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 or install the Communications Toolbox. 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, 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). Below the Subject, From, To and Date field is the following strip of buttons:
 
You can use these buttons to move around from message to message in an area as well as perform message related functions like printing and saving. All of these buttons have menu equivalents as well.
For example, here is the Go To menu:
 
You can also use the right & left arrow keys to move forwards and backwards through the messages.
Message Threading:
Often, you want to read a series of related messages or threads. MacWoof 1.5.1 lets you do this using either using the Threads submenu on the Message menu or via command key equivalents. Here is what the Threads submenu looks like:
 
‚åò-T moves you to the next message in the thread while ‚åò-Option-T moves you to the previous message in the thread. What determines if a message is part of the same thread? Basically, MacWoof uses the subject field to track threads. If a message contains exactly the same subject as the message you are currently reading or if the subject of the current message appears as part of another message, they are considered part of the same thread.
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 the following dialog which allows you to enter the text you are searching for:
 
The 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 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. There are also checkboxes in the Save all msgs to a file… file dialog box to allow you to save only messages you have "marked" and/or append the messages to an existing file.
Printing a Message:
You can print the header and contents of a message by using the Print Message (‚åò-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.
You can also use the Previous and Next Area buttons in the message window or the equivalent items on the Go To menu or their keyboard equivalents. These options move you to the next area in the selected direction that contains messages.
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. (‚åò-N, ‚åò-R, and ‚åò-' (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.
Also, if you are in an "echo" area, you can specify that you want your reply to be sent as netmail to the author of the original message. Simply select the (via NetMail) menu item below either Reply to Message or Quote Message. There are also key sequence for these choices as well: ‚åò-Option-R and ‚åò-Option-'.
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 (‚åò-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. Version 1.5.1 now accepts the "standard" [Zone:]Net/Node[.Point] format. The items in brackets "[]" are optional.
Address Book:
To help you keep track of netmail addresses, there is now an Address Book built into MacWoof. When you open a netmail or area message entry window there is now an Address button visible in the window. Clicking on it brings up the following dialog:
 
Simply select the name of the person (or service!) that you want to send the message to then click the OK button and MacWoof will fill in the appropriate information in the message header.
Adding Info to the Address Book:
The simplest method to add someone's address to the Address Book is to select the Address Book item (‚åò-Option-B) from the Utilities submenu of the File menu. If you do this with a message window open, either Netmail or in an area, MacWoof attempts to figure out the persons address information from the message. Sometimes, due to peculiarities in message structure, MacWoof won't be able to figure it out properly.
See the section on the Utilities submenu for more details.
Sending out your mail:
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.
Filtering Messages:
Quite often the amount of traffic in an area can be more than you are able to read each day. To help you with this problem, MacWoof version 1.5.1 introduces the ability to filter incoming messages. The filtering can be either of two methods: Keyword Flagging and Twit Filtering.
Keyword Flagging:
Keyword flagging allows you to set for each area a set of keywords or phrases that if MacWoof finds them in any of the header fields or the text of a message, it will set a special "Flag" on that message. When you are looking at the Subjects window of an area, any messages that have been "Flagged" have the following character in the left column: "¶". You can use either the button strip in the message window or a Go To menu item to move between flagged messages. Also, you can "mark" all the flagged messages and subsequently print them out or save them to a file.
Twit Filtering:
Sometimes, certain people or topics appear in an area that you simply don't want to EVER see anything about again. To deal with this, version 1.5.1 allows you to create a separate list of keywords or phrases such that when they are encountered during the import of a message cause that message to be skipped.
Setting up Filters:
To set up either a Twit or Keyword filter for an area select the Filter Messages submenu from the Messages menu. Select the appropriate item for the type of filtering you want. If you select Keywords… you will see the following dialog:
 
If you select the Twits item you will get this dialog:
 
In either case, simply enter the word, name or phrase you want to filter for and then press the Add button. When you are done press the OK button to close the dialog.
Marking Messages:
Another of the features introduced into MacWoof in version 1.5.1 is the concept of "marking" messages. Marking basically allows you to put together individual messages into a group to then perform a common operation on such as printing, purging, etc. This is all done with the Mark submenu of the Messages menu:
 
If you want to add a specific message to the group of "marked" messages simply use the Mark Message item or press ‚åò-M. To unmark a message select the Mark Message item again. When a message has been marked, a "‚àö" appears next to the message subject in theSubjects window.
As described above, you can have MacWoof watch for certain keywords or phrase and then "flag" messages that contain them. You can use the Mark All Flagged Msgs menu item to group all of the flagged messages together for subsequent saving, purging, etc.
You can also have MacWoof mark all unread messages, all messages addressed to your name or all messages containing a keyword or phrase.
Note that marking is a cumulative process. In other words, if you manually mark 3 messages and then have MacWoof mark any messages to you and there are 4 other messages that you haven't marked addressed to you, you would end up with a total of 7 marked messages.
This is one of the reasons for the next two menu items Unmark All Msgs and Reverse Marks on All Msgs. By creative use of these two items and the other items on the Mark submenu you can quickly select a particular subset of messages for further manipulation.
Purging Messages:
Once you have read your messages, you may want to erase them to make room for the next batch. To do this, go to the Purge Messages submenu on the Messages menu.
You have the following choices:
 
If you select Purge Msgs by Number you will be shown this dialog:
 
If you select Purge Msgs by Date you will see this dialog:
 
In either case, simply type in the number you want and press the OK button. All the appropriate messages will be deleted.
If you select Purge All Marked Msgs all the messages you have marked in the area will be deleted.
Finally, if you simply want to delete all the messages in an area choose Purge All Msgs from the menu (or press ‚åò-Option-P). An alert will come up asking if you really do want to do this.
