User`s Manual for Version 0.6
Contents
1. The next undeleted message The previous undeleted message All messages n m An inclusive range of message numbers user All messages from user string All messages with string in the subject line case ignored c All messages of type c where c is one of d deleted messages n new messages o old messages r read messages u unread messages Note the context of the command determines whether this type of message specification makes sense Additional arguments are treated as strings whose usage depends on the command involved File names where expected are not expanded Special characters recognized by certain commands are documented with those commands Commands While in command mode if you type in an empty command line a RETURN or NEWLINE only the print command is assumed The following is a complete list of mail commands shell command Escape to the shell The name of the shell to use is listed in the COMSPEC variable If no com mand is given a new DOS shell will start You can return back to mail by using the DOS exit command arguments The comment command This may be used the same way as comments in mail rc files but note that it must be separated from its arguments Commentary by white space Print the current message number page 8 Print a summary of commands This is done by printing to the screen the MAIL HLP file Same as the help command alias alias recipient Decla2. message list Prints the messages using the program defined in the PAGER variable If no program is defined the MORE program is used If MORE or the program specified in the PAGER variable can not be found this command works the same as the print type command Uses the crt variable if set Same as the more command As the MS DOS version of more can not be used with MAIL a pub lic domain more is included with this package Page message list Prints the messages using the program defined in the PAGER variable including all header fields If no program is defined the MORE program is used If the MORE program or the program defined in the PAGER variable is not found this command is the same as the Print Type com mand Overrides suppression of fields by the ignore and retain commands Same as the More command As the MS DOS version of more can not be used with MAIL a public domain more is included with this package preserve message list Hold the specified messages in the system mailbox Same as the hold command print message list Print the specified messages Same as the type command Print message list page 11 Print the specified messages on the screen including all header fields Overrides suppression of fields by the ignore and retain commands Same as the Type command quit Exit from mail storing messages that were read in the mbox file and unread messages in the MAIL IN file Messages that have been explicitly saved
3. of Unix mail A Unix user even if he has never used MS DOS before should have no problems using this software as the interface is exactly the same as the Unix program The advantages are a The user does not depend on any local resources except for the phone line b The cost of the phone call is minimized as data is being transferred the whole time the two com puters are connected and almost all data sent is in compressed form The user does not have to deal with phone line noise as noise is taken care of by the communication protocol page 2 c The user has a copy of the mail received which he can read or print as many times as he likes without having to stay on line d The MS DOS mail reader uses the same interface as the mail program on the host computer The user does not need to learn a new interface Savings To estimate minimal savings let s make some totally unrealistic assumptions Let s assume a user who is perfect one who makes no typing errors and is able to type at the speed his modem can transmit data who can read and memorize his mail as fast as his modem can received it and who already knows exactly what to type in his outgoing messages It would still be cheaper to use The odora to access mail than through the regular Unix tools Compress reduces the size of the mail to about 40 of the original When the compressed file gets uuencoded its size grows by 35 to 55 of the original As a results the savings fro
4. the other side because it is very expensive to resent it For this she adds the ASCII representation of sum of all the characters in the line in the end of each line The sum is separated from the data by a Control L character ASCII 12 When the other side receives the line it first checks the sum If it matches it passes it to uudecode and sends a received message to the other sending side If it does not it requests that line again A received line starts with the code 200 The resend line starts with the code 550 The text after the 200 or 550 is ignored If the sending side receives a 550 it will resent the line until it receives a 200 Note that 200 and 550 are the only codes that ever get generated by the PC side This method of data transfer should be replaced by a sliding windows protocol The protocol cur rently used is very reliable but the transfers are much slower than before the protocol was added
5. the specified recipients Save as typing MAIL recipient at the DOS prompt mbox message list Arrange for the given messages to end up in the mbox file on the remote computer MAIL has to terminate normally At quit time an MBOX command will be placed in the MAIL TMP file See also the exit and quit commands more message list Prints the messages using the program defined in the PAGER variable If no program is defined the MORE program is used If MORE or the program specified in the PAGER variable can not be found this command works the same as the print type command Uses the crt variable if set As the MS DOS version of more can not be used with MAIL a public domain more is included with this package Same as the page command More message list Prints the messages using the program defined in the PAGER variable including all header fields If no program is defined the MORE program is used If the MORE program or the program defined in the PAGER variable is not found this command is the same as the Print Type com mand Overrides suppression of fields by the ignore and retain commands As the MS DOS ver sion of more can not be used with MAIL a public domain more is included with this package next message Go to next message matching message A message list can be given instead of message but only first valid message in the list is used This can be used for instance to jump to the next message from a specific user page
