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Starting the Software in the CIRCA Lab

RICE mail is available on NERDC's VM/CMS system. You can easily access this system from the CIRCA labs.

From a PC in the lab you can log in to NERVM from either DOS or Windows. Since doing this from DOS is easier and definitely faster, we'll just describe that method. From the Public Menu choose Applications, then choose Network Services. You will now have the Network Services menu on your screen. Choose NERDC Hosts, and then choose NERVM. This will open a Telnet session with the NERVM system. You will see the NERVM login screen. Enter your username, press [Tab], enter your password and press [Enter]. You will see a screen similar to that shown in figure R-1. When you see the line that starts with "Ready; T=…" and you see a blinking cursor, the system is waiting for a command from you.

RICE mail commands are run directly from the command prompt, so there is no need to actually start the software. All commands entered at the command prompt must be followed by pressing the [Enter] key.

Starting the Software From a Remote Site (home PC)

Using RICE from a home PC should be exactly like running it in the CIRCA labs except that you will have to start it differently. You will need to have terminal emulation software capable of IBM 3270 terminal emulation. There are many different freeware and shareware packages available. If you're not sure if you have this software, and/or you want to get a different package, just ask one of the CIRCA lab assistants for advice.

Once you have your terminal emulation software, you need to use it to log in to NERVM. The Host Name for NERVM is "nervm.nerdc.ufl.edu". When you give the command to establish the connection, you will be presented with the same prompt for your username and password as you would see in the CIRCA labs.

From this point on it should appear and behave the same as a PC in the CIRCA labs.

The RICE Mail Interface

RICE mail's interface is very different from Netscape's Navigator or Eudora. Rather than being an application running in the Microsoft Windows environment, having a graphical user interface (GUI), it is entirely text based without mouse support. It runs on the host machine and the PC you sit at is simply a terminal.

What this means to you is that you will need to learn how to do everything from the keyboard. Sometimes the keyboard options seem cryptic. Even though this may seem to be a drawback, keyboard commands can frequently be faster and more efficient than using a GUI. Once you have learned all the most frequently used commands it's very easy to use the software.

Function keys are used for most options. On your terminal screen they are listed at the bottom of the screen when RICE mail is running. You will notice that instead of showing them as "F1", "F2", etc., they are shown as "PF1", "PF2", etc. Their function changes depending on what you are doing. Some of the keys have the same purpose on each screen and are necessary for navigating in each screen. The [PF3] key is used to quit the current activity and return to the previous screen. The keys [PF7], and [PF8] are equivalent to the [Page Up] and [Page Down] keys which can be used to see information which cannot fit on one screen at a time. The [PF9] key is a general purpose delete key. Sometimes it will delete the current line of text (like when you are editing the body of a message), and other times it will delete an item from a list, etc.

The top line of each screen in RICE mail indicates the version number, the current screen name, and the line number of the cursor. The second line is a command line where you can input commands instead of using the function keys. To place the cursor in this field, you should press the [PF12] key, or when that is used for a different function you can use the [Enter] key. Now you can enter a command at the prompt. However, this method is sometimes not as easy and straightforward as using the function keys. Occasionally RICE mail will prompt you for a reply which you must enter in this field.

Setting and Changing Your Userid and/or Password

Since RICE mail is running on the host to which you have logged in, it can directly use your username from the system. This means that you do not have to configure RICE mail with your account and host information like you have to when using e-mail software that runs on the PC itself.

If you want to change your password for e-mail, you simply change your password for your account as you normally would. On NERVM you can do this by not entering your password at the login screen. You will then see a special prompt with instructions for changing your password:

	LOGON "your username "

	Enter your password
	or
	To change your password, enter: ccc/nnn/nnn
	      where  ccc = current password, and nnn = new password 

If my password is currently "secret" and I want to change it to "gators", I would type "secret/gators/gators" at the blinking cursor. Your password will not show when you type it in. This is to keep it private.

Writing and Sending a Message

You can start writing a mail message by entering the command "mail receiver" where "receiver" should be the valid e-mail address or nickname of the person you want the message to go to. You will be prompted for your name, the real name of the receiver, and a subject line. These prompts would look something like figure R-2.

After typing in a response to each prompt press the [Enter] key to enter it, and you will be prompted for the next field. Figure R-2 shows the cursor at the end of the subject line waiting for the [Enter] key to be pressed. All these fields are optional and can be left blank simply by pressing [Enter] at each prompt.

