Getting Help

MAIL8 has two ways to help you during an interactive session: HELP and EXPLAIN.

The HELP Command

If you type

          help

in response to the usual Mail? prompt, MAIL8 displays a list of all its commands. This is useful if you have forgotten the name of a particular command.

If you want help on a particular command, you can specify the command name. For example,

          help print

lists a summary of all the options that can be used with the Print command. Similarly,

          help to print reply

summarizes the options for the To command, the Print command, and the Reply command.

The EXPLAIN Facility:

In addition to the summaries supplied through HELP, MAIL8 can provide more detailed explanations of commands and other aspects of MAIL8. You ask for these detailed explanations through the EXPLain command. For example, to get an explanation of the Print command, type

          explain print

in response to the usual Mail? prompt. EXPLain can explain any command. It can also explain other topics related to MAIL8. For a list of all topics on which MAIL8 can provide help, type

          explain index

A typical entry on this list looks like

DRAWERS . . . . . . the three parts of a mailbox

If you want help on this topic, type

          explain drawers

in response to the usual Mail? prompt.

We recommend that you become familiar with the EXPLain command and use it as your primary source for information about MAIL8. Hardcopy documentation goes out of date with each new release of the software, but the information provided by EXPLain is updated whenever the software is.

Copyright © 1997, Thinkage Ltd.