell UUCP/Connect to call only if messages are waiting to go out on your machine. You also can clear the logs automatically every few days with a background task, and if you're running UUCP/Connect unattended, it's a good idea to have it restart the machine once a day to periodically clear memory. On the whole, UUCP/Connect is stable, and it always works on a copy of open mailboxes, so even the uncommon crash doesn't damage any data.
Perhaps more so than any other area, the area of special features is where UUCP/Connect stands out from the crowd of free UUCP implementations. Tim Endres took a bit of flak on Usenet when he decided to create the then-uAccess as a commercial product, but for the features he added, he made the right move.
Aliases are all fine and nice for distributing email to a group of people, but UUCP/Connect has gone several steps further by providing some address commands, which are special additional extensions to the main program. The first one acts as an autoreply so that any message to an autoreply address automatically receives a specified message back. The second one automatically forwards messages, so if you send email to one address, the autoforward address command forwards it to a second address. The autoforward address command is slightly broken in that it messes up the sender and subject information in the forwarded message. The most recent address command is autokill, and I haven't used it, but it deletes messages that meet certain criteria.
Last is the fileserver address command, which unfortunately no longer ships with UUCP/Connect. Like the others, it was never meant to be an integral part of the program, only example code, but if you call InterCon and beg, maybe they'll send it to you (see figure 15.37).
Figure 15.37: UUCP/Connect Fileserver configuration dialog.
Mail sent to the fileserver address with a specific word in the Subject line elicits a response based on that Subject line. So, for instance, if you had sent email to fileserver@tidbits.com with the single word setext in the Subject line, UUCP/Connect would have sent you a file talking about the setext file format that we use for TidBITS. The capabilities offered by these address commands are extremely useful in any type of professional situation, although an individual user may also find uses for them.
Note: I've found that people prefer using autoreply addresses far more than the fileserver, so if you wish to automatically send out information to people who send email, I recommend using an autoreply address.
Although you can find utilities to perform all of these translation tasks, take a look at UUCP/Connect's hierarchical File Tools menu under the File menu (see figure 15.38).
Figure 15.38: UUCP/Connect File Tools menu.
The set of utilities is impressive. You may find them easier to use than the various utilities floating around the nets, and although they're not necessarily as powerful or fast, the fact that they're so handy in UUCP/Connect makes up for it.
Whenever you send a message, a UUCP program places it in the spool folder along with two other supporting files that share similar names. If you want to delete these files, finding and deleting all three can be a hassle. UUCP/Connect helps by providing you a Job Queue, which lists all the files waiting to go out or, depending on when you look, the incoming files that haven't yet been processed (see figure 15.39).
Figure 15.39: UUCP/Connect Job Queue dialog.
Although the Details button shows you little in the way of useful information (such as the subject of the letter), you can often differentiate messages by the timestamp. I mainly use the Job Queue to see how many messages are waiting in line to go out. This gives me an idea of how much mail I've sent during that session, and also how long the next connection will take if I connect manually.
Note: Since all the files are text files, it's relatively easy to go into the spool:uucp directory with a text editor and look at the contents of each message if you wish to delete a specific one but don't know which it is.
Finally, UUCP/Connect includes a complete, if simple, Communications Toolbox-based terminal program. This feature proves its worth when you're first troubleshooting a new connection, because it's a pain to switch back to a separate terminal emulator to check on how a chat script works. Because the terminal uses the Comm Toolbox, in theory you can use various different file transfer tools. Because there weren't any others when UUCP/Connect came out, however, the Transfers menu shows only Text and XMODEM protocols (see figure 15.40).
Figure 15.40: UUCP/Connect Terminal menu.
The main addition I'd like to see to UUCP/Connect's terminal is the capability to link it more closely to the rest of the program. For instance, it would be nice to be able to select Call Mail Server from the Comm menu and have that host dialed in the terminal. Similarly, it would be nice to have a background-only option for the terminal, so you could see on-screen what the UUCP connection thought was happening at login.
I could go on and on about UUCP/Connect because it's a deep program. A bunch of little touches aren't documented anywhere, such as being able to Option-select a server from the hierarchical Call Other Server menu to configure it, or the fact that you can copy the contents of a modal header window with Command-C if you wish. Still, the program suffers from a few interface problems such as text entry. And its configuration process could use an overhaul to clarify what's happening and which options affect which other options. Despite its price, I think UUCP/Connect may very well be one of the most cost-effective methods of sending and receiving a lot of mail and news on the Internet today.
You can purchase UUCP/Connect direct from InterCon Systems for $295. If you want to use UUCP/Connect on a network, you need at least one server copy (which is what I covered in this section), but you also can purchase cheaper client-only versions (which cannot relay news or mail to machines other than the server) for $195. Also, a ton of different pricing tiers exist based on what your volume is and whether you work at an educational institution (60 percent off) or for the government (15 percent off). For more information, contact InterCon electronically at sales@intercon.com, or at 703-709-5500 or 703-709-5555 (fax).
In this chapter, I've attempted to give you a comprehensive overview of all of the UUCP software available for the Macintosh. I won't pretend that UUCP is the wave of the future or the best way to access the Internet, because in fact UUCP is the wave of the past and is mostly limited to email and news. However, for email and news, you may find that UUCP connections are the most efficient, both in terms of your time and money. In addition, if you want to set up email accounts for a number of people in a single office, the combination of UUCP/Connect and Eudora is pretty hard to beat.
Let's turn now from the UUCP past to the MacTCP present and future. The next section looks in gory detail at everything related to MacTCP-based connections.