AEMAIL.DOC Name of Program: AEMail (Amiga E-Mail) Version: 1.15 (BETA VERSION K) Release Date: April 5, 1997 Written By: John F. Zacharias AEMail is copyright (c) 1996-97 by John F. Zacharias, all rights reserved. Permission is given to Beta Testers to test and evaluate the program in return for feedback on the use of the program and reporting of any bugs encountered. AEMAIL SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS-IS" AND SUBJECT TO CHANGE; NO WARRANTIES ARE MADE. ALL USE IS AT YOUR OWN RISK. NO LIABILITY OR RESPONSIBILITY IS ASSUMED. Installer and Installer project icon (c) Copyright 1995-96 Escom AG. All Rights Reserved. Reproduced and distributed under license from Escom AG. INSTALLER SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS-IS" AND SUBJECT TO CHANGE; NO WARRANTIES ARE MADE. ALL USE IS AT YOUR OWN RISK. NO LIABILITY OR RESPONSIBILITY IS ASSUMED. This documentation is divided into the following Sections and sub-topics: I. PROGRAM PURPOSE II. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS REQUIREMENTS RESTRICTIONS REGISTRATION III. INSTALLATION IV. CONFIGURATION TOOL TYPES INTERLACE=YES MAIL_DIR=directory-path CONFIG=configuration-file MAILCAP_DIR=directory-path USERID=UserId PASSWRD=your_password DOMAIN=Domain_Name FROM=your_email_address REALNAME=your_real_name REPLYTO=reply-email-address ORGANIZATION=organization-name POP_SERVER=your_POP_host SMTP_SERVER=your_SMTP_host EDITOR=call_line_for_your_editor TCPLOG=name_of_log_file DELETEMAIL=YES FULLHEADER=YES STRIPDUPS=YES HDRINREPLY=YES STARTNET=call_line_for_your_startnet_script STOPNET=call_line_for_your_stopnet_script AUTOCONNECT=YES CONFIGURATION SCREEN Identity Page TCP/IP Page Default Path Page Other Parameters Page V. STARTING AEMAIL Starting AEMail Using AEMail as a "MailTo" Agent VI. COMMAND ICON STRIP DISPLAY FOLDER LIST DISPLAY ADDRESS BOOK DISPLAY PREVIOUS MESSAGE DISPLAY NEXT MESSAGE SAVE MESSAGE TO FILE PRINT SELECTED MESSAGES DELETE/UNDELETE MESSAGE COMPOSE A MESSAGE SEND MESSAGE IMMEDIATELY QUEUE MESSAGE FOR LATER DELIVERY RETRIEVE MESSAGES VII. AEMAIL MENUS Project menu Configuration... Open... Edit... Save Save As... Restore Default Send Queued Mail Iconify AEMAIL About... Quit... Folders menu New... Edit... Delete... Set Sort Key... Remove DELETED Msgs Messages menu Compose... Reply... Forward... Edit... Select None Select All Export... Copy... Transfer... Print Delete/Undelete... Display Full Hdr Incl Hdr in Resp Retrieve Msgs menu From POP Host From Local File... Excl Dup Msgs Delete Host Mail TCP/IP menu Start Net Stop Net TCP Logging File Active Purge Display/Edit... VIII. AEMAIL WINDOWS Configuration Window Folder List Window Message List Window Folder Configuration Window Set Sort Keys Window Examples of Setting Sort Keys Address Book Window Message Display Window Attachment Requester Compose Message Window Add Attachments Requester IX. AEMAIL FILES mailcap configuration (s:aemail.cnfg) folder.config [folder_Name].config .addrbook .signature Messages TCP Trace Log File (TCPLOG) X. BUG REPORTS & SUGGESTIONS XI. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS XII. IN CONCLUSION I. PROGRAM PURPOSE: AEMAIL is a mail client designed to read, process, compose and send e-mail from an Amiga computer over the Internet. It provides an easy to use graphical interface designed specifically for the Amiga. It connects to an Internet server through AmiTCP or any TCP/IP stack compatable with AmiTCP. This includes TermiteTCP and Miami. It uses the AmigaDOS editor, ed, or any other editor of the user's choosing for developing email messages. No other external programs or modules are required. The POP3 and SMTP protocols are built into the program. The current version of AEMAIL supports attachments following the MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension) outline in RFC 1341, 1521, 1524 (Mailcap files), and 1806 as well as UUENCODED attached files. Not all of the features of MIME headers are fully supported and exceptions will be noted in the documentation. AEMail can also be used as a "MailTo" agent in WWW browsers, such as Voyager and AWeb, which allow the user to specify such an agent for composing and sending email. II. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS: REQUIREMENTS This program can run on any Amiga Operating Systen 2.1 and above. This program requires AmiTCP or a TCP/IP stack compatable with AmiTCP. It has been tested with the 4.0 Demo Version of AmiTCP, but will possibly run on earlier versions at level 2.0 or greater. It also has been tested under TermiteTCP and Miami which use a TCP/IP stack that is compatable with AmiTCP. Other TCP/IP software may or may not be compatable with AmiTCP. If the software uses a socket library (bsdsocket.library) with calls that are compatable with AmiTCP, it possibly will work. If you wish to display MIME attachments from within AEMAIL, you will also need a 'Mailcap' file. Specifications for how to set up a mailcap file are given under the IX. AEMAIL FILES section below. It is possible to display attachments with either AmigaDos 2.x or 3.x. Datatypes are not required for this display. A sample mailcap file is also provided in the archive. This sample mailcap file can be used without modification on any system running under AmigaDos 3.0 or later since it uses multiview as the display agent. If you are using a version of AmigaDos before 3.0, you will have to modify the mailcap file to specify your own favorite display program for specific "Content Type/Subtypes". RESTRICTIONS Only one version of AEMail can be running at a time. If you are using AEMail as a "mailto" mail agent in a browser, you can not have AEMail running when you invoke your browser if you expect to send any email from your browser. AEMail will be automatically loaded from the browser when you click on a "mailto:" link. While AEMAIL appears to work fine with a standard configured AMIGA, there are some possible problems with "system addons" that do not behave correctly with AEMAIL. One known problem is with the "Click-To-Front" commodity as follows: If you have the "Click-To-Front" commodity active with a QUALIFIER Tool type equal to NONE when you execute AEMAIL, the folder strip will disappear the first time you double-click on any part of the AEMAIL screen outside the folder strip area. The reason for this is that the folder strip window overlays the main AEMAIL window and when you double-click outside this area, the folder strip window will be pushed to the back. Presently, the solution to the problem is to change the QUALIFIER Tool Type to something other than NONE or to deactivate the "Click-To-Front" commodity BEFORE executing AEMAIL. Any other hack or commodity which automatically brings the current window to front either when you click on it or when you pass the cursor over it, will react the same as "Click-To-Front" commodity. You will have to deactivate the commodity or hack when you run AEMail. Other system configurations may also cause problems with AEMAIL. If you encounter one of these, please send me e-mail describing the problem and what "add-on" you were using. If it is a public domain program, it would be helpful if you included the program as an attached archive to your message. (see Section VI, Command Icon Strip: Compose A message). One other restriction is in the use of the editor. The editor can not relinquish control when it is called. This is particularly a problem with CygnusEd (CED) and if you plan to use CED you must use the activator program, ED with the option -sticky, or the supplied script, "s:AEMced.scr". The script calls CED directly with a stack size of 12000 and the option -keepio. Both options keep CED in control while you are performing the edit. You need a script for the direct call to CED if you use the -keepio option, because CED requires a stack size of at least 8000. The Install script automatically handles this if you allow the Install to configure AEMail. If you are having problems with other editors and stack size, you can use the script and modify it to your specifications. One warning, however, if you call a word processor you will need to ALWAYS save the file as ASCII. You can send me e-mail by using the Address Book Nickname AEMAIL. (see also Section X, Bug Reports and Suggestions) REGISTRATION AEMail is now shareware. Versions prior to 1.15 were "freeware". A shareware fee of $30 is requested for AEMail. The shareware fee (US Funds only) should be sent to: John Zacharias 10004 Vanguard Drive Sacramento, CA 95827 USA You must include your Real Name and email address with your remittance. A handy form has been provided in the file "registration.form" which you can print out and use for this purpose. If you have more than one email address with more than one AEMail_Mail directory, please include ALL these addresses on the "registration.form". Your registration will be acknowledged by email that must be received by AEMail. AEMail version 1.15 does not have any features that are not implemented for non-registered users; however, future versions will have enhancements that will only be available to registered users. For the un-registered "Freeware" version, permission is given to to test and evaluate the program in return for feedback on the use of the program and reporting of any bugs encountered. I do ask, however, that, in return for the use of this product, you inform me of any suggestions you have and of any bugs that you encounter. You can do that by sending e-mail to me using the Nickname AEMAIL which can be found in your Address Book when you first load AEMail. (see also Section X, Bug Reports and Suggestions) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING -------------------------------------------------------------------------- When you send your first message with any new version of AEMail, a special "Notification" message will be sent to me at jzachar@calweb.com. Besides the normal header information, the body of this message will contain the following information (obtained from your configuration file): Your email address Your Real Name Your POP3 Server name Your SMTP Server name Your SMTP Domain Name Your editor call Your Display ID (from the screen mode setting) Your Overscan Type (from the screen mode setting) Base configuration file name Currently active configuration file name Mail Directory This information is provided to help me determine and debug problems with AEMail. Future versions may contain more or less information as the need arises. Most of the Internet information is public information and can be obtained from your service provider. I WILL KEEP THIS INFORMATION IN STRICT CONFIDENCE. IF YOU DO NOT WANT THIS INFORMATION DIVULGED TO ME, DO NOT USE AEMAIL! ----------------- I am including this warning because of concerns expressed to me by some people. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING -------------------------------------------------------------------------- This "notification" message will also give me the opportunity to inform all users of updates to AEMatl by e-mail. The notification message will not appear in your PENDING folder although you will see it in your SENT folder after the notification message has been sent. You will not have an opportunity to change any of the information. If you feel some of the information is in error, you can correct it by sending me a separate email message. Please note that a new notification message will be sent when you upgrade to a new version of AEMail. This lets me know which version you are using. Some of the data in future notification messages may also change to help give me feedback on how AEMail is being used and what setup you are using. Also, if you are using multiple configuration files, a separate notification message will be sent the first time you send mail with any particular configuration. III. INSTALLATION: PLEASE NOTE: If you are installing from a diskette, your AEMail installation disk must NOT be write protected when you install AEMail. It will be written to during the install. An installation script using Amiga Technologies' Installer program, has been provided for the installation of AEMail. Installer and Installer project icon (c) Copyright 1995-96 Escom AG. All Rights Reserved. Reproduced and distributed under license from Escom AG. To install AEMail simply double click on the "Install_AEMail icon". The install script provides three user levels that the user can choose: Novice (no control - all defaults will be taken) Intermediate (control of configuration parameters) Expert (control of configuration and where files are placed) The Install script makes an attempt to determine which TCP/IP stack that you have installed. This controls which defaults will be taken. The way the install scripts knows which TCP/IP stacks are present is as follows (you must have installed the particular stack before installing AEMail): AmiTCP: This is controlled by the presence of the AmiTCP: assign statement and the presence of the AmiTCP:bin drawer. Miami: This is controlled by the presence of the Miami: assign statement. When you installed Miami you should have let the install create the Miami: assign. This was only available under later versions of Maimi. While the Miami: assign is not an absolute requirement if you are using Miami, it is required if you intend to use the supplied "startnet.miami" and "stopnet.miami" scripts supplied with this archive. The scripts will not even be moved to your AEMail drawer if the Miami: assign is not present. TermiteTCP: This is controlled by the presence of the TermiteTCP.prefs envronomental variable. Also, if you want to pick up some of the other TermiteTCP variables, such as email address, you must have run TermiteTCP prior to installing AEMail (TermiteTCP does not have to be online, however). The action that takes place at the Novice level is slightly different depending on whether AmiTCP has been installed or not. The installation script determines if AmiTCP is installed by checking for an assignment to AmiTCP:. This AmiTCP: assignment was automatically created when you installed AmiTCP. The AmiTCP: assignment determines where the installation script will place the AEMail executable. For AmiTCP the executable is placed in the AmiTCP:bin drawer. If it is not present, the placement of the executable defaults to an AEMail drawer (created by the script if it does not already exist) on the largest partition on your hard drive. If you wish to control where AEMail will be placed, you will need to execute the Install script at the "Expert" user level. The reason that AEMail is placed in the AmiTCP:bin drawer is that the assumption is made that you are using AmiTCP. The "startnet" and "stopnet" scripts should be in the same directory that contains AEMail if they are to work without modification. If you select the Novice user level you will not be able to give any input for the install. The following actions will automatically be taken: The AEMail executable file will be placed in AmiTCP:bin or, if the AmiTCP: assignment is not present, on the largest partition on your hard drive. Note: No special directory will be created if AmiTCP:bin is present, otherwise a directory called "AEMail" will be created for containing the AEMail executable. When the installation script terminates it will tell you where it placed the AEMail executable. The AREXX scripts StartNet.Miami and StopNet.Miami will also be moved to this drawer if you have Miami installed on your system. Your AEMail mail directory will normally be a directory called AEMail_Mail in AmiTCP: or, if the AmiTCP: assignment was not present, in the AEMail directory. The AEMail mail directory will be assigned to AEMAIL:. If an AEMAIL: assignment already exists, that directory will be used as the mail directory. This operation is automatic and makes updating the AEMail program easy without disturbing your existing mail files. No configuration will be performed. However, certain default configuration values will be provided (see below). This will include the appropriate Start Net and Stop Net scripts for the TCP/IP stacks that you are running. Miami takes precedence over AmiTCP. All of the documentation files will be copied to the same drawer in which the AEMail executable was copied to. If you are running under AmigaDos 3.0 or greater, the supplied mailcap file will be copied to the AEMail_Mail directory. No mailcap file will be copied if you are using AmigaDos 2.1. An AEMAIL: assign statement will automatically be placed in your S:User-Startup file. An "ASSIGN C: SYS:REXXC ADD" will also be added to your s:User-Startup file to provide a path to your AREXX commands. If you select the Intermediate user level you will also be able to provide configuration data that will be stored in the Tool Types parameters of the AEMAIL icon. Further, if the AEMAIL: assignment existed at the start of the installation that assignment will be used. However, if the mail directory had been called something else, you will be asked if you want to rename it to AEMail_Mail. If you select NO, the directory will not be renamed; however, a new AEMail_Mail directory will be created in the same parent directory and used for the AEMAIL: assignment. In addition to what is available for the Intermediate user, the Expert user will be able to select what directories will be used and will be able to copy the documentation files to a directory of his/her choice. The Expert user will also be able to select an alternate location for a pre-existing mailcap file and, if running under AmigaDos 2.1, will be able to build their own mailcap file. The installation script will try to automatically configure certain items to default values. These include the switch for deleting mail from your POP Server once the mail has been transferred to your Amiga and the switch for stripping duplicate messages. The edit call will default to c:ed and will open the editor on the Workbench. Also, if you installed TermiteTCP, the installation script will obtain your POP3 UserID and SMTP Domain Name as well as your email address from the ttcp-email-address environmental variable provided TermiteTCP has been run (not necessarily on-line) before the AEMail installation was performed. The installation script at the Intermediate and Expert user levels will allow you to provide additional configuration parameters as Tool Types in your AEMail icon or to change the default ones. However, if you are updating from a prior version you may already have an aemail.cnfg file in your S: directory which will override the Tool Types. If the S:aemail.cnfg file is present, you will be asked if you want to use it or if you want to re-configure using tool types. If you select this option your current s:aemail.cnfg file will be deleted and you can reconfigure through the installation script. If these parameters are not provided by Tool Types (through the installation script) or by an existing configuration file, the Edit Configuration screen will be displayed upon the initial startup of AEMail. You can not proceed beyond this configuration screen until certain required configuration parameters are provided. The absolute minimum configuration parameters that must be provided are: POP3 UserID Password Your email Address SMTP Domain Name Edit Call A POP Server name and a SMTP Server name must also be provided. However, if they are missing AND, if the SMTP Domain Name has been specified, default values will be assigned to these items. These default values will prepend 'POP." to the domain name for the POP server and 'SMTP.' to the domain name for the SMTP Server as defaults. Please note: these may NOT be correct for your POP and SMTP servers. If they are not, you will have to edit the Configuration and make appropriate changes (see Configuration Parameters for Identify under Section IV. Configuration). If you have installed and ran TermiteTCP before you installed AEMail, the only configuration parameter you may have to provide is your password. The POP3 UserID and the SMTP Domain Name are extracted from the email address that you gave TermiteTCP. If these are not the correct values you will have to change them in the Identity page of the Configuration screen. For AmiTCP or Miami users, you will need to provide your POP3 UserID and SMTP Domain name as well as your email address. One of the things that is needed to run AEMail is an editor. By default AEMail will use the AmigaDOS editor, ed, which comes with all Amigas. However, you can change this through the install to any editor that you want provided that you have specified that you want to configure AEMail when you do the the install. Special considerations have to be made if you want to use CygnusEd (CED) as your editor. The installation script will automatically handle this by asking if you are using CygnusEd. If you are using AmiTCP, it is recommended that you place AEMail in the same directory that contains your AmiTCP StartNet and StopNet scripts (usually AmiTCP:bin) although this is not an absolute requirement. If the directory containing your StartNet or StopNet scripts is NOT the AmiTCP:bin directory or the scripts have names different from "startnet" or "stopnet", you will have to add the STARTNET and STOPNET tool types to your AEMail icon. You can do that with the installation script at either the Intermediate or Expert user levels. If you are using TermiteTCP, there are no Start Net or Stop Net scripts. For Miami, special startnet.miami and stopnet.miami scripts have been provided with the install of AEMail. If the Miami assign is present, the install script assumes the Miami startnet and stopnet scripts should be used over the AmiTCP ones. SPECIAL NOTE FOR MIAMI USERS: In the TCP/IP Settings page on Miami, the "Down when Offline" item should be checked and the settings SAVED. If this item is not checked, it will take AEMail 80 seconds to determine that Miami is offline if Miami is loaded but not online. The installation script will automatically create a directory for your email storage (mail and configuration files) and place TWO ASSIGN statements in your S:User-Startup file as follows: ASSIGN AEMAIL: [your-mail-directory-path] ASSIGN C: SYS:REXXC ADD The second assign statement is used to provide a path to your AREXX commands because the only paths visable when you run a program from the Workbench are the program directory and C:. If you are using AmiTCP (as determined by the presence of the AmiTCP: assignment), the default directory that is created is AmiTCP:AEMail_Mail; otherwise, it will be a directory called AEMail_Mail in the AEMail directory that has been created. If an AEMAIL: assignment already exists, the AEMail_Mail directory will not be created nor will the existing mail or Configuration files in the directory be disturbed. If you want to place the AEMail_Mail directory some place else you will have to specify the Expert user level when you perform the installation. The mail directory can start out empty. The AEMail program will generate any necessary configuration and support files required. The AEMail_Mail directory can be anywhere on any one of your hard drive partitions (or on a floppy or other read/writable media); it does not have to be in the AmiTCP: directory; but it must be mounted when you execute AEMail. Special Note on Use of multiple configuration files: The normal AEMail configuration file is s:aemail.cnfg. With version 1.13 you will be able to assign your configuration file to some other name and location (you will need the Expert user level to do this). and this will become your base configuration. Also, the installation will ONLY configure this base configuration. You will have to use the Configuration screen to configure any other configuration files for other users. See Section IV., Configuration, for other multiple user considerations. As stated above, you will need a "mailcap" file if you want to display MIME mail attachments. A sample mailcap file is provided on the AEMail program disk which uses MultiView to display audio, images, and video content types provided that you have the appropriate datatypes loaded into your system. This, of course, requires AmigaDos 3.0 or higher. If you are using AmigaDos 2.1, the mailcap file needs to be modified to reflect the display programs that you want. The installation script at the Expert level will help you do this. If you are running under AmigaDos 3.0 or higher, the installation script will automatically move the supplied mailcap file to AEMAIL: unless you specified a different location for a pre-existing mailcap file (Expert level only). The mailcap file specifications are given in Section IX, AEMail Files: mailcap. When the installation script terminates it will store the directory in which it placed AEMail in the Environmental variable AEMail_dir. This facilitates updating to future releases of AEMail. The version 1.13 installation script, at all installation levels, will look for this Environmental variable to try to determine where to place AEMail. HANDLING OF TIME ZONES IN AEMAIL -------------------------------- AEMail will handle time zones in both full hour and half hour increments. AEMail uses either the "tz" environmental variable, a special "aem_tz" environomental variable, or the "locale.prefs" file that is part of AmigaDos to determine your local time zone. The "locale.prefs" file will only allow for full hour time zone offsets. You can use the "tz" environmental variable