6. variable EDIT is the default editor As EDIT is available only with MS DOS 5 0 and above this test ver sion of Theodora is distributed together with a shareware full screen editor w filename Write the message text onto the given PC file without the header If in your mailrc in your home directory on the workstation you set the record variable with a filename to save a record of your outgoing mail the workstation side of Theodora will use it This is the only use Theodora makes of your mailrc file Reading Mail page 7 If you have downloaded new mail you can not access it until you run the PREPARE program PREPARE will uncompress the new mail and append it to the MAIL IN file See the to prepare mail for reading section above When you enter command mode in order to read your messages mail displays a header summary of the first several messages followed by a prompt for one of the commands listed below The prompt is the amp ampersand character Message are listed and referred to by number There is at any time a current message which is marked by a gt in the header summary For commands that take an optional list of messages if you omit a message number as an argument the command applies to the current message A message list is a list of message specifications separated by SPACE characters which may include The current message n Message number n The first undeleted message The last message
7. 3 Dial the number on the telephone After you dial the last digit hit return on the PC keyboard You can now hang up the phone The modem will try to connect with the remote modem To hang up just hit F4 Three plus signs will appear They will be followed by the string ATHO which tells the modem to hang up Please note that Quitting Alt F10 does not hang up If The odora is connected through a dedicated line instead of a modem there is no way to hang up Important keys for SEND F1 Run the selected commands F2 Dial the number stored in the NUMBER environment variable F3 Dial manually F4 hang up phone F5 Set current position as tab stop for VT100 terminal F6 Unset current position as tab stop for VT100 terminal Alt F1 Prints a summary of keyboard commands Alt F8 Send a Break to the remote host Alt F9 Open a new DOS shell Alt F10 Quit SEND This will not hang up the phone Command line options Processing Options GET get messages selected through the LIST program GETALL get all new messages PUT upload messages composed on the PC page 4 LIST get a listing of mail in the workstation mailbox You can give any number of processing options Note that GET is incompatible with GETALL If no processing option is entered GETALL and PUT will be assumed Communication Options Bx Will set the baud rate to x The default is 2400 Cx Will set the communications port to COMx The default is COM1 Dx Wil
8. BROWN UNIVERSITY Department of Computer Science Master s Thesis CS 91 M16 THEODORA User s Manual for Version 0 6 by Spyros Nicholas Bartsocas THEODORA User s Manual for version 0 6 The Problem How does a user efficiently read and respond to electronic mail when he is away from his computer In environments where electronic mail is used heavily people have to check their mailbox very often Checking mail can be problematic if you are away from your home machine Unfortu nately a mailbox is physically located on a specific machine which in turn is physically located in a specific geographical place It is possible for a user s mail to be forwarded to another machine but forwarding requires that the user have a mailbox on the other machine It is not very likely that a user can have a mailbox on systems in every place to which he travels Also setting up mail forward is not worth the trouble if the trip is a short one So mail forwarding is not a solution to this problem Advances in technology over the past few years have made common new Laptop Notebook and even smaller size computers which have the power of desktop personal computer The new generation of laptop computers features cellular modems simplifying the procedure of connect ing to a remote computer One can travel with a laptop and remotely access files including mail on one s home computer via modem This setup depends only on the av
9. This module is also responsible in maintaining a private PC based mailbox This mailbox is similar to the one maintained on the server but as there is only one instance of it there is no reason for it to stay in synch with anything on the remote system PC front end Mail selection This part of the program displays a list of messages in the remote host system mailbox The user can click on messages and select them for download The display includes the following informa tion about a message 1 Sender taken from the From field of the message 2 Time and Date of the message taken from the date field of the message 3 Size in lines and Bytes of the message 4 The subject of the mail taken from the subject field of the message 5 The status of the mail displayed in the same way Unix mail does To download them the user has to start the SEND EXE with the get option PC back end Communication Layer SEND EXE PREPARE BAT UP BAT This part of the program communicates between the PC and the Unix based server It compresses the script created by the front end calls to the server gets the new mail and sends the script When needed it uncompress the packets that are sent to it from the server and passes them to the front end A log of what packets have been sent and successfully received is kept If the communication is broken before all packets are received it is able to resume the session at the packet level after it reconnects to th
10. age ID is the message id of the mail mes sage the user wants deleted The reason we need to specify the message ID is because it uniquely identifies a mail message We can not use the message index number as Unix mail does because it might change between sessions Note that as the script is written by the program and not the user saying DEL 1234567890 ABCDEF host domain edu is not as bad as it sounds Similarly the save command has syntax SAVE message ID filename The filename path begins at the user s home directory The MBOX command is similar to the SAVE command It saves a copy of the message in the mbox file located in the user s home directory and deletes it from the mail box The syntax is MBOX message ID The message ids in the above commands have to be enclosed in a pair of lt and gt symbols Also note that SAVE is executed immediately but MBOX and DEL are executed when a Quit command is received Quit tells the server that the client wishes to close the connection and update the system mailbox This should always be the last command the client sends to the server The syntax is QUIT This command can be abbreviated as Q Batch interpreter This is the part of the program that runs when the user is off line It interprets the script created by the PC front end The sendmail command sends mail to one or more addresses This is done by the SEND command The format is SEND lt address gt Address is any valid address fo
11. ail variables shell Invoke the interactive shell listed in the COMSPEC variable size message list Prints the size in characters of the specified messages source filename Read commands from the given file and return to command mode top message list Prints the top few lines of the specified messages If the toplines variable is set it is taken as the number of lines to print The default number is 5 touch message list Touch the specified messages If any messages are touched either by this command or a print command and are not saved an MBOX command will be placed in the MAIL TMP file upon normal termination unless the hold variable is set See also the exit and quit commands type message list Print the specified messages Same as the print command Type message list Print the specified messages on the screen including all header fields Overrides suppression of fields by the ignore and retain commands Same as the Print command undelete message list Restore deleted messages This command only restores messages deleted in the current mail ses sion If the autoprint variable is set the last message restored is printed unread message list Take a message list and mark each message as not having been read unset variable Erase the specified variables If the variable was imported from the environment that is an envi ronment variable it cannot be unset from within mail version Print the curr
