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1990-09-27
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Emma 2.1
========
Documentation Update
by Pete Maclean
-- ---- -------
This short document describes the changes to Emma made since version 1.7. A
full user guide for the program is available separately.
As well as a few new features, this edition of Emma has substantial improvements
in various types of error handling. For example, it now copes gracefully with a
disk-full condition and will not leave fragments of aborted messages cluttering
up your MAIL.IN file.
New Features
--- --------
(*). Three options are available on the 'M' command: send-only,
attachment-overwrite and ASCII-mode. Each option is selected by including a key
letter in a string argument.
In send-only mode, Emma sends MCI any outgoing mail without downloading INBOX
messages. The feature is selected thus:
M "S"
Send-only mode is intended for users with secretaries who create and dispatch
mail but who do not handle incoming messages.
Normally, when Emma receives an attachment with a name that matches an existing
file, it generates a new name for the attachment of the form ATTACHED.xxx. By
selecting attachment-overwrite mode, you instruct Emma to store attachments
under their original names even if such files already exist. This option is
useful for those people who update remote files by MCI. You select this option
by editing your 'M' command to read
M "O"
Finally, Emma's ASCII mode is provided for users of WordStar and similar editors
that bend high bits to their own uses. The effect of selecting this option, by
M "A"
is that all messages are stripped down to 7-bit characters before transmission.
(This stripping applies specifically and only to message texts and not to
attached files.)
You may combine options as in this example:
M "AOS"
The option letters may appear in the string in any order.
(*). The K command tells Emma to transmit a standard BREAK signal on the COM
port. (A BREAK consists of approximately 385 milliseconds of SPACE.) It is
included for compatibility with certain foreign packet switch networks that
require such a signal as a trigger for setting PAD parameters.
(*). Suppose you love Emma but are wary about keeping your MCI password in a
script file that someone else might look at. Or suppose that you use Emma on a
portable PC and need a different dialing code every time you run it. Emma can
help. Place a question mark in front of any string argument and Emma displays
it on the screen as a prompt for you to type in the "real" string you want used.
For example, to avoid putting your password in your EMMA.CSF file, you could set
up the appropriate section of it as follows:
R 15 "name:"
T "your_username"
T "/batch:1ST/"
T ? "^M^JPlease type your password (and press Enter): "
T "^M"
R 20 "COM^M^J"
You can use this facility with any script command although it is not obviously
useful with any but 'T'. Note that while you press Enter to terminate the
string that you type in, the Enter itself (i.e. a carriage return) is not
included in the string. You may type in strings of up to 80 characters;
anything typed beyond this limit is quietly ignored.
You can use the Escape key to abort a session while typing a string just as you
can at any other time.
You can even go one step further with this mechanism. When Emma reads the
response to a prompt, it reads standard input (not the keyboard directly). Thus
you can redirect input from a file. For example, set up your EMMA.CSF with null
prompts (?"") and create a file, RESPONSE, containing the responses, one per
line. Then start Emma with the command:
EMMA <RESPONSE
This would allow you, for instance, to set up a totally generic script file for
Emma then have some other application query the user for dialing code, username,
password, etcetera, write that information out to a file and then invoke Emma as
above (perhaps via a batch file).
Troubleshooting Tips for Users with MNP Modems
--------------- ---- --- ----- ---- --- ------
With an MNP modem, Emma should be perfectly reliable. If it proves not to be
then consider the following possible problems: (1) You are not configuring the
modem so that it establishes an MNP connection with MCI. (2) You have the modem
configured for the wrong type of flow control. Emma uses Control-S/Control-Q
flow control. If you set the modem for hardware flow control or any other
flow-control option then you are very likely to see errors. (3) If your PC is
on a LAN the network software may steal sufficient processor time that Emma
misses characters coming in on the serial port. Should you suspect this, verify
it by temporarily unloading the network software and seeing what happens.
Notes for International Users
----- --- ------------- -----
Emma is the only publicly available agent software for MCI Mail that is
"internationalized." As such, it has users all over Europe and Asia.
To use Emma from a foreign location, you will likely need to make substantial
modifications to a script in order to complete the connection. The most
important thing to remember in doing so is that the connection must be set up
with no echoing. This is different from terminal-mode connections and may
entail changing PAD parameters for foreign packet switch networks.
Should Emma give you the diagnostic:
***Protocol failure: unrecognized message received***
after completing a login to MCI, it is almost certain that echoing is the
problem. Determine what has to be done to turn it off.
Emma does not operate correctly with Canada's DataPac.
* * * * * * * *
Emma is Copyright (C) 1989 Ziff Davis Communications Co.
This document is Copyright (C) 1989, 1990 Pete Maclean. It may be freely
distributed with Emma as long as no additions, deletions, or alterations are
made. All other rights reserved.
NOTICE: Emma was developed, in part, using, with permission, proprietary, trade
secret information of MCI Telecommunications Corporation. The user agrees to
use this program only for the purpose of communicating with MCI Mail.