One of the many exciting features of AzTeC is electronic mail (E-mail). You
can send messages to other users on AzTeC and you can send messages to any of
millions of people and organizations through the worldwide Internet network of
computers. You can also receive messages in your own personal mailbox. These
messages often travel to a distant continent in a few minutes. Best of all, it's
free. There is no charge to send or receive E-mail through AzTeC.
You may ask, "Is there is some catch or limitation involved in the use of
E-mail?" You do have to be a registered user of AzTeC to have access to E-mail,
but we have already shown how easy it is to register. Some E-mail systems allow
pictures and sound files to be sent with E-mail messages, but AzTeC is limited
to simple text (numbers, letters, and punctuation marks in only one font and
size). As a community Free-Net, we provide basic services and do not attempt to
compete with commercial Internet providers who do provide graphics. Also, there
is a limit on how many messages can be stored in your mailbox without being
read. The limit is very generous and should not be a problem for most users.
However, we recommend that you clear mail from your mailbox after you have read
it.
When you send an E-mail message to someone, you type the address and subject
information, and then the body of your message. The AzTeC computer stores this
information in a file with other outgoing E-mail messages. Periodically, a
program in the computer scans this file and finds where each message is to go by
looking at the address information. Those messages addressed to other AzTeC
users require only the user ID as an address and are moved to a file for
incoming mail. When each user signs on to AzTeC, the program, which handles the
sign-on procedure, looks at the incoming E-mail file. If it finds mail for the
user, it notifies the user that he or she has new mail. The user can go to the
Post Office area of AzTeC to read the mail.
If the address you indicated for your message was for someone who is not an
AzTeC user, the process is a little more complicated. The AzTeC computer
periodically transfers all the mail it has for outside users to another
computer, which participates in the Internet mail system. The second computer
looks at the addresses of all the mail it has received and determines if any of
the messages are for users on that computer. If any are, they are moved into its
incoming mail file and the user is notified just as we do on AzTeC. Those
messages with addresses for users not on that computer are passed on to a third
computer, and so on until they reach the computer on which the addressee is a
user.
This sounds pretty inefficient, with messages jumping from computer to
computer all over the world. It would be, but the mail system is designed to use
the information in the address to determine the most efficient path from the
sender to the recipient. The address has two parts, a local address and the
Internet Domain address. The local address is used to tell for which user on a
computer the message is intended. On AzTeC, the user-id you picked when you
registered is your local address. When you send E-mail to another AzTeC user,
all you need to use is the local address. The domain address identifies the
computer on which a user can receive mail. If you want to send E-mail to someone
who is a user on another computer, you have to combine their local address on
that computer system with the domain address for their computer. The domain
address for AzTeC is "aztecfreenet.org". To make a complete address (called a
fully qualified address in computer talk), you use the local address, followed
by the @ symbol, and then the domain address. In the example we used above, Anna
Karenina would receive mail sent to her from outside the AzTeC system addressed
to "annak@aztecfreenet.org".
Domain addresses work somewhat like telephone numbers. A telephone number has
an area code, an exchange code, and a subscriber number. The domain address is
similar, except the order of the parts is reversed. If we look at AzTeC's domain
address of "aztecfreenet.org", the last portion, ".org", means that we are part
of a large group designated as non-profit organizations shortened to org. The
first part, "aztecfreenet", tells the host computer to forward mail to the
computer that runs AzTeC. Some domain addresses have more or fewer than 3
sections. Computers in countries outside the United States can be identified by
a country code at the end of the address, such as .ca for Canada, .de for
Germany, etc. Other common addresses are .com for commercial businesses, and
.mil for military installations. There have been other designations added which
you may see now and again.
We will show how our fictional user, Anna Karenina, would send a letter to
her brother Stepan in Pittsburgh, who works at Carnegie Mellon University. She
knows his address there is "oblonsky@andrew.cmu.edu". Anna obtained this address
by asking for it when she spoke to him on the telephone. Many E-mail addresses,
as well as telephone numbers and postal addresses, can now be found through
special Internet search engines and the availability of these services is
improving constantly.
The first thing Anna does, after signing on to AzTeC, is to choose item 4 --
"Post Office" from the main menu (or, she could type the command "send" at the
> prompt).