12. ailability and the reli ability of the local phone system Unfortunately long distance phone calls can be very expensive Line noise can make dial in sessions both long and frustrating Thus remote access solves the problem of how to get one s electronic mail but a means of reducing the remote connection time is needed The Solution Download a compressed copy of the mail file manipulate it locally off line and send back a list of changes to be made to the remote mail file Theodora attempts to address all these problems She connects to the computer that hosts the mailbox and downloads a compressed copy of the mailbox Then the connection is broken and the user can manipulate the mailbox on the portable computer in the same way that he would do so on the remote system Theodora executes the changes on the local copy of the mailbox and keeps information about changes that have to be made to the remote copy of the mailbox When the user is ready he reconnects to the remote host and Theodora sends a list of commands to the host to be executed on the mailbox The user can break the connection and let the remote com puter work on those changes on its own time Theodora always appends to files She never deletes or overwrites them She can not get any other files except for the mailbox so the user s files are secure The current Theodora set up includes a program running under Unix which is controlled from an MS DOS program and an MS DOS port
13. ars as a recipient do not delete it from the list Default is nometoo no When used as a prefix to a variable name has the effect of unsetting the variable outfolder Locate the files used to record outgoing messages in the directory specified by the folder variable unless the pathname is absolute Default is nooutfolder See folder above and the Save command PAGER DOS command The default pager to be used when paging is needed MORE is the default command The only requirement for the DOS command used is that it can accept the file to display as a command line parameter Unfortunately the MORE COM file distributed with DOS does not fullfill this require page 15 ment Use the MORE EXE file distributed with Theodora instead See crt above and the More Page and more page commands quiet Refrain from printing the opening message and version when entering mail Default is noquiet record filename Record all outgoing mail in filename Disabled by default See also the variable outfolder replyall Makes the reply command the same as the Reply command save Enable saving of messages in the DEAD LET file on interrupt or delivery error See DEAD for a description of this file Enabled by default screen number Set the number of lines in a screen full of headers for the headers command toplines number The number of lines of header to print with the top command Default is 5 VISUAL DOS command The name of a preferred screen edito
14. at deal with downloading messages and uploading scripts for execution These routines correspond to the GET PUT and DO commands A GET is performed by the give routines Give sets the pipes to compress and encode and calls the getunmarkedmail routine to run through the message structure select the unread messages and pipe them to compress Give also runs the DO command The only difference between the two routines is that the getmarkedmail routine is the one sending out the data A PUT is done in two stages In the first stage receive collects the data from the input channel decodes it and uncom presses it using pipes In the second stage calls execute to setup the background processing Execute forks and the new process calls intepret again to now process the script check c Contains the routines that receive or send the data from the remote machine The data is then piped to the uudecode routines theodora h Contains the definitions for the various data structures and constants used by the pro gram It includes globals h and a small number of system include files needed by the various mod ules Most of the data structures are adaptations of data structures used by the mail and sendmail programs Data transfers When theodora needs to transfer mail between the mailbox computer and the laptop it compresses the mailbox to save on transmission time It then uuencodes it She has to make sure that this data is received correctly on
15. d SEND TMP Before you use SEND to send the mail to its recipients you have to use the UP program UP will convert the SEND TMP to a Unix file and compress it For more information read the before sending back commands section bellow Tilde Escapes The following tilde escape commands can be used when composing messages to SEND Each must appear at the beginning of an input line The escape character can be changed by setting a new value for the escape variable The escape character can be entered as text by typing it twice shell command Escape to the shell If present run shell command mail command Run a mail command while composing mail Mail commands are listed on page 8 Simulate EOF terminate message input This is the only way that will always work for indicat ing the completion of a mail message Control Z can be overridden by setting the ignoreeof vari able and the dot method by setting the nodot variable For more information about this variables take a look at the Mail Variables section on page 13 Print a summary of tilde escapes This is done by displaying the TILDE HLP file b name Add the names to the blind carbon copy Bcc list This is like the carbon copy Cc list except that the names in the Bcc list are not shown in the header of the mail message c name Add the names to the carbon copy Cc list page 6 d Read in the DEAD LET file The name of this file is list
16. d altered interactively using the set command The unset command clears variables The set command can also be used to clear a variable by prefixing the word no to the name of the variable to clear append Upon termination append messages to the end of the mbox file instead of prepending them Default is noappend askcc Prompt for the Cc list after message is entered Default is noaskcc asksub Prompt for subject if it is not specified on the command line with the s option Enabled by default autoprint Enable automatic printing of messages after delete and undelete commands Default is noauto print crt number Pipe messages having more than number lines through the command specified by the value of the PAGER variable MORE by default Disabled by default DEAD filename The name of the file in which to save partial letters in case of untimely interrupt Default is the file DEAD LET in your HOME directory dot Take a period on a line by itself during input from a terminal as EOF Default is nodot EDITOR DOS command The command to run when the edit or e command is used Default is edlin The only requirement for the program defined by this variable is that it can accept the filename to edit as a command line parameter escape c Substitute c for the escape character page 14 folder directory The directory for saving standard mail files User specified file names beginning with a plus are expanded by precedin