for half hour time zones, but, if this variable is used by other programs in your system it is suggested that you use the "aem_tz" variable instead. Currently AEMail first looks for the environmental variables "aem_tz" or "tz". The format for "tz" is dictated by SAS_C and should be aaabbbccc where aaa is the abbreviation for local standard time, bbb is the offset in hours from GMT (-11 to 12) which is SUBTRACTED from GMT to get the local standard time. ccc is the abbreviation for local daylight savings time or "summer time" (in the United Kingdom or Europe). If the time zone has daylight savings time this should be present even if daylight savings time is not currently in effect (contrary to the specification for "Tz" for the SAS-C compiler). AEMail automatically determines when DST or "Summer Time" is in effect. AEMail also recognizes an alternate form of "tz" where aaa and ccc can be abreviations longer than 3 characters. This is desireable in some European countries. AEMail will also recognize time zones in increments of one half hour. To specify an half hour time zone, specify it as + or - hhmm. As an example: +230 would specify a time zone in which 2 and a half hours are SUBTRACTED from GMT. You can enter the above with the "tz" environmental variable, but since this variable might be used with other programs in it's strict sense, an alternate environmental variable has been provided called "aem_tz". If "aem_tz" is present it will take precedence over "tz". If the "tz" or "aem_tz" environmental variables are not present, the system then attempts to get the time zone offset from the "locale.prefs" file. Only the time zone offset is present in this file. The abbreviations for local standard time and daylight savings time are obtained from a table that is by no means complete. Only the time zone abbreviations for the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom are contained in this table, so one of the environmental variables is preferred. if neither the "tz" nor "aem_tz" environmental variables nor the "locale.prefs" file are present, the system defaults to CST with an offset of 6. NOTE: the standard header in an email message has the time zone offset sign reversed from that of the "locale.prefs" and the environmental variables. AEMail automatically makes this reversal, so the offset should be set to positive for US time zones and negative for European time zones. They will appear as negative (for US) and positive (for Europe) in the Date: header. You can set the "tz" or the "aem_tz" environmental variables by using the SETENV AmigaDos Command. This must be done from the shell. The syntax to use is as follows: SETENV tz aaabbbccc (for tz) and SETENV aem_tz aaaaaaaaabbbbbccccccccc (for aem_tz) aaa, your local time zone abbreviation must always be present. If you don't know your abbreviation (or don't want it in the header), use "xxx". If AEMail sees xxx it will assume that no abbreviation is present and it will be left off the Date: header bbb is the time offset in hours from GMT. Plus indicates that you are west of GMT and minus indicates that you are east of GMT. Acceptable values are -12 to 24. If you want to specify a half our time zone it can be entered as hhmm. If AEMail sees a value of 30 or above it assumes that a half hour increment is being used. In this case -1200 to 2400 are acceptable. If your time zone observes daylight savings time, ccc is the abbreviation to use for daylight savings time. If ccc is not present, no adjustment will be made during the times of the year that daylight savings time is observed. The result of the SETENV command is only in effect while your computer is on. If you want to make the "tz"or "aem_tz" environmental variables always present enter the one of the following AmigaDOS command after the SETENV command: COPY ENV:tz ENVARC:tz (or) COPY ENV:aem_tz ENVARC:aem_tz Using the "tz" or "aem_tz" environmental variables gives you more control over which abbreviations will be used for your time zone. However, the locale.prefs file may be more useful for those that prefer the "point and click" method of doing things. To set the correct time zone for locale.prefs, enter the Locale editor in your Prefs drawer. You will see a time zone map with which you can move the white strip indicating the time zone on the map. Click either to the left or right of the strip to move the strip. The correct time zone offset for standard time will be shown at the top of the map. Since the locale.prefs does not have any abbreviations, AEMail makes certain assumptions as to what the abbreviation should be. These assumptions are as follows: Time Zone Name Standard DST -----------Time Zone----------- Time (in "locale") (in email Date:) Greenwich Mean Time GMT* BST 0 +0000 Atlantic Time AST ADT 4 -0400 Eastern Time (US) EST EDT 5 -0500 Central Time (US) CST CDT 6 -0600 Mountain Time (US) MST MDT 7 -0700 Pacific Time (US) PST PDT 8 -0800 Yukon Time YST YDT 9 -0900 Hawaiian Time HST --- 10 -1000 International Date Line IDL --- 12 -1200 --- indicates this time zone does not observe DST *Note: GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) is also known as UTC or Universal Time Coordinated. If you want to use a different abbreviation or control whether DST is used or not, you should use the "tz" or "aem_tz" environmental variable. DST in the United States and Canada begins on the first Sunday in April. "Summer Time" in the United Kingdom and Europe begins on the last Sunday in March. Both DST and "Summer Time" end on the last Sunday in October. IV. CONFIGURATION: The configuration of AEMail is provided by parameters presented as Tool Types in the AEMail icon or by a Configuration screen that can be called up from within AEMail using the "Project/Configuratio/Edit.." menu item. All configuration items provided by Tool Types can also be provided by the Configuration screen with the exception of the MAIL_DIR= and the CONFIG= Tool Types. These two Tool Types have special uses, as explained below, that can not be duplicated by the configuration screen. Certain configuration parameters can ONLY be provided by the Configuration screen. Currently, setting the time zone that you are in is done outside the AEMail environment. To set the time zone for AEMail see "HANDLING OF TIME ZONES IN AEMAIL" above. If you are running AEMail from the shell or as a "mailto:" agent, it must be either pre-configured (through the S:aemail.cnfg file), or you will have to use the configuration screens for the configuration. You can specify an alternate configuration file (other than S:aemail.cnfg) by using the config= parameter on the AEMail call line. The first thing AEMAIL does when it is activated is check to see that certain configuration information has been provided either through Tool Types or as contained in the AEMail configuration file. The necessary items are: POP3 UserID Password From Addr (your email address) SMTP Domain Name Edit Call If these items have not been provided, the following requester will be immediately displayed: The following Configuration items are empty [list of empty items] They are required items! The Pop Server call and the SMTP call will also be included in this list if the SMTP Domain Name was missing. Also, the Edit Call item, if it is missing, will default to: C:ed %s with the editor opening on the Workbench. The only way the Edit Call can appear in the list is if the Configuration screen had been entered and the Edit call field cleared. If this requester is displayed, you will be given the following choices: [Configure AEMAIL now] [Cancel AEMAIL] If you were to click on [Cancel AEMAIL], AEMAIL will terminate. You can not proceed any further until you have entered these items with the Configuration screen or by providing them as Tool Types. Clicking on the [Configure AEMAIL now] will bring up the Configuration screen which is described below following the description of the Tool Types. Also, if "Mail Directory" appears in the list of empty items, it means that the AEMail: assign is not in the system and the MAIL_DIR Tool Type has not been given. There is no way you can provide this information through the Configuration screen. You will have to either provide the ASSIGN statement or add the MAIL_DIR Tool Type. If you use the standard install script, this should never be necessary. The two Tool Types, MAIL_DIR= and CONFIG= have special uses. CONFIG= is used to specify an alternate configuration file other than s:aemail.cnfg that AEMail is to open with. MAIL_DIR= is used to specify a mail directory other than the one provided by the AEMAIL: assign. It is used to provide an alternate location for the mail files. If you have two or more users of AEMail on the same system and you want each user to have different locations for their mail files, you can establish an alternate location for one of the mail files. To do this, you will have to have two different instances of the AEMail executable in two different directories (or, if they are in the same directory, you will have to rename one of the copies - in this case you might want to edit the icon so it shows something different). You then must go into the Tool Types (you can do this by selecting the icon and using the Workbench menu "Information"). Add (or change) the CONFIG= Tool Type to reflect where the configuration file is for that particular user and add (or change) the MAIL_DIR= Tool Type to give the full path name of the mail directory for that user. Be sure to include the ending '/' after the directory name. As an example, lets say you have two users named John and Jan. You install AEMail (using the expert mode) in a directory called HD1:AEMail/John and the AEMAIL: assign is set to: ASSIGN AEMAIL: HD1:AEMail/John/AEMail_Mail If you wanted your configuration file to be aemail.cnfg in the HD1:AWMail/John directory, you could add the following Tool Type to the AEMail icon in AEMail/John: CONFIG=HD1:AEMail/John/aemail.cnfg You could then create another directory in HD1:AEMail called Jan. Then copy the AEMail executable and its icon to the Jan directory and change Jan's CONFIG= Tool Type to: CONFIG=HD1:AEMail/Jan/aemail.cnfg and add the MAIL_DIR= Tool Type as follows: MAIL_DIR=HD1:AEMail/Jan/AEMail_Mail/ Then, when John wants to use his copy of AEMail and his files, he double clicks on the AEMail icon in his drawer, and when Jan wants to use her copy she double clicks on the one in her drawer. The one restriction is that you cannot have both copies of AEMail running at the same time. Each set will be set up with different configuration files so that information in these files can be different. You can configure both instances of AEMail through either the Tool Types in the appropriate icon or with the configuration screen when you execute that particular instance of AEMail. TOOL TYPES Tool Types have been provided to initially provide certain Configuration information when AEMAIL is first activated without the need to build the Configuration information through the Configuration screens. To modify or delete any specific Tool Type, select the AEMAIL icon and then select the "Information" item from the workbench menu. You will have to select the appropiate Tool Type and modify it when it appears in the string gadget below the Tool Type list. The current Tool Types utilized by the program are: INTERLACE=YES Opens the AEMail Public Screen (AEMAIL-1) in hires, interlace mode. If this tool type is omitted, the screen will be opened as a hires, non-interlaced screen. You can actually have more control over the Screen Mode you desire by selecting the "Set Screen Mode" button in the AEMAIL Configuration: General Parameters configuration display. Selecting a Screen Mode from the Configuration display precludes the use of this Tool Type. MAIL_DIR=directory-path If you do not place the AEMAIL ASSIGN statement in your Startup-Sequence, you can use this Tool Type to assign your mail directory. This can also be used to provide an alternate location to the AEMAIL Assign statement when you have more than one instance of AEMail in your system. This parameter CAN NOT be provided with the Configuration screen. (DEFAULTS TO AEMAIL: This assumes that the AEMAIL ASSIGN is present). If you are using a different directory, be sure and include the ending '/' at the end of the directory path. CONFIG=configuration-file If you do not care to use the standard s:aemail.cnfg file for your configuration data, but want a file named something else or in a different location, you can use this tool type. When AEMail opens it will look here for the configuration file. YOU MUST PRECEDE THE FILE NAME WITH THE FULL PATH NAME. This parameter CAN NOT be provided with the Configuration screen, although the initial file can be created, saved, and edited from the "Project/Configuration" menu. (DEFAULTS TO s:aemail.cnfg) MAILCAP_DIR=directory-path Your mailcap file can reside in any directory you want. Use this Tool Type to assign the mailcap directory path. If this parameter is missing, the MAIL_DIR path will be used as the mailcap directory path. The mailcap file must be called "mailcap". Since the mailcap file follows a standard format dictated by the internet, you can use the same mailcap file used by another process. That is the purpose of this Tool Type. This parameter can also be provided with the Configuration Screen (DEFAULTS TO AEMAIL:). USERID=UserId Enter your POP3 UserId for signing onto your POP Server on your Internet provider (ISP). This may be the same as the one initially used to sign into your ISP. It is also very possibly (but not always) the part of your email address that precedes the @ sign. Check with your ISP for what should be used. Example: my UserId is "jzachar" so I would enter USERID=jzachar for this Tool Type. THIS IS A REQUIRED PARAMETER, but it can be provided with the Configuration Screen. PASSWRD=your_password Enter the password required for signing onto your POP3 server. This may or not be the same as that used to sign onto your Internet provider. THIS IS A REQUIRED PARAMETER, but it can be provided with the Configuration Screen. SPECIAL NOTE: if the password is provided by a Tool Type it can be read by anyone that performs an "Information" on the AEMAIL icon. If you provide the password through the Configuration screen, it can not be seen. DOMAIN=Domain_Name Enter the Domain name used by your Internet provider's SMTP server. It very possibly is the same as the Domain part of your email address (the part following the @ sign) Example: my Internet provider's domain name is "calweb.com" so I would enter DOMAIN=calweb.com for this Tool Type. THIS IS A REQUIRED PARAMETER, but it can be provided with the Configuration Screen. FROM=your_email_address Enter your FULL email address (i.e. user@domain). This is email address that you are known by on the Internet. Example: my email address is "jzachar@calweb.com" so I would enter FROM=jzachar@calweb.com for this tool type. THIS IS A REQUIRED PARAMETER, but it can be provided with the Configuration Screen. If it is missing it defaults to UserID@Domain. This default action may NOT be correct for your situation, so be sure to change it if required to. REALNAME=your_real_name Enter your full name. Example: REALNAME=John Zacharias This is an OPTIONAL parameter, but if it is omitted your full name will NOT be provided in the FROM: address of any messages you send unless you add it yourself when you compose a message. This parameter can also be provided with the Configuration Screen. REPLYTO=reply-email-address This is the email address that you want all replies directed to. This may be the same as your FROM email address or it can be a different address if you want replies sent somewhere else. This is an OPTIONAL parameter and can also be provided with the Configuration screen. The standard REPLY-TO address provided here can also be modified each time you compose a message to send. ORGANIZATION=organization-name This parameter is OPTIONAL and, if present, will provide an Organization: header for any message that you compose and send. This parameter can also be provided with the Configuration screen. POP_SERVER=your_POP_host Enter the name of your POP host. This sometimes is "pop." or "mail." prepended to your Domain name. As an example, mine is "pop.calweb.com" so I would enter POP_SERVER=pop.calweb.com If this parameter is omitted, "pop.[domain]" will be generated as your POP_SERVER name provided a domain name has been specified. Unless your POP server is different it is recommended that you do not include this Tool Type. This parameter can also be provided by the Configuration Screen. SMTP_SERVER=your_SMTP_host Enter the name of your SMTP host. This sometimes is "smtp." or "mail." prepended to your Domain name. As an example, mine is "smtp.calweb.com" so I would enter SMTP_SERVER=smtp.calweb.com If this parameter is omitted, "smtp.[domain]" will be generated as your SMTP_SERVER name provided a domain name has been specified. Unless your SMTP server is different it is recommended that you do not include this Tool Type. This parameter can also be provided by the Configuration Screen. EDITOR=call_line_for_your_editor Enter the full call parameter required to activate your editor from the shell. Use "%s" where you would place the file name. Your editor should be called so that it remains in control while AEMAIL is utilizing it. If you are using CygnusEd (CED) as your editor, that is not normally the case. You can force CED to not relenquish control by one of two methods: (1) Use the CED activator program ED with the -sticky option. The CED activator ED has the same name as the AmigaDos ED, but is usually contained in the SYS/Utilities drawer rather than the C: drawer. If you use this method, do not call CED directly. "-sticky" will not work with a direct call to CED. As an example the editor call using the CED activator program would be: EDITOR=Sys:Utilities/ED %s -sticky (2) You can call CED directly using the "-keepio" option. However, if you do this, you will get an "out of stack" error. The way around this is to call CED from a script. A script called "AEMced.scp" is provided with AEMail for this purpose. As written, the script only works if CED is in the C: directory. If it is somewhere else you will either have to add a CD statement to change to that directory or place the full path name in front of the CED call. As an example: if CED is in SYS:Utilities, either the following statement must be added before the CED call: CD SYS:Utilities or the following added in front of the CED call: SYS:Utilities/CED -keepio The editor call in AEMail would then read: EDITOR=s:AEMced %s If you use the accompanying AEMail install script at the Intermediate or above level, this script will be installed and modified as necessary if you tell it you are using CED. If your editor opens on the workbench screen rather than a screen of its own, you should prepend "WB;" in front of your editor call. As an example, the standard AmigaDos ED program always opens on the workbench screen. An example edit call for the Amiga ED would be as follows: EDITOR=WB;c:ed %s WINDOW raw:0/0/640/400/AEMailCompose The window statement in the above call is used to create a full screen window with an interlaced display. If you are not using an interlaced display you can remove the WINDOW parameter or change it to raw:0/0/640/200/AEMailCompose. You can, of course, make other changes to the window parameters if you desire. If you are using the Amiga ED you should probably also remove or rename the ED-Startup file in the S: directory so that you will have a full set of ED menus. If this Tool Type is missing, the following call is the default editor call: EDITOR=WB;c:ed %s The specification for your editor call can also be provided by the Configuration Screen. A convenient check mark item is provided in the Configuration Screen to open the editor on the Workbench screen. TCPLOG=name_of_log_file Enter the full path of your TCP logging file. If this parameter is omitted, it defaults to "tcplog" in the directory AEMail is loaded from. This parameter does not start TCP logging, it only establishes the name of the TCPLOG file. Logging can be started or stopped at any time by a menu item (see Section VII. AEMAIL MENUS - TCP Logging File under the TCP/IP menu). The Logging file can be active when AEMail is started through a parameter in a Configuration Screen item. When TCP logging is active, all sends and receives over the TCP/IP connection are recorded to this file. Each time an AEMAIL session is started and logging is active, data is appended to this file. As a result this file can become quite large. IT IS THE USER'S RESPONSIBILITY TO PERIODICALLY PURGE (DELETE) THIS FILE. A menu item is provided to perform this purge and another item to display the log file with your editor from within AEMail. NOTE: When there is a need to report a problem, especially with your TCP/IP connection, the TCP Logging file should be set active and a copy of the resultant file provided with any feedback on the program activity (see Section X, Bug Reports & Suggestions). The file can be sent as an attachment to any message that you send to AEMAIL. You probably should compress the file with LHA before attaching it as an "Applicatio/Octet Stream" content type with "encoded binary" encoding. I have discovered that this file comes in handy when analysing problems with your Internet provider since it time stamps all entries to the nearest second. This parameter can also be provided by the Configuration Screen. DELETEMAIL=YES This Tool Type sets the initial value of the "Delete Host Mail" menu item under the RETRIEVE MSGS menu. If this Tool Type is entered, the "Delete Host Mail" menu item will be initially checked. See the "Delete Host Mail" item under section VII. AEMAIL MENUS below. This parameter can also be set by the Configuration Screen or the DELETEMAIL flag can be set with a menu item and its state can be saved in the configuration file by selecting the "PROJECT/CONFIGURATION/SAVE" menu item. FULLHEADER=YES This Tool Type sets the initial value of the "Display Full Hdr" menu item under the MESSAGES menu. If this Tool Type is entered, the "Display Full Hdr" menu item will be initially checked. See the "Display Full Hdr" item under section VII. AEMAIL MENUS below. This parameter can also be set by the Configuration Screen or the FULLHEADER flag can be set with a menu item and its state can be saved in the configuration file by selecting the "PROJECT/CONFIGURATION/SAVE" menu item. STRIPDUPS=YES This Tool Type sets the initial value of the "Excl Dup Msgs" menu item under the RETRIEVE MSGS menu. If this Tool Type is entered, the "Excl Dup Msgs" menu item will be initially checked. See the "Excl Dup Msgs" item under section VII. AEMAIL MENUS below. This parameter can also be set by the Configuration Screen or the STRIPDUPS flag can be set with a menu item and its state can be saved in the configuration file by selecting the "PROJECT/CONFIGURATION/SAVE" menu item. HDRINREPLY=YES This Tool Type sets the initial value of the "Incl Hdr in Resp" menu item under the MESSAGES menu. If this Tool Type is entered, the "Incl Hdr in Resp" menu item will be initially checked. See the "Incl Hdr in Resp" item under section VII. AEMAIL MENUS below. This parameter can also be set by the Configuration Screen or the HDRINREPLY flag can be set with a menu item and its state can be saved in the configuration file by selecting the "PROJECT/CONFIGURATION/SAVE" menu item. STARTNET=call_line_for_your_startnet_script This Tool Type is used to specify the call line for your script that starts up your TCP/IP stack. If you are using AmiTCP, this is normally the file "startnet" in the AMITCP:bin directory. If you are using Miami, an AREXX script has been provided with the AEMail archive called "startnet.miami" and it is located in the AEMail program directory. A full path name to that script must be entered. If the script is an AREXX script it should be preceded with "rx " (a space is between the rx and the script name). The standard AmiTCP startnet script is NOT an AREXX script even though it uses AREXX commands. It is an AmigaDOS script. The Miami script, on the other hand, is an AREXX script. If you do not use the STARTNET Tool Type, AEMail assumes that you do not have a script. If you activate the "Start Net" item in the TCP/IP menu and you don't have a startnet script, AEMail's action is to iconify and allow you to manually start your TCP/IP stack. Connect using the method prescribed by your TCP/IP stack. When you un-iconify AEMail, AEMail will immediately check to see if any mail is present on your POP server. If you are using a TCP/IP stack that can't use a script (such as TermiteTCP) or you have no script to make connection to your Internet provider, then this Tool Type should not be used. Then if you select the StartNet menu item, the system will automatically iconify AEMail and present the Workbench screen. Since AmiTCP Demo Version 4.0 puts up a requester on the workbench screen that must be responded to, AEMail will automatically switch to the Workbench screen before calling this script. Although the Miami script does not require manual intervention, the default action is to also switch to the Workbench screen since this allows you to see the action of the dialer. When the connection has been made using Miami, the screen will automatically switch back to the AEMail screen. The Start Net