Connecting with your Boss:
In order to receive messages, you need to connect to your Boss.  The usual way to do this is via modem.  Go to the File menu and select Connect to Boss…. If the Communications Toolbox is not installed on your boot disk this option is disabled, and you will have to use a separate mailer program.  See the next section for directions.

If the Boss system is busy or the connection fails for some other reason, MacWoof will retry up to a total of 10 times at 30 second intervals. These values may be changed using the Configure… Boss Info… menu.

Once there is a connection, MacWoof does either a YooHoo/DietIFNA or a plain FTSC-0001 mail session. This often takes a few seconds to get started. There is a “Session” window that reflects the phase of the transfer. When the session is complete, or an error occurs or (eventually) you lose carrier, the connection manager resets the modem and the session window goes away. If any incoming mail was received, it is automatically imported for you.

Reading Messages:
Once you have gotten your messages, look at  your Areas menu. The text “style” of each area name gives a clue to that area’s contents. The ones in outline have unread messages. The ones that are in bold have messages, but they have all been read. Finally, any in just plain text are empty areas. Select one of the areas that has unread messages. 

Maneuvering through Messages:
Now you will see a window open up that shows the last message read (or the first message if this is the first time you are reading in this area). You can use the right & left arrow keys to move forwards and backwards through the messages. Pressing ⌘-1 (or if you have an extended keyboard the Home key) will take you to the first message in the area. Pressing ⌘-0 (or the End key) will take you to the last message. Particularly useful once you have been getting messages for awhile are the ⌘-2 and ⌘-3 keys. 

⌘-2 takes you to the first unread message. Because MacWoof defaults to sorting incoming messages by date & time sent, this could be before the last message you read last time. 

⌘-3 will take you to the next higher message that hasn't been read.

Searching Messages:
The Find… command on the Messages menu allows you to search through the messages in a given area for a specified text string. Selecting Find… (⌘-F) brings up a dialog which allows you to enter the text you are searching for.  A set of radio buttons let you select which fields of the message will be searched for a match. You can search the Subject, From, and To fields of each message as well as within the text of each message. Additionally, there is a check box that let’s you tell MacWoof only to search in messages you haven’t read yet.

If MacWoof finds a match, it makes the message with the match the current message. To search again select Find Again… (⌘-G). If MacWoof can’t find a match it alerts you with its distinctive bark and remains positioned at the current message.
 
Saving Messages to Disk:
While reading messages, you may want to keep one for future reference.  Choose Save Message to Disk on the File menu.  You will see the usual file selection dialog.  MacWoof uses the message subject as a suggested file name.  All the header information (date sent, sender, etc.) is listed first followed by the actual text of the message. The file that is created is a plain text file that can be edited and printed with any word processor.

You can also save all messages in any given area in a single file.  Choose Save all msgs to a file… from the Messages menu.  This file is in the same format as one with a single message.

Printing a Message:
You can print the header and contents of a message by using  the Print Message (⌘-P) item from the File menu.

Changing Areas:
When you are through reading messages in an area, you can simply choose another area from the Areas menu or click the close button which closes the window and leaves no area selected. Also, if you quit MacWoof with an area open, the next time you open that message file, that area will be opened and the message you were looking at will be displayed.

Entering New Messages:
When you want to enter a message in an area, select one of the message creation choices from the Messages menu or use the appropriate command key combination. You have 3 choices: New message, Reply to message, or Quote message. (⌘-N, ⌘-R, and ⌘-' (single quote) respectively.) 

The difference between the three options is that New Message is for the creation of a message independent of the currently displayed message. Reply to message uses the subject, to and from fields of the current message and creates an “empty” reply message for you to fill in the text of. Quote message is similar to Reply to message but places the text of the currently visible message into the text of the new message with each line set off to indicate that it is “quoted” text.

Once you select one of these functions, another window similar to the message display window appears. The big difference is that you can edit any of the fields and there are Send and Cancel buttons in the header area. Simply enter your message, using standard Macintosh cut & paste techniques. 

Note: You should avoid using any of the special Macintosh characters such as accented vowels, curly quotes (ie: “ & “), etc. These characters are not standard ASCII characters and at the very least, don’t look the same on non-Mac systems in FidoNet and in the worst cases, can actually cause some FidoNet mailer software to crash.

If you have text in a separate file that you wish to add to your message, you can use Load Message Text… on the File menu to read the text into your message.  The file in question must be a plain text file.

When you have finished composing your message select the Send message (⌘-S) from the Messages menu. MacWoof then adds the appropriate AREA:, ^A kludges and your origin line and address to the message and then closes the message entry window automatically. If you pull down the Areas menu, you will see a new area labeled Outbound. By opening this area, you can examine any message(s) that you have created but that haven't yet been transferred to your Boss. Note that you can delete messages from the Outbound area, but not edit them.

NetMail messages are treated and created slightly differently than EchoMail. NetMail messages have no origin or tag lines.  When you quote a message, the quote will not have initials.  Also, when sending NetMail, you must specify a full net/node/point address for the destination. Usually this information can be found in the origin line of an EchoMail message from the person.  The information given is zone, net, node, and point.  For example, 1:109/342.3422 would be zone 1, net 109, node 342, point 3422.

When you next connect to your Boss, the messages you have sent will be on their way. MacWoof tries to find the packet file based upon the default name. If there is no pending outbound packet MacWoof will automatically create one, exporting any messages that you have sent, but not exported.

Purging Messages:
Once you have read your messages, you may want to erase them to make room for the next batch.  To do this, choose Purge Messages… from the Messages menu.  

The following dialog will appear:

You can leave either a certain number of messages in an area, or purge all messages sent more than a certain number of days ago.  If you skipped reading messages because they weren’t interesting and want to purge them without reading them, click the Purge Unread Messages checkbox.  Depending on which radio button you selected, you will next see one of these dialogs:

 

Simply type in the number you want and press the OK button.  All the appropriate messages will be deleted.