When you press [Enter] after typing a subject line, you will be presented with the Sending Mail screen (figure R-3). The cursor will be in the message area of the screen (below the header information) initially. You can simply start typing the body of your message in this area. RICE mail will wrap your text, but not as nicely as you might like. It does not try to wrap the text at the end of a word. Instead it just wraps it at the end of the line even if it's the middle of a word. So you might want to press [Tab] at the end of each line to move to a new line. (Don't use the [Enter] key to move down to a new line since that will place the cursor on the command line.) You should be able to use the cursor keys to move the cursor around. You can use [PF9] to delete an entire line of text, and use [Delete] to delete a single character.

There are only 14 lines available for your message body initially. If you need more space just press [PF2] to add a new line at the cursor location, or press [PF4] to add another 14 blank lines.

If you change your mind and decide not to complete and send the message, just press [PF3] to quit. You will be given a warning that the message has been changed and if you really want to discard it, type "qquit" and press [Enter] at the command line. (The cursor will have been placed there automatically.) You will be returned to the NERVM command prompt.

When you have your message completed and ready to send, just press [PF5]. You will be prompted to confirm that the message should be sent. You can either press [PF5] again or type "send" and press [Enter] to confirm and send the message. You will be returned to the NERVM command prompt and you should see messages from the system indicating that it has the message ready to send, and then that the message was sent. There may be a delay before the message is actually successfully sent depending on how busy NERVM is and other factors.

Receiving a Message

To receive mail you don't have to do anything. Since RICE mail is running on the host, your mail is placed directly in your Mailbox. If you're logged in and using the system at the time the message is received, you will see a message on your screen indicating that a message has arrived. If the status at the lower right of the screen changes to "HOLDING" you can press the [PA2] key (or button) to return to what you where previously doing.

From the command prompt you can type "mail" and press [Enter] to see what messages are in the Mailbox. You will be presented with the Reviewing Your Mailbox screen (figure R-4) which lists each entry in the Mailbox, showing who it's from, who it's to, the message date, the subject, and status. The cursor will be placed at the first entry which is unread. Unread entries will have a ">" (greater than) character preceding the date.

Another status mark is the "-" (minus) character which indicates that the entry is marked for deletion. It will be deleted on exit.

You can read a message by moving the cursor to the line for the entry and pressing the [PF2] key. You will be presented with the message screen shown in figure R-5. The message will include detailed header information followed by the body of the message. There may be any number of different heading fields displayed depending on whether the sender included the information and/or whether their e-mail software writes all the fields to the header. The typical fields include the Return-Path, Received, Date, From, Subject, and To fields.

When reading a message, you can scroll the message up and down by using the [PF7] and [PF8] keys respectively. This is necessary with long messages. When you have finished reading the current message, you have a couple options to read another message. You can press [PF2] to open the next message, or press [PF9] to mark the current message for deletion and open the next one. You can also press [PF3] to quit the message screen and return to the Reviewing Your Mailbox screen (figure R-4) where you can select and open another message.

When you have finished reading all your mail messages, you can press [PF3] to exit RICE mail and return to the NERVM command prompt.

Replying to a Message

Sometimes you may want to reply to a question or comment in a message someone has sent to you. You could do this by writing a new message and entering the person's address, the subject, and maybe even some of their original message for reference. Rather than do all this manually, it can be done automatically just by pressing [PF5] when the cursor is on the message in the Reviewing Your Mailbox screen (figure R-4) or when you are reading the message in the message screen (figure R-5). You will be prompted for your real name. Type it in and press [Enter].

The screen will change to the Sending Mail screen (figure R-3). The receiver's address will already be filled in along with the From: and Subject: fields. An additional field will be added called In-Reply-To: which indicates the original message's date. The body of the reply message will not include the original message's text.

If you want to include the original message in the body of your reply, you should type the command "reply text" in the command line and press [Enter] instead of just pressing [PF5] to reply. When this is done the body of the reply will contain a line indicating that the receiver wrote the following text and the text of the original message will be included with each line preceded by a ">" (greater than) character.

You may edit the body of the original message just as if you typed it in yourself. Otherwise, replying is exactly the same process as writing your original message. You send it the same way.

Reviewing and Deleting E-mail Messages

As you may have noticed, messages you have received do not automatically get deleted after you read them. They stay in your Mailbox until you want to take them out. This may seem like a waste of disk space, but it is very convenient to be able to review old messages. Sometimes you may find that you want to reply to or forward one of them.

You can open any old message for reading in the same way as you open new messages. You can delete a message by pressing [PF9] when the cursor is on the message in the Reviewing Your Mailbox screen (figure R-4) or when you are reading the message in the message screen (figure R-5). The "-" (minus) character will be placed next to the date in the entry to indicate that the message is marked for deletion. You can press [PF9] to remove the "-" mark. When you exit RICE mail, you will be prompted with the number of messages to delete and asked to confirm the deletion. By typing "yes" they will be deleted. If you answer "no", the "-" mark will be removed from each of the messages and the next time you open the Reviewing Your Mailbox screen (figure R-4) they will still be listed.

