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Text File | 1995-03-08 | 25KB | 501 lines

  Copyright @ 1995 MSM Systems Ltd. 9802 W. Bell Rd., P.O Box 1184
  Sun City, Arizona  85372. Reproduction or translation of any part of
  this work beyond that permitted by section 107 or 108 of the Untied States
  Copyright Act without the permission of the copyright owner is unlawful.






                                  E-MAIL


      Electronic mail, or e-mail, is your personal connection to the
 world of the Net. Every one of the millions of people around the world who
 use the Net have their own e-mail address.  A growing number of "gateways"
 tie more and more people to the Net every day.  When you logged onto the
 host system you are now using, it automatically generated an address
 for you, as well.
     The basic concepts behind e-mail parallel those of regular mail.
 You send mail to people at their particular addresses.  In turn, they
 write to you at your e-mailbox address.  You can subscribe to the
 electronic equivalent of magazines and newspapers. There is even
 electronic junk mail.
     E-mail has two distinct advantages over regular mail.  The
 most obvious is speed. Instead of several days, your message can reach
 the other side of the world in hours or even minutes (depending on
 where you drop off your mail and the state of the connections between
 there and your recipient).  The other advantage is that once you master
 the basics, you'll be able to use e-mail to access databases and file
 libraries.  You'll see how to do this later, along with learning how to
 transfer program and data files through e-mail.
     E-mail also has advantages over the telephone.  You send your
 message when it's convenient for you.  Your recipient responds at his
 convenience.  No more telephone tag.  And while a phone call across
 the country or around the world can quickly result in huge phone
 bills, e-mail lets you exchange vast amounts of mail for only a few
 pennies -- even if the other person is in New Zealand.
     E-mail is your connection to help -- your Net lifeline.  The Net can
 sometimes seem a frustrating place!  No matter how hard you try, no matter
 where you look, you just might not be able to find the answer to whatever
 is causing you problems. But when you know how to use e-mail, help is
 often just a few keystrokes away: ask your system administrator or a
 friend for help in an e-mail message.
     The quickest way to start learning e-mail is to send yourself a
 message.  Most public-access sites actually have several different types of
 mail systems, all of which let you both send and receive mail. We'll
 start with the simplest one, known, appropriately enough, as "mail,"
 and then look at a couple of other interfaces. At your host system's
 command prompt, type this:

              mail username

 where username is the name you gave yourself when you first logged on.
 Hit enter.  The computer might respond with

              subject:


              Type

              test

 or, actually, anything at all (but you'll have to hit enter before
 you get to the end of the screen). Hit enter.
      The cursor will drop down a line. You can now begin writing the
 actual message. Type a sentence, again, anything at all.  And here's
 where you hit your first Unix frustration, one that will bug you
 repeatedly: you have to hit enter before you get to the very end of
 the line.  Just like typewriters, many Unix programs have no word-
 wrapping.
      When done with your message, hit return. Now hit control-D (the
 control and the D keys at the same time).  This is a Unix command that
 tells the computer you're done writing and that it should close your
 "envelope" and mail it off (you could also hit enter once and then, on
 a blank line, type a period at the beginning of the line and hit enter
 (again).
      You've just sent your first e-mail message.  And because you're
 sending mail to yourself, rather than to someone somewhere else on the
 Net, your message has already arrived, as we'll see in a moment.
      If you had wanted, you could have even written your message on
 your own computer and then uploaded it into this electronic
 "envelope."  There are a couple of good reasons to do this with long
 or involved messages.  One is that once you hit enter at the end of a
 line in "mail" you can't readily fix any mistakes on that line (unless
 you use some special commands to call up a Unix text processor.  Also,
 if you are paying for access by the hour, uploading a prepared
 message can save you money.  Remember to save the document in ASCII or
 text format.  Uploading a document you've created in a word processor
 that uses special formatting commands (which these days means many
 programs) will cause strange effects.
      When you get that blank line after the subject line, upload the
 message using the ASCII protocol.  Or you can copy and paste the text,
 if your software allows that. When done, hit control-D as above.
      Now you have mail waiting for you.  Normally, when you log on,
 your public-access site will tell you whether you have new mail
 waiting.  To open your mailbox and see your waiting mail, type

           mail

 and hit enter.
      When the host system sees "mail" without a name after it, it
 knows you want to look in your mailbox rather than send a message.