script can also be set by the TCP/IP page of the Configuration Screen. The Configuration screen will also allow you to set whether or not the system switches to the Workbench screen when the Start Net script is executed. Note: Check your startnet script to be sure that full path names are specified. If you are using the standard AmiTCP startnet script, that script may not be executed from the Amitcp:bin directory (unless AEMAIL is executed from there). Therefor, you should verify that Amitcp:bin/ is prepended to all calls to functions within the AmiTCP/bin directory within the script. Pay particular attention to the "online" call - it should be AmiTCP:bin/online. You will also have to move the AREXX commands (such as WaitForPort and RX) to the C: directory. The installation script will automatically do this for you. STOPNET=call_line_for_your_stopnet_script This Tool Type is used to specify the call line for your script that terminates your TCP/IP connection. If you are using AmiTCP, this is normally the file "stopnet" in the AMITCP:bin directory. If you are using Miami, an AREXX script has been provided with the AEMail archive called "stopnet.miami" and it is located in the AEMail program directory. A full path name to that script must be entered. If the script is an AREXX script it should be preceded with "rx " (a space between the rx and the script name). The standard AmiTCP startnet script is NOT an AREXX script even though it uses AREXX commands. It is an AmigaDOS script. The Miami script, on the other hand, is an AREXX script. If you do not use the STOPNET Tool Type, AEMail assumes that you you do not have a script. If you activate the "Stop Net" item in the TCP/IP menu and you don't have a stopnet script, AEMail's action is to iconify and allow you to manually stop your TCP/IP stack. You can then disconnect using the method prescribed by your TCP/IP stack. When you un-iconify AEMail, AEMail will test to see if you are, in fact, disconnected. If you are using a TCP/IP stack that can't use a script (such as TermiteTCP) or you have no script to terminate your connection to your Internet provider, then this Tool Type should not be used. Then if you select the Stop Net menu item, the system will automatically iconify AEMail and present the Workbench screen. The Stop Net script can also be set by the TCP/IP page of the Configuration Screen. The Configuration screen will also allow you to set whether or not the system switches to the Workbench screen when the Stop Net script is executed. Since terminating your connection with a script usually does not require any visual interaction, the default action is to NOT switch to the Workbench screen. Note: Check your stopnet script to be sure that full path names are specified. If you are using the standard AmiTCP stopnet script, that script may not be executed from the Amitcp:bin directory (unless AEMail is executed from there). Therefor, you should verify that Amitcp:bin/ is prepended to all calls to functions within the AmiCCP:bin directory within the script. Pay particular attention to the "offline" call - it should be AmiTCP:bin/offline. You will also have to move the AREXX commands (such as WaitForPort and RX) to the C: directory. The installation script will automatically do this for you. AUTOCONNECT=YES When AEMail is first activated it attempts to determine if you are connected to your Internet provider. If you are not and this Tool Type is present, AEMail will automatically run your StartNet script. Before activating this Tool Type, you should check to see if AEMail can activate your TCP/IP stack properly using the StartNet menu item. If there are any problems with your StartNet activation they will show up at this time rather than constantly every time you try to activate AEMAIL. WARNING: You should not use this Tool Type if a StartNet script is not present for your TCP/IP stack. You should activate your TCP/IP stack manually before you start AEMail. This parameter can also be set by the Configuration Screen. CONFIGURATION SCREEN The Configuration screen is displayed on the Workbench when you click on the [Configure AEMAIL now] button or when you select the "Project/Configuration/Edit" menu item. The configuration screen is divided into four pages with the page name shown with a button at the top of the page area. When you click on any one button that button will become highlighted and the appropriate page will be displayed. The four pages are: IDENTITY TCP/IP PATHS GENERAL At the bottom of the Configuration screen is a row of buttons as follows: [USE] [SAVE] [SAVE AS] [CANCEL] Clicking on any one of these buttons will perform the requested action, regardless of which page you are on, and return you to the main AEMAIL screen. If you want the configuration information to apply only to this AEMAIL session select [USE]. If you want to make the configuration permanent, select [SAVE]. This will cause a new configuration file to be written and will also signal that the configuration file is to take precedence over the Tool Types the next time AEMAIL is loaded. Normally the configuration file is either s:aemail.cnfg or the file specified in the CONFIG= tool type. However, if you opened another configuration file with the "Project/Configuration/Open..." menu item, that configuration file will be the current active one. The [SAVE AS] button does the same as [SAVE] except that a file requester will be displayed that will allow you to rename and place the configuration file anywhere you wish. WARNING: when you use the [SAVE AS] button, AEMAIL assumes that that file is now your active configuration file and any saves occuring after that will be to that file. To return to the base configuration (either s:aemail.cnfg or the CONFIG= file), use the "Project/Configuration /Reset" menu item. [CANCEL] will abort the operation without making any changes to the configuration information. The [USE], [SAVE], [SAVE AS] or [CANCEL] buttons are active no matter which configuration page is currently active. When the Configuration screen is first activated, the Identity page will be active. Before exiting from the Configuration Screen with [USE], [SAVE], or [SAVE AS] the required configuration parameters must be present. If not, the following requester will be displayed: The following Configuration items are empty [list of empty items] They are required items! This is the same requester that is displayed when AEMAIL is started without these parameters being provided. Your choices with this requester are: [Reenter Configuration Data] [Cancel Configuration Request] Clicking on the [Cancel Configuraion Request] will act the same as if you clicked on [CANCEL] in the main configuration screen. In this event your "old" configuration data will still be active and if you did not have the required parameters in the first place, you will not be able to do anything but enter the data or exit from AEMAIL. The one exception to the "old" configuration remaining the same is with the .headers file. This is always updated no matter which button is pressed. Identity Parameters ------------------- The Identity page appears as follows: ========================================================================= AEMAIL Configuration Screen ------------------------------------------------------------------------- [ IDENTITY ]____________________________________________________________ | | | POP3 UserID: [ ][CLR][DEFAULT] [CHANGE PASSWORD]| | | |From (email) Address: [ ][CLR][DEFAULT]| | | | Reply To Address: [ ][CLR]{DEFAULT]| | | | Real Name: [ ][CLR][DEFAULT]| | | | Organization: [ ][CLR][DEFAULT]| | | | POP Server: [ ][CLR][DEFAULT]| | | | SMTP Server: [ ][CLR][DEFAULT]| | | | SMTP Domain Name: [ ][CLR][DEFAULT]| |_______________________________________________________________________| [USE] [SAVE] [SAVE AS] [CANCEL] ========================================================================= When this page is first called up, values from the Tool Types or the current configuration file (which ever takes precedence) will be displayed in each of the string gadgets. Appropriate information can be entered into each of the string gadgets. The buttons to the side of each string gadget perform the following actions: [CLR] will cause the string gadget to be cleared. [DEFAULT] will cause default information to be loaded into the string gadgets as follows: POP3 UserID: information from the USERID= Tool Type. From Address: information from the FROM= Tool Type. Reply To Address: information from the REPLYTO= Tool Type or, if missing, the From Address. Real Name: information from the REALNAME= Tool Type. Organization: information from the ORGANIZATION= Tool Type. SMTP Domain Name: Information from the DOMAIN= Tool Type. POP Server: information from the POP_SERVER= Tool Type if present; otherwise , if a Domain Name is present, this will be the domain name with 'pop.' prepended to it. SMTP Server: Information from the SMTP_SERVER= Tool Type if present; otherwise, if a Domain Name is present, this will be the domain name with 'smtp.' prepended to it. If a Tool Type was the only default and it is missing, nothing is loaded into the corresponding string gadget. The [CHANGE PASSWORD] button gadget will bring up a special window which will allow you to add or change your password. This window looks like the follwing: |========================================| |0|Enter Password | |----------------------------------------| | | | Enter your new password below | | | | [ ] | | | | | | | | [START OVER] [ CANCEL ] | |________________________________________| The string gadget will be automatically activated when the window is displayed. You can type in your new password, but for each character you type, an '*' will appear. After hitting return, the heading "Enter your password below" will be replaced by the following heading: "For verification, re-enter your password". You must re-enter your password and, when you hit return, if the re-entered password matches the first password, the password window will close. The new password will not take effect until you hit the [USE], [SAVE] or [SAVE TO] buttons at the bottom of the Configuration screen. If you hit the [CANCEL] button at the bottom of the Configuration screen even though the new password has been accepted, the new password will not be used. If the re-entered password does not match, the following will appear below the password entry string gadget: Password failed Validation! and the "Enter your password below" heading will re-appear. If at any time you want to start over with entering the new password, you can click on the [START OVER] gadget. If you want to cancel the password entry process you can either click on the close gadget at the top left of the window or on the [CANCEL] gadget in the window. TCP/IP Parameters ----------------- The TCP/IP page appears as follows: ========================================================================= AEMAIL Configuration Screen ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ____________[ TCP/IP ]________________________________________________ | | |Start Net Call: [ ][REQ][CLR][DEFAULT]| | [ ] Start Net Opens on the Workbench | | | | Stop Net Call: [ ][REQ][CLR][DEFAULT]| | [ ] Stop Net Opens on the Workbench | | | | [ ] Automatic connection to Internet Provider on AEMAIL Start Up | | [ ] Display disconnect check on AEMAIL exit | | | |Disable Queued Mail Chk [] on connection establishment [] at AEMAIL exit| | Disable New Mail Chk [] on connection establishment [] at AEMAIL exit| | | | Check for new mail every [ ] minutes | |________________________________________________________________________| [USE] [SAVE] [SAVE AS] [CANCEL] ========================================================================= The "Start Net Call" and "Stop Net Call" are required if you are going to start up or stop your TCP/IP connection from within AEMail with a script. If you are using AmiTCP, this is normally either the file "startnet" or "stopnet" in the AMITCP:bin directory. If you are using Miami, two AREXX scripts, called "startnet.miami" and "stopnet.miami" have been provided with the AEMail archive located in the AEMail program directory. When first presented, these two string gadgets will contain the values given in you STARTNET and STOPNET Tool Types or what was last stored in your configuration file. If these two Tool types are not present, these two string gadgets will be blank unless a previous configuration file is present and has these calls. If you do not want what is presented as the default in these two string gadgets, you can enter the correct path and script name in the string gadgets. A full path name to that script must be entered. If the script is an AREXX script it should be preceded with "rx " (a space is between the rx and the script name). The standard AmiTCP startnet script is NOT an AREXX script even though it uses AREXX commands. It is an AmigaDOS script. The Miami script which comes with AEMail, on the other hand, is an AREXX script. The [REQ] button will call up a file requester to allow you the find the script you want and [CLR] will clear the string gadget. [DEFAULT] will place the script path and name from your Tool Types in the appropriate string gadget. If you need the "Start Net" script or the "Stop Net" script to open on the workbench screen, click on the approriate check mark gadget for the particular script. When the TCP/IP Configuration page first opens the "Start Net Opens on the Workbench" item will be checkmarked. SPECIAL NOTE FOR USERS OF TERMITE TCP: If you are using a TCP/IP stack that does not have a Start Net or Stop Net script (such as TermiteTCP), you should use the [CLR] button to clear these two string gadgets. Starting and stopping your Internet connection is then done manually. Then when you use the Start Net or Stop Net menu item, the action that is performed is to iconify AEMail. You can then perform the network connection in what ever manner was provided by your TCP/IP stack software. Once the connection is made, un-iconify AEMail and AEMail will then check your POP Server for any available messages if that option was selected (see below). The "Automatic connection to Internet Provider on AEMAIL Start Up" check box provides the same capability as the AUTOCONNECT Tool Type. When AEMail is first activated it attempts to determine if you are connected to your Internet provider. If you are not and this item is checked, AEMail will automatically run your StartNet script. However, the AUTOCONNECT function will be disabled if you do not have a "Start Net" script. Except when you are using AEMail as a mailto: agent, when AEMail terminates and you are still connected to your Internet provider, the following Requester will be displayed: Do you wish to terminate your Host connection now? You will given the opportunity to reply with either a [YES] or [NO]. If you never want you Internet connection to be terminated when you exit from AEMAIL, you can prevent the above requester from being displayed by NOT checking the "Display disconnect check on AEMAIL exit" box. By default, this box WILL BE CHECKED, so, to disable the function, you would have to click in this box. However, this function will automatically be disabled if you do not have a Stop Net script. Please Note: The way AEMail determines if you are still connected is to check if the "bdsocket.library" is present. This library may become present when you load your TCP/IP stack software. Even though you may not be connected the bdsocket.library will then be present, so you will get the above notification even though you are not actually connected. In this event replying with either [YES] or [NO] to the requester will have no effect. Whenever AEMAIL is first loaded and is connected to Internet Provider or if you select "Start Net" from the "TCP/IP" menu, a check will be made for any mail on your POP server or any mail that must be sent from your QUEUED folder. Except when you are using AEMail as a "mailto:" agent, this same check is also performed when you quit AEMAIL. You can disable any of these checks by checking the appropriate box in the following lines: Disable Queued Mail Chk [] on connection establishment [] at AEMAIL exit Disable New Mail Chk [] on connection establishment [] at AEMAIL exit AEMAIL also has the capability for checking for mail periodically on your POP server. This function is performed in the background so you can be doing other activities while this check is going on. When mail is found, the following requester will pop up on your screen: YOU HAVE MAIL!! n Messages available on the POP Server Do you wish to receive these messages now? Replying [YES] to the above requester will start the retrieval of the messages. If you are in iconify mode when this occurs, the retrieval will occur in the background without bringing up the AEMail screen. You can set the time interval for this check by entering the appropriate number of minutes in the following numeric gadget: Check for new mail every [ ] minutes The default time interval is 2 minutes. If you enter a zero in this numeric gadget, no check will be made. Default Path Parameters ----------------------- The Default Path page appears as follows: ========================================================================= AEMAIL Configuration Screen ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________________[ PATHS ]_____________________________________ | | | Mailcap Directory: [ ][REQ][CLR][DEFAULT]| | | | TCP Logging File: [ ][REQ][CLR][DEFAULT]| | [ ] TCP Logging Active on AEMAIL startup| | | | Retrieve Mail from Directory: [ ][REQ][CLR][DEFAULT]| | | | Save Mail to Directory: [ ][REQ][CLR][DEFAULT]| | | |Add Attachments from Directory: [ ][REQ][CLR][DEFAULT]| | | | Save Attachments to Directory: [ ][REQ][CLR][DEFAULT]| |________________________________________________________________________| [USE] [SAVE] [SAVE AS] [CANCEL] ========================================================================= String gadgets are provided for giving the full path for each of the default directories and or file. The directory paths that can be specified are: Mailcap Directory: This is the directory that contains your mailcap file. The file will always be named "mailcap". The default entry for this is "AEMAIL:". TCP Logging File: This allows you to enter a file name as well as a path. The default path and file name is "tcplog" in the AEMail program directory. If this field is cleared, no TCP logging can take place. When the [SAVE], [SAVE AS] or [USE] gadgets are selected, if TCP Logging was active and the TCP logging File name that was entered is different from the current log file, the current log file will be closed and a new file opened. If you clear this field TCP logging will stop since there is no file to log to. Whether logging takes place or not should depend on the "TCP/IP/TCP Logging File/Active" menu item (checkmarked flag). You can cause TCP logging to be active when AEMail starts up by checking the "TCP Logging Active on AEMAIL startup" check mark gadget below the TCP Logging File string gadget. If this item is checked, the logging will become active when you exit from the Configuration screen. You will have to turn off the Active flag in the "TCP/IP/TCP Logging File" menu item to stop logging. Note: none of the actions mentioned above will take place until you select [USE], [SAVE] or [SAVE TO] at the bottom of the Configuration screen. If you select [CANCEL] no change will be made in your TCP logging activity. Retrieve Mail from Directory: This is the initial path that will appear in the file requester when you Retrieve mail from a file rather than your POP Server. The default directory for these files is "PROGDIR:" which is your current AEMail program directory. If you regularly are trying to bring in mail that was previously transferred using another mail user agent such as AmiPOP, AirMail, or Voodoo, you should use the directory that was used for these agents for storing mail. You can specify any directory of your choosing as the default path for the Retrieve Mail file requester. You enter that default in this string gadget. Save Mail to Directory: This is the initial path that will appear in the file requester when you select the "Save Mail" icon in the command icon strip. The default directory for this path is PROGDIR:, which is your current program directory. However, you can specify any other path of your choosing as the default path for the Save Mail file requester. You enter that default in this string gadget. Add Attachments from Directory: This is the initial path that will appear in the file requester when you select the [REQ] button in the Add Attachment requester (see below under Section VIII. AEMAIL WINDOWS. The default directory for this path is PROGDIR:. However, you can specify any other path of your choosing as the default path for the Add Attachment requester. You enter that default in this string gadget. Save Attachments to Directory: This is the initial path that will appear in the file requester when you select the [Save] or [View & Save] buttons in the Attachment requester (see below under Section VIII. AEMAIL WINDOW. The default directory for this path is RAM:. However, you can specify any other path of your choosing as the default path for the Attachment file requester. You enter that default in this string gadget. When this this page is first activated, the values that were last saved in the current configuration file will be displayed. The buttons to the side of each string gadget perform the following actions: [CLR] will cause the string gadget to be cleared. [DEFAULT] will cause default information, as described above, to be loaded into the appropriate string gadget. [REQ] causes a file requester to appear for selecting the appropriate directory and file name (TCP Logging File only) to be loaded into the appropriate string gadget. The file requester will start out with the last path that was used for that particular string gadget. If no path was last used, a dummy name of "VOLUMES" will be used, the requester will flash, and the volumes and assigns will be displayed. General Parameters ------------------ The General Parameters page appears as follows: ========================================================================= AEMAIL Configuration Screen ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ___________________________________[ GENERAL ]__________________________ | | |Printer Device: [PRT: ][REQ][CLR][DEFAULT] Top Margin:[4 ]| | [ ] Include Attachment List in Print Out | | | | [ Printer Setup ] [Set Screen Mode] | | [Set Minimum Headers] | | | | [ ] Delete Mail from Server [ ] Display Full Header | | [ ] Strip Duplicate Messages [ ] Include Header in Reply | | | | EditCall: [ ][REQ][CLR][DEFAULT] | | [ ] Editor Opens on the Workbench | | | | Default Reply to Message Parameters | | | | [ ] Quote Original Message Text Quote Prefix[> ] | | | | Quote Header: [ ] | |________________________________________________________________________| [USE] [SAVE] [SAVE AS] [CANCEL] ========================================================================= The General Parameter page allows you to set up certain general type parameters such as specifications for your printer device, your screen mode that you want your AEMail screen to open on, the list of minimum headers you want displayed in a message, certain default menu checkmarked items, the specification for your editor, and the specifications for the default message reply headers. For the Printer Device you can specify the device that you want to do your printing on. By default this is PRT:, but you can specify a file if you care to. If you specify a file, your printer output will be sent as standard ASCII text with form feeds and margin spacing included in the output. The [REQ] button will call up a file requester through which you can enter the path and file name of this printer file. [CLR] will clear the string gadget and DEFAULT will enter PRT: into the gadget. When this page is first displayed, the PRT: default will be in the gadget. You can also specify the Top Margin with the numeric string gadget to the right of the Printer Device. The default top margin is 4. If you want the list of attachments to appear on the last page of your printout, you can check the "Include Attachment List in Print Out" box. By default, this box is checked when you first call up the General Parameter screen. If you want to modify your printer setup parameters that are normally set with your PRINTER PREFERENCES, you can click on the [Printer Setup] button. This will call up the Printer Preferences program so that you can can change your printer setup. Please Note that, if you change the printer preferences, the new preferences will remain in effect when you quit AEMail. If you want to set your screen mode for AEMail, you can click on the [Set Screen Mode] button. This will call up a Screen Mode Requester which will allow you to set whatever screen mode you wish. Your overscan mode can also be set. This defaults to "OVERSCAN-TEXT". When you save your configuration settings, the screen mode you selected and the overscan setting are saved in the AEMail configuration file and will be used the next time you load AEMail. The minimum header set that you want displayed in your message can be set by clicking on the [Set Minimum Headers] button. This will bring up a requester that looks like this: |==================================| |[o] Set Minimum Headers | |==================================| | Select/Deselect Headers | | to be displayed | |==================================| || *bcc: | || || *cc: | || || Content-Transfer-Encoding: | || || Content-Type: | || || *Date: | || || *From: | || |==================================| | Enter New Header | |[ ]| | | | [OK] | |==================================| A list of possible message headers is displayed in the scrollable list. An asterick (*) in front of a header indicates that it has been selected for inclusion in the minimum header list. Clicking on an item in the list will select it with an (*). If it is already selected, it will deselected (the asterick will change to a blank). The string gadget at the bottom of the requester is used to enter a header that is not in the list. Be sure and end the header with a colon (:). After entering the header, press return and the header will be place properly in the scollable list. It will be deselected when it is first entered in the list. You will have to click on it to select it. When you are through entering items in the list, click on [OK] and you will be returned to the General Parameters page. Clicking on the close gadget at to top of the requester has the same effect as clicking on [OK]. Please NOTE: anything you enter in the list or select/deselect will remain in the list in that state during the current run of AEMail even if you click on [CANCEL] in the main configuration window. In other words, [CANCEL] for the minimum header list has the same effect as [USE]. Clicking on [SAVE] or [SAVE AS] at the bottom of the screen will permanently save the headers you have selected. There is no way to delete a header once it has been entered in the list and saved except by deleting the .headers file in the AEMAIL: directory. This is really not a problem, however, since, if you entered an incorrect header and haven't selected it, it will have no effect on the program. The four check boxes: [ ] Delete Mail from Server [ ] Display Full Header [ ] Strip Duplicate Messages [ ] Include Header in Reply have the same effect as the Tool Types DELETEMAIL=, FULLHEADER=, STRIPDUPS=, and HDRINREPLY=. A checked condition is the same as a YES. When you exit from the Configuration screen with [USE], [SAVE] or [SAVE AS], the corresponding menu items will be checked or unchecked depending on the state of these check boxes. For the EditCall string gadget you must use the full path name of the editor of your choice plus any parameters you want to use on the call. To specify where the file name you are editing goes use '%s'. An example would be: c:ed %s Below the EditCall: string gadget is a checkmark gadget which is used to tell AEMail that your editor will open on the Workbench screen. If your editor of choice does not open on it's own screen, you must check this item. The AmigaDos editor, ED, does NOT open on it's own screen; therefor you must check this item if you are using ED. For special considerations in using CygnusED (CED) please see the discussion under the Tool Type EDITOR=. If you plan on using CED you must take these considerations seriously or CED will not work in all instances. The DEFAULT for the EditCall is the information from the EDITOR Tool Type. If the key word 'WB;' precedes the editor call information in the tool type, the "Editor Opens on Workbench" item will be checkmarked. 