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PC-MAIL tutorial Wietse Z. Venema Mathematics and Computing Science, Eindhoven University of Technology Eindhoven, The Netherlands 1. What does this software do for you? This software allows you to send and receive electronic mail. Once the software has been configured, it can be used without any knowledge about computer networking. The following summarizes a few features: o Mail messages can be edited, printed, replied to, sent, and received, from within the mail program. o Messages can be created with almost every word- processing package. o Almost every command can be selected by pressing a sin- gle key. There is a "help" facility that gives brief explanations. o You can set up an "alias" data base to avoid the use of the usually cryptical electronic mail addresses. This facility can also be used to implement small mailing lists. o There is a facility for personalized headers and signa- tures. The mail software does not attempt to solve every problem in this world. It is only fair to mention the most important limitations here: o Any information other than pure text must be converted to text format before you can mail it to someone else (for example, programs, pictures and so on). For- tunately, there exists a lot of software to aid in this task. The people that installed the mail software should be able to help you out. o Most electronic mail systems impose an upper limit to January 24, 1990 - 2 - the size of a mail message. This limit varies from about 60 kilobytes to about 100 kilobytes per message. You will have to break up larger messages; the mail software does not do it for you. Normally, you should not run into this limit. Installation of the mail software is described in various other documents. The remainder of this document gives an introduction to the use of the mail software. The following gives a summary. Chapter 2, "Starting the program", describes how to invoke the program, and how to leave it. Also gives a general introduction to the command structure of the program. Chapter 3, "Reading new mail", describes how to take care of new mail, and what happens once you have read a new message. Chapter 4, "Creating a message", describes how to compose a message from scratch, and how to specify its destination. Chapter 5, "Sending and receiving electronic mail", describes how to exchange messages between your machine and the rest of the world. It does not apply if your machine is connected to a "file server". Chapter 6, "Alias data base", describes the use of the alias data base, and gives an example of a tiny mailing list. Chapter 7, "Replying to a message", describes how to compose a reply to message. Chapter 8, "Mailing other files", describes how to distri- bute files via electronic mail. Chapter 9, "Receiving encoded files", describes how to decode files that have been encoded with e.g. the "uuencode" or "btoa" programs. 2. Starting the program Starting the mail program is easy; just type the command "mail". You should see a screen that looks like the one shown here: January 24, 1990 - 3 - Close File Setup Alias Print Up Down Enter Help ? ========================================================== Create Create a new message Work 2 Messages in preparation New 0 Unread messages In 30 Messages already read Out 7 Messages not-yet sent Sent 20 Messages already sent ========================================================== Select a message category with cursor keys and press ENTER or select one of the commands in the top line. The screen is divided into three horizontal regions: o The top region shows the commands that can be selected by pressing a single key. Some of these commands are selected by pressing a function key with the same name as the command; for example, the Up or Down commands are selected by pressing the corresponding arrow key. Other commands are selected by typing the first letter of that command; for example, the H key selects the "Help" command; it gives a brief description of what the other commands do. o The middle region shows various categories of mail mes- sages. You might think of it as a collection of boxes with letters. For example, the "New" box is for mes- sages that you haven't read yet, and the "Out" box is for messages that you wrote, but that have not yet been sent away. The program also shows how many messages there are within a message category. A special case is the "Create" box; it is for messages you are going to write. Think of it as a box with blank sheets of paper. o The bottom region gives an explanation of what you are supposed to do when you see this screen. In this par- ticular case, it tells that you can select one of the message categories by moving the cursor to the appropriate line, and by pressing the "Enter" key, or that you can give commands by pressing the appropriate key. You can leave most screens by pressing the "C" key. In par- ticular, pressing that key while the program displays the first screen is the preferred way to leave the mail program. January 24, 1990 - 4 - 3. Reading new mail Depending on how the mail software was installed on your system, you may have seen a message that "You have new mail" when you started up the machine. This section describes how to deal with new mail. In the display that was described above, move the cursor to the line with "New" and press the "Enter" key. The program will present an overview of unread messages that looks like the following one: Close File Setup Alias Print PgUp PgDn Up Down Enter Help ? ===================================================================== 90 Dec 15 22:18 Wietse Venema "Re: how do I forward a message?" 