 Your screen, on a plain-vanilla Unix system will display:

          Mail version SMI 4.0 Mon Apr 24 18:34:15 PDT 1989  Type ? for help.
          "/usr/spool/mail/adamg": 1 message 1 new 1 unread


          >N 1 adamg              Sun Mar 22 20:04   12/290   test

      Ignore the first line; it's just computerese of value only to the
 people who run your system. You can type a question mark and hit
 return, but unless you're familiar with Unix, most of what you'll see
 won't make much sense at this point.
      The second line tells you the directory on the host system where
 your mail messages are put.  This is your "home directory."  It's a
 good name to remember.  Later, when you start transferring files across
 the Net, this is where they will usually wind up, or from where you'll
 send them.  The second line also tells you how many messages are in your
 mailbox, how many have come in since the last time you looked and how
 many messages you haven't read yet.
      It's the third line that is of real interest -- it tells you who
 the message is from, when it arrived, how many lines and characters
 it takes up, and what the subject is.  The "N" means it is a new
 message -- it arrived after the last time you looked in your mailbox.
 Hit enter. And there's your message -- only now it's a lot
 longer than what you wrote!

       Message 1:
       From adamg Mar 22 20:04:55 1992
       Received: by eff.org id AA28949
       (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4/pen-ident for adamg); Sun, 22 Mar 1992 20:04:55 -0400
       (ident-sender: [e-mail])
       Date: Sun, 26 Apr 1992 21:34:55 -0400
       From: Adam Gaffin <adamg>
       Message-Id: <[e-mail]>

       To: adamg
       Subject: test
       Status: R
       This is only a test!

      Whoa! What is all that stuff? It's your message with a postmark
 gone mad.  Just as the postal service puts its marks on every piece of
 mail it handles, so do Net postal systems.  Only it's called a
 "header" instead of a postmark. Each system that handles or routes
 your mail puts its stamp on it.  Since many messages go through a
 number of systems on their way to you, you will often get messages
 with headers that seem to go on forever.  Among other things, a header
 will tell you exactly when a message was sent and received (even the
 difference between your local time and GMT -- as at the end of line 4
 above).
      If this had been a long message, it would just keep scrolling
 across and down your screen -- unless the people who run your public-
 access site have set it up to pause every 24 lines.  One way to deal
 with a message that doesn't stop is to use your telecommunication
 software's logging or text-buffer function.  Start it before you hit
 the number of the message you want to see.  Your computer will ask you
 what you want to call the file you're about to create. After you name
 the file and hit enter, type the number of the message you want to see
 and hit enter.  When the message finishes scrolling, turn off the
 text-buffer function, and the message is now saved in your computer.
 This way, you can read the message while not connected to the Net
 (which can save you money if you're paying by the hour) and write a
 reply offline.
      But in the meantime, now what?  You can respond to the message,
 delete it or save it.  To respond, type a lower-case "r" and hit
 enter.  You'll get something like this:

           To: adamg
           Subject: Re:  test

      Note that this time, you don't have to enter a username.  The
 computer takes it from the message you're replying to and
 automatically addresses your message to its sender. The computer also
 automatically inserts a subject line, by adding "Re:" to the original
 subject.  From here, it's just like writing a new message. But say you
 change your mind and decide not to reply after all. How do you get out
 of the message? Hit control-C once. You'll get this:

           (Interrupt -- one more to kill letter)