17. e ASCII command file to a format that minimizes connect time List select mail for reading You can tell SEND to download a list of messages in your system mailbox by invoking it with the LIST flag You can then use the LIST program to select one or more messages for downloading LIST displays the available messages in a manner similar to the mail headers command Each page 16 line of the display represents one message The first column displays the status code for the mes sage The Theodora server produces one of the three following codes N A new message U An unread message A read message A blank followed by a colon The next two columns contain the address of the person that sent the mail and the date and time that they sent it This is followed by the number of lines and bytes in the message Note that the number of bytes a message takes on a Unix workstation is smaller than the number of bytes it takes on an MS DOS machine The rest of the line is used to display the subject of the message You can select a message by pressing RETURN or by clicking with the mouse when it is high lighted Follow the same procedure to cancel a selected message Use the Up and Down arrow keys to move the highlight LIST always displays as many messages as can fit on the screen Press the PageUp or PageDown keys to access teh messages that do not fit on the screen If you try to page out of the screen a beep will sound and you will still be loo
18. e added to your MAIL TMP file See also the exit and quit commands Same as the write command savediscard header field saveignore header field Suppress printing of the specified header fields when saving messages to disk such as Status and Received The fields are included when the message is saved unless the variable alwaysi gnore is set The save write command saves all header fields ignored or not Without any param eters prints out the list of saveignored fields saveretain header field Add the list of header fields named to the saveretained list Only the header fields in the saveretain list are saved when you write a message All other header fields are suppressed The set of retained fields specified by the retain command overrides any list of saveignored fields specified by the savediscard saveignore command The save write command do not use the saveretain list If saveretain is executed with no arguments it lists the current set of saveretained fields set variable value Define a variable To assign a value to variable separate the variable name from the value by an there must be no space before or after the A variable may be given a null string or numeric value To embed SPACE characters within a value enclose it in quotes With no argu page 12 ments set displays all defined variables and any values they might have See Variables for a description of all predefined m
19. e server The server keeps the information for 24 hours The user can change the behavior of this part of the program by the use of different flags The GET flag will get all selected mail for the user The GETALL flag will get all unread mail for the user The LIST flag will get a list of all mail in the system mailbox so the user can select by using the LIST EXE pro gram what messages to download If no options are specified it defaults to GETALL Changes to the mailbox are automatically sent Interactive command interpreter Here is where the commands received from the PC are interpreted and executed These com mands are get put list del mbox mark do save quit Get tells the server to send the user s new unread mail The syntax is GET There is another set of commands to download messages The user can mark arbitrary messages and then request them The syntax is MARK message id To get the marked commands the syntax is DO Marks are not saved between sessions Both versions of get compress and uudecode their output Put tells the server to receive the script from the remote machine This script contains mail and commands This script does not get executed until the whole script has been transmitted uude coded and uncompressed most likely after the connection has been closed The syntax is PUT List tell the server to send a list of all queued mail messages The syntax is LIST The syntax for delete is DEL message ID where mess
20. ed in the variable DEAD e Invoke the editor to edit the message The name of the editor is listed in the EDITOR variable The default editor is edlin f message list Forward the listed messages or the current message being read Valid only when sending a mes sage while reading mail the messages are inserted without alteration as opposed to the m M escape F message list same as f but keep all header lines h Prompt for the message header lines Subject To Cc and Bcc The new text inserted replaces the original text Note that this is different from the way Unix mail works where you can edit the text which was originally in the header fields m message list Insert text from the specified messages or the current message into the letter Valid only when sending a message while reading mail the text in the message is shifted to the right and the string contained in the indentprefix variable is inserted as the leftmost characters of each line If indent prefix is not set a TAB character is inserted into each line To forward mail without alteration use the f F escape M message list Same as m but keep all header lines p Print the message being entered r filename Read in text from the specified file s subject Set the subject line to subject t name Add each name to the list of recipients y Invoke a visual editor to edit the message The name of the editor is listed in the VISUAL
21. ell prompt comes up press the F1 key on the PC keyboard Theodora will then ask you to wait while she transfers mail and commands A dot will get printed on the screen for every line received from the workstation Note that in order for this to work the work station part of Theodora has to be in your path If you want to quit before all transactions are completed simply press the Q key on the PC keyboard When all transactions are made the Unix shell prompt will appear You can then logout as you normally would or enter any Unix command To hang up press F4 To exit the SEND program hit Alt F10 on the laptop keyboard 1 To connect to the 1200 baud lines you need to give SEND the following parameters b1200 pe d7 The phone number for the 1200 baud lines is 401 457 5000 2 This assumes that you have proto the workstation side of Theodora in your path If you do not change directory to the one proto is located page 3 SEND is really a communications program with a simple VT100 emulator Because it does not have many of the fancy features of other terminal emulation programs it is very fast When SEND starts up it initializes the modem and waits for user commands Everything typed at that point is sent to the modem except for the functions keys listed bellow After you hit F1 the pro gram takes control and tries to communicate with the workstation side Your laptop controls the session until it is done with its task or u