'WB;' will NOT appear in the EditCall string gadget. If the EDITOR Tool Type was not provided, the following will be the default EditCall: c:ed %s and the "Editor Opens on Workbench" item will be checkmarked. This uses the default AmigaDos editor, ed. If you need to find where your editor is located, [REQ] causes a file requester to appear for selecting the appropriater program file to be loaded into the EditCall string gadget. The section below the heading "Default Reply to Message Parameters" is used to set up the default actions when you are replying to a message. The "Quote Original Message Text" box sets up the default action for quoting the original text in a message. Even though you take the default of not quoting text, you will be given an opportunity to change you mind about this when you compose the message. The "Quote Prefix:" string gadget indicates what is to be placed in front of each quoted line if an original message is quoted. This, by default, is '>'; however, you can use any other prefix as the derfault that you like. A "Quote header:" will be placed on the line in front of the quoted material. You can choose what you would like as the default heading and enter it in this string gadget. By default, the header which will initially appear in the "Quote Header:" string gadget is: On &(week), &(date2), at &(time), &(name) wrote: The & followed by a field name in parenthesis indicates substitution of data from the original message. The values that can be substituted are: &(name) The real name of the sender of the original message. If the real name is not available, the sender's email address will be used instead &(subject) The subject from the original message. Any RE: or (fwd) will be stripped. &(week) The day of the week that the original message was sent. &(date) The date the original message was sent in the form DD MMM YYYY, where DD is the day of the month, MMM is month in the form Jan, Feb, Mar, etc, and YYYY is the full 4 digit year. &(date1) Same as &(date). &(date2) The date in the form MMM DD, YYYY. &(time) The time the original message was sent in the form HH:MM xM where HH is the hour on a 12 hour clock, MM is the minute, and xM is AM or PM. The "Quote Header" is designed to be modified by the user and can be changed with this string gadget. This is a permanent change if you save the Configuration data or it can be in effect as the default for only this running of AEMail if you select [USE]. You can always change this default, however, when you compose a message. V. STARTING AEMAIL Starting AEMail AEMail can be started either from the Workbench by double clicking on it's icon or from the shell. It is recommended that AEMail be normally run from the Workbench. The shell invocation is primarily designed for "MailTo" agents in WWW browsers. When invoked from the shell, there are three optional argument that can be used as follows: AEMail [email-addr-of-recipient-of-email] [config=configuration_file] [pubscr=browser-screen-name] If the recipient's email address is present, AEMail assumes that we are using AEMail as a "MailTo" agent. AEMail will load and immediately display the Compose message window. After you have composed the message a requester will be displayed which asks: What action do you wish to perform on the message you just created? You are given the following options: [SEND NOW] [QUEUE] [CANCEL] [NO ACTION] [SEND NOW] will immediately send the message; [QUEUE] will queue the message for later delivery; [CANCEL] will delete the message without sending it; and [NO ACTION] will leave the message in the Pending folder without any action being performed. [SEND NOW], [QUEUE], and [CANCEL] work similarly to the corresponding commands described under Section VI. COMMAND ICON STRIP ([CANCEL] is the same as the DELETE command). Once the action requested is performed, AEMail will terminate. The "config=" keyword parameter is used to specify a configuration file other that the normal s:aemail.cnfg file. All pertanent data on the AEMail configuration to be used will be in this file. If you wish to invoke AEMail from the shell and have it run normally (not as a "MailTo" agent), you can use the "config=" parameter to direct AEMail to use a different configuration file on startup. To use aemail in this manner, you could simply type: AEMAIL config=[name_of_configuration_file] If AEMail is used as a "mailto:" agent for your browser and that browser passes it's public screen name along with the userid, you can use the keyword argument "pubscn=" to specify that public screen. AEMail will then bring the browser's screen to the front when AEMail terminates. If this argument is missing and the browser opens on it's own screen but does not, itself, bring the screen to the front when it returns from the "mailto" command, you might have to manually bring the browser's screen to the front with the LEFT-AMIGA M key. When you invoke AEMail from the shell with a email address parameter, you will not be able to use any of the AEMail menus or commands. However, AEMail will check for Mail on your POP Server and for Queued messages before displaying the Compose message screen (see initial AEMAIL action below) and ask for configuration data if required parameters are not present in the s:aemail.cnfg file or the config= configuration file. If you invoke AEMail from the shell without any parameters, AEMail will behave the same as if it was invoked from the Workbench by clicking on it's icon except that tool types will not be utilized. That action is described below. AEMail can be run either in an offline or online mode. This means that your TCP/IP stack does not have to be running when AEMAIL is activated. However, to actually receive or send mail via your Internet provider, you must have your TCP/IP stack (AmiTCP, TermiteTCP, Miami, etc) running and connected to your provider. You can activate AEMAIL before activating your TCP/IP stack or after; it makes no difference. A convenient menu item has been provided in AEMAIL to start your TCP/IP stack ("TCP/IP/Start Net") after AEMAIL is up and running provided a script can be used to start your TCP/IP stack. If a script is not provided for this purpose, AEMail will iconify an allow you to start your TCP/IP stack manually. A menu item has also been provided to stop the TCP/IP stack. You can also automatically activate your TCP/IP stack at program startup by providing the AUTOCONNECT=YES Tool Type described above or by check marking the "Automatic connection to Internet Provider on AEMAIL Start Up" in the TCP/IP Page of the configuration screen. WARNING: for this to work, you will need to be able to activate your TCP/IP stack automatically by a script. To activate AEMAIL simply double click on the AEMAIL icon. You can also activate AEMAIL from the shell, but, if activated in this manner, it will not have access to the configuration information provided by Tool Types. It does, however, have access to the configuration information in the specified AEMail configuration file (either s:aemail.cnfg or the file specified with config=). AEMAIL opens on it's own 16 color Public Screen. The Public Screen name is "AEMAIL-1". 8 of the colors are defined by the first eight colors of the workbench screen. The remaining 8 colors are pre-defined with the following colors: Red (13R, 0B, 0G), Green (0R, 15G, 0B), Blue (0R, 0G, 15B), Magenta (15R, 0G, 15B), Yellow (15R, 15G, 0B), Orange (15R, 10G, 0B), Brown (10R, 5G, 0B), and Purple (9R, 3G, 9B). These colors have been preset to provide a consistant color scheme for displaying icons and folder tab colors. Under consideration is the possibility of allowing these colors to be user settable in the future. Since multiple windows are opened by AEMAIL, the program opens on it's own screen to allow uniformity in being able to push the screen to the back (with all of it's member windows) and back again to the front. The LEFT-AMIGA-M key can be used for this purpose. You can also iconify AEMAIL with an iconify bar on the Workbench screen. A menu item has been provided to perform the iconify action. When this menu item is selected, the AEMAIL screen will disappear and a button bar will appear on the Workbench screen with AEMAIL (Click on Close or with RMB to restore) in the title. When the iconified bar is selected, clicking either on the close gadget or with the RMB will restore the AEMAIL screen. There is also a hotkey provided for iconifying AEMAIL. This is RIGHT-AMIGA-I. This same hot key will also take AEMAIL out of iconify mode. The LEFT-AMIGA-I key will also accomplish this. Periodically during the running of AEMAIL, the program will automatically switch to the workbench screen for executing certain functions and then switch back when the function is complete. The first thing AEMAIL does when it is activated is to check to see that certain configuration information has been provided. The necessary items are: POP3 UserID Password Your email address SMTP Domain Name Edit Call If these items have not be provided, the following requester will be displayed: The following Configuration items are empty [list of empty items] They are required items! The Pop Server call and the SMTP Server call will also be included in this list if the Domain Name is missing. If this requester is displayed, you will be given the following choices: [Configure AEMAIL now] [Cancel AEMAIL] If you were to click on [Cancel AEMAIL], AEMAIL will terminate. You can not proceed any further until you have entered these items with the Configuration screen or by providing them as Tool Types. Clicking on the [Configure AEMAIL now] will bring up the Configuration screen which was described previously. After verifying that required configuration information has been provided, AEMAIL will check to see if you are connected to your Internet provider. If it is, connection will be made to your POP server to see if there are any messages available on the server in your mail box. If there are, the following requester will appear: n Messages Available on the POP Server Do you wish to receive these messages now? If you click on the [YES] button, those message will be retrieved at this point. See the RETRIEVE MESSAGES command described in Section VI. COMMAND ICON STRIP for details on this process. If you click on [NO], no message retrieval will take place at this time. You will need to retrieve these messages later using the RETRIEVE MESSAGES command icon. After AEMAIL checks to see if any messages are available on the POP Server, it also checks to see if any messages are in the QUEUED folder (messages queued to be sent). If there are, the following requester will appear: You have n messages queued to be sent Do you wish to send these messages now? If you click on the [YES] button, all of the messages in the QUEUED folder will be sent immediately. This is the same as selecting the "Send Queued Mail" item under the "Project" menu or selecting the QUEUED FOLDER and clicking on the "Send Message Immediately" command icon (see Sections VI. Command Icon Strip and VII. AEMAIL MENUS below). If you click on [NO], the queued messages will not be sent at this time. You will need to send these messages later using either the "Send Queued Mail" item under the "Project" menu or selecting the QUEUED FOLDER and clicking on the "Send Message Immediately" command icon. If you successfully connected at program startup the following message will appear in the Title bar of the AEMAIL screen: TCP/IP session started with [Your-POP-Server-Name] If you were not connected the following message will appear in the Title bar: Not Connected to [Your-POP-Server-Name] Host You can disable either or both the POP mail check or the queued mail check at startup by checkmarking the appropriate items in the TCP/IP Page of the Configuration screen. When AEMAIL first starts, three windows are opened in horizontal bands on the AEMAIL screen. This main window is displayed just below the screen menu/title bar and provides a contextual help title bar and a command icon strip. This strip provides icons for accessing the major functions of AEMAIL and consists (from left to right) of the following icons: Display Folder List, Display Address Book, Display Previous Message, Display Next Message, Save Message To File, Print Selected Messages, Delete/Undelete Message, Compose a Message, Send Message Immediately, Queue Message for Later Delivery, and Retrieve Messages. Currently these icons are in black and white, but a future release will provide colored icons with more detailed displays. The window below the command strip window contains a "folder strip" set of icons. An icon is provided for each folder with a colored "tab" to indicate the type of folder (of the user's own choosing). Below each folder icon is a short name (not exceeding 9 characters) for that folder. Inside the folder is the total number of messages. It may be followed by the number of un-read messages in parenthesis. If there are unread messages, both numbers will be displayed in red. These messages counts will be updated as messages are added to the folders. Currently deleted messages are not subtracted from these counts. The counts reflect the actual number of messages in the folder whether they are marked for deletion or not. Four pre-defined folders are provided: "INBOX" for holding retrieved messages, "PENDING" which holds messages that the user is currently composing and has not decided to send as yet, "QUEUED" which holds completed messages for later transmission, and "SENT" which holds messages that have been sent and accepted by the SMTP Server. Since these folders must always be present, you can not delete or change the name of these folders. A facility has been provided to allow the user to add as many additional folders of his own choosing that he wants to the list of folders. As each new folder is created, an icon will be created and placed next to the last folder icon. Any number of folders can be created and the "folder strip" has the ability to scroll horizontally so that all of the folder icons can be viewed and accessed. You can use the menu items "Transfer..." and "Copy..." under the MESSAGE menu to transfer or copy messages between folders. The last window is placed below the "folder strip" and is used to display either folder lists, address books, message lists, or messages themselves. If a non-interlaced screen is provided, the message and address book displays will start below the command strip (overlaying the folder strip) rather than below the folder strip. This is done to provide more room for the message or address book display since the number of displayable lines is limited. Other windows are also provided which cover the entire screen below the title bar for the purpose of providing configuration information and for composing messages. Each of the windows is described in detail in the WINDOW section below. While the command and folder strips are being displayed, a contextual help line is provided in the main (command strip) window title bar below the screen's title bar. As you pass the mouse cursor over any command or folder icon, a description of that command or folder will be displayed in the window title bar. The main window menu bar should also be active whenever the mouse pointer moves to the "folder strip" or above. All command and folder icons are surrounded by a raised box. Whenever a command or folder is selected, the box will become depressed. When AEMail is first activated and you are online and have mail and accept it's transfer, the message list for the INBOX folder will be displayed. As each mail message is received you will see it added to the message list of the INBOX. If you are offline or there is no mail or mail is not being checked, the folder list will be displayed. Double clicking on either the name of a folder in the list or one of the folder icons will cause the message list for that folder to be displayed. Double clicking on a message in the message list will cause that particular message to be displayed. If you have selected a time increment in the Configuration screen (the default is 2 minutes), a background process will be started which checks your POP server every few minutes (as specified by the interval) for messages. If there are any messages, the following requester will pop up: YOU HAVE MAIL!! n Messages available on the POP Server Do you wish to receive these messages now? Replying [YES] to the above requester will start the retrieval of the messages. This requester will only pop up when you are not in the middle of some function such as composing a message, transferring or saving a message, printing a message, or performing configuration changes. It will pop up on the Workbench screen if you have AEMail iconified. NOTE: if you did not specify that you wanted messages deleted from your POP server as you transferred them to your Amiga, the "YOU HAVE MAIL" requester will pop up each time the system checks for mail. USING AEMail AS A "MailTo" AGENT A number of Amiga WWW Browsers allow you to select a Mail agent to be used for sending email when a "mailto:" HTML link is specified. AEMail can be used as such a mail agent. On the configuration screen for your browser specify AEMail as your "mailto:" agent by using the full path name of AEMail and the token for specifying the mailto email address. As an example, for Voyager you can specify the following: AmiTCP:bin/AEMail %h as the "mailto:" helper application in the "Network Settings: Other" Voyager menu or when you install Voyager. Be sure and save your Voyager settings once you make the change. The "%h" in the above specification is Voyager's token for where to place the email address. The specification also assumes that AEMail was installed in the AmiTCP:bin drawer. Use the correct full path for where you installed AEMail. Voyager does not require a "pubscr=" argument. Other browsers, if they use this capability, may have a different way to specify the "mailto" user agent. Consult your browser documentation for how to do this. In AWeb, for instance, bring up the "Change Settings" menu and select "External programs" in the cycle gadget. You enter the "mailto:" application call with two string gadgets. The first string gadget specifies the Command string which would be "AmiTCP:bin/AEMail" (again the full path name) and the second string gadget specifies the Argument string which would be "%s pubscn=%s". AWeb does use the public screen argument. In order for the "mailto:" agent to work properly, AEMail must NOT be running when you start up your browser. When you click on the "mailto:" link, AEMail will be loaded, the Compose message window will be displayed, you will then be able to compose and send the message, and AEMail will terminate. If you have a custom configuration file, you should also add the argument "config=name-of-config-file" to the "mailto" calling argument. As an example, using Voyager: AmiTCP:bin/AEMail %h config=name-of-file VI. COMMAND ICON STRIP Below is a description of the "command strip" and the fuctions that it performs: DISPLAY FOLDER LIST This icon looks like a file cabinet. Clicking on the icon will cause the folder list to be displayed in the lower window. This list shows each folder with its short name (INBOX, PENDING, etc), a description of the folder, the number of unread mesages in the folder, and the total number of messages in the folder. The total number of messages includes any messages marked for deletion. DISPLAY ADDRESS BOOK This icon looks like an open book. Clicking on this icon will display the Address Book window. Each address book entry contains three fields: Nickname, Real Name, and UserID (Address). In addition, entries can be provided for groups with a distribution list. The group is identified with the heading "DISTRIBUTION LIST" in the top most UserID field and the UserID's for the members of that list are shown below that heading. For items in the distribution list, real UserID's or Nicknames can be used (Nicknames preferred). An item in the distribution list can also be another distribution list (In this case, only a Nickname can be used). All nicknames are expanded to Real Name and UserID when mail is sent. Currently, address book entries are sorted by Nickname and group entries are interspersed with single entries. Also Real Names are presented as first name followed by last name rather than last name, first name. If you are displaying a message, or have a message selected, when you click on the Address Book icon, the "Reply-To:" address, if present, will be transferred to the UserID address in the Address Book. If the Reply-To: address is not present, the From: address will be used. If a Real Name is present in the address it also will be transferred. You can force the From: address to be transferred by holding down the shift key when you click on the Address Book icon. This process facilitates transferring names and UserIDs to the Address Book. The first time AEMAIL is loaded, a special Address Book entry with a nickname of "AEMAIL" is created. This entry can be used to send bug reports and messages about AEMAIL to my email address. Address book data is stored in a file in your AEMAIL directory called ".addrbook". A more complete description of the Address Book window is given later. DISPLAY PREVIOUS MESSAGE This icon is a backward arrow. When you are displaying a message, clicking on this icon will display the previous message in the message list. If you are at the first message in the list, a requester will be displayed informing you of this. A more complete description of the message display window is given later. DISPLAY NEXT MESSAGE This icon is a forward arrow. When you are displaying a message, clicking on this icon will display the next message in the message list. If you are at the last message in the list, a requester will be displayed informing you of this. A more complete description of the message display window is given later. SAVE MESSAGE TO FILE This icon looks like a diskette. A message must be selected before activating this