On CMS, your email arrives (together with other files sent to you via the sendfile command) in your ReaderList. That is part of the general (public) filespace, not part of your own minidisk(s) or directories. Thus there has to be a limitation on the amount of space you use up for your mail files. The "grim reaper" automatically removes messages that are too old, too big, or too numerous.
Another option you have on CMS is receiving your messages into your minidisk(s), using the mail command. That way they are safe, but you use up your own filespace for them.
On Unix, things are at first glance very similar. All these years the standard was to read your email on a Unix machine with the pine command, which transfers your email from a part of the public filespace (called spool area) to your own mail-directory inside your home-directory. You could then read, answer, and manage your mail there. When you accumulated too much mail, your quota would fill up, so you had to archive (and then delete) part of it.
Another option is using Eudora (or a similar POP3-compatible program) to download your email to a home computer. That way you can store your mail safely on diskettes/ZIPs/hard drives and don't have to worry about quotas. Eudora allows you to quickly download all mail, write your replies, and then send them all at once, so it is the ideal option for users dialing in from further away.
Just recently, the installation of an IMAP server has added yet another option. With IMAP, email can be stored on the server, so it is accessible from multiple sites. You can also move messages to your PC/MAC, or even from your computer to the server. Both Eudora and pine work with IMAP. For more info, see the seminar materials for Migrating Email from CMS to Eudora.
When you are logged in to tigger or icarus, you are normally in a telnet-session,
so you have only a character-based display, just as in CMS. Recall that everything
you do has to be entered on the command-line (not as prefix-commands as in CMS).
To avoid a lot of typing, Unix generally uses very short commands, and pine
is no exception. Every command in pine is issued by typing a single
letter. While composing (=writing) a message, you are using the pico
editor, where commands are issued by holding down the Control-key and
typing a single letter (e.g. ^x or Control-x
for eXit). Fortunately, just as in CMS, you get a list of the
most important commands at the bottom of the screen. And one of those is o
(for Other commands), which displays another list. Another
important one is ? (for help), which lists all available
commands.
To send a quick message to user@host.domain, simply type pine
user@host.domain - or you can invoke pine's menu by typing
pine, and then select c (for Compose)
and enter the address you want to send the mail to.
pine stores messages in folders (like the CMS Ricemail mailbooks). All new messages will be in a folder called INBOX, and messages you send are stored in sent-messages. By default, pine will try to move messages you have read to another folder called read-messages. It is useful to keep these folders small, so each month pine will suggest to start a new set of folders. You can safely accept that.
Some important commands:
i (for Index)
- this also gets you out of a message you are reading, back to the index.l (for List
folders) - navigate in the list with the arrow keys.y (for
Yank it out).Pine should print directly to the attached local printer
when using the y command (this is a function of the terminal
software). If not, or if you don't have a local printer, follow these steps
to configure a network printer to use from your account:
s for setup p for printer a to Add Printer sel2058) lpr -Psel2058) s to select the printer you just installed e to exit y to confirm the changes you madeAfter many years of using CMS mail, you may have accumulated a lot of email-addresses
in your names file. How can you save these for using them in pine?
That's an easy one! First, in case you already have created an .addressbook
file for pine, you should rename it via the Unix-command mv .addressbook abook. Then, in CMS, enter nam2nick
(pine to create an addressbook in pine-format from your CMS
names-file. Finally, connect to your Unix machine via ftp (e.g. type ftp
tigger.uic.edu), set the transfer mode to ASCII (just type ascii)
and then type put address book a .addressbook
followed by quit. Done! If you have a renamed
addressbook file, you can just add its contents at the beginning of the
new .addressbook file. To do so, use pico
.addressbook, then hit Control-r to read in
a file, and type abook at the prompt. Save and quit
via Control-x and yes and Enter.
Note: The period character at the beginning of
.addressbook is crucial!
Eudora is available at the Computer Center's ftp-site both for PCs and Macs as part of the Network Services Kit. It uses the POP3- and IMAP-protocols to download your messages to your own machine. A discussion of Eudora goes beyond this seminar's scope. Please visit one of our Eudora-seminars, or study the online materials (more on the links page). In particular, the seminar on Email-Migration from CMS to Eudora ought to be of interest.
You can make a names file for Eudora, too! When issuing the CMS-command
nam2nick, simply change the option (after the parenthesis)
from pine to win or mac.
That will create a file nndbase txt a (for Windows) or eudora nickname
a (for Macintosh). You then have to connect from your computer via ftp
to CMS, set the transfer type to ascii, and get the file into the Eudora
directory, giving it the local name nndbase.txt (or Eudora Nicknames
for the Mac). Again, you should rename the existing nicknames files before overwriting
them, in case you already have nicknames on your computer. On a PC, you also
have to erase the outdated table-of-contents, which is contained in the
file nndbase.toc, before re-starting Eudora.
Actually, there is an even better method: Eudora supports multiple addressbooks. They can be named any way you like, as long as they are a plain text file (on a PC, they need the extension .txt, while on a MAC, they need file creator type Simpletext). Instead of being in the main Eudora directory, where Eudora keeps its main addressbook, they are stored in a folder called Nickname on a PC (inside the Eudora folder), and Nicknames folder on a MAC (where this folder must be inside the Eudora folder in the System folder). If you have a nickname occurring both in the main Eudora addressbook and a secondary addressbook, only the first one will be recognized by Eudora. So if you have already used Eudora and now suddenly add a converted old CMS Names file to it, you are not going to break anything - outdated addresses are not going to override correct newer ones that you may have already entered in your main Eudora addressbook.
