. 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 s.p.a.ce bar to read the next page.
You can type a lowercase 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 lowercase 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 that will keep you from going totally nuts.
If you want to save a message to your own computer, hit s, either within the message or with your cursor on the message entry in the elm menu. A filename will pop up. If you do not like it, type a new name (you won"t have to backs.p.a.ce). Hit enter, and the message will be saved with that file name in your "home directory" on your host system. After you exit elm, you can now download it (ask your system administrator for specifics on how to download -- and upload -- such files).
2.3 PINE -- AN EVEN BETTER WAY
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 doc.u.ment, 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 some systems may 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!
2.4 SMILEYS
When you"re involved in an online discussion, you can"t see the smiles or shrugs that the other person might make in a live conversation to show he"s only kidding. But online, there"s no body language. So what you might think is funny, somebody else might take as an insult. To try to keep such misunderstandings from erupting into bitter disputes, we have smileys. Tilt your head to the left and look at the following sideways. :-). Or simply :). This is your basic "smiley."
Use it to indicate people should not take that comment you just made as seriously as they might otherwise. You make a smiley by typing a colon, a hyphen and a right parenthetical bracket. Some people prefer using the word "grin," usually in this form:
Sometimes, though, you"ll see it as *grin* or even just for short.Some other smileys include:
;-) Wink; :-( Frown; :-O Surprise; 8-) Wearing gla.s.ses; =|:-)= Abe Lincoln.
OK, so maybe the last two are a little bogus :-).
2.5 SENDING E-MAIL TO OTHER NETWORKS
There are a number of computer networks that are not directly part of the Net, but which are now connected through "gateways" that allow the pa.s.sing of e-mail. Here"s a list of some of the larger networks, how to send mail to them and how their users can send mail to you:
America Online
Remove any s.p.a.ces from a user"s name and append "aol.com," to get
[email protected]
America Online users who want to send mail to you need only put your Net address in the "to:" field before composing a message.
ATTMail
Address your message to [email protected]
From ATTMail, a user would send mail to you in this form:
internet!domain!user
So if your address were [email protected], your correspondent would send a message to you at
internet!world.std.com!nancyr
Bitnet
Users of Bitnet (and NetNorth in Canada and EARN in Europe) often have addresses in this form: [email protected] If you"re lucky, all you"ll have to do to mail to that address is add "bitnet" at the end, to get [email protected] Sometimes, however, mail to such an address will bounce back to you, because Bitnet addresses do not always translate well into an Internet form. If this happens, you can send mail through one of two Internet/Bitnet gateways. First, change the @ in the address to a %, so that you get username%site.bitnet. Then add either @vm.marist.edu or @cunyvm.cuny.edu, so that, with the above example, you would get [email protected] or [email protected] Bitnet users have it a little easier: They can usually send mail directly to your e-mail address without fooling around with it at all.
So send them your address and they should be OK.
CompuServe
CompuServe users have numerical addresses in this form: 73727,545. To send mail to a CompuServe user, change the comma to a period and add "@compuserve.com"; for example: [email protected]
Note that some CompuServe users must pay extra to receive mail from the Internet.
If you know CompuServe users who want to send you mail, tell them to GO MAIL and create a mail message. In the address area, instead of typing in a CompuServe number, have them type your address in this form:
>INTERNET:[email protected]
For example, >INTERNET:[email protected] Note that both the ">" and the ":" are required.
Delphi
To send mail to a Delphi user, the form is [email protected]