function. Only one message can be selected; multiple selection does not work with this command. The message you want to save must be either highlighted in the message list or currently being displayed. Before saving the message, a requester will be displayed which will describe the message as to Date, From, To, and Subject and ask you if you want to perform the requested action. Selecting [SAVE] will display a file requester in which you will be asked to enter the file name you want the message saved as, and selecting [CANCEL] will exit the function without performing the action. The complete message, including all attachments, is saved in the format in which the message was received from the POP server except that CARRAGE-RETURN/LINEFEED sequences are stored as LINEFEEDs alone. Also, the message ending sequence (.) is eliminated and any embedded .. are changed to . as they would normally appear in a message. This facilitates conversion of messages from one AEMAIL version to another. If you want to save an attachment in its converted format, you can do that with the Attachment Requester that can be brought up when you display a message (see Attachment Requester under VIII. AEMAIL WINDOWS below). PRINT SELECTED MESSAGES This icon looks like a printer. You must select the messages you want printed prior to selecting this icon. Multiple message selection works with this command. Each of the messages will be printed in the order that they appear in your message list. A progress indicator will appear as each message is being sent to your printer which shows the percent being printed and the total bytes being printed. This progress indicator has an [ABORT] button which allows you to terminate the printing. However, beware, most printers have a substantial buffer which will probably receive all of your messages quite quickly. Once the messages are in the printer's buffer, the printing can not be cancelled without turning your printer off. A heading line will be printed on each page of the listing which contains the following information: Message Sent on MM/DD/YY (DOW) at HH:MM [AM/PM], [from/to] [name] Page n where MM/DD/YY is the date the message was sent (received) or composed, DOW is the day of the week the message was sent (received) or composed, HH:MM is the hour and minute the message was sent (received) or composed using a 12 hour clock, [AM/PM] is either AM or PM. [from/to] if the message was received you will see "from", and if you composed or sent the message you will see "to", [name] the full name of the sender or nickname of recipient, [n] the page number. On the first page only, if there are attachments, the following line will appear below the heading line: This message has attachments (See last page for list). On a separate page after the message, the attachment list will appear, providing the "Include Attachment List in Print Out" item is checkmarked in the General Parameters portion of the Configuration screen. Printing the attachment list is the default action. Note: no check is made whether a selected message is deleted or not. If a deleted message is selected it will be printed anyway (this is probably desireable in certain circumstances). If you don't want to print it, de-select it! This function can also print a list of all messages in a folder. To do this, DO NOT select any messages in the folder. A requester will appear when you select either the printer command icon or the Print menu item which says: No messages selected to print! Do you want to print a list of all the messages in the [name of folder] folder? [YES] [NO] By selecting [YES] you will print a list of the messages. Messages will be printed in the order that they appear in the message list. Selecting [NO] will terminate the printing function. Printing uses your Preferences Printer. You should set it up properly before executing AEMAIL, but you can set it up while in AEMAIL by using the General Parameters display on the Configuration screen. You can also specify a print file that the output will be directed to. As a default AEMAIL will space 4 lines down before starting to print. This "Top Margin", however, can be changed in the General Parameters section of the Configuration screen. DELETE/UNDELETE MESSAGE This icon looks like a garbage can. This will delete OR undelete all messages that have been selected in a message list. Whether deleting or undeleting takes place depends on the current status of the message. If it is currently marked for deletion, it will be undeleted. This function only marks (or unmarks) messages for deletion. The messages will actually be deleted only when AEMAIL exits. COMPOSE A MESSAGE This icon looks like a sheet of paper with a pen on it. The Compose a Message function brings up the Compose Message window which is described under Section VII, AEMAIL Windows. In this window you will enter information about the message you are about to compose. The information you enter includes the Nickname or UserID of the receipient of the message, the subject and whether or not you want to send cc's to anyone. You can also specify any attachments you want to send with the message through the Add Attachment Requester. After supplying the required information, your editor will be called and you will then compose your message text. If a message has been selected in any folder, except the PENDING, QUEUED, or SENT folders, before clicking on this icon, the compose will be treated as either a reply to the selected message or you will be allowed to compose a new message to be sent to a different (or same) recipient. If you want to forward a message you will have to use the "Forward..." sub-item in the Messages menu. If the message selected was in the PENDING or QUEUED folder, you will be allowed to either edit the selected message or create a new message. If you edit the message it will be stored back into the PENDING folder and the old message will be deleted. If the message selected was in the SENT folders, you will only be able to create a new message. After your message has been composed it will automatically be placed in the PENDING folder. You can then send the message by either clicking on the SEND MESSAGE IMMEDIATELY icon or queue it for later delivery by clicking on the QUEUE MESSAGE FOR LATER DELIVERY icon. SEND MESSAGE IMMEDIATELY This icon looks like an envelope with an arrow going out. An attempt will be made to send the Selected Message(s) to their recipients. The messages to be sent must be in either the PENDING or QUEUED folder. The messages will be sent from the QUEUED folder only if the QUEUED folder is selected; otherwise they will be sent from the PENDING folder. If messages are selected, a requester will appear that asks: Do you wish to send the entire [pending/queued] folder or just selected messages? The choices available are: [ENTIRE FOLDER] [SELECTED MESSAGES] [CANCEL SEND] If no messages have been selected, the entire selected folder will be sent without a requester appearing. Deleted messages are never sent. If there are no undeleted messages in the selected folder a notification requester will appear that indicates that "No messages available to send". A check will then be made to see if AmiTCP is active. If it is not, a requester will be displayed which informs the user that we are in offline mode and that the messages can not be sent (unless the SIMSMTP=YES tool type was set). If AmiTCP is active and a connection has been made to your Internet provider, a message will appear in the top title bar that says "Connecting to SMTP Host to send mail". Once the connection is made. AEMAIL will display "Starting to send n messages" where n is the number of messages selected to send. If we are unable to connect or an error is reported back from your Internet provider, a requester will be displayed showing the nature of the error and the messages will not be sent. A progress window will also be displayed which will show the current number of the message being sent, the total number of messages being sent, the percentage of the current message already sent and the total bytes in the current message being sent. The percentage will be shown as both a number and a graphic slider. This progress window also has an [ABORT] button which allows you to terminate the sending of the current and all remaining messages to your SMTP Server. All nicknames used in To:, cc:, and bcc: header fields will be expanded to the form: Real Name. Group nicknames will be expanded to the Real Names and userids of all members of the group. When each message is successfully sent, the following message will be displayed in the upper title bar: Mail n of n successfully sent to [To: addressee] The n in the above message indicates the message number and the total messages to be sent. The [To: addressee] indicates who the message was addressed to. If it was addressed to multiple addressees, the first addressee will appear followed by ", et al...". The message will also be placed in the SENT folder and marked as deleted in the PENDING or QUEUED folder. In the current version of AEMAIL, the send process operates in the same execution mode as AEMAIL. This means that you can not perform any other AEMAIL operation until the message is either rejected by your Internet provider or successfully received by your provider (unless you abort the process). In a future version, this process will be moved to a background process so that you can perform work in AEMAIL while the sending of the message proceeds. QUEUE MESSAGE FOR LATER DELIVERY This icon looks like a mailbox. This function is provided to allow the user to mark messages that you want sent later. NO MORE EDITING OF THESE MESSAGES can occur once they are moved to the QUEUED folder. However, messages can be moved back to the PENDING folder with the "Transfer..." menu item. Messages for queuing must come from the PENDING folder. You can send these messages manually from the QUEUED folder any time you want by either sending the entire folder or individual messages in the folder. This is done by selecting the QUEUED folder and clicking on the SEND IMMEDIATE icon (see above) or by selecting the "Send Queued Mail" menu item under the PROJECT menu. AEMAIL also allows the user the option of sending queued messages automatically when AEMAIL is first activated, or when the program terminates provided AmiTCP is up and running and you are connected to your Internet provider (see Section V. STARTING AEMAIL, above). It will also perform this check when you make connection to your Internet provider through the StartNet script unless you have disabled this feature with the TCP/IP Parameters section of your Configuration screen. If messages are selected in the PENDING folder when you click on the QUEUE MESSAGE icon, a requester will appear that asks: Do you wish to queue the entire pending folder or just selected messages? The choices available are: [ENTIRE FOLDER] [SELECTED MESSAGES] [CANCEL QUEUING] If no messages have been selected, the entire PENDING folder will be queued without a requester appearing. Deleted messages in the PENDING folder are never queued. If there are no undeleted messages in the PENDING folder a notification requester will appear that indicates that "No messages available to queue". The messages that are selected will be placed in the QUEUED folder and marked as deleted in the PENDING folder. RETRIEVE MESSAGES This icon looks like an envelope with an arrow coming in. When selected, AEMAIL will attempt to connect to the POP host server and transfer any mail at the server to your Amiga. If you are in offline mode (AmiTCP is not up or running or AEMAIL can not connect to your POP server), you will see a requester that asks: !! We are running in Offline mode !! Do you wish to receive messages from files? Clicking on [NO] will terminate the retrieval process. Clicking on [YES] will bring up a file requester which will allow you you to select one or more files. The default directory for these files is "AMITCP:" since it is assumed that you are trying to bring in mail that was previously transferred using another mail user agent such as AmiPOP, AirMail, or Voodoo; however, you can switch to any other directory and bring in any file that is in email text format. You can also change the default directory for retrieving off-line mail with the Path Parameters display on the Configuration screen. AEMAIL automatically recognizes mail stored as individual messages or as message streams (such as stored by AmiPOP). The only requirement is that the message stream must separate messages with data beginning: ...From [UserID] where [UserID] is the UserID specified in the USERID= tool type or with the Required Parameters display on the Configuration screen. It is also assumed that lines have been stored in the file ending in and not ( is $0D and is $0A). If you encounter a message stream that does not use the above to separate messages, please report what was used and what product was used to create the message stream. A copy of the message stream on floppy or sent to me as an email attachment would be very handy. If AmiTCP is up and running and connection can be made to your POP mail server, all messages stored on the server will be transferred to the Amiga. They will be stored as individual messages in the AEMAIL: directory with cryptic file names. A progress window will also be displayed which will show the number of the current message being received, the total number of messages being received, the percentage of the current message already received and the total bytes in the message being received. The percentage will be shown as both a number and a graphic slider. This progress window also has an [ABORT] button which allows you to terminate the receipt of the current and all remaining messages from your POP Server. PLEASE NOTE: The abort process only aborts the receipt of messages into the AMIGA, It does NOT abort the transfer of data from the POP Server. While AEMAIL disconnects from the server, the server may be unaware of this and continue to send the remainder of the message. If AEMAIL attempts to re-establish contact with the Server while it is still sending the message AEMAIL may start to receive the middle of the previously requested message. AEMAIL has been programmed to recognize this and will temporarily report that the POP connection could not be established. Once the POP Server finishes transferring the message, it should become available for another connection. The progress window will be shown both when retrieving messages from your POP server and from files, hyowever, if you are retrieving a message stream, AEMAIL will not be able to correctly determine the number of messages being retrieved. Therefor the "n of n" indicator will be incorrect. If mail on the server is to be deleted, the menu sub-item "Delete Host Mail" in the Retrieve Messages menu item must be checked. If this menu sub-item is not checked, mail will NOT be deleted on your POP server. This has no effect when you are retrieving messages from a file. NOTE: the AEMAIL Installation script automatically defaults to deleting host mail. You will have to un-check this item if you want to keep mail on your POP Server. Since old mail may not be deleted on your server, a menu sub-item has been provided under the Retrieve Messages menu item called "Excl Dup Msgs". When this sub-item is checked duplicate messages from the mail server which are currently stored in any incoming folder will not be stored again. The only folders not checked for duplicate messages are the PENDING, QUEUED and any folder designed to hold SENT messages. Again, the default action with the installation script is to delete duplicate messages. Currently, like sending messages to your Internet provider, the retrieval process is run in the same execution mode as AEMAIL. This means that all of the messages must be received from the POP host before any other AEMAIL process can take place. Again, a future version will move the retrieval process to a background process so you can proceed with other AEMAIL functions while retrieval takes place. Every time a new message is retrieved AND stored, the total and new message counts in the folder list AND the folder icon strip will be updated. Also the top title bar will display the following message: Message n of n retrieved[/deleted] from [POP server/file], [not] saved The first n indicates the current message number and the second n indicates the total number of messages being retrieved. (NOTE: This message will also appear when local mail files are being transferred, but the counts may not be accurate if you are retrieving from a message stream. Also, the retrieval process from local files is so fast, you may only see the message for the last retrieval.) The [/deleted] will appear if the message has been deleted on the POP server and [not] will appear if the message was a duplicate and was not saved. You can check for messages on your POP server and retrieve these messages manually any time you wish by clicking on the RETRIEVE MESSAGES icon. Also, the user has the option of retrieving messages automatically when AEMAIL is first activated (provided AmiTCP is up and running and you are connected to your Internet provider), each time you execute your "startnet" script from within AEMAIL, and when you quit AEMAIL. You can also set a time interval in minutes in which AEMAIL will periodically check for new mail. This function is done in the background and if one or more messages are on your POP server, the following requester will pop up: YOU HAVE MAIL!! n Messages available on the POP Server Do you wish to receive these messages now? Replying [YES] to the above requester will start the retrieval of the messages. This requester will only pop up when you are in the main AEMAIL screen and are not in the middle of some function such as composing a message, transferring or saving a message, printing a message, or performing configuration changes. NOTE: if you did not specify that you wanted messages deleted from your POP server as you transferred them to your Amiga, the "YOU HAVE MAIL" requester will pop up each time the system checks for mail. VII. AEMAIL MENUS Below is a list of all the current menus and menu sub-items and a description of their functions: Project menu Configuration... This has five submenu items for controlling your configuration. These sub-menu items are: Open... This brings up a file requester which allows you to specify a configuration file other than the standard "s:aemail.cnfg" file. Once you have opened this configuration file it becomes your current active configuration. Edit... The Configuration screen will be activated allowing complete configuration data to be entered for the current active configuration file. See the description of the Configuration screen previously under the IV. CONFIGURATION: section in this document for details on the configuration screen. Save This will save the current configuration settings in the currently active configuration file. It serves the same purpose as the previously "Save Settings" menu item (AEMail versions prior to 1.13) in which all of the current settings including the current state of the "Display Full Hdr", "Incl Hdr in Resp", "Excl Dup Msgs" and "Delete Host Mail" menu items. Save As... This is the same as "Save" except that a file requester will be brought up which allow you to rename the current active configuration file. The new name becomes the new current active configuration file. Restore Default This reads in the s:aemail.cnfg file OR the file specified in the CONFIG= Tool Type OR the config= parameter on the Shell call to AEMail. The particular file that is used is referred to as your "base configuration". The base configuration now becomes your currently active configuration file. Send Queued Mail Will send all messages in the QUEUED folder. See the SEND MESSAGE IMMEDIATELY command in the COMMAND ICON STRIP section above. This action will also occur automatically when you first load and when you exit AEMAIL provided you are connected to your Internet provider. Iconify AEMAIL You can iconify AEMAIL with an iconify bar on the Workbench screen with this menu item. When this menu item is selected, the AEMAIL screen will be closed and a button bar will appear on the Workbench screen with AEMAIL (Click on Close or with RMB to restore) in the title. When the iconified bar is in selected mode, clicking either on the close gadget or with the right mouse button will restore the AEMAIL screen. Initially the iconify bar will open at the top center of the Workbench screen, but it can be dragged anywhere on the screen. AEMAIL remembers where you dragged the bar so the next time you iconify, the bar will be at that new position. There is also a hotkey provided for iconifying AEMAIL. This is RIGHT-AMIGA-I. This hot key, and also LEFT-AMIGA-I, will also restore the AEMAIL screen when in the iconify mode. When in iconify mode, periodic checking of mail on your POP server is still done. If mail is found, the "YOU HAVE MAIL" requester will pop up on the Workbench mail. You can retrieve the mail immediately by clicking on the YES gadget. The requester will disappear and retrieval of messages will occur in the background and no progress indicator will appear. When you return to the AEMAIL screen, the new messages will be in your INBOX folder. You can also push the AEMAIL screen to the back exposing the screen immediately behind the AEMAIL screen or the WorkBench screen by hitting LEFT-AMIGA-M when the AEMAIL screen is being displayed. This is standard Amiga action. If the AEMAIL screen has been pushed to the back, hitting LEFT-AMIGA-M will bring the screen forward. Note: if other screens, besides the Workbench screen, are also present, they may be moved to the front first so that you may have to hit LEFT-AMIGA-M several times before the AEMAIL screen appears. Since there is no screen to bring forward, this will not work if the iconify action has been taken. About... This will display the name, version, and date of the program followed by information as to whether or not the shareware registration message has been received and who the version is registered to (with serial number). Below that is information on how to contact the author of the program. Quit... Exits AEMAIL. When this menu item is selected, AEMAIL first checks to see if you are connected to your Internet provider. If you are, a connection will be made to your POP server to see if there are any messages available on the server. If there are, the following requester will appear: n Messages Available on the POP Server Do you wish to receive these messages now? If you click on the [YES] button, those message will be retrieved at this point. If you click on [NO], no message retrieval will take place. After AEMAIL checks to see if any messages are available on the POP Server, it also checks to see if any messages are in the QUEUED folder (messages queued to be sent). If there are, the following requester will appear: You have n messages queued to be sent Do you wish to send these messages now? If you click on the [YES] button, all of the messages in the QUEUED folder will be sent immediately. If you click on [NO], the queued messages will not be sent. After checking for POP messages and QUEUED messages, the following requester will appear: Do you wish to terminate your Host connection now? Selecting the [YES] button will cause the "stopnet" script to be executed terminmating your TCP/IP connection to your Internet provider. You can disable all of these requesters with a checkmarked item in the TCP/IP display on the Configuration screen. If they are disabled, the [NO] action will be assumed which each of the requesters. Finally, a requester will be displayed that asks: Do You Really Want to Quit? Clicking on [YES] will terminate the program and [NO] will return to the program. When AEMail exits, all messages marked for deletion will be deleted and any configuration files in which data has been updated will be re-written. You will probably see a great deal of disk activity at this time. While this disk activity is going on, a window will be displayed on the Workbench screen saying: Updating all AEMail Configuration Files! When updating is complete, this window will disappear. WARNING: DO NOT turn your computer off while this window is being displayed. If you do your disk will be corrupted! Folders menu New... The Configure Folder window will be activated indicating that a new folder should be created. See the description of the Configure Folder window later in this document for details on how to create a new folder. Edit... The Configure Folder window will be activated indicating that the current selected folder description should be edited. The current selected folder is the folder that has a depressed frame. You can change the selected folder by single clicking on the appropriate folder icon or selecting a folder from the folder list. See the description of the Configure Folder window later in this document for details on how to change the folder description. Delete... This will delete the folder that has been selected. You will not be able to delete a folder that has active messages in it. If there are deleted messages in the folder, the messages will be immediately deleted along with the folder. There is no way you can get these deleted messages back. Set Sort Key... Activates the Set Sort Key window