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Electronic mail (e-mail) lets you send typed messages to other Chebucto Community Net members, and to people anywhere in the world, as long as they have an Internet e-mail address. Chebucto Community Net uses a mail managing program called Pine to send, recieve, read, write and store mail. To get to Pine, type "g mail" and press [ENTER]. You will arrive in your new mail folder. If there is any, it will appear as a list. Type "m" to go to the Pine main menu or "v" to view mail. You can also read your mail by using the arrow keys to select a message and then hit the right arrow or [ENTER] to read the message.
There are also a number of other functions that the user can set for Pine. These include using Pine to read and post to Newsgroups and other configuration options. The Community Net Keymap does not operate in Pine, it has instead its own sets of commands in its different sections. Remember that, '^' means to hold down the Control key while pressing the other key.
? HELP - Get help using Pine
c COMPOSE MESSAGE - Compose and send a message
i FOLDER INDEX - View messages in current folder
l FOLDER LIST - Select a folder to view
a ADDRESS BOOK - Update address book
s SETUP - Configure or update Pine
q QUIT - Exit the Pine program
? Display help text
o Show other available commands
m MAIN MENU screen
q Quit Pine
c Compose a message to selected address
l FOLDER LIST screen
g Specify a folder to go to
i FOLDER INDEX screen
From most areas in Pine, "c" will take you to the composing screen. The basics of editing are the same as for the Pico editor detailed later in this document. Look there for a detailed description of editing the message.
The top part of the composing screen contains a header for the address and some information about sending it. Below this is the actual message.
For example:
From: aa001@chebucto.ns.ca Sat Mar 18 10:48:34 1995 Date: Fri, 17 Mar 1995 23:07:11 -0400 From: John Smith <aa001@chebucto.ns.ca> To: Jon Doe <aa002@chebucto.ns.ca> Subject: Good News!
The To: field in general
Type in the e-mail addresses you want to send mail to. If you are sending mail to someone else on CCN then you can just type their login name (such as aa001), or if the person is in your address book then you can just type the nickname you gave the person. When you move the cursor out of the To: field, the full addresses will be filled in. The To: field may be several lines long, and have many addresses in it separated by commas. You can move around the To: field and the header with the arrow keys.
Commands for editing the To: field
Arrow keys Move the cursor around.
Delete key
Back Space key Erase character and move back one character.
^D Del Char Delete character under the cursor.
^G Help Display this help screen.
^X Send Finish composing this message and send it off to the
addressees.
^C Cancel Stop sending this message. Anything you have composed
is lost. You have a chance to confirm cancellation.
^R Rich Hdr Expand the header to show the Bcc: (Blind Carbon Copy)
and Fcc: (File Carbon Copy) fields, so they can be
edited. Giving this command again hides these fields
again but does not remove the information.
^J Attchmnts Use this command to attach a file to a message.
First you will be prompted for the file name, and then
a description of the file you just attached. Once the
file is attached it will be displayed in the
"Attchmnts:"
line in the message header with its size. The
contents of the file won't actually show in your
message.
^Y Prev Page Go back one page in the message text.
^V Next Page Go forward one page in the message text.
^K Del Line Delete the entire line the cursor is currently on.
The last batch of lines that were deleted one after
another is saved so they can be undeleted elsewhere.
^U Undel Line Undelete the last line or series of lines you
deleted. To delete a series of lines and move them to
another part of your message addresses be sure to
delete them all at once.
Using the Del Line and Undel Line commands is a
convenient way to rearrange the order of addresses in
the To: field, or move addresses between the To:, Cc:
and Bcc: fields.
^O Postpone Temporarily stop working on the current message so you
may read other messages, or compose another message.
You can then resume working on the postponed message
by going back in to compose. You will be asked if you
want to continue the postponed message. Only one
message can be postponed at a time. When you are
ready to resume entering your message, choose
Compose. At that point you will be prompted with the
question "Continue work in progress?". Choose yes and
your existing message will appear. Choose no, and you
will be given a blank screen to compose a new
message. You may resume composing the previously
postponed message later.
^T To AddrBk Go into the address book so you can browse through
your addresses. Put the cursor on the entry you want
to send mail to and give the command to select the
address ("S" Select). You will return to the
To:field, and the address will be filled in. You may
go into the address book several times to pick several
addresses.