<<< THE POST OFFICE >>> 1 About the Post Office 2 Check Your Mail 3 Send Mail 4 Check the size of your mailbox 5 See who your new mail is from 6 Edit your signature file 7 Edit your personal aliases file 8 Have your mail forwarded 9 Directory Services ________________________________________________________ h=Help m=Main p=Previous x=Exit 'go help' 'go mail' Your Choice ==> 3
(Anna could also have used the command "send" to go directly to the
mail-sending program, skipping the post office menu, or she could just type "s"
at the > prompt.)
Anna chooses 3 -- "Send Mail" here and she receives this message:
Do you wish to send some Electronic Mail (y/n) ==> y
She answers "y" here to continue with the mail process. AzTeC sends back this
screen:
Date: Thu Oct 27 19:30:15 1994 To: oblonsk@andrew.cmu.edu
(Anna types in the address; AzTeC has put the date in automatically)
Verifying addresses... oblonsky@andrew.cmu.edu Not a local address Assuming it's OK. Is this correct? (y/n) y
(AzTeC has checked and found that this address is not for a user on AzTeC. It
is asking Anna to read over the address to make sure it is correct, because
AzTeC has no way to know if this address is correct. If Anna had typed an
address with no domain part, like "annak ", AzTeC would have checked to see if a
user is registered with that address and would have then shown this
message:)
Verifying address... annak (Anna Karenina )- OK Is this correct? (y/n) y
(AzTeC Looked up the address and found that it belongs to a registered user.
It lets Anna Know who that user is (yes, you can send mail to yourself it 's a
good way to practice sending and receiving mail). She can look at the name to
see if it is to whom she really wants to send mail and confirms the
choice.)
(If she has made a mistake, she cannot change the address. She must answer
Nand enter the address again. )
Subject: I can send E-mail now!
(Anna typed in the subject line. When, her brother Looks at his E-mail menu,
he will see a list of letters, each indicating its subject, who sent it, and the
time and date it was sent. We will show an example of this soon. Anna had to
finish the Line by pressing the "Enter" hey to continue.)
Anna took our advice earlier and set her environment parameters to choose an
editor, because it makes sending E-mail much easier. The editor is called Chet's
Editor and we will describe briefly how to use it in a later chapter. AzTeC
sends several lines of text that disappear off the screen too fast to read.
These aren't important; they are part of setting up the editor screen. What does
stay on the screen looks like this:
To: oblonsky@andrew.cmu.edu > Subject: I can send E-mail now! Cc: Reply To: annak@aztecfreenet.org > **ce 4.2E: (Fundamental)98% ------------------------------
This is the editor screen that Anna uses to compose her letter. The cursor is
on the "T" in the upper left corner. AzTeC has filled in the address and subject
that Anna had typed in earlier, and it also filled in a fully qualified address
that can be used to send a reply back to Anna. If Anna's terminal program
supports the VT-100 arrow keys, she can use the arrow keys to move the cursor
(the point where a character appears on the screen when a key is typed) to the
first blank line. If the arrow keys don't work, she can use special key
combinations with the Control key to move the cursor (we will show a few of
these in the chapter describing Chet's Editor). Anna uses the arrow keys to move
the cursor down to the first blank line below the header. She then types in the
text of her letter:
To: oblonsky@andrew.cmu.edu > Subject: I can send E-mail now ! Cc: Reply To: annak@aztecfreenet.org > Dear Stiva, After hearing you talk for years about using E-mail to send letters to your friends on the Internet, I am now able to send and receive E-mail also, so send me a letter. I registered for a Free-Net system here in Arizona called AzTeC. We can send E-mail to other users here on AzTeC as well as to anyone on the Internet. Do you have any Free-Nets in Pittsburgh yet? They tell me that Free-Nets are being started all over the country and in several other countries. Say hello to Dolly and the kids for me. Send me a reply letter; I think you can do that from your mail reader program, if it is like the one here on AzTeC. I am eager to see what it looks like when I get your letter. Anna **ce 4.2E: (Fundamental)98% ------------------------------
As Anna types, if her message text reaches the bottom line of the editor
screen, new blank lines are added (i.e., the text will scroll upward). She could
use the arrow keys to move back to previously typed text to make changes and
corrections, and what she typed would be inserted into the text. There are many
other commands she could use, to move blocks of text on the page, or to erase
lines, or many other things that can be done with a simple word processor. When
Anna finishes her letter, she pushes the Control-X and Control-C key
combinations, and this message appears on her screen:
Buffer .letter modified. Save [y/n]?y
She pushes the "y" key to confirm that she wants to save the message she just typed. A few lines of information flash on the screen and disappear which tell her that the AzTeC system saved a copy of her message in a file it will use to send her mail. After this, the screen shows:
Would you now like to... 1. Send the message 2. Read the message over 3. ReWrite the message 4. Append to the message 5. Edit the message 6. Cancel the message 7. Check spelling for this message 8. Append a file to the message Enter Command:1
This menu gives Anna several choices. If she remembers something she forgot
to put in the letter, she could answer "5" and she would get the editor again
with her text on the screen, ready to be edited or to add more. If she wants to
look at what she typed, to be sure it was correct, she could choose "2". Choice
"3" would let her start over again from a blank screen and "6" lets her cancel
the whole process. In our example her she chooses "1" - "Send the message". She
then sees this message on her screen:
Sending mail... oblonskyQandrew.cmu.edu Not a local address Assuming it's OK. done.