22. ent version and release date of the mail utility visual message list Edit the given messages with the screen editor listed in the VISUAL variable Each message is placed in a temporary file for editing write message list filename Write the given messages onto the specified file This is equivalent to the save command xit Exit from mail without changing the system mailbox No messages are saved in the mbox see also quit Same as exit command z Scroll the header display forward or backward one screenfull The number of headers dis played is set by the screen variable page 13 Variables The behavior of mail is governed by a set of predefined variables that are set and cleared using the set and unset commands Environment Variables MS DOS Environment Variables are set and displayed using the MS DOS SET command To set variable A to value B just type SET A B at the DOS shell prompt To display the values of all variables type SET with no parameters at the DOS prompt HOME Location of MBOX and MAIL RC files default current directory MAIL file to find new mail in default MAIL IN in current directory MAILRC the MAIL RC file default MAIL RC in HOME directory USER Your workstation login Required if you want mail to know who you are TEMP Where temporary files should be created default current directory Mail Variables The following variables can be initialized within the mail rc file or set an
23. followed by the user s shell prompt The user can now run Theodora She presses the F1 key and wait for The odora to transfer the mail Running please wait A dot will appear for each line transfered QUIT 221 igor closing connection logout Connection closed annex0 OK ATHO OK C gt list C gt send GET C gt prepare C gt mail Theodora is now done The user can either logout or run any workstation command In this example she will logout The connection is closed and she is back at the annex port To hangup she presses F4 on the laptop keyboard The telephone connection is now closed User presses Alt F10 and she is back at the DOS prompt By typing list the user calls up the LIST program A list of mail in the remote system mailbox will appear The following is a typical line as dis played by LIST U scb Mon Jun 10 19 02 25 1991 19 508 test She can select this message by clicking the mouse or pressing the ENTER key while the message is highlighted The procedure is described on page 16 She quits the program by pressing the Escape key To download those messages she issues the following command The GET flag tells theodora to download the selected messages The user then follows the procedure described in the previous page to connect back to the workstation After quitting SEND and before reading mail the user has to uncompress the mail If she already had a MAIL IN file mail wi
24. for storage This second ary file called the mbox is normally the file mbox in your home directory on the workstation or the current directory on the PC The location of the PC file can also be changed by setting the MBOX environment variable Messages remain in the mbox file until deliberately removed When started mail reads commands from a private start up file called the mail rc file In your mail rc file you should have personal commands and variable settings Most mail commands are legal inside this file This file stores your personal commands and variable settings It plays the exact same role as the mailrc file in your home directory on Unix workstations and it is recom mended that you download your Unix one The file name and location can be changed by setting the MAILRC environment variable The most common uses for this file are to set up initial dis play options and alias lists The following commands are not legal in the start up file edit hold mail preserve reply Reply shell and visual Any errors in the start up file cause the remaining lines in that file to be ignored You can use the MAIL command to send a message directly by including names of recipients as arguments on the command line When no recipients appear on the mail command line it enters command mode from which you can read messages sent to you If you list no recipients and have no messages MAIL prints the message No mail for username and exits When
25. g the filename with this directory name to obtain the real filename If directory does not start with a slash the value of HOME is prepended to it There is no default for the folder variable See also outfolder below header Enable printing of the header summary when entering mail Enabled by default hold Preserve all messages that are read in the system mailbox instead of putting them in the standard mbox save file Default is nohold ignore Ignore interrupts while entering messages Default is noignore ignoreeof Ignore EOF during message input Input must be terminated by a period on a line by itself or by the command Default is noignoreeof See also dot above indentprefix string When indentprefix is set string is used to mark indented lines from messages included with m The default is a TAB character keep When the system mailbox is empty truncate it to zero length instead of removing it Disabled by default keepsave Keep messages that have been saved in other files in the system mailbox instead of deleting them Default is nokeepsave LISTER DOS command The command and options to use when listing the files in the folder directory The default is dir MBOX filename The name of the file to save messages which have been read The xit command overrides this variable as does saving the message explicitly to another file Default is the file mbox in your home directory metoo If your login appe
26. ide line The comma tells the modem to wait for two seconds before dialing the rest of the number This only needs to be done once per session C gt mail abc The user starts mail in send mode The mail will be sent to user abc Subject sample subject The user gets prompted for a subject She types in the subject sample sub ject This prompting can be overriden by the MAIL RC file This is the body of a sample message After typing the line above the user wants to review the message so she enters the p command Message contains Subject sample subject This is the body of a sample message continue We are now back in input mode page 18 The user is done with the message and enters the command to end the message Ce ut The user wants to receive a copy of this message in her workstation mail box and adds her address to the Cc list of recipients The Cc prompting can by controled by the MAIL RC C gt UP The user is now ready to send the mail to the remote workstation She first has to prepare it for uploading UP will prepare all queued messages for uploading Should be executed only once between MAIL and SEND C gt send PUT LIST theodora v1 0 Default Port Settings Used Now it is time to send the new mail message At the same time she wants to get a list of the mail that is waiting for her back at her office The PUT option tells SEND to upload the mail and the LIST to download a listing of the w