 If you hit control-C once more, the message will disappear and you'll
 get back to your mail's command line.
      Now, if you type a lower-case "d" and then hit enter, you'll

 delete the original message.  Type a lower-case "q" to exit your
 mailbox.
      If you type a "q" without first hitting "d", your message is
 transferred to a file called mbox.  This file is where all read, but
 un-deleted messages go.  If you want to leave it in your mailbox for
 now, type a lower-case "x" and hit enter.  This gets you out of mail
 without making any changes.
      The mbox file works a lot like your mailbox.  To access it, type

            mail -f mbox

 at your host system's command line and hit enter.
      You'll get a menu identical to the one in your mailbox from which
 you can read these old messages, delete them or respond to them.  It's
 probably a good idea to clear out your mailbox and mbox file from
 time to time, if only to keep them uncluttered.

     Are there any drawbacks to e-mail?  There are a few.  One is that
 people seem more willing to fly off the handle electronically than in
 person, or over the phone.  Maybe it's because it's so easy to hit R
 and reply to a message without pausing and reflecting a moment.
 That's why we have smileys!  There's no online equivalent yet of a
 return receipt: chances are your message got to where it's going, but
 there's no absolute way for you to know for sure unless you get a
 reply from the other person.  Also, because computers are quite
 literal, you have to be very careful when addressing a message.
 Misplace a period or a single letter in the address, and your message
 could come back to you, undelivered.
      So now you're ready to send e-mail to other people on the Net.
 Of course, you need somebody's address to send them mail.  How do you
 get it?
      Alas, the simplest answer is not what you'd call the most
 elegant: you call them up on the phone or write them a letter on paper
 and ask them.  Residents of the electronic frontier are only beginning
 to develop the equivalent of phone books, and the ones that exist
 today are far from complete (still, later on, we'll show you how to
 use some of these directories).
      Eventually, you'll start corresponding with people, which means
 you'll want to know how to address mail to them.  It's vital to know
 how to do this, because the smallest mistake -- using a comma when you
 should have used a period, for instance, can bounce the message back
 to you, undelivered.  In this sense, Net addresses are like phone
 numbers: one wrong digit and you get the wrong person.  Fortunately,
 most net addresses now adhere to a relatively easy-to-understand
 system.
      Earlier, you sent yourself a mail message using just your user-
 name.  This was sort of like making a local phone call -- you didn't
 have to dial a 1 or an area code.  This also works for mail to anybody
 else who has an account on the same system as you.
      Sending mail outside of your system, though, will require the use
 of the Net equivalent of area codes, called "domains." A basic Net
 address will look something like this:

               [e-mail]

      Tomg is somebody's user ID, and he is at (hence the @ sign) a
 site or "domain" known as std.com.  Large organizations often have
 more than one computer linked to the Internet; in this case, the name
 of the particular machine is world (you will quickly notice that, like
 boat owners, Internet computer owners always name their machines).
      Domains tell you the name of the organization that runs a given
 e-mail site and what kind of site it is or, if it's not in the U.S.,
 what country it's located in.  Large organizations may have more than
 one computer or gateway tied to the Internet, so you'll often see a
 two-part domain name; and sometimes even three- or four-part domain
 names.
      In general, American addresses end in an organizational suffix,
 such as ".edu," which means the site is at a college or university.
 Other American suffixes include:

           .com for businesses
           .org for non-profit organizations
           .gov and .mil for government and military agencies
           .net for companies or organizations that run large networks.


      Sites in the rest of the world tend to use a two-letter code that
 represents their country.  Most make sense, such as .ca for Canadian
 sites, but there are a couple of seemingly odd ones.  Swiss sites end
 in .ch, while South African ones end in .za.  Some smaller U.S. sites
 are beginning to follow this international convention (such as
 unixland.natick.ma.us).
     You'll notice that the above addresses are all in lower-case.
 Unlike almost everything else having anything at all to do with Unix,
 Most Net mailing systems don't care about case, so you can capitalize
 names if you want, but you generally don't have to. Alas, there are a
 few exceptions -- some public-access sites do allow for capital
 letters in user names.  When in doubt, ask the person you want to
 write to, or let her send you a message first (recall how a person's