This tells her that the letter will be sent to the address she indicated. Now
she just has to wait for a reply from her brother. Her computer screen goes back
to the Post Office menu she used to get to the send mail area. If she had used
the command "send" to get here, her screen would have returned to the area she
was using when she sent the command.
Now that we have shown an example of sending an E-mail letter, let's see an
example of how our fictional user might look at the mail she receives. We have
already mentioned that AzTeC has a file with incoming mail. When a user first
signs onto AzTeC, part of the program which handles signing on a user checks
this file to see if there is any unread mail addressed to the user. If it finds
unread mail, it prints "You have new mail" at the end of the screen with the
sign on message. The user can then either choose the Post Office area, from the
main menu, or type the command "mail", at the ==> prompt.
Let's assume Anna has signed onto AzTeC and sees the message "You have new
mail" on her computer screen. She types the command "mail", at the first ==>
prompt. ( If she goes to the Post Office menu, she can choose item 2 -- "Check
Your Mail" to read her mail). Several messages scroll by on her computer screen
so quickly that they are hard to read, but this screen remains:
Current message is #1 (2 is last) * N 1. oblonsky@andrew.cmu.edu (Stepan Oblonsky) (411 chars) Thu, 27 Oct Great ! N 2. prince@aztecfreenet.org (Andre Bolkonsky) (630 chars) Tue, 01 Nov Welcome to AzTeC ----------------------------------- n = Read next unread message d = Delete this message p = Back to previous screen h = Help, list of additional commands Enter Command:
This is a list of all the E-mail messages addressed to Anna in AzTeC's files.
The first line, "Current message is #1 (2 is last)", tells her that there are
two messages in the file for her, and that message number 1 will be acted upon
by a command unless she picks another message. Below that line, there is
information about the two messages. The " at the start of the information for
message 1 is another indication that message number 1 is the current message
(the one that commands will act upon). The N after that indicates it is a new
message, which Anna has not yet read. Next is a number that identifies the
message. The address after the number is the address of the person who sent the
message, in this case Anna's brother, who is replying to her earlier message.
The name in parentheses is the name of the sender. The name is not always
present; some mailing programs only send an address and not the name of the
sender. The last item on the first line is the size of the message in characters
(letters, numbers, punctuation, and blank spaces). The second line of
information shows the date the message was sent and the subject of the
message.
There is also information on a message number 2. Anna's friend, Andre
Bolkonsky, found out that she is now registered to use AzTeC, and he sent her a
letter welcoming her to the system.