63 Dec 11 23:18 Jan Kalisvaart "File server cleanup" . . . -- end of display -- ===================================================================== Select a message with the cursor keys and press ENTER or select one of the commands in the top line. The top line of the screen shows a few more commands than the screen described earlier. New commands, for example, are the the PgUp and PgDn commands. They are useful when information does not fit in the middle screen region. The middle screen region shows summaries of mail messages. Each message is summarized on a single line, and gives the following information: o The message sequence number (e.g. 90). Normally, you do not have to remember message sequence numbers, but the mail program needs them in order to keep things apart. o The date of arrival (e.g. Dec 15 22:18). If a message is very old, the year will be displayed instead of the hours and minutes. o The sender of the message (e.g. Wietse Venema). Usu- ally, the mail program presents a "human" name. Every now and then, however, you may see an ugly electronic mail address. o The subject of the message (e.g. "Re: how do I forward a message?"). This allows you to decide if a message is urgent and has to be dealt with right away, or if the message can wait till later. January 24, 1990 - 5 - After you have moved the cursor to the message you want to read, and have pressed the "Enter" key, the program displays the selected message. The following example shows what the screen might look like. Close Delete Mail Print Reply Save Work | PgUp PgDn Up Down Help ? ============================================================================== Subject: Re: how do I forward a message? Organization: Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands From: wietse@wzv.win.tue.nl (Wietse Venema) To: you Select the message that you wish to forward, and press the "M" (Mail) key. The program will ask for a destination. As usual, you can enter an alias or a real address. This command mails a copy of the message; it does not change or remove the message itself. Greetings, Wietse Venema -- end of display -- ============================================================================== (Reading a mail message) At this stage you may decide to do nothing with the message; just hit the "C" key and the program returns to the last message-selection screen. Now that the message has been read it will no longer show up in an overview of the "New" category; once a "New" message has been read it goes to the "In" category, and remains there until you explicitly delete it. Hitting the "C" key once more brings us back to the begin- ning of the program. 4. Creating a message In order to compose a message, move the cursor to the "Create a new message" line in the first screen of the mail program and press the "Enter" key. After a few seconds you should see the first screens of the same word processor that you probably also use for other activities. Please note that the mail program has not terminated; as soon as you exit from the word processor you will return back to the mail program. If all is well, your message should begin with a "Subject: " line. Depending on how the mail software was set up on your machine, an "empty" message may already contain one or more customized header lines, as well as a customized "signature" at the end of the message. The following is an "empty" mes- sage as produced on my personal system (the text between square braces is not part of the "empty" message; I just January 24, 1990 - 6 - added it to clarify things). Subject: [the subject of this message] Organization: Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands [this is where the actual message goes] Wietse Venema If your "empty" message contains garbage you should contact the people that installed the mail software on your system. The message text that you are about to enter will be only part of the message that other people will receive; the mail software automatically prefixes each message with your own electronic mail address, and the current date-. Obviously, further details about the entry of message text depend on the word-processing package that you are using. Suffice to say that upon exit, the word processor should produce an "ASCII document" file; the people that installed the mail software on your machine should be able to provide more details on this topic. Upon return from the word processor back to the mail pro- gram, you will see the first few lines of your newly- composed message in the middle region of the screen. There may be "funny cookies" in your text if you forgot to produce an "ASCII document"; if that is the case you had better re- enter the word processor (by pressing the "E" key) and correct this mistake. After this, your screen should be something like: Close Delete Edit Mail Print PgUp PgDn Up Down Help ? ============================================================== Subject: your subject optional header lines your message -- end of display -- ============================================================== (Reading a message in preparation) _________________________ - Your message will probably be prefixed with several additional rude header lines while it passes through other machines on the way to its destination. This hap- pens outside the control of the mail software on your machine. January 24, 1990 - 7 - What you see on the screen is a close approximation of what other people will receive. If this is the first time you use electronic mail you may wish to use the "PgUp" and "PgDn" keys to check things out. Normally, the next step will be to mail the message to its destination, but you may choose any of the other commands shown in the upper line of the screen. For example, you could choose the put the message "on hold"; the mail program will ask you to give a one-line description so that you can easily find it back at a later time (it will be stored in the category "Messages in preparation"). If you choose the "Mail" command, the program will respond with: Press ESC to cancel. Send message to: ? You should enter one or more electronic mail addresses or aliases. If what you wrote was just a "test" message, you might want to mail it to yourself. There is nothing crazy about sending mail to yourself; many people do that instead of littering their rooms with notes on small pieces of paper. Aliases are described later on, and are more easily remembered than real electronic mail addresses. Your input should be terminated by pressing the "Enter" key. After this, the program returns to the first screen. The message you just "mailed" will temporarily live in the category "Not-yet sent". If your machine is connected to a "file server", it will automatically be moved to the category "Already sent" within a short period of time. Oth- erwise, you should read the next section. 