27. in a file are deleted unless the variable keepsave is set reply message list respond message list Sends a response to the author of each message in the message list The subject line is taken from the first message If record is set to a filename a copy of the reply is added to that file If the replyall variable is set the actions of Reply Respond and reply respond are the same Reply message Respond message Reply to the specified message including all other recipients of that message If the variable record is set to a filename a copy of the reply added to that file retain header field Add the list of header fields named to the retained list Only the header fields in the retain list are shown on your terminal when you print a message All other header fields are suppressed The set of retained fields specified by the retain command overrides any list of ignored fields specified by the ignore command The Type and Print commands can be used to print a message in its entirety If retain is executed with no arguments it lists the current set of retained fields save message list filename Save the specified messages in the named file The file is created if it does not exist If no file name is specified the file named in the MBOX variable is used mbox in your HOME directory by default Each saved message is deleted from the system mailbox when mail terminates unless the keepsave variable is set A SAVE command will b
28. in command mode while reading messages you can send messages using the mail command Options Prints the syntax of the MAIL command page 5 b users Give list of blind carbon copy recipients c users Give list of carbon copy recipients list f filename Read messages from filename instead of MAIL IN If filename is omitted mbox in the home directory will be used i Ignore Control Break can also be set with the ignore variable in mail I run mail in interactive mode s subject Set the subject of the mail message N Do not print initial header summary n Do not initialize from the mail rc file Sending Mail To send mail type MAIL recipients where recipients is the addresses of the people you want to send mail to Recipients can be any recipient that would be valid for the Unix mail command except for files and pipes While you are composing a message to send mail is in input mode If no subject is specified as an argument to the command a prompt for the subject is printed After entering the subject line MAIL enters input mode to accept the text of your message to send As you type in the message mail stores it in a temporary file To review or modify the message enter the appropriate tilde escapes listed below at the beginning of an input line To indicate that the message is complete type a dot or EOF character CTRL Z or F6 for MS DOS on a line by itself mail appends the message in a file calle
29. king at the last page Press Escape to exit or click the mouse outside the area of the messages List can handle up to four hun dread messages Key Summary Up Go up one item Down Go down one item PageUp Go up one screenfull PageDown Go down one screenfull Enter select current item Esc Update selection file and quit FILES The following is a list of files that make up the MS DOS component of Theodora and an explana tion of what each is COMMANDS Temporary file used by UP BAT to store the commands it is pro cessing COMMANDS Z Compressed version of commands This file is sent to the work Station side by SEND COMPRESS EXE The program that compresses and uncompresses the mail and commands files CRLF EXE Used by the prepare program DEAD LET undeliverable mail message MAIL EXE The mail reader editor MAIL HLP Help for MAIL command mode commands MAIL IN The incoming mail MAIL LST the list of mail in the system mailbox MAIL RC your private start up MBOX similar to the file with the same name in your home directory PREPARE BAT The program that prepares the mail to be used by the MS DOS utilities SEND EXE The communication program SEND HLP Help for SEND keyboard commands THEODORA HLP General information for MS DOS component of program page 17 TILDE HLP Help for MAIL tilde commands UP BAT The program that prepares the commands to be uploaded XCR EXE Used by the UP program GET TMP The requests fo
30. l set the number of data bits to x The default is eight Px Will set the parity to x The default is no parity Sx WII set the number of stop bits to x The default is one If no communication option is entered the defaults above are assumed To prepare the mail for reading When mail is received by your DOS machine it is compressed and encoded In order to read it you have to type PREPARE Prepare will call all the programs needed to convert your mail into the format used by the mail program The processes performed by these commands include uncom pressing the received mail and converting the file from a Unix format to MS DOS After running PREPARE any DOS application can use the MAIL IN file If you already have a MAIL IN file PREPARE will append the new mail to the end of your old file MAIL read or compose mail MAIL is the command that allows you to compose send and receive electronic messages Mail is an adaptation of Berkeley mail A list of differences is given at the end of this section While reading messages MAIL provides you with commands to browse display save delete and respond to messages While sending mail MAIL allows editing and reviewing of messages being composed and the inclusion of text from files or other messages Incoming mail can be found in the file MAIL IN You can use the MAIL environment variable to have it look in a different file When you read a message it is marked to be moved to a secondary file
31. ll append the new mail to it PREPARE has to be executed for MAIL to access the new mail The iuser s now running mail in read mode Mail version 1 0 Type for help mail in 2 messages 2 new amp The user can now read mail or do any of other mailbox manipulations as described on page 7 page 20 Notes 1 This product includes software developed by the University of California Berkeley and its con tributors page 21 Aa Telephone Network Flow of data between the different programs that make up Theodora page 1 User Interface script writer MS DOS Communication layer Interactive command interpreter Batch Interpreter Mailbox Manipulation Unix Host mail transport agent Description of modules in diagram PC front end User Interface script writer MAIL EXE This module has two purposes The first one is to interactively manipulate the mail for the user in a manner similar to the Unix mail command The second is to translate the user commands to the Theodora server commands These server commands are saved into a script which is sent to the server the next time the PC connects to the Unix server The interface and the commands are the same as the Unix mail program Commands which are not possible or do not make sense in the single user environment of MSDOS are not available The commands which actually manipulate the mailbox are both executed on the local copy of it and recorded in the script file
