Quick Reminder: Eudora is an email client program. Although it can work with both a shell account and a UUCP transport agent, it is most commonly used with MacTCP, and that's how we configure it here.
Tasks:
Eudora launches.
Eudora presents you with the Settings dialog. Notice that the dialog has icons running down the left side, and clicking an icon brings up controls for that icon's options (see figure 29.21).
Figure 29.21: Getting started in the Eudora Settings dialog.
You have now completed filling in the Getting Started portion of the Eudora Settings dialog. We are going to skip the Personal Information option and move on to the Hosts settings.
The Settings dialog shows the controls for Hosts (see figure 29.22)
Figure 29.22: Setting Hosts options.
That's it for the Hosts controls. Let's move on to the Sending Mail controls.
The Sending Mail controls appear (see figure 29.23).
Figure 29.23: Setting Sending Mail options.
You have now performed the minimum configuration to use Eudora. There are many other options in the Settings dialog that you may wish to explore further. I recommend that you turn on Balloon Help from the Help menu (at the upper right of the menu bar) and point at any fields or checkboxes with which you need help.
Eudora presents you with a new message window, with the From line filled in with your email address and name (see figure 29.24).
Figure 29.24: Sending email to the President.
Since this example sends email to an address that replies automatically, the body of the message isn't that important for the time being, although you can use this method to express your opinions to President Clinton. At minimum, type something like I strongly support the concept of a National Information Infrastructure. It's considered polite to sign your name at the bottom.
Eudora immediately presents you with a dialog asking for your password. Enter it, making sure to capitalize it as you did when you originally created it (or as it was given to you). The characters will not be displayed.
Eudora then contacts your POP server and looks for new mail, transferring it back to your Macintosh if you have any. After retrieving new mail, Eudora contacts the SMTP server and sends the mail that you just queued for delivery. After it finishes sending, Eudora displays a dialog telling you whether or not you have new mail.
Assuming everything was set up correctly on your Macintosh and on your host machine, you've just sent an email message via Eudora.
Eudora presents you with a new message window, with the From line filled in with your email address and name and with the insertion point in the To line.
Figure 29.25: Subscribing to TidBITS.
You've just subscribed to a mailing list! Although other mailing lists may be slightly different, mostly in terms of the mailing list manager's address and the list name, the basics are the same.
If you received a reply from the White House when you sent the subscription message to the TidBITS list, Eudora automatically opened your In box for you.
If you have not yet received the reply from the White House or the confirmation of your subscription to the TidBITS list, wait for a while (there's no way to know how long it could take, although when I wrote these instructions, the responses came back within minutes).
Eudora opens the message and displays it, along with the first four lines of the header (see figure 29.27).
Figure 29.27: Email from the White House.
Eudora creates a new message window, entering the original sender's address in the To line and the subject of your original message, prefixed with Re:, in the Subject line. The entire body of the original message is quoted in the body of the message, and Eudora automatically selects the quoted text (see figure 29.28). You can edit this text or delete it entirely by pressing the Delete key.
Figure 29.28: Replying to a message.
When replying to personal email, you would queue the message, and then -- when you wanted to send the message, perhaps along with other queued messages -- you would choose either Check Mail or Send Queued Messages from the File menu.
Eudora moves the deleted message to the Trash mailbox.
That's about all you need to know to get started reading and writing email with Eudora. As you explore the program or read about Eudora in chapter 21, "Email," you will find many other options and shortcuts to make using Eudora even easier.
Quick Reminder: NewsWatcher is a newsreader, a client program for Usenet news. NewsWatcher requires access to an NNTP news server on an Internet host.
Note: Unfortunately, we were unable to include NewsWatcher on the ISKM disk for space reasons. The directions later in this chapter for Anarchie give specific steps for using Anarchie to download a copy of NewsWatcher.
Tasks:
If you haven't previously configured NewsWatcher, the program launches and presents a Welcome to NewsWatcher dialog (see figure 29.29).
Figure 29.29: Choosing how you use NewsWatcher.
The Server Addresses dialog appears. If you configured Internet Config, the fields will already be filled in (see figure 29.30).
Figure 29.30: Configuring NewsWatcher.
The Personal Information dialog appears.
NewsWatcher connects to your news server and retrieves the full group list from the server. This can take some time, especially over a slow modem. Once NewsWatcher sorts the list, it displays it in a scrollable window, along with a smaller window labeled untitled.
Do not quit NewsWatcher now, but go on to the next task in which you learn how to create a personalized subscription list and subscribe to newsgroups that might interest you.
You've now successfully completed the minimum steps necessary to configure and use NewsWatcher. I strongly recommend that you read my discussion of NewsWatcher in chapter 22, "Usenet News," and the user documentation that comes with NewsWatcher. Most of the additional configuration options live in the Preferences dialog, which is available from the File menu (see figure 29.31).
Figure 29.31: NewsWatcher Preferences dialog.
The window, also known as the subscription window, takes on the name that you gave it.
You may wish to move the file later, perhaps to your Apple Menu Items folder so that it shows up in your Apple menu.
NewsWatcher may show the spinning beach ball cursor briefly, and news.announce.newusers should appear in your subscription window. The number next to its name indicates the number of unread articles in that group.
Figure 29.32: NewsWatcher subscription window.
Announcements important to the entire Mac community appear in comp.sys.mac.announce. Discussions about Macintosh communications software appear in comp.sys.mac.comm, which is also a good place to ask about things that you cannot otherwise figure out. I use misc.test later, when providing instructions on posting.
The previous isn't absolutely necessary, but bear with me. I want you to start the next task, reading articles, as you would normally, and that includes launching NewsWatcher.
You've now successfully created a personalized subscription list and saved it for future use. You can add newsgroups to this list at any time and remove newsgroups that no longer interest you (to remove a newsgroup, select it in the subscription window and then choose Unsubscribe from the Special menu). NewsWatcher starts up slightly faster with a small subscription list, so it works best to only subscribe to newsgroups that you read.
NewsWatcher launches, connects to the news server, checks for new groups and new articles, and then displays your subscription list window.
NewsWatcher retrieves the subjects and authors of the articles contained in that newsgroup and presents you with a window displaying a list of those articles (see figure 29.33).
Figure 29.33: Articles in news.announce.newusers.
Since articles in news.announce.newusers are often relatively large, it may take a minute or so to download if you're using a modem. NewsWatcher displays the article once it is downloaded.
You've now successfully opened a newsgroup and read several articles. You can close the window listing articles in news.announce.newusers, and double-click comp.sys.mac.announce to see the list of articles in that group and read them if you wish.
The misc.test window opens.
NewsWatcher brings up the New Message window with the Newsgroups line already filled in and the insertion point in the Subject line (see figure 29.34).
Figure 29.34: NewsWatcher new message window.
NewsWatcher posts your article to misc.test. Now that you've posted your article, feel free to read other articles, post more articles (but remember, it's a good idea to lurk for a while before becoming a prolific poster), and subscribe to additional newsgroups. You won't see your post in misc.test unless you quit NewsWatcher and relaunch it.
Congratulations! You've successfully performed all the basic tasks you do with NewsWatcher. I won't pretend that there aren't many more subtleties in using this program, but you can learn about those from reading chapter 22, "Usenet News," and NewsWatcher's documentation files.