5. Sending and receiving mail This section describes how to exchange mail messages between your machine and the rest of the world. This is automati- cally taken care of if your machine has a direct connection to a "file server". If you are not connected to a "file server", most of the mail-program screens will provide a "Network" command (for example, the first screen). All messages that you produce will stay on your machine, in the message category "Not-yet sent"", until the mail software has sent them away through the network. Also, messages, having your machine as their destination, will not arrive on your machine until the mail software has picked them up through the network. The mail software may have been installed such that it, as soon as the machine is turned on, automatically makes January 24, 1990 - 8 - contact with the network. In that case, you do not need to invoke the "Network" command by hand. It can, however, be useful if you are expecting urgent mail, or if you wrote a letter that should be sent away right now. The "Network" command is activated by pressing the "N" key. The mail program will ask for a network password (the one given to you by the people that installed the mail software on your machine). Transferring mail across the network may take a few minutes. If all goes well, all messages in the message category "Out" will have moved to the category "Sent"; in addition, you may have received new mail that will show up in the "New" message category. 6. Alias data base The addresses used in electronic mail are often ugly, and hard to remember. To alleviate this problem, the mail pro- gram provides an alias data base facility. This allows you to use easily-remembered names instead of mail addresses; the mail program will automatically replace aliases by the actual mail addresses that you have specified in the alias data base. The following is an example of an alias data base: wietse wswietse@lso.win.tue.nl jan wsbujank@win.tue.nl staff wietse jan An alias data base has a very simple format: each alias definition consists of a single line of text with two or more words. Words may be separated by blanks or commas. The first word is the alias; it will be replaced (by the words in the remainder of the line) if the mail program finds the alias in the destination of a mail message. With the alias data base shown above, the message destination "wietse" will be automatically replaced by the destination "wswietse@lso.win.tue.nl". An interesting property is that an alias may be defined in terms of other aliases; an alias may, however, not be defined in terms of itself! In the above example, the third line illustrates the definition of an alias in terms of other aliases. The same line also is an example of how to implement a small mailing list; all messages sent to "staff" will be sent to "wswietse@lso.win.tue.nl" and to "wsbujank@win.tue.nl". Typing the word "staff" certainly is easier. The mail program is smart enough to eliminate, after alias replacement, multiple occurrances of the same destination. Thus, you do not have to worry about duplicate destinations January 24, 1990 - 9 - if you combine several mailing lists into a bigger one. Most mail-program screens provide the "Alias" command. This allows you to look at the contents of your alias data base, and to invoke a word processor to make changes. The word processor should save the alias data base in "ASCII docu- ment" format, just like ordinary mail messages. It is worth noting that aliases can be defined in any order. The above example would have worked just as well if the last entry had been the first one. Thus, you may wish to keep the alias data base in sorted order. Finally, a few caveats are in order. If an alias is defined more than once, only the last definition will be used. Although the mail program does not care whether an alias is defined in upper case or in lower case, it is wise to keep electronic mail addresses in lower case. 7. Replying to a message Replying to a mail message is almost the same as creating a mail message from scratch; the main difference is that you must specify which message you are replying to. In order to reply to a message, select it with the cursor keys and the "Enter" key, so that the contents of the mes- sage become visible on the screen. Pressing the "R" key executes the reply command. The program will ask you if the reply should include a copy of the message being replied to. Including a copy of the original message is convenient if the sender asked several questions; both you and the recipient of the message can see what questions you are actually replying to. In order to distinguish the text that you write from what the other per- son wrote, the latter text will be prefixed with a ">" char- acter at the beginning of each line. After you answered the question, the mail program will invoke a word processing program. Most of what follows is the same as when you create an electronic mail message: the mail program has not terminated, but is just waiting for you to finish editing; upon exit, the word processing package should produce an "ASCII document" file; after leaving the word processing program you will return to the mail program. At this point, your screen should look like this: January 24, 1990 - 10 - Close Delete Edit Mail Print PgUp PgDn Up Down Help ? ============================================================== Subject: Re: The subject of the original message Other customized header lines may go here >Text taken from the original message is prefixed >to distinguished it from the text that you wrote. Your text -- end of display -- ============================================================== (Reading a message in preparation) In order to send the message, press the "M" key. The program will respond with: Press ESC to cancel. Send message to: ? some-mail-address The mail address shown by the program was taken from the original message and should usually be correct. If you wish to use that address, just press the "Enter" key. Otherwise, the address can be changed in the usual way; you can specify one or more aliases or electronic mail addresses. After this, the message that you wrote will temporarily live in the message category "Not-yet sent"; if your machine is connected to a "file server" the message will automatically be moved to the message category "Already sent". If your machine is not connected to a "file server", read the sec- tion "Sending and receiving mail". 8. Mailing other files In addition to sending files created with your word proces- sor, the mail program provides a facility to distribute copies of other files as well. This feature is of limited use, however, since it only works well with pure text files; a file that contains non-textual data, such as a program or a picture, will have to be converted to textual form before the mail program can handle it. The mail program can, how- ever, help you to find out whether a file is suitable for mailing. Most screens of the mail program provide a "File" command that can be executed by pressing the "F" key. After a few seconds the middle region of the screen should show a list- ing of the current directory. The top region of the screen lists the commands that you can execute; the bottom region January 24, 1990 - 11 - of the screen shows the name of the directory being listed. Close Print Save PgUp PgDn Up Down Enter Help ? =================================================================== . <dir> Dec 28 18:10 .. <dir> Dec 27 16:36 alias.c 3295 Dec 12 22:41 ascf.c 5315 Dec 23 21:16 call.c 2282 Nov 30 22:08 cmail.c 3748 Dec 17 21:22 create.c 2176 Dec 27 18:28 desk.c 12435 Dec 27 14:04 deskutil.c 7180 Dec 27 15:29 . . . =================================================================== To display a file, select it with the cursor keys, then press ENTER (showing directory: "/usr2/wietse/src/pc-mail/mail") You can leave the "File" command at any time by pressing the "C" key once or twice. With the cursor keys and the PgUP and PgDn keys you can "walk" through the directory listing. Pressing the "Enter" key causes the program to "open" the thing being selected. If you select a directory, the program will display the con- tents of that directory; if you select a file, the program will display the contents of that file. In order to mail a copy of a file, select that file with the cursor and "Enter" keys so that its contents are shown on the screen. Only if you see a clean text, without "funny cookies", the file is suitable for mailing. Pressing the "M" key executes the "Mail" command. It will ask for a des- tination, which may be one or more aliases or an electronic mail addresses. Pressing "Enter" finishes the "Mail" com- mand. As usual, the message will temporarily live in the message category "Not-yet sent"; if your machine is con- nected to a "file server" the message will automatically be moved to the message category "Already sent". If your machine is not connected to a "file server", read the sec- tion "Sending and receiving mail". In order to leave the "File" command you may have to press the "C" key once or twice. 9. Receiving encoded files Sometimes people send "encoded" files if they contain data that cannot be sent directly as an electronic mail message. Encoded files must be processed by a "decoding" program in order to restore the original data. January 24, 1990 - 12 - There exist various encoding methods. Usually, the sender will provide some information about the encoding method used. In case of doubt, you will have to consult a techni- cal person. If a message was encoded with the "uuencode" program it usu- ally looks like begin 644 tutorial.ms M7"(@9F]R;6%T('=I=&@@=&AE(&US(&UA8W)O(&QI8G)A<GD*+E1,"E!#+4U!; M24P@='5T;W)I86P*+D%5"E=I971S92!:+B!696YE;6$*36%T:&5M871I8W,@P M86YD($-O;7!U=&EN9R!38VEE;F-E+`I%:6YD:&]V96X@56YI=F5R<VET>2!OJ . . . In order to restore the original file, select the message such that its contents appear on the screen, and press the "|" key. The program will ask for the name of a command: Press ESC to cancel. Filter through command: ? At this point, specify the "uudecode" command and press the "ENTER" key. Press ESC to cancel. Filter through command: ? uudecode This produces, in the current working directory, a decoded file with the same name as shown in the "begin" line in the message (in this particular example, the name would be "tutorial.ms"). Another popular encoding program is "btoa". If that program has been used, the message looks somewhat like: xbtoa Begin >Tt;&DfT]'F<GdAFD)e=BOr<'F!,=.@rcK1Ch[@!@<-W#/lYLO:dZg/5tO`m qQFE;"9=tUpuASu'r@1#_;FD,6&@<?3nF!+n/A0=6XD/aW>Bl7Q+;e'NQDI[ J=9*EcYr:Gp%$;+B2o^BPqa)DeF>&7;6XMBQ&'*DCco0BOr;]ATVTsEbo0%A . . . In order to restore the original file, select the message such that its contents appear on the screen, and press the "|" key. The program will ask for the name of a command: January 24, 1990 - 13 - Press ESC to cancel. Filter through command: ? At this point, specify the "atob" command and a file name, and press the "ENTER" key. For example, Press ESC to cancel. Filter through command: ? atob >abc.def The ">" is needed or you will get the decoded data on your screen. If all goes well, you should now have a decoded file in your current working directory (in this example, the name of the file would be "abc.def"). January 24, 1990