32. m compression are at least 35 Note that the most important savings do not come from compression but from most commands taking place off line The length of the phone call is more than cut in half resulting in less than half the long distance charges Using Theodora Send get or send new mail Type SEND on the DOS prompt This assumes a 2400 baud hayes compatible modem con nected to serial port COM1 You will be greeted by the Theodora start up banner indicating the version of the software you are using SEND is the part of Theodora that handles all the commu nication for the MS DOS part of the program The following instructions describe how to access the Brown University Computer Science Department Computers To access any other computer the procedure is similar but will differ in at least the phone number used Type ATDT and the phone number For example to call from out of state you would dial ATDT 14014575120 If the modem has a speaker you will hear the num ber being dialed the phone ringing and eventually the call being answered A CONNECT 2400 line will appear and a pound sign prompt the localnet 20 prompt You are now connected to BRUNET Typing CALL 1110 will connect you to the CS department annex If nothing hap pens press Control Q When the annex prompt appears you can login to your favorite workstation with the rlogin command for example rlogin igor Enter your userid and password when prompted When your sh
33. nstead of the current With no arguments file prints the name of the current mail file and the number of messages and characters it contains folders Print the name of each mail file in the folder directory from message list Print the header summary for the indicated messages or the current message group alias recipient Declare an alias for the given list of recipients When alias is used as a mail recipient MAIL will substitute the list With no arguments displays the list of defined aliases Same as the alias com mand headers message Print the page of headers that includes the message specified or the current message The screen variable sets the number of headers per page See also the z command help Print a summary of commands This is done by printing to the screen the MAIL HLP file Same as the command hold message list Hold the specified messages in the system mailbox Same as the preserve command if s r t mail command else mail command endif Conditional execution where s will execute following mail command up to an else or endif if the program is in send mode r executes the mail command only in receive mode and t exe cutes the mail command only if mail is being run from a terminal Useful in the mail rc file ignore Ignore Control Break and Control C page 10 list Prints all commands available No explanation is given mail recipient Mail a message to
34. ntil you interrupt it by hitting any key on the keyboard Note that the key you press will be sent to the workstation side You control what Theodora will do after you hit F1 by command line options when starting up the SEND program If no option is given it assumes you want to download all unread messages This is the same as specifying the GETALL option To get a specific message which can be read or unread use SEND with the LIST command option to get a list of all mail in your system mail box use the LIST program to select the mail you want and then start SEND with the GET option Note that mailbox changes are automatically made when you connect and can not be turned on or off Hitting F2 will make SEND dial the string stored in the NUMBER environment variable If the string is longer than 40 characters SEND will dial it in groups of 39 characters of shorter To set the variable type SET NUMBER string at the DOS prompt For example to make SEND dial 401 555 1212 you would type SET NUMBER 4015551212 Any other character which is valid in a dial string 0 9 A B C D P T W is valid except for the semi colon Send assumes it has the modem s attention It waits until the modem replies If the modem does not connect it prints its own educated guess of why the connection was not made If you want to quit before the connection is made hit return The modem will be left in command mode If you want to dial a number manually Press F
35. orkstation mailbox If the user had entered one or more communi cation options the current port settings would have been printed instead of the Default message The option required most often is C2 This option tells SEND to use Communication port 2 instead of the default communi cation port The user then presses the F2 key The screen gets cleared and the number being called will appear This is the number we entered earlier with the DOS SET command ATDT8 4575120 CONNECT 2400 If the modem was not successful in connecting to the remote modem The odora will print a message that describes the problem better than the mes sage supplied by the modem CALL 1110 The pound sign is the localnet 20 prompt 1110 is the call number for the CS department annex If there is a problem connecting to the annex brunet will print a message explaining why it can not connect Annex Command Line Interpreter Copyright 1988 Encore Computer Corporation annex0 rlogin igor In this example the user connected to igor She could have selected any other workstation in the department login ut password The password will not appear when you type it Then something similar to the lines bellow will appear followed by what usually appears when the user logs in Last login Wed Apr 17 11 37 42 from console SunOS Release 4 1 1 CSD4_60 3 Tue Mar 19 13 37 14 EST 1991 You have new mail page 19 A regular login message similar to the one above will appear
36. r The only requirement for the DOS command used is that it can accept the filename to edit as a command line parameter There are many different ways to specify the value of a variable that corresponds to a DOS com mand The way you specify it changes the way DOS will look for it If you enter a full pathname only that pathname will be searched If no pathname is specified the current directory will be searched first If it is not found then the path specified in the PATH environment variable will be searched If you specify a file extension then only that extension will be searched If you do not specify an extension MAIL will first search for a COM EXE and BAT file in that order Note that the default commands for EDITOR LISTER PAGER and VISUAL are searched without an extension Differences between Berkeley Mail and MAIL MAIL can not send mail to files or pipes MAIL in input mode does not support inclusion of the output of a command Mail and MAIL use different file names and default locations To update the workstation mailbox Use the same procedure as in the get mail section Theodora will automatically upload the script and then proceed to receive any new mail that might have come since your last connection Before sending back commands When you are ready to reconnect you have to compress and uuencode the command file In order to perform this processing you have to type UP Up will call all the programs needed to convert th