for the current selected folder. See the description of the Set Sort Key window later in this document for details on how to set the folder sort keys. Remove DELETED msgs This will IMMEDIATELY delete ALL messages marked for deletion in the current active folder. This means that they will no longer appear in the message list for that folder and they will be physically deleted from your mail directory. Before actually removing the messages the following requester will appear: This will remove all deleted messages in the [folder_name] folder If you continue you can not retrieve them! You will given the option to either [CONTINUE] or [CANCEL]. If you select [CONTINUE] all the messages marked for deletion in the folder will be removed. [CANCEL] will abort the operation. A busy pointer will be displayed while the messages are being removed. Messages menu Compose... Activates the Compose Message window, described later in this document, to create a NEW message to be sent whether or not a message is currently selected. Reply... Activates the Compose Message window to reply to the current selected message. See the description of the Compose Message window later in this document. If a message is not selected when this menu item is activated an error requester will appear. Forward... Activates the Compose Message window to forward the current selected message. See the description of the Compose Message window later in this document. If a message is not selected when this menu item is activated an error requester will appear. Edit... Using this menu item will allow you to edit a message selected in either the PENDING or QUEUED folders. It has the same effect as clicking on the Compose icon when you have selected a message in either the PENDING or QUEUED folders. If you have not selected a message in either the PENDING or QUEUED folder when this menu item is activated an error requester will appear. Select None This menu item will de-select all messages in the selected folder. Select All This menu item will select all messages in the selected folder. Selected messages will be marked with an asterick (*) in the first position of the message in the message list display. Export... Same as the SAVE MESSAGE TO FILE command described previously in this document. Copy... This menu copies all selected messages from the selected folder to a new folder. When you select this menu a Notification window appears which says: Select Folder to Copy Messages To! [CANCEL] When the window appears, click on the folder icon that represents the folder you want the messages copied to. The window will automatically disappear at that time. The selected messages will be copied to that folder. Messages will remain in both folders. Clicking on [CANCEL] before clicking on a folder will cancel the operation. As the messages are being copied, the folder message list that the the messages are copied to will be displayed. Once the copy is complete, the folder message list from which the messages are copied will be displayed. Transfer... This menu moves all selected messages from the selected folder to a new folder. When you select this menu a Notification window appears which says: Select Folder to Transfer Messages To! [CANCEL] When the window appears, click on the folder icon that represents the folder you want the messages transferred to. The window will automatically disappear at that time. The selected messages will be copied to that folder, and the messages in the folder from which the messages are copied will be marked as "deleted". Clicking on [CANCEL] before clicking on a folder will cancel the operation. As the messages are being transferred, the folder message list that the the messages are transferred to will be displayed. Once the transfer is complete, the folder message list from which the messages are copied and deleted will be displayed. Print Same as the PRINT SELECTED MESSAGES command described previously in this document. Delete/Undelete... Same as the DELETE/UNDELETE MESSAGE command described previously in this document. Display Full Hdr This is a checkmarked menu sub-item. When checked, all message headers will be displayed in the message. Since many of these headers are somewhat cryptic and could be confusing and not always understood by the user, the normal action is display only certain header lines. The default action is to display the following headers: From:, To:, Date:, Subject:, cc:, and bcc:, but you can control this default minimum header list with the General Parameters display of the Configuration screen. This menu sub-item is very useful for debugging purpose to see all of the headers what any particular message carries. The current state of this checkmarked item is saved in the aemail.cnfg file whenever the "Save Settings" menu item is selected. It can also be set or reset by the General Parameters display on the Configuration screen. Incl Hdr in Resp This is a checkmarked menu sub-item. When checked the minimum header lines (To:, From:, Date:, Subject, cc:, and bcc:) will be included for the quoted message when composing a response. If it is not checked, no header information will appear. The current state of this checkmarked item is saved in the aemail.cnfg file whenever the "Save Settings" menu item is selected. It can also be set or reset by the General Parameters display on the Configuration screen. Retrieve Msgs menu From POP Host This will only retrieve messages from the POP Server. See the RETRIEVE MESSAGES command described previously in this document for a full explanation of the retrieval process. If AmiTCP is not active or connection to the POP Server can not be made, the RETRIEVE MESSAGES command will return silently with the information that the POP Server could not be reached in the title bar. From Local File... This will only retrieve messages from a local file. No attempt will be made to connect to the POP Server. See the RETRIEVE MESSAGES command described previously in this document for a full explanation of the retrieval process. This menu sub-item allows you to retrieve messages from files even when online (connected to a host through AmiTCP). Excl Dup Msgs This is a checkmarked menu sub-item. When checked, duplicate messages (ones that were previously retrieved and stored in one of AEMAIL's folders), will not be stored. See the description under the RETRIEVE MESSAGES command for the use and full explanation of the function of this item. The current state of this checkmarked item is saved in the aemail.cnfg file whenever the "Save Settings" menu item is selected. It can also be set or reset by the General Parameters display on the Configuration screen. Delete Host Mail This is a checkmarked menu sub-item. When checked mail retrieved from your POP Server will be deleted after it is retrieved. If it is not checked, mail will not be deleted and you will have to use the "Exl Dup Msgs" checkmark item discussed above to insure that a duplicate message are not retrieved the next time you retrieve messages. The current state of this checkmarked item is saved in the aemail.cnfg file whenever the "Save Settings" menu item is selected. It can also be set or reset by the General Parameters display on the Configuration screen. TCP/IP menu Start Net This menu item makes connection to your Internet Provider. It executes the script that has been assigned by the Start Net Tool Type or the TCP/IP page of the Configuration screen. If no Start Net script has been assigned, the action that is performed is to iconify AEMail. You can then perform the network connection in what ever manner was provided by your TCP/IP stack software. Once the connection is made, un-iconify AEMail. When this menu item is selected and a "startnet" script has been assigned, the system will, by default, switch to the workbench screen and execute the "startnet" script. This allows the initial dialing window to display. Once your Internet connection has been made the system will switch back to the AEMail screen. You can control the switching to the workbench screen by a check- marked item in the TCP/IP Parameters page on the Configuration screen. If you are using AmiTCP, the script that should be run is AmiTCP:bin/startnet; although the user may specify a different script and path with the STARTNET Tool Type or in the TCP/IP Parameters page on the Configuration screen. If you are using Miami, a "startnet.miami" script has been provided for connecting with your Internet provider. This is usually run from the AEMail program directory. This is an AREXX script so you will have to precede the script name with "rx " (see Section IV. CONFIGURATION for setting up your Start Net script). This is set up automatically with the AEMail install provided a Miami: assignment is in the system. If you are using a TCP/IP stack that does not have a Start Net script (such as TermiteTCP), you should be sure that the Start Net call gadget in the TCP/IP parameters page of the Configuration screen has been cleared. Your Internet connection is then done manually as explained above. Once a connection is made to your Internet provider and you have returned to the AEMail screen, a connection will be made to your POP server to see if there are any messages available on the server. If there are, the following requester will appear: n Messages Available on the POP Server Do you wish to receive these messages now? If you click on the [YES] button, those message will be retrieved at this point. See the RETRIEVE MESSAGES command described in Section VI. COMMAND ICON STRIP above for details on this process. If you click on [NO], no message retrieval will take place at this time. You will need to retrieve these messages later using the RETRIEVE MESSAGES command icon. After AEMAIL checks to see if any messages are available on the POP Server, it also checks to see if any messages are in the QUEUED folder (messages queued to be sent). If there are, the following requester will appear: You have n messages queued to be sent Do you wish to send these messages now? If you click on the [YES] button, all of the messages in the QUEUED folder will be sent immediately. If you click on [NO], the queued messages will not be sent. After the connection is made, the following message will be displayed in the screen's title bar: TCP/IP Session started with [your-domain-name]. If for any reason the connection can not be made, the following message will be displayed in the screen's title bar: TCP/IP connection to [your-domain-name] failed Stop Net This menu item terminates the connection to your Internet Provider. It executes the script that has been assigned by the Stop Net Tool Type or the TCP/IP page of the Configuration screen. If no Stop Net script has been assigned, the action that is performed is to iconify AEMail. You can then terminate the network connection in what ever manner was provided by your TCP/IP stack software. Once the connection is terminated, un-iconify AEMail. When this menu item is selected and a "stopnet" script has been assigned, the system will terminate the connection silently in the background. Since no action is required by the user (unlike "startnet"), the screen display will remain on the AEMail screen. If you want to switch to the Workbench screen while the connection is being terminated, you can do this through a check-marked item in the TCP/IP Parameters page on the Configuration screen. If you are running AmiTCP, the script that should be run is AmiTCP:bin/stopnet; although the user may specify a different script and path with the STOPNET Tool Type or in the TCP/IP Parameters page on the Configuration screen. If you are running Miami, a "stopnet.miami" script has been provided for terminating the connection with your Internet provider. This script is usually run from the AEMail program directory. This is an AREXX script so you will have to precede the script name with "rx " (see Section IV. CONFIGURATION for setting up your Stop Net script). This is set up automatically with the AEMail install provided a Miami: assignment is in the system. If you are using a TCP/IP stack that does not have a Stop Net script (such as TermiteTCP), you should be sure that the Stop Net call gadget in the TCP/IP parameters page of the Configuration screen has been cleared. Your Internet connection is then terminated manually as explained above. The following messages will be displayed in the screen's title bar when the connection is terminated: TCP/IP session with [your-domain-name] terminated. TCP Logging File This has three submenu items for controlling your TCP Logging file. Please read section IX. AEMAIL FILES, TCP Trace Log File for how to read the entries in this file. The sub-menu items are: Active This is a checkmarked menu sub-item which indicates whether the TCP Logging is active or not. If a TCP Logging File has not been defined with the Configuration screen, this sub- item is ghosted. Clicking on this item when it is not checkmarked will activate TCP Logging. Clicking on it when it is checkmarked will deactivate logging. Purge This is a handy way to delete all previous TCP Logging entries. "Purge" will delete the current logging file and open another file with the same name if logging is active. If logging is not active, the current logging file will be deleted, but a new file will not be opened until the Active sub-item is checkmarked. This menu item can be used whether the logging file is currently active or not. Display/Edit... "Display/Edit" will call your editor to display the current TCP logging file. The logging file MUST NOT be Active in order to display or edit it. If it is active you will get a requester that informs you that you can't display the file beause it is active. If this happens, de-activate it by turning off the Active checkmark and then try the "Display/Edit" again. If a TCP Logging file has not been defined in the Paths page of the Configuration screen, you will receive a requester saying that it is not present. NOTE: The TCP logging file can become quite large and it may take some time for your editor to bring in the file. Some editors are slower than others in this regard. If you are using the AmigaDos editor (Ed), you will see a series of astericks (@) moving across the screen as the file is being read in. You might want to periodically purge the file (if it is always active), to prevent a very large TCP Log file from being created. VIII. AEMAIL WINDOWS Folder List Window The Folder List window will be displayed in the lower portion of the screen when AEMAIL is first loaded and whenever you click on the DISPLAY FOLDER LIST icon in the Command Icon Strip. The Folder List window looks like the following: ===================================================================== Folder List Name Description of Folder Not Read Total --------------------------------------------------------------------- INBOX Messages Received nnnnn nnnnn| | PENDING Messages composed and pending for action nnnnn| | QUEUED Messages Queued to be sent nnnnn| | SENT Messages that have been sent nnnnn| | xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx nnnnn nnnnn| | xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx nnnnn nnnnn| | | | ===================================================================== The folder list is a scrolling list. Double clicking on any of the folders in the list will bring up the Message List window for that folder. If the Folder Icon strip is also being displayed, double clicking on any particular folder icon will also bring up the message list for that folder. Single clicking on a item in the list or folder icon merely selects that folder. The selected folder is then the folder referenced by the Folders Menu group items (Edit.., Delete..., Set Sort Key ...) and by such commands as Message Delete, Message Copy, Message Transfer, or Message Select All/NONE. One of the folders is always active (selected). On program startup, the active folder will be INBOX. You can always tell the current active folder by the depressed frame around the folder icon. Message List Window The Message List window will be displayed in the lower portion of the screen whenever you double click on either an item in the folder list or one of the folder icons. The Message List looks like the following: ======================================================================== Message List for [folder-name] Folder ([folder Description...]) FLGS Date Time From Size Subject (nnn messages) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ NARF MM/DD/YY HH:MM xxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx| | *NARF MM/DD/YY HH:MM xxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx| | . . . . . | | NARF MM/DD/YY HH:MM xxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx| | | | ======================================================================== The column header line displays the number of messages in the folder as (nnn messages). The message descriptions are presented in a scrollable list. The meaning of the various fields of each message description are as follows: FLGS: (starts in the 2nd column) N indicates an unread message A indicates a message with attachments (NOT IMPLEMENTED) R indicates the message is a reply F indicates the message is a forwarded message. D (in the same position as N) indicates the message is a deleted message. Date: This is the message date from the DATE: header in the form of MM/DD/YY (2 digit month, 2 digit day, and the last 2 digits of the year). Time: This is the time the message was received in the form of HH:MM (2 digit hour, 2 digit minute). Time uses a 24 hour clock. From: Is the Real Name (if present) from either the From: or To: header. If the folder represents messages being sent from AEMAIL (PENDING, QUEUED, SENT) then this field will be headed "To" and the To: header will be used. If the Real Name is not present in the header, then the UserID will be used instead. If a Nickname is being used for a message being sent, then the Nickname will appear. Size: This is the size, in bytes, of the message in the form nnn,nnn. If the size exceeds 999,999 bytes then ***,*** will appear. The size includes the size of the message with all its attachments. Subject: Up to 39 characters from the Subject: header after RE: and (fwd) are stripped. You can tell if the message is forwarded or is a reply by examining the FLGS field. RE: and (fwd) are stripped from the Subject: header to allow sorting to place all messages with the same subject (whether original, replied, or forwarded) together. You can also control where 'replied' and 'forwarded' messages go in the list since these use separate sorting criteria. An asterick (*) in the first position indicates that the message is selected. This position will be blank if the message is not selected. The Message list can be sorted under a number of different categories (see Set Sort Keys window below). Double clicking on any message in the message list will bring up the message display window for that message. A single click will highlight and select the message. An asterick will appear in the first column of the line indicating the message is selected. You can click on another message to highlight and select that message. Clicking on a message that is already selected will deselect the message. Only one message is highlighted. If that message is selected it will be considered the current message for some operations (like DELETE/UNDELETE MESSAGE, SAVE MESSAGE TO FILE, and the message to reply to, forward, or edit when composing messages. Other operations such as DELETE/UNDELETE MESSAGE (depending on the option selected), COPY MESSAGE, TRANSFER MESSAGE, PRINT SELECTED MESSAGES, SEND MESSAGE IMMEDIATELY, and QUEUE MESSAGE FOR LATER DELIVERY will use the entire selected list of messages. Folder Configuration Window The Folder Configuration window will be displayed over the entire screen below the top title line when either the "New..." or "Edit..." menu items are selected from the Folders menu. The Folder Configuration window looks like the following: ===================================================================== Folder Name: [ ] (1 - 9 Characters only) Folder Description: [ ] Tab Color: [@| Red | From/To Filter: [ ] AND [ ] OR [ ] Subject Filter: [ ] AND [ ] OR [ ] Date Filter: [ ] [ ] Folder for Sent Messages [SORT KEYS] [ SAVE ] [CANCEL] ==================================================================== If you are editing an existing folder, the Folder Name will be filled in, but the string gadget will be disabled. You will not be able to modify it. If you are creating a new folder you must name it with a 1 to 9 character folder name. This will appear below the folder icon in the folder strip and in the folder list. The folder description can be up to 99 characters, but of course that many charcters will never appear anywhere. Up to 52 characters will appear in the folder list display under "Description of Folder". This will also appear in the contextual help line in the window bar preceded by "Folder for" The Tab Color is a cycle gadget with the following possible values: Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, Orange, Magenta, Brown, or Purple. This provides a color on the folder tab to help classify the folders according to the user's preferences. The next 3 string gadgets are designed for filters to help distribute in-coming messages to various folders. THESE ARE NOT IMPLEMENTED AS YET AND AT THIS TIME ARE DISABLED. The checkbox gadget marked "Folder for Sent Messages" is used to indicate when a folder is for messages that have been sent or ready to be sent rather than in-coming folders. The PENDING, QUEUED, and SENT folders all have this box checked. The [SORT KEYS] button is used to call the Set Sort Keys window (see below) to set the sort keys for the folder. Finally, you are given the choice of canceling the operation or saving the folder data in the folder.config file with the [CANCEL] and [SAVE] buttons. Set Sort Keys Window The Set Sort Keys window will be displayed over the entire screen below the top title line when either the "Set Sort Key..." menu item from the Folders menu is selected or the [Sort Keys] button is clicked in the Folder Configuration window. The Set Sort Keys window looks like the following: ===================================================================== 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Priorities: ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- Un-Read Messages: FIRST [ ] Messages with Attachments: FIRST [ ] Priority [@|0| LAST [ ] Priority [@|0| LAST [ ] Replied Messages: FIRST [ ] Forwarded Messages: FIRST [ ] Priority [@|0| LAST [ ] Priority [@|0| LAST [ ] Latest Date: FIRST [ ] Largest Messages: FIRST [ ] Priority [@|0| LAST [ ] Priority [@|0| LAST [ ] Group by FROM at Priority [@|0| Group by Subject at Priority [@|0| [ ] Order Received --> at Priority [@|0| [ ] Apply to all Folders [ ] Latest Received [ USE ] [ SAVE ] [CANCEL] ===================================================================== Messages in each of the folders can be displayed in various sort orders and each folder can have a different sort order. Up to seven levels of sort priority can be given. The various sorting criteria are shown on this window and a particular sort order can be given for any sort priority. The sorting criteria for any particular priority is selected by the priority cycle gadget under or opposite each criteria. A priority of 0 is used to indicate that this criteria is not used in the sort. To help visualize which criteria applies to which priority a list at the top of the window shows the current position of any particular sort criteria in the priority list. With the exception of priority 0 (no priority), no two criteria can have the same priority. If this happens, **DUP** will appear for that priority in the priority list. If you want the sorting criteria to be used for all folders check the "Apply to all Folders" box. At the bottom of the window is the [USE], [SAVE], and [CANCEL] buttons. If you want the sorting to apply only to this AEMAIL session select [USE]. If you want to make the sorting permanent, select [SAVE]. [CANCEL], of course, will abort the operation without setting any sort keys. If the this window was called from the Folder Configuration Window, selecting [USE], [SAVE], or [CANCEL] will return you to the Folder Configuration Window. Examples of Setting Sort Keys You may want your messages displayed in different orders in the Message Window. This is the purpose of the "Set Sort Keys Window." Let's assume that you want your messages displayed with unread messages first. Within both the unread and previously read sections you want the messages sorted by the latest date first. To do this click on the Un-Read Messages: FIRST box and set the priority underneath Un-Read Messages to 1. Then click on the Latest Date: FIRST box and set it's Priority to 2. Notice that as you change the Priority cycle gadget for Latest Date from 0 to 1 to 2, you will see *DUP* appear in priority 1 as the Date moves through the priority 1 position. The final sort window for the above sorting priority will look like this: ===================================================================== 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Priorities: UNREAD DATE ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- Un-Read Messages: FIRST [X] Messages with Attachments: FIRST [ ] Priority [@|1| LAST [ ] Priority [@|0| LAST [ ] Replied Messages: FIRST [ ] Forwarded Messages: FIRST [ ] Priority [@|0| LAST [ ] Priority [@|0| LAST [ ] Latest Date: FIRST [X] Largest Messages: FIRST [ ] Priority [@|2| LAST [ ] Priority [@|0| LAST [ ] Group by FROM at Priority [@|0| Group by Subject at Priority [@|0| [ ] Order Received --> at Priority [@|0| [ ] Apply to all Folders [ ] Latest Received [ USE ] [ SAVE ] [CANCEL] ===================================================================== When you are satisfied with the order click on [SAVE] to save this order for this folder only. If you want to use this order for all your folders click on "Apply to all Folders" before clicking on [SAVE]. Another example might have the messages displayed with unread messages first, followed by messages grouped by SUBJECT, and within the SUBJECT grouping, by the latest date received. This, in effect, creates a message threading condition with like subjects grouped together. To create this sort condition, click on the Un-Read Messages: FIRST box and set it's priority to 1. Then set the "Group by Subject at Priority" cycle gadget to 2. Finally click on the Latest Date: FIRST box and set it's priority to 3. The final sort window for this grouping would be: ===================================================================== 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Priorities: UNREAD SUBJECT DATE ------- ------- ------- ------- Un-Read Messages: FIRST [X] Messages with Attachments: FIRST [ ] Priority [@|1| LAST [ ] Priority [@|0| LAST [ ] Replied Messages: FIRST [ ] Forwarded Messages: FIRST [ ] Priority [@|0| LAST [ ] Priority [@|0| LAST [ ] Latest Date: FIRST [X] Largest Messages: FIRST [ ] Priority [@|3| LAST [ ] Priority [@|0| LAST [ ] Group by FROM at Priority [@|0| Group by Subject at Priority [@|2| [ ] Order Received --> at Priority [@|0| [ ] Apply to all Folders [ ] Latest Received [ USE ] [ SAVE ] [CANCEL] ===================================================================== If you want the messages sorted by with the earlier messages first within the subject grouping, you would click on Latest Date: LAST rather than Latest Date: FIRST. Since the date sort is controlled by the local date and time that the message was SENT, you might want to use the Order Received or Latest Received instead of Latest Date. Order Received will list the messages with the oldest received first, while Latest Received will list the messages with the newest received first. You, of course, can set different sort orders for different folders. In this case select the folder you want to change the sort order on and DON'T click on the "Apply to all Folders" checkmark gadget. Address Book Window The Address Book window will be displayed in the lower portion of the screen whenever you double click on the ADDRESS BOOK command icon or on the [Call Address Book] button in the COMPOSE MESSAGE window (see below under the COMPOSE MESSAGE window description). If you have a non-interlaced screen (640 x 200), the display will cover the folder strip to allow more room for the Address Book display. With an interlaced screen (640 x 400) you will be able to see the folder strip. The Address Book window looks like the following: ===================================================================== Address Book ===================================================================== Nick Name: [ ] Address: [ ] Select [@| To: | Real Name: [ ] Group [ ] Send Header Only [ ] Nickname Real Name UserID (Address) --------------------------------------------------------------------- xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx| | xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DISTRIBUTION LIST | | xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx| | xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx| | --------------------------------------------------------------------- [ ADD ] [MODIFY] [DELETE] [SELECT] [ EDIT ] ===================================================================== This window can be used to create, modify, or delete Address Book entries. It can also be used to select a Nickname to be used as a recipient of a message when composing messages. Several of the Command icons remain active when you are displaying the Address Book window, although there meaning maybe slightly changed. These are the DISPLAY NEXT MESSAGE icon, the DISPLAY PREVIOUS MESSAGE icon, the PRINT icon, the DELETE icon, and the COMPOSE MESSAGE icon. The three fields of an address book entry are: a one to eight character Nickname, an individual's real name, and the address of the individual (UserId and Domain in the form userid@domain). Group lists can also be created which distributes a message to a number of different individuals. The group is identified with the heading "DISTRIBUTION LIST" in the top most UserID field and the UserID's for the members of that list are shown in alphabetic order below that heading. For items in the distribution list, real UserIDs or Nicknames can be used. An item in the distribution list can even be another distribution list identified by the Nickname for that group. By clicking on the Checkmarked item "Group", you can identify the entry as a group item. The checkmarked item identified as "Send Header Only" is only active when "Group" is checked. If a checkmark is in the "Send Header Only" box, only the group name will be sent in the To: field when a message is sent to the group; otherwise, every UserId in the group will be listed in the To: header. It is a good idea to check this item if you have large groups or if you don't want the other members of the group to know all the members of the group. If a Nickname rather than a UserID is used in the group list Address field, then, if a modification is made to the UserID of the Nickname, you do not have to change the item in the Group list. The modification will be automatic when the group rather than the individual is selected. When composing a message, a Nickname can be used to identify the recipient of a message. All Nicknames are expanded to Real Name and UserID when mail is sent. Address Book entries are sorted by Nickname and group entries are interspersed with single entries. Also Real Names are presented as first name followed by last name rather than last name, first name. For adding entries to the Address Book, the entries at the top of the window are used to place data in the various fields of the Address Book entry. If a message was selected when the address book was called, the Real Name:, if present, and Address: fields are filled in with information from the Reply-To: header of the message. If the Reply-To: header is not present, the From: header will be used. You can force the From: header to be used by holding down the shift key when you click on the Address Book icon. If you access the Address Book from the Compose message window during a "mailto:" call to AEMail, the userid from the "mailto:" will be placed in the address field. This allows you to assign a Nickname and Real Name to this address and save it in your Address Book. If you click on one of the entries in the list view, that entry will be transferred to the Nickname:, Real Name:, and Address: fields at the top of the window. If you click on a group entry line which has the Group Nickname and "DISTRIBUTION LIST" in the address portion, only the Nickname: and the Group name (in the Real Name field) will be transferred leaving any previous address in the Address field. The "Group" box will also be checked. This facilitates adding items to a Group list. When adding an entry to the address book, you must always enter a Nickname and Address. Real Name is optional, but recommended. To add a group entry, the "Group" box must be checked. Groups need a Nickname and should have a group description entered in the Real Name: string gadget. Group entries are entered one at a time. The maximum number of entries that can be added to a group is 3000. When a message is sent to a group, the message will be sent to a maximum of 50 recipients at a time. This takes care of problems when there is a limit on the number of recipient addresses that a SMTP server can handle at a time. After correctly filling in the top portion of the window, click on the [ADD] button to add the item to the list. Except for group Nicknames, there can't be a duplicate Nickname when adding to the list. An already existing group Nickname will cause the entry to be added to that groups distribution list. To modify an entry, the Nickname must already exist in the list. You can not modify Nicknames. If you need to do this, delete the old entry and add a new one. For individual entries, you can modify either the Real Name: or Address: fields. For group entries you can only modify the Real Name: field. If you need to modify an address in the distribution list, delete the old one and add a new one. One of the reasons that Nicknames are preferred in distribution lists is that, if you need to modify a user's address, you can do so by simply modifying the Individual's entry. The address in the group is then automatically updated by reference. Selecting one of the entries in the address list will move the data from that entry to the fields at the top of the window. Make the modifications you want then click on the [MODIFY] button to make the modifications. To delete an entry, select it in the list and then click on the [DELETE] button. You can also use the DELETE icon to do this. The [SELECT] button is used to select an address from the Address Book and place it in the appropriate recipients address line when composing messages. To determine which header field is to receive the address, the "Select" cycle gadget at the top of the window is used. There are three items for this gadget: To:, cc:, and bcc:. Determine which field should receive the address and then click on the [SELECT] button. The Nickname for the selected item is transferred to the appropriate field in the compose window. You can avoid using the [SELECT] button if the address book was called from the COMPOSE MESSAGE screen by double clicking on an item in the Address Book list view. If the Address Book was not called from the COMPOSE MESSAGE screen, instead of double clicking, the COMPOSE MESSAGE command icon can be selected when in the Address Book window. When this is done, the COMPOSE MESSAGE window is activated for composing a new message and the [SELECT] button does not have to be clicked. The [EXIT] button is used to exit from the Address Book window without performing an address selection for a composed message. You will need to [EXIT] from the Address Book if you want to quit AEMail. If the Address Book was called while displaying a message, clicking on the DISPLAY NEXT MESSAGE or the DISPLAY PREVIOUS MESSAGE icons will automatically exit from the Address Book and display either the next or previous message in the currently displayed message list. If the PRINT icon is selected while you are displaying the Address Book, you will get a printout of your complete address book. All individual entries will be displayed first followed by group entries. Unless a group is too large to fit on one page, an attempt will be made to ensure that a group will be printed in it's entirety on a page. NOTE: When AEMAIL is loaded it will automatically create an address book entry for the Nickname AEMAIL with an address for my email address: jzachar@calweb.com. You can use this entry whenever you wish to report a bug or send a message concerning AEMAIL to me. Message Display Window The Message Display window will be displayed in the lower portion of the screen whenever you double click on a message in the message list window. If you are already displaying a message, clicking on the NEXT or PREVIOUS command icons will display either the NEXT or PREVIOUS message. If you have a non-interlaced screen (640 x 200), the display will cover the folder strip in allow more room for the message display. With an interlaced screen (640 x 400) you will be able to see and use the folder strip. The message is divided into two sections: message header information, which is always present, and a scrolling list that displays the message. Header information will also be displayed in the scrolling message listview, but only those header lines that you want displayed. The message header portion of the screen is set up as follows: From: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Date: DOW, MMM DD YYYY HH:MM:SS To: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [ATTACHMENT] Subject: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx The From: and To: fields will show the Real Name (if present) from the appropriate header. If the Real Name is not present in the header, then the UserID will be used instead. If a Nickname is being used for a message being sent, then the Nickname will appear. The Subject field will have the RE; or (FWD) preappended to the field for messages that are REPLIES and/or are FORWARDED. If the message has attachments, either MIME or UUENCODED, the [ATTACHMENT] button will appear at the right of the To: line. If no attachments are present this button will not appear. The complete message will be displayed in the message listview including any text type attachments. If the attachments are in BASE64 notation or are UUENCODED attachments, they will not be shown, but can be retrieved by clicking on the [ATTACHMENT] button. This will bring up an attachment requestor which is described below under "Attachment Requester". Messages that are encoded with "Quoted-Printable" notation will be correctly displayed. While messages are loaded into the listview, you will not see them until they are completely read. A busy pointer will be displayed until the listview is completely built. Attachment Requester When you click on the [ATTACHMENTS] button on the Message Display Window, an Attachment Requester will be displayed. It looks like this: ============================================================ [o] Attachment List ============================================================ MimeType/SubType File Name ========================================================== | 1 SHOWN text/plain | | | Description: (None) | | | 2 VIEWABLE image/gif castle.gif | | | Description: Picture of a castle | | | 3 SAVE ONLY application/octet-stream aemail.lha | | | Description: The AEMAIL archive | | ========================================================== [ VIEW ] [VIEW & SAVE] [ SAVE ] [ EXIT ] ============================================================= This requester is initially placed at the top center of the window partially obscuring the command and folder icons and the top portion of the message. You can drag the requester around the window to expose other items of the display. You can also use the scroll bar on the message display listview to show different parts of the message; however, none of the commands on the command or folder bar or the menu bar can be activated until after you click on the [EXIT] button in the Attachment Requester. The SHOWN designation is used for any attachment that is displayed in the message window. This is generally any attachment that has a MIME type of text or message. However, standard Mailcap entries have been included in the Mailcap file to also display and save these attachments from the Attachment window. Any message with attachments will generally have one section (the initial message) which is displayable text and will be shown as an attachment with the SHOWN designation. You will also be able to VIEW all SHOWN parts of the message separably. UUENCODED attachments will have the designation UUENCODED displayed in the MIME types/subtypes field. Any attachments that do not have a MIME type of text or message will have either a VIEWABLE or SAVE ONLY designation. The VIEWABLE designation is used for those MIME types/subtypes which have a program designated in the mailcap file for displaying this MIME type/subtype. If no program is designated for this MIME type/subtype the SAVE ONLY designator will appear on the attachment line and the [VIEW] and the [VIEW & SAVE] buttons will be disabled. UUENCODED attachments are always SAVE ONLY attachments. To select an attachment to view, view & save, or to save only, select the appropriate attachment line in the list view gadget. You can select the main description line (with number, mime type, and filename) or the second line with the "Description:" heading. After selecting the attachment, the buttons below the listview will perform the following actions: [VIEW] This will display the attachment with the program you selected in the "mailcap" file for this MIME type/subtype. If a program was not pre-defined for this MIME type/subtype this button will be disabled and you will not be able to display the attachment. You will also see SAVE ONLY rather than VIEWABLE on the description of this attachment. [VIEW & SAVE] A file requester will pop up which allows you to select a file to save your attachment to. The default directory designated to receive attachments is RAM:; however, you can change this with the file requester or set a different default with the Default Path Parameters display on the Configuration screen. If a file name was provided in either the Content-Type: or Content-Disposition: headers, the file name will be shown on the attachment description and will be pre-set as the filename in the file requester. You can, of course, change this name if you wish. After the file is saved, the attachment will be displayed with the program you selected in the "mailcap" file. If a program was not pre-defined for this MIME type/subtype this button will be disabled and you will not be able to display the attachment. You will also see SAVE ONLY rather than VIEWABLE on the description of this attachment. [SAVE] A file requester will pop up which allows you to select a file to save your attachment to. The default directory designated to receive attachments is RAM:; however, you can change this with the file requester or set a different default with the Default Path Parameters display on the Configuration screen. If a file name was provided in either the Content-Type: or Content-Disposition: headers or with the UUENCODED "begin" line, the file name will be shown on the attachment description and will be pre-set as the default filename in the file requester. You can, of course, change this name if you wish. You will always be able to save any attachment even if it is SHOWN and a filename is not specified. [EXIT] After performing all the operations you wish for any particular attachment, click on this button to remove the Attachment Requester. This requester also has a CLOSE gadget which you can also use to exit from the requester. Compose Message Window The Compose Message window is brought up whenever you click on the COMPOSE MESSAGE command icon or select the Compose..., Reply..., or Forward... sub-menus under the Messages menu. If a message is selected when you click on the COMPOSE MESSAGE command icon it will act as a "Reply to this message" action. The Compose Message window will cover the entire screen. You must proceed sequentional through the actions or cancel to abort the compose operation. The Compose Message window looks like this: ===================================================================== TITLE ===================================================================== To: [ ][CLR] [Call Address Book ] cc: [ ][CLR] bcc: [ ][CLR] Reply To: [ ][CLR] [ Use Default ] Subject: [ ][CLR] [ ] Quote Original Message Text Quote Prefix[> ] Quote Header: [ ] [ ] Add Signature Block [Edit Signature ] [Add Attachments] [New Msg] [ Edit ] [ Reply] [Forward] [Cancel] ====================================================================== The TITLE that appears on the Compose Message window will be one of the following: Compose a new Message Reply to a Message Forward Message Edit Message Which title appears depends on the way the Compose Message window was called. "Edit Messages" appears if a message was selected from the PENDING or QUEUED folders and the COMPOSE MESSAGE command icon was selected or the "Edit..." menu item was selected from the Messages menu. "Reply to a Message" appears if a message was selected from an input folder (such as INBOX) and the COMPOSE MESSAGE command icon was selected or the "Reply..." menu item was selected from the Messages menu. "Forward Messages" appears if a message was selected and the "Forward..." menu item was selected from the Messages menu. "Compose a new Message" appears if no message was selected, if the "Compose.." menu item was selected, or if a message in the SENT folder was selected. "Compose a new Message" also appears if the Compose message window was activated by a "mailto:" call from a browser. If the "Edit...", "Reply..." or "Forward..." menu items are selected and a message was not selected, an error message appears. If the "Compose..." sub-menu is selected, a new message will always be created. Likewise, messages cannot be replied to or forwarded from the PENDING, QUEUED or SENT folders. If the "Edit..." menu item is selected, the message must come from either the PENDING or QUEUED folder. The [Edit], [Reply], and [Forward] buttons will be ghosted except when the appropriate action is available to be performed as indicated by the window title. [New Msg] will never be ghosted which gives the ability to create a new message at any time. When the Compose window first appears, if the message is a replied or forwarded message, the Subject: string gadget will be automatically filled in with the subject from the replied or forwarded message. RE: or (fwd) will also automatically appear in front of the subject. If the message is a replied message, the To: string gadget will also be filled in with the Reply-To: address from the message you are replying to or, if that is not present, the From: real name and user ID of the message you are replying to. Also, if the message is the result of a "mailto:" call, the To: string gadget will be filled in with the userid passed by the "mailto:" call. You may enter names, either Nicknames or Real Names and/or UserIDs, for any of the To:, cc:, or bcc: fields. If a Real Name and/or UserID is entered, it should be entered as Real Name or userid@domain(Real Name) or userid@domain The domain can be left off if the recipient is at the same domain as the user. If a Nickname is used it will be automatically expanded when the message is sent. If multiple users are placed in any of the To:, cc:, or bcc: fields they must be separated by commas. If the users you are sending the message to are in your Address Book, you can click on the [Call Address Book] button. This will call up your Address Book and you can select the user you want. Be sure and set the Select: cycle gadget to the appropriate field you want the name to be added to (To:, cc: or bcc:) and click on the [Select] gadget. The Nickname for the user will be automatically added to the appropriate field in the Compose window. If you make a mistake and the wrong name is added or it is added to the wrong field, you can use the backspace key to remove the offending nickname or the [CLR] gadget to completely clear the field. You can [Call Address Book] as many times as you want and the Nicknames will be added to the appropriate fields. Multiple names in any field will be automatically separated by commas if this method is used for adding names to the fields. You can also use the [Call Address Book] gadget to place the userid from a "mailto:" call into your Address Book. The cc: field is used to send a "carbon copy" of the message to the people in the list on the cc: line. The cc: header will appear on the message sent to the To:, cc: and bcc: recipients. The bcc: field is used the send a "blank carbon copy" to the people in that list. The bcc: recipients will not be identified for any of the receipients of the message. The Reply To: field is used to place a Reply-To: address header in the message. This field is intended for people who want replies directed to a different email address than their From: address. The configuration item "Reply-To:" will automatically be loaded into this field when the compose screen is displayed. If the Reply To: address for this message should be different than the configured Reply-To address, then place it here. If you click on the [ Use Default ] button, your configured Reply-To address will be placed is this field. If the Reply To: field is left blank, no Reply-To: header line will be added to the message. The [CLR] gadget to the right of the To:, Reply To:, Subject:, cc:, and bcc: string gadgets allows you to easily clear the data in the appropriate string gadget. If the message is a reply, the "Quote Original Message Text" box will be checked if you have selected this option in the Configuration screen. You can un-check this box if you don't want the original text quoted in the message (or check it, if the default action was not to include text). For all other types of Compose windows, this checkbox will be disabled. The "Quote Prefix:" string gadget will indicate what is to be placed in front of each quoted line. This, by default, is '>'; however, you can add whatever you like here (such as the person's initials followed by : or >). You can also permanently change this field with the General Parameters page of the Configuration screen. A "Quote header:" will be placed on the line in front of