MAIL8 lets GCOS8 users exchange messages with other users on the same system and on other GCOS-8 systems.
To begin a session with MAIL8, type the command
MAIL8 replies with
Mailbox of userid
where userid is your userid. MAIL8 then writes the line
Mail?
This line that MAIL8 is ready for you to enter a MAIL8 command.
MAIL8 commands all have simple English names, like Print and Reply. You may abbreviate most MAIL8 command names, by omitting any characters that the documentation shows in lowercase. For example, you can abbreviate the Print command to any of
prnt
prt
pr
p
and so on, by omitting one or more of the lowercase letters. All the letters that the documentation shows in uppercase must be present. However, this is just a convention in MAIL8's documentation; when you type in a MAIL8 command, you can enter letters in either upper or lowercase.
When you are finished sending and reading messages, you leave MAIL with the qQuit command. For example, you might enter "q" in response to the Mail? prompt.
To send a message to another user, use the MAIL8 command
To userid
where userid is the GCOS-8 userid of the intended recipient. For example,
to epdodd
says that you want to send a message to user epdodd. To send a message to more than one person, just add more userids to the command line, as in
to curly larry moe
When you have pressed the RETURN key to indicate the end of the To command line, MAIL8 displays
Subject:
and waits for you to type something. Whatever you type in response to the Subject: prompt will be reported to the recipient as the subject of the message. Once you have entered a subject, press the RETURN key. If you do not want to specify a subject, you can press the RETURN key immediately. MAIL8 then displays
Enter message, end with a "."
>
The ">" is called a prompt; it tells you MAIL8 is ready for you to type in a message. A message can be any number of lines, including no lines at all (maybe the Subject line says everything you want to say). Every time you finish a line of the message and press the RETURN key, MAIL8 prompts with another ">". You can put blank lines into your message if you wish.
When you have entered your entire message and pressed RETURN to end the final line, type a dot "." in response to the ">" prompt, then press the RETURN key. Such a line (just a dot, nothing else, not even spaces) tells MAIL that you have finished entering your message. MAIL8 will then send the message to the intended recipient(s).
When you sign on to the computer, GCOS8 tells you if you have any unread messages waiting for you. If new messages come in while you are signed on, the system gives you the message
YOU HAVE MAIL
To read a mail message, start a MAIL8 session by typing
as usual. MAIL8 tells you how many unread messages are waiting for you to read. It also tells you how many Outbound messages you have; these are messages that you have sent but which have not been read by all the intended recipients.
To read an unread message, use the command
Print +Unread
By omitting all the lowercase letters, you can shorten this to
p +u
MAIL8 displays the first unread message waiting for you. By repeatedly executing
p +u
you can display each of your unread messages.
A message does not disappear after you have read it. Instead, it is saved in a file named "/_sysfiles/mail.box" under your account. The command
*Summary
(or just *s) summarizes all the saved messages in your mailbox file.
You should notice that every saved message has a number. You can display a particular saved message with the Print command. Give the number of the message you want to display, followed by the (possibly abbreviated) word Print. For example,
3 p
displays the saved message with the number 3.
If you no longer wish to save a message, use the Delete command. For example,
5 d
deletes the saved message numbered 5.
When you send a mail message to someone else, MAIL8 stores the message in your own mailbox file until all intended recipients have read the message. Such messages are called Outbound messages.
The command
*s +o
summarizes all of your outbound messages. The summary information tells who has and hasn't read each message. The summary shows that each outbound message is numbered, just as each saved message is numbered.
You may display an outbound message by giving the number of the message and the Print +Outbound command. For example,
1 p +o
displays the first outbound message.
You can retract messages you have sent by deleting the outbound message. You do this with the Delete +Outbound command. For example,
5 d +o
deletes the outbound message with the number 5. If one or more of the intended recipients have already read the message, their copy of the message will be saved in their own mailboxes and you will not be able to retract the message from them; however, MAIL8 does retract the message from any recipients who have not yet read it.
MAIL8 attaches numbers to all saved, outbound, and unread messages. Once MAIL8 has numbered a message, the message keeps that number until you ask to renumber the messages. For example, if your saved messages are numbered 1 to 5 and you delete messages 3 and 4, message 5 still keeps its old number. In addition, the next message to be saved is given the number 6. As a result, there is a gap in the numbers of your saved messages.
To get rid of such gaps, use the Number command.
Number
renumbers all your saved message sequentially.
Number +Outbound
renumbers all your outbound messages sequentially.
Number +Unread
renumbers all your unread messages sequentially.
MAIL8 lets you send the contents of any kind of file to another user. Conceptually, the contents of the file are "attached" to a normal mail message. In many cases, you use the normal message as a "cover letter" talking about the attached file(s). The command to send a file in this way is
to user file=name
where name is the name of the file you want to send and user is your intended recipient. After you enter this command, MAIL8 prompts you to enter the body of the message (the "cover letter") in the usual way. A typical session might go like this.
Mail? to fbueller file=ferris/save
Enter message, end with a "."
>This is a copy of the save file as of last
>Tuesday.
>.
This sends the given message to fbueller and attaches the contents of the file ferris/save. When fbueller reads the message, MAIL8 indicates that the message has a file attached and asks him to enter the name of a file where the attached data can be saved. Once he has entered an appropriate name, MAIL8 copies the data into the specified file. MAIL8 creates the output file if it doesn't already exist.
Your system administrator can make it possible to use MAIL8 to exchange messages with other computer systems.
to user@system
sends MAIL8 to someone on a different computer. user is the userid of the recipient on the remote computer and system is a name that refers to the remote computer. For example,
to ripley@acheron
sends a message to user ripley on the system known as acheron. Your system administrator may supply you with a list of other computer systems with which you can exchange mail messages.
Copyright © 1997, Thinkage Ltd.