37. r the GET command of SEND GET OLD The previous requests MAIL TMP The outgoing script MAIL OLD The previous outgoing script SEND TMP The prepared outgoing script Mail creates a small but significant number of temporary files These files get created in the directory the TEMP environment variable points to or the current directory The filenames of these files are always 8 characters long and begin with an R The second character with be on of the following E M Q S X If mail terminates abnormally or the machine gets rebooted before it terminates these files will stay around You can delete them using the DOS ERASE command Example Use For the following example we will assume that the user of the program has tu as her worksta tion login The login directions are those a user would follow to access the Brown University Computer Science Department workstations These might be different for a user in a different environment What user types will appear in italics System responses will appear in bold Regu lar text are comments and would not appear in the real screen The user is far away from her workstation when she realizes that she wants to send mail to user abc She starts up her laptop computer and types C gt set NUMBER 8 14014575120 She first set the default number that will be used to call the mailbox machine As the user s phone is located in a hotel PBX she has to dial 8 before getting an outs
38. r the send mail program of the host on which the server resides The server does not perform any checking for address validity These addresses are used for the next DATA command Everything between a DATA and a line consisting of a period and an end of line is not parsed by theodora but it is used to construct the body of the message that is going to be sent All mail to be sent is passed to the servers host mail agent for delivery Theodora will report on the commands it executed in batch mode The report is sent as mail from the server to the user This way it can either be retrieved through the next invocation of theodora or through the regular remote host mail com mands THEODORA Programming Notes Workstation side The workstation side of the program is made up from eight C files and three header files main c This is where main entry point of the program can be found It also contains init the routine that initialize the program recordmessage to save copies of outgoing mail and sendmes sage the interface between theodora and sendmail file c Contains the source to the LIST DEL SAVE MBOX and MARK commands all com mands that modify the message data structure It also includes routines to parse and manipulate message headers List is performed by the listmail routine in a strait forward manner Note that although the output is similar to the header mail command unnecessary spaces have been taken out to
39. re an alias for the given list of recipients When alias is used as a mail recipient mail will substitute the list With no arguments displays the list of defined aliases Same as the group com mand alternates name Declare a list of alternate names for your login This way mail will not send copies to these addresses when replying to mail With no arguments prints current list of alternate names It is recommended that you put your workstation login as an alternate name The MS DOS part of Theodora does not know what you workstation login is cd directory chdir directory Change directory One difference from the MS DOS commands with the same name is that it uses the Unix convention of changing to the HOME directory when no parameter is given instead of the MS DOS convention of printing the current directory copy message list filename Copy messages to the file without marking the messages as saved Otherwise equivalent to the save command delete message list Delete messages from the system mailbox If the variable autoprint is set print the message fol lowing the last message deleted Deletions are stored in the file MAIL TMP and sent to the workstation during the next remote connection discard header field Suppress printing of the specified header fields when displaying messages on the screen such as Status and Received The fields are included when the message is saved unless the variable alway
40. save on the transmission Savemail executes the SAVE command by looping through the message data structure and appending matching messages to the given file The other three com mands are implemented with the do_mail command This command simply sets the appropriate bits to all messages that match the given message id mailbox c This file contains various message file I O functions Most of the routines have been taken from the mail source and modified for the need of this program This is the backend of the program srvr c This is where the command interpreter is It also contains the routines that implement the HELP SEND and DATA commands The interpet routine performs some preprocessing on the read line and then gets into a long switch statement that implements most of the commands Note that interpet is used both in foreground and background mode The calling routine is responsible to set the InChannel file pointer to the appropriate file The difference in behavior in the two modes is implemented by checking the global variable batch util c This contains various functions taken from Unix source uu c Contains the encode and decode routine to read and decode or write and encode the incom ing or outgoing messages It is the modified source of uuencode and uudecode It also contains the routines that initialize the uuencoding and link it with the error checking routines exec c This module contains the routines th
41. signore is set The Print and Type commands display all header fields ignored or not Same as the ignore command dp message list dt message list Delete the specified messages from the system mailbox and print the message following the last deleted message Equivalent to a delete command followed by a print command echo string Echo the given strings The following characters have special meaning to echo Your system mailbox usually MAIL IN The previous mail file amp Your mbox file of messages previously read usually MBOX filename The named file in the folder directory listed in the folder variable As the first character your HOME directory edit message list Edit the given messages The messages are placed in a temporary file and the EDITOR variable is used to get the name of the editor The default editor is edlin page 9 exit Exit from mail without changing the system mailbox No messages are saved in the mbox see also quit Same as xit command file filename folder filename Quit from the current mailbox file and read in the named mailbox file Several special characters are recognized when used as file names Your system mailbox usually MAIL IN The previous mail file amp Your mbox file of messages previously read usually MBOX filename The named file in the folder directory listed in the folder variable As the first character will start the search at your HOME directory i
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