 e-mail address is usually found on the top of her message).
    The domain name, the part of the address after the @ sign, never
 has to be capitalized.
      It's all a fairly simple system that works very well, except,
 again, it's vital to get the address exactly right -- just as you have
 to dial a phone number exactly right.  Send a message to [e-mail]
 (which is the University of New Mexico) when you meant to send it to
 [e-mail] (the University of Minnesota), and your letter will either
 bounce back to you undelivered, or go to the wrong person.
      If your message is bounced back to you as undeliverable, you'll
 get an ominous looking-message from MAILER-DAEMON (actually a rather
 benign Unix program that exists to handle mail), with an evil-looking
 header followed by the text of your message. Sometimes, you can tell
 what went wrong by looking at the first few lines of the bounced
 message.  Besides an incorrect address, it's possible your host system
 does not have the other site in the "map" it maintains of other host
 systems. Or you could be trying to send mail to another network, such
 as Bitnet or CompuServe, that has special addressing requirements.
     Sometimes, figuring all this out can prove highly frustrating.
 But remember the prime Net commandment: Ask.  Send a message to your
 system administrator.  He or she might be able to help decipher the
 problem.
     There is one kind of address that may give your host system
 particular problems.  There are two main ways that Unix systems
 exchange mail.  One is known as UUCP and started out with a different

 addressing system than the rest of the Net.  Most UUCP systems have
 since switched over to the standard Net addressing system, but a few
 traditional sites still cling to their original type, which tends to
 have lots of exclamation points in it, like this:

                uunet!somesite!othersite!mybuddy

      The problem for many host sites is that exclamation points (also
 known as "bangs") now mean something special in the more common systems
 or "shells" used to operate many Unix computers. This means that
 addressing mail to such a site (or even responding to a message you
 received from one) could confuse the poor computer to no end and your
 message never gets sent out. If that happens, try putting "forward"
 backslashes in front of each exclamation point, so that you get an
 address that looks like this:

                uunet\!somesite\!othersite\!mybuddy

 Note that this means you may not be able to respond to such a message
 by typing a lower-case "r"  -- you may get an error message and you'll
 have to create a brand-new message.
     If you want to get a taste of what's possible through e-mail,
 start an e-mail message to

               [e-mail]

 Leave the "subject:" line blank.  As a message, write this:

               send quote

 Or, if you're feeling a little down, write this instead:

               send moral-support

      In either case, you will get back a message within a few seconds to
 a few hours (depending on the state of your host system's Internet
 connection).  If you simply asked for a quote, you'll get back a
 fortune-cookie-like saying.  If you asked for moral support, you'll also
 get back a fortune-cookie-like saying, only supposedly more uplifting.
       This particular "mail server" is run by Oregon State University.
 Its main purpose is actually to provide a way to distribute agricultural
 information via e-mail.  If you'd like to find out how to use the
 server's full range of services, send a message to the above address
 with this line in it:

               send help

 You'll quickly get back a lengthy document detailing just what's
 available and how to get it.
      The "mail" program is actually a very powerful one and a Netwide
 standard, at least on Unix computers.  But it can be hard to figure
 out -- you can type a question mark to get a list of commands, but
 these may be of limited use unless you're already familiar with Unix.
 Fortunately, there are a couple of other mail programs that are easier
 to use.

 ELM

      Elm is a combination mailbox and letter-writing system that uses
 menus to help you navigate through mail.  Most Unix-based host systems
 now have it online. To use it, type

                 elm

 and hit enter.  You'll get a menu of your waiting mail, along with a
 list of commands you can execute, that will look something like this:


    Mailbox is '/usr/spool/mail/adamg' with 38 messages [ELM 2.3 PL11]