E-mail addresses can be structured many different ways. The most common way is:
somone@somehost Where somehost is usually the name of the system followed by abreviations for where the system is located. Such as CCN's address:
chebucto.ns.ca This tells the people that the machine is chebucto and that it is in Nova Scotia, Canada. So a full address would be:
aa001@chebucto.ns.ca But there can also be more complicated addresses that you may have to use. Just make sure that you use the address that people give you and it should work. Remember, that uppercase and lowercase letters makes a difference! Also, there are never spaces in any e-mail address.
If the person you are sending mail to is on the same system (CCN in this case) then you can just enter their user name and the rest of the address will fill in automatically. So you could just type in:
aa001 and when you moved out of the to: field the whole address would be filled in (aa001@chebucto.ns.ca).
Sometimes a person's email address has their name and then in brackets there is the e-mail address:
John Smith <aa001@chebucto.ns.ca>
In these cases you only need to enter the address (without the brackets). When you fill out someone's email address on the same system (CCN) then it will also automatically fill in their name.
The Carbon Copy field in general
The Cc: field is just like the To: field, except it is used for addressees that you wish to send a carbon copy to. That is, the message is not directly addressed to these recipients, but you wanted them to see the message. The only difference the recipients see is that their name is in the Cc: field, rather than the To: field.
All of the things that you can do with addresses in the to: field you can also do in the cc: field.
This field shows the attachments or other "parts" of the message you are composing.
The most common use for this field will be to attach a file to your mail message. You can just type the file name here and if the file is found and accessible it will be "attached". You will know it is attached when the size of the file is shown. You can also add a description of the file between the quote marks "". You can remove and edit attachments to your messages by editing the items in this field. If you delete the line, the file will not be included in your message. When you attach a file, it will not actually be shown in your message, but if the line is the "Attchmnts:" field, the file will be included.
Typing the file name here achieves the same result as using the ^J command.
If some one sends you a message with different parts or attachments, you may forward that message with its different parts if you like. When you do this the parts will show up in the "Attchmts" field too, but they will be in square brackets "[]". These attachments can be images, files, other messages, sounds and even video. The type will be shown. You can remove these attachments if you like by deleting the line from the field. This is something you might want to do often because messages with attachments can become very large and it is better to send smaller messages if that will do.
This is simply a few words summarizing the message that will show up in listings of the header when the recipient gets the message. You can type any text here you like. It's nice to make it as specific as possible. This shows up in the Index listings so the receiver can see what a message is about before actually reading it.
Using the Export command is the easiest way to take a message that you have received and put it in a plain file in your home directory. The file can then be edited, downloaded or used otherwise. The message will be written to the file with a small amount of the mail header information. You may want to edit the file to delete these headers if you don't want them.
Editing exported files is safe. Be aware, however, that it is not always safe to edit a Pine email folder directly.
To export a document, select it and then press "e". You will be asked for a filename (one is provided as a default) and where you want to export it - your personal files is the default for this.
When you press the TAB key, Pine advances to the next "interesting" message. When you are using Pine to read email, that message is the next new message in the folder (a new message is one you have not read before). When reading news folders, Pine cannot tell which messages you have read, which you have not, so the next "interesting" message is the next one which you have not yet deleted.
The Address Book provides you with a place to store and select names of people you regularly send e-mail to. Once you have entered some names and addresses you can select them again and go directly to the composing screen with the address already filled in.
Address Book Navigation Address Book Commands
----------------------- ---------------------
P Prev Address E Edit selected entry
N Next Address D Delete selected entry
- Previous page of address book A Add a simple entry
Spc Next page of address book Z Add to a list entry
W Where is (search for word/ Y Print address book
name in address book) C compose letter to selected
address
You can get to the folder list by pressing "l". You use this to get to your sent mail and saved messages folders, as well as other things.
Navigating the Folder Screen Operations on the Selected Folder ---------------------------- --------------------------------- P Move to previous folder V View Index of selected folder N Move to next folder D Delete - Show previous page of listing R Rename Spc Show next page of listing
A Add a folder
G Specify a folder to go to
I Show FOLDER INDEX
of current folder
W Whereis (search folder names)
Y Print folder listing
The folder index displays the headers or summary information of each message in the current folder. This is useful if you want to quickly scan new messages, or find a particular message without having to go through the text of each message, or to quickly get rid of junk messages, etc. If the list is too long to fit on one screen, you can page up and down in the list with the -/SPACE commands. The current message is always highlighted, and its message number is shown in the status line. Each message line contains the following columns:
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