Anna wants to read her mail so she types an "n" and the "Enter" key. The list
of commands (under the list of messages) says this will "Read next unread
message". This is message number 1 from her brother. Her computer screen
shows:
Message #1 (2 is last): Date: Tue Nov 1 07:57:521994 From: oblonsky@andrew.cmu.edu (Stepan Oblonsky) Subject: Great ! To: annak@aztecfreenet.org > Reply-To: oblonsky@andrew.cmu.edu > >friends on the Internet I am now able to send and receive E-mail also, so >send me a letter. I registered for a Free-Net system here in Arizona >called Aztec. We can send E-mail to others here on Aztec and also to >anyone on the internet. Anushka, It's great to hear from you over the internet. I am sure you will enjoy using this new toy. We are all doing well, we will be going to Florida for vacation in a few weeks. I have to run now but I hope to get more E-mail from you and I promise my replies will be longer. Love to you and Ivan. Shown 91%, pressfor more, 'q' to quit, or 'h' for help (Anna knows what this last line means by now so she pushes the space bar to see the rest of the message) Stiva Enter Command:
( this last line is not part of the letter, it is a prompt from AzTeC for
Anna to enter a command for the next operation )
Anna has several choices here. If she wants to send a letter back to Stepan,
she could use the command "r" for reply. This would bring up the editor, with a
mail header, which will send mail to the address in the "reply to:" line of this
letter. It also enters the date in the date field and Anna's E-mail address in
the "From:" and "Reply To:" fields. It will have a copy of his letter with the
> symbol at the beginning of each line (so the lines which already have the
> from being quoted from Anna's original letter will end up with >> at
the start). Anna can edit out as many of the quoted lines as she wants and then
type in her reply. (It is considered bad etiquette on the Internet to quote the
entire letter or article to which you are replying, just quote enough so the
reader will be able to follow any references you make.) When she is done, she
can exit the editor in the normal way (Control X, Control C), and she will
receive the same menu of choices as she did when she sent her first letter. When
she has made her choice, the screen will revert to the list of mail
available.
If Anna did not want to reply to the letter at this time, she could have used
the "n" command again to read the next letter. After Anna has read all the
letters she can use the "q" command to exit from the mail reader and go to other
areas of AzTeC.
When Anna exits from the mail reader, all of her letters will still be in her
mail file. They will have been marked as having been read, so she will not
receive the "You have new mail" message when she next signs on to AzTeC.
However, they will still be available to read over or for reply.
After a while, Anna's mail list could get very long, with many letters she
had already read. In addition, all these letters would be using space in AzTeC's
disk files. Anna should delete messages if she has read them and decided that
she does not want to reply to them. She can delete the last message read by
using the "d" command. If she has just read several messages she can use the "D"
command. AzTeC will reply by asking the range of messages to delete. To delete
the two messages currently in her mailbox, she would type "1-2" to indicate the
range of 1 to 2. When either of these delete commands are used, the message or
messages are marked to be deleted. However, the actual deletion is not done
until the user exits from the mail area, so it is possible to reverse the
decision to delete a file. Use the "h" command to get a list of commands that
can be used in the mail reader to see how to do this.
Notice here that "d" and "D" call for similar actions, but they are not the
same. You may be familiar with the MS-DOS operating system, where upper case and
lower case commands or file names act the same. AzTeC's software uses the
conventions of the UNM operating system, where upper case and lower case are
treated differently. In the same way, the "n" command displays the next message,
with pauses after each full screen on the terminal, but "N" will display the
next message with no pauses. There are many other commands throughout AzTeC that
have both upper case and lower case versions. The help files for each area give
details on all of them.
If Anna had wanted to compose something to send in her email that was rather
lengthy and would have required her to be connected to AzTec longer than the
allowed one hour time limit, she could have composed her text offline using a
word processor or text editor, being sure to save the file in azcii format, and
uploaded the file into her email when she was at point of typing in the body of
her email. Some software talks about uploading and downloading, while other
software talks about cutting and pasting. Either terminology does basically the
same thing, but because each software has it's own unique method of
accomplishing the task, it is not practical to try to address how each one makes
it happen.
Conversly, Anna may have received a rather lengthy email that she would like
to save to her computer and study it at her leisure, and possibly reply to it at
a much later time. This is accomplished by downloading or using the capture text
mode. When the email has been opened Anna can indicate to her software where she
wants to save the email to and press "T" which will cause AzTec to scroll
through the complete email from the beginning to the end, at which point Anna
may turn off the capture text mode. Now she has the email stored on her computer
and may act on it when ever she wants to.
Anna will need to experiment a little with her computer to determine what
works best for her in uploading and downloading email to and from her computer
into AzTec. Each user has their own preference for accomplishing this.
If you remember our explanation of how E-mail works, you will realize that a
message may pass through several computers on its way from the sender to the
receiver. While AzTeC, and most other service providers, tries to maintain the
confidentiality of E-mail, we can not guarantee that someone other than the
addressee will not gain access to the text somewhere in its travels. Also, do
not assume that you can remain anonymous when sending E-mail. A trail of
addresses is left by each message as it travels along the networks. If you would
be embarrassed by the content of your message, don't send it. The AzTeC
Appropriate Use Policy printed in Appendix II to this manual is a helpful guide
in determining how you might use E-mail.