      1   Sep 1  Christopher Davis  (13)   here's another
 message.
      2   Sep 1  Christopher Davis  (91)   This is a message from
 Eudora
      3   Aug 31 Rita Marie Rouvali (161)  First Internet Hunt !!!
 (fwd)
      4   Aug 31 Peter Scott/Manage (69)   New File <UK077> University
 of Londo
      5   Aug 30 Peter Scott/Manage (64)   New File <DIR020> X.500
 service at A
      6   Aug 30 Peter Scott/Manage (39)   New File <NET016> DATAPAC
 Informatio

      7   Aug 28 Peter Scott/Manage (67)   Proposed Usenet group for
 HYTELNET n
      8   Aug 28 Peter Scott/Manage (56)   New File <DIR019> JANET
 Public Acces
      9   Aug 26 Helen Trillian Ros (15)
 Tuesday
      10  Aug 26 Peter Scott/Manage (151)  Update <CWK004> Oxford
 University OU


 You can use any of the following commands by pressing the first character;

 d)elete or u)ndelete mail, m)ail a message, r)eply or f)orward mail,
 q)uit. To read a message, press <return>.  j = move down, k = move up,
 ? = help

      Each line shows the date you received the message, who sent it,
 how many lines long the message is, and the message's subject.
      If you are using VT100 emulation, you can move up and down the
 menu with your up and down arrow keys.  Otherwise, type the line number
 of the message you want to read or delete and hit enter.
      When you read a message, it pauses every 24 lines, instead of
 scrolling until it's done.  Hit the space bar to read the next page.
 You can type a lower-case "r" to reply or a lower-case "q" or "i"
 to get back to the menu (the I stands for "index").
      At the main menu, hitting a lower-case "m" followed by enter
 will let you start a message.  To delete a message, type a lower-case
 "d".  You can do this while reading the message.  Or, if you are in
 the menu, move the cursor to the message's line and then hit D.
      When you're done with Elm, type a lower-case "q".  The program
 will ask if you really want to delete the messages you marked. Then,
 it will ask you if you want to move any messages you've read but
 haven't marked for deletion to a "received" file.  For now, hit your n
 key.
      Elm has a major disadvantage for the beginner. The default text
 editor it generally calls up when you hit your "r" or "m" key is
 often a program called emacs. Unixoids swear by emacs, but everybody
 else almost always finds it impossible.  Unfortunately, you can't
 always get away from it (or vi, another text editor often found on
 Unix systems), so later on we'll talk about some basic commands.

 PINE

      Pine is based on elm but includes a number of improvements that
 make it an ideal mail system for beginners.   Like elm, pine starts
 you with a menu.  It also has an "address book" feature that is handy
 for people with long or complex e-mail addresses. Hitting A at the
 main menu puts you in the address book, where you can type in the
 person's first name (or nickname) followed by her address. Then, when
 you want to send that person a message, you only have to type in her
 first name or nickname, and pine automatically inserts her actual
 address. The address book also lets you set up a mailing list.  This
 feature allows you to send the same message to a number of people at
 once.
      What really sets pine apart is its built-in text editor,
 which looks and feels a lot more like word-processing programs

 available for MS-DOS and Macintosh users.  Not only does it have
 word wrap (a revolutionary concept if ever there was one, it also has a
 spell-checker and a search command. Best of all, all of the commands
 you need are listed in a two-line mini-menu at the bottom of each
 screen.  The commands look like this:

                ^W Where is

 The little caret is a synonym for the key marked "control" on your
 keyboard.  To find where a particular word is in your document, you'd
 hit your control key and your W key at the same time, which would bring
 up a prompt asking you for the word to look for.
      Some of pine's commands are a tad peculiar (control-V for "page
 down" for example), which comes from being based on a variant of

 emacs (which is utterly peculiar).  But again, all of the commands you
 need are listed on that two-line mini-menu, so it shouldn't take you
 more than a couple of seconds to find the right one.
      To use pine, type

                pine

 at the command line and hit enter.  It's a relatively new program, so
 many systems do not yet have it online.  But it's so easy to use, you
 should probably send e-mail to your system administrator urging him to
 get it!



 MSM Systems, Ltd.