Beyond the Basics:

Sending Copies to Multiple Receivers

Sometimes you want to send a message to someone and also send copies to others for reference. To do this, you can enter "mail receiver_1 cc: receiver_2 receiver_3 ..." where "receiver_1", "receiver_2", and "receiver_3" should be the valid e-mail address or nickname of the persons you want the message to go to. The first receiver will get the original and all others receive copies. You will be prompted for your name, the real name of the receivers, and a subject line. These prompts would look something like figure R-2. You can list as many receivers after the CC: argument as you want. Separate them by spaces.

An alternate method is to start the message with the normal "mail receiver" command and then specify the receivers of copies while in the Sending Mail screen (figure R-3). While in this screen, press [PF12] to move the cursor to the command line and enter "include cc: receiver_1 receiver_2 ..." then press [Enter]. This command works just like the command line argument already described. You can use this command multiple times to add more receivers to the list. When you're done adding receivers, press [PF12] to return the cursor to the message for editing.

The Sending Mail screen (figure R-3) will display the cc: field with all the receivers to get copies separated by commas and on separate lines.

Working with nicknames is discussed in the section entitled "Using Nicknames" below.

Sending Blind Copies

When you send a copy to multiple receivers, each receiver can see who other copies have been sent to. A blind copy does not include a list of all receivers. This allows you to keep the list of receivers private from each other.

Sending blind copies works just like regular copies. At the command line you would use the bcc: argument instead of the cc: argument. The Sending Mail screen (figure R-3) will display the Bcc: field with all the receivers to get copies separated by commas and on separate lines.

You may send blind copies to some people and regular copies to others. Simply use both the cc: and bcc: arguments in the command line or use multiple "include" commands. For example, from the NERVM command prompt I could enter:

mail johndoe@grove.ufl.edu cc: janedoe@cis.ufl.edu bcc: jim@cis.ufl.edu

Or from the command line I could enter:

include cc: janedoe@cis.ufl.edu bcc: jim@cis.ufl.edu

Jane will receive a regular copy and Jim will receive a blind copy. Of course, John will receive the original.

Forwarding Messages

Sometimes you may receive a message that you know a friend would like to read. If the sender didn't already send a copy to your friend, you can forward a copy. To do this, just press [PF6] when the cursor is on the message in the Reviewing Your Mailbox screen (figure R-4) or when you are reading the message in the message screen (figure R-5).

You will be prompted for the receiver's nickname or address. Enter it and press [Enter] and you will be prompted for the receiver's name. Enter it as well, and you will be presented with the Sending Mail screen (figure R-3). The Date:, From:, Subject:, and To: fields will be filled in for you.

The body of the message will have two blank lines for you to enter a comment, followed by a line indicating that the original message follows. The original message's text will follow that line.

You may edit the body of the original message just as if you typed it in yourself. You may need to add some lines at the top for your comments. You can use the [PF2] key to do this. Otherwise, forwarding is exactly the same process as writing your own original message. You send it the same way.

Using Nicknames

You may have noticed that virtually every time you enter an address in RICE mail you will be prompted to enter a real name for that person. This can get really frustrating even though you can just press [Enter] to leave it blank. Nicknames can help you avoid this hassle and make it much easier to enter addresses.

Before you can use nicknames, you will need to create some. You should always create one for yourself so RICE mail will not prompt you for your name either. To create a nickname, just type "names" at the NERVM command prompt and press [Enter]. You will be presented with the Names screen (figure R-6). It has fields for the nickname, the real name, the username and host, and other information like address and phone number. You only need to put data in the Nickname:, Userid:, Node:, and Name: fields to avoid all the annoying prompts and to send e-mail.

To add a new entry, just start filling in the fields and press [Tab] to move on to the next field. When you have it as you like it, press [PF2] to add it to your list. You can add another entry by simply replacing the data in the fields with new data. If you want to clear all the fields first, use the [PF4] key.

You can move forward and back through the entries by using the [PF7], and [PF8] keys. If you need to change an entry, display it on the screen, edit the fields, then press [PF6] to save it with the changes. If you need to remove an entry, press [PF9] when it is on the screen to delete it.

Using nicknames is easy. Just use the nickname in any place you would normally use an e-mail address. RICE mail will automatically insert the e-mail address and person's name without prompting you for anything.

Getting On-line Help

You can always get on-line help from RICE mail simply by pressing [PF1]. The help system may take some getting used to. If you need more help using the help screens, type "HELP HELP" and press [Enter] immediately after pressing [PF1].

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