the quoted material. Currently, the default header which will appear in the Quote Header: string gadget is: On &(week), &(date2), at &(time), &(name) wrote: The & followed by a field name in parenthesis indicates substitution of data from the original message. The values that can be substituted are: &(name) The Real Name of the sender of the original message. If the Real Name is not available, the sender's UserId will be used instead &(subject) The subject from the original message. Any RE: or (fwd) will be stripped. &(week) The day of the week that the original message was sent. &(date) The date the original message was sent in the form DD MMM YYYY, where DD is the day of the month, MMM is month in the form Jan, Feb, Mar, etc, and YYYY is the full 4 digit year. &(date1) Same as &(date). &(date2) The date in the form MMM DD, YYYY. &(time) The time the original message was sent in the form HH:MM xM where HH is the hour on a 12 hour clock, MM is the minute, and xM is AM or PM. The "Quote Header" is designed to be modified by the user and can be changed with the string gadget. This change is only in effect for this message, however. You can permanently change the "Quote Header" with the General Parameters section of the Configuration screen. If a .signature file is present, the "Add Signature Block" box will be checked. If the .signature file is not present, this checkbox will be disabled. If you want to create or edit the .signature file, you can click on the [Edit Signature] button. This will call up your editor to allow you to create or edit the .signature file. After you have edited or created your signature file in your editor, save the file and exit from the editor. This will return you to the COMPOSE MESSAGE window and the "Add Signature Block" check box will now be enabled. If you do not want the signature block placed at the end of your message, uncheck the Add Signature Block box. Note: if the message is being edited, the Add Signature Block box WILL NOT be checked. This is done to prevent two signature blocks being added to the message. However, rather than disable this item, it is left to allow the user to add a signature block in the event one was not added to the original message or you selected [NEW] in the compose window. The [Add Attachments] botton brings up the Add Attachments Requster which is described below. This requester allows you to add one or multiple files as attachments to your message. You can bring up this requester at any time. If it is brought up a second time, the old attachment information will appear in the attachment list. You can add to this information or delete entries as you desire. If you decide that you do not want to compose a message after all, click on the [CANCEL] button to exit the COMPOSE MESSAGE window. Otherwise, if all the correct information has been added in the COMPOSE MESSAGE window, click on the appropriate action button at the bottom of the window. [New Msg] will create a new message. You can also use one of the other buttons: [Edit], [Reply], or [Forward] if it is not ghosted. All but the [Forward] button will call up your editor to allow you to compose your message. [Forward] will forward the selected message to the indicated recipients without calling up the editor. Special NOTE for edited messages: If the message you were editing had attachments, you must re-add these attachments BEFORE exiting from the COMPOSE MESSAGE window. Of course, if you forgot to add the attachments the first time, you can add them by editing the message. In your editor window you will see the message header, which has been constructed from the COMPOSE MESSAGE window information followed by any quoted material and then your signature block (if requested). You can delete any material you wish from the quoted text and/or insert lines between quoted text. Whether on not the quoted messages header is to be included in the quote is controlled by the "Incl Hdr in Resp" submenu item under the Messages main menu group. If this item is checked the "Date", "To", "From:", "Reply To:", "Subject:", "cc:", and "bcc:" headers will be displayed from the original message. If it is not checked, no header information will be included. The amount of header information in the quoted message is also controlled by the "Display Full Hdr" menu item in the Messages menu. WARNING: when you start entering you message information, you must insure that one blank line follows the message header. Special note for users of CED (CygnusEd Professional): In order for attachments to be properly added to messages, your editor can not relenquish control until you have finished editing the message. The normal execution of CED will relenquish control. To correct this problem, a special script has been provided for CED users which will prevent CED from relenquishing control. This script, called "AEMced.scr" should be placed in your s: directory and called with "s:AEMced.scr %s". If you configure AEMail when you perform the install, this will be done automatically if you specify CED as your editor. Other editors that have been used successfully with AEMAIL have been the AmigaDos editors Ed and Memacs. A future version of this documentation will give some tricks and tips for using various various editors with AEMAIL. Add Attachments Requester When you click on the [ADD ATTACHMENTS] button on the Compose Message Window, an Add Attachments Requester will be displayed which looks like this: ============================================================= [o] Add Attachments ============================================================= Filename: [ ][REQ] Attachment Description: [ ] Content Type/SubType: [ ] ===================================== | text/plain | | | text/enriched | | | text/richtext | | ===================================== Encoding: |@| Plain Text | Mime Type/Sub-Type FileName Encoding ============================================================= | | | | | | | | | | | | ============================================================= [ ADD ] [DELETE] [ APPLY ] [CANCEL ] ============================================================= The Filename string gadget should contain the FULL path name and filename of the attachment. Clicking on the [REQ] gadget will bring up a file requester which will allow you to select the appropriate file. The filename portion of this string will be used as the "file=" parameter of the Content-Type MIME header and as the "filename=" parameter of the Content-Disposition MIME header. The initial directory that is chosen for the file requester is the directory that was set up in the "Add Attachment from Directory" string gadget in the Configuration: Default Path Parameters (see Configuration Screen under IV. Configuration above). If you are adding multiple attachments to the message, clicking on [REQ] will bring up the last directory that you used. The Attachment Description is an optional string gadget for entering a description of the attachment. If present, this string gadget will create a Content-Description MIME header. Content Type/SubType is a string gadget which contains the MIME Content Type/Subtype entry which will appear on the Content-Type MIME header. THIS IS A REQUIRED ENTRY UNLESS YOU ARE ADDING AN UUENCODED attachment. It is not used for UUENCODED attachments. A scrolling list below this gadget is used to select an appropriate type/sub-type. Predefined type/subtypes, as defined in RFC 1341 and RFC 1521, are included in this list as follows: text/plain text/enriched text/richtext message/rfc822 message/partial message/external-body multipart/mixed multipart/alternative multipart/digest multipart/parallel application/octet-stream application/postscript image/gif image/jpeg audio/basic video/mpeg Also added to this list will be any additional type/subtypes added through the mailcap file and any type/subtypes encountered when displaying attachments during THIS RUN OF AEMAIL. AEMAIL has no way to remember differing type/subtypes that it encounters unless they are included in the mailcap file. You can also add your own type/subtype by directly entering it in the Content Type/SubType string gadget. Unless the type/subtype is well known and published, you should pick one of the existing types (text/, message/, application/, image/, audio/, or video/) and use a subtype beginning with "x-". As an example, you might want to define an IFF image (not part of the mime published standard) as: image/x-iff It is suggested that you use a mailcap entry for the image/x-iff to cause it to permanently appear in the list of Content Type/Subtypes. Attachments must be in the format you select. AEMAIL will do no conversion. As an example, if you select application/postscript, the file you attach should already be in postscript format. Also, DO NOT use the follwing types/subtypes: message/partial message/external-body multipart/mixed multipart/alternative multipart/digest multipart/parallel All of the multipart types are not supported except at the highest level (specifying the initial attachment list), and this is done automatically by the program. The encoding cycle gadget has four states as follows: Plain Text Quoted-Printable Encoded Binary UUENCODED Currently only the "Quoted-Printable" state is not effective. "Quoted-Printable" will be treated as "Plain Text". While AEMAIL can handle retrieved messages that are in "Quoted-Printable" format, it does not convert mail and or attachments to that encoding format at this time. Generally speaking "Encoded Binary" should be used for the following types: application/ image/ audio/ video/ "Plain Text" should be used for: text/ message/ "UUENCODED" should be selected if you want the attachment to be in UUENCODED format. You can not mix UUENCODED attachments with MIME attachments! When a type/subtype is selected, the appropriate encoding format is automatically selected. Of course, you can change this with the cycle gadget if there is a need. Once all of the attributes for any particular attachment are selected, click on the [ADD] gadget to add the attachment to the attachment list. If the Filename field or Content Type/Subtype field (other than for UUENCODED attachments) is blank an error requester will appear indicating that you must have a valid entry in these fields. As many attachments as you want can be added to this list, but you can not mix MIME type attachments with UUENCODED attachments. If you wish to delete any particular gadget, select the attachment from the list and click on [DELETE]. There is no way to modify attachment attributes once they have been added to the list. If you want to do this, first click on [DELETE], make the appropriate changes, and then click on [ADD]. Once you are satisfied with your attachment list click on [APPLY]. The Add Attachments Requester will disappear and the attachments will be automatically added to your message after it is composed. If you decide that you don't want to add attachments after all, click on [CANCEL] and the attachments will not be added when you compose your message. Clicking on the Close Gadget at the top of the window has the same effect as if you clicked on [CANCEL]. IX. AEMAIL FILES The following are the various files used by AEMAIL. They all reside in the AEMAIL: directory with the exception of the aemail.cnfg file, the TCPLOG file and the mailcap file. The aemail.cnfg file resides in the S: directory, and both the TCPLOG file and the mailcap file may or may not reside in the AEMAIL: directory depending on the user's preference. With the exception of the mailcap file, you can begin AEMAIL without any of the other files being present. They will be automatically created as you process messages or do other AEMAIL actions. The mailcap file, if used, MUST be setup prior to executing AEMAIL. This can be done using any text editor. The following are the AEMAIL files: mailcap The mailcap file is used to establish programs that should be executed to display MIME attachments. Use of this file allows AEMAIL to use any AmigaDOS operating system 2.1 or above. The mailcap file is a standard Internet file which is specified in RFC (Request For Comment) 1524. Since it is standard, you can use a mailcap file that was created for another program that specified a display program for the same type of files. That is the reason that AEMAIL allows you to specify the directory that contains the mailcap file with the Tool Type MAILCAP_DIR= or with the Configuration Screen. If you do not include this Tool Type or change the specification in the Default Path section of the Configuration Screen, the mailcap directory will default to the AEMAIL: directory. AEMAIL only uses the two required fields of the RFC 1524 standard. Other fields are ignored at this time. Each mailcap file consists of entries that describe the proper handling of one media type at the local site. A mailcap file consists of a sequence of such individual entries separated by LINE FEEDS. Blank lines and lines starting with '#' are considered comments and are ignored. Long entries may be continued on multiple lines if the line to be continued ends with a backslash character ('\'). In this event, mutiple lines are to treated as a single mailcap entry. Note that for such "continued" lines, the backslash must be the last character of the line to be continued. Each mailcap entry consists of a number of fields each separated by a semicolon (';'). The first two fields are required, and must occur in the specified order. The remaining fields are optional and may appear in any order. NOTE: At this time AEMAIL does not use these optional fields and if they are present, ignores them. Because of this, these optional fields WILL NOT be discussed in this documentation. The general format of a mailcap entry is: content type; view command [; ......] LINE FEED The first field is the content type, which indicates the type of data this mailcap entry describes how to handle. It is to be matched against the type/subtype specification in the "Content-Type" MIME header (see the ADD ATTACHMENTS REQUESTER described in section VIII. AEMAIL WINDOWS above). If the subtype is "*", it is intended to match all subtypes of the named content type. Examples of the content type field are: images/gif which is intended to match only the images/gif type/subtype whereas images/* matches all image types (images/gif, images/jpeg, etc). The second field, view command, is a specification of how the attachment meeting the content type specification is viewed. For any particular operating system, this would indicate how the program is called. For AEMAIL this would include the entire path name for calling the program and any parameters that are needed on the command line. A "%s" is used to indicate the substitution of the attachment name. The entire entry should be surrounded by quotes. As an example: "sys:Utilities/multiview %s screen" would call multiview placing the displayed attachment on its own screen (the "screen" parameter). If you needed to have the display on the Workbench screen you can add the keyword "wb;" in front of the program path. As an example, if you wanted multiview to open on a window on the Workbench screen, you could use: "wb;sys:Utilities/multiview %s" Note the use of the quotes (") surrounding the parameter. This is necessary so that the mailcap interpreter will be prevented from treating special characters (such as ';') as part of the mailcap syntax. Also note the absence of the "screen" keyword. The above call would push the Workbench screen to the front when MultiView was called and the Workbench screen would be used for the MultiView window. The only problem with this is you would be limited to the number of colors and the resolution specified for Workbench. Some other programs, however, might only be able to open as a window on the Workbench screen and would be hidden by the AEMAIL screen when those programs were called unless the "wb;" parameter was specified. An example of a complete mailcap entry to use multiview to display all images would be: image/*; "sys:Utilities/multiview %s screen" Any image/ type, regardless of the subtype, would be displayed providing there was an appropriate data type present for that image subtype. A sample mailcap file is included with the archive which uses MultiView for text, message, sound, image, and video files. Since MultiView is a 3.x program using datatypes, this mailcap file will ONLY work with 3.x systems. To make it work for 2.x systems, you would need to change the display programs to your favorite programs that work with 2.x. You might also have to be specific as to the subtype for a specific display type/subtype. If you install AEMAIL on a 2.1 system using the provided installation script, you will be able to create the mailcap file provided you selected "Expert" mode for the installation "user mode". The following is the sample mailcap file used for AmigaDos 3.x that uses MultiView as the display agent. Please note the use of the "screen" parameter which tells MultiView to open on it's own screen rather than the WorkBench screen. This allows the use of all colors in the image's palette. text/*; "sys:Utilities/multiview %s" message/*; "sys:Utilities/Multiview %s" image/*; "sys:Utilities/multiview %s screen" audio/*; "sys:Utilities/multiview %s screen" video/*; "sys:Utilities/multiview %s screen" General Config File (aemail.cnfg) The s:aemail.cnfg file is the General Configuration file. This file contains various configuration information including the version and revision number of the AEMail version that was last loaded. A special flag in this file indicates whether this file should take precedence over the Tool Type entries. This file is normally placed in the S: directory rather than the AEMAIL: directory. The reason for this was that if you changed the location of the AEMAIL: directory, AEMAIL would not be able to locate the new configuration file the next time you loaded AEMAIL. Also, the S: directory is more commonly used to store configuration files for AMIGA programs. You do not have to store this file in the S: directory nor do you have to name it "aemail.cnfg". This is only the default name and location for this file. With the use of the CONFIG= Tool Type or the config= parameter on the shell call for AEMail, you can rename the file and place it anywhere you want. With AEMail version 1.13 you can also have multiple configuration files. This allows you to set up multiple configurations for different users of AEMail. You can select which configuration you want through the "Project/Configuration/Open" menu item. If the configuration is never changed with the Configuration Screen, the Tool Type entries will take precedence. If either the [SAVE] or [SAVE TO] gadgets in the Configuration Screen is selected, or the "Project/Configuration/Save" or "Project/Configuration/Save to" menu items are selected, the General Configuration File will always take precedence. The s:aemail.cnfg (or CONFIG= Tool Type or config= shell parameter) is referred as your base configuration file. You can always return to the base configuration through the "Project/Configuration/Restore Default" menu item. If you display the AEMail General Configuration file with a text editor, you will find that not all portions of the file are readable as text. The only way you can create and update the general configuration file is through AEMail itself. As part of this file is your password stored in encrypted format. .headers The .headers file provides a list of message headers. Those that you want displayed in the message as "minimum headers" are preceded by an asterick (*); all other headers are preceded by a space. The .headers file may not be present. If it is not, the following are displayed as the "minimum headers": Date: From: To: cc: bcc: Subject: See the discussion on configuring minimum headers in the General Parameters section of the Configuration Screen. folder.config This file gives the general information about each of the folders including: Flags (long word, 4 bytes): general flags concerning this folder Name (9 bytes including ending NULL): short folder name Pen (1 byte): pen number for folder tab Sort Keys (8 bytes): the permanent sort keys for the folder Folder Description (string ending in LINE FEED): the folder description. If this is a folder for one of the pre-set folders, this string will be empty (LINE FEED only) unless the user has decided to change the folder description. From Filter (string ending in LINE FEED): NOT IMPLEMENTED AS YET Subject Filter (string ending in LINE FEED): NOT IMPLEMENTED AS YET Date Filter (string ending in LINE FEED): NOT IMPLEMENTED AS YET For those fields that are strings: if the field is empty there will be a LINE FEED with no data preceding it. NOTE: if for some reason your folder.config file becomes corrupted or is accidently deleted, you can restore all of the folders and the messages within them by doing the following: delete any current folder.config file (or rename it so it is no longer recognized). Run AEMAIL. Add any additional folders that you previously had added. (INBOX, PENDING, QUEUED and SENT will automatically be created). You must use the exact name you had previously used. The new folders will show 0 messages. Quit AEMAIL. Re-Run AEMAIL. The new folders should now show the appropriate number of messages provided a valid [folder_Name].config file was present for that folder. The name of the new folder must exactly match the [folder_Name] in the [folder_Name].config file. [folder_Name].config For each of the folders that contain messages there will be a configuration file which gives information on the messages in that folder. The name of the file will be the short folder name with ".config" appended to it. For this version of AEMAIL, the [folder_Name].config file contains the following information for each message in the folder: Message Flags (word, 2 bytes): Flags describing the message. File Code (long word, 4 bytes): this field is a binary field which is used to derive the file name for the message file itself. Message Size (long word, 4 bytes): size of message. Body Displacement (word, 2 bytes): the position where the body of the message starts. From (string ending in LINE FEED): the information in the From: field in the message header. Subject (string ending in LINE FEED): the information in the Subject: field in the message header. The RE: and FWD: headings at the beginning of the Subject header are stripped, but indicated by flags in the Message Flags field so that the exact subject field can be reconstructed. Date (string ending in LINE FEED): the information in the Date: field in the message header. To (string ending in LINE FEED): the information in the To: field in the message header. Return To (string ending in LINE FEED): the information in the Return To: field in the message header. cc (string ending in LINE FEED): the information in the cc: field in the message header. bcc (string ending in LINE FEED): the information in the bcc: field in the message header. For those fields that are strings: if the field is empty, there will be a LINE FEED without any data preceding it. .addrbook This file provides address book information. Each record looks like this: Count (word, 2 bytes): If this field is zero, the entry is a single user entry. If this field is greater that zero it represents a group entry and indicates the number of UserIds in the group. Nickname (string ending in LINE FEED): the Nickname for this entry (both group or user). Real Name (string ending in LINE FEED): the Real Name for individual users or the group description for group entries. UserID (one or more strings ending in LINE FEEDS): The number of UserID fields is determined by the count at the beginning of the record. For individual users, this MUST be the UserID and Domain for that user. For group users this can be a Nickname that points to the real user. For a description of how entries in the Address Book can be created and displayed see the Section VIII, AEMAIL Windows: Address Book window. .signature This is a flat ASCII file that contains the signature block that is to be appended to any composed messages. Each line of the signature block must end in a LINE FEED. A facility is provided when composing messages to create and or edit this signature block (see the Compose Message window description in Section VIII above). Messages Each message is stored as an individual file with a cryptic file name generated from the File Code in the [Folder_Name].config file. This name begins with "AE" and ends with "M" with a number of numeric digits in between. The message is stored as a flat ASCII file as it is received from the POP Server with any CARRAGE RETURNS in a CARRAGE RETURN/LINE FEED sequence stripped. This follows the Amiga format for ASCII files. The complete message is stored along with any attachments as they were orginally received. Any particular message can be copied to a named file anywhere in your system through the "SAVE MESSAGE TO FILE" command. If you have an off line program that can process a mime message or a message with UUENCODED attachments, you can use that program against this file to extract the attachments or you can save that attachment directly with the Attachment Requester in the Message Display Window (Section VIII). PLEASE NOTE: if the [folder_Name].config file is deleted you will lose all capability of retrieving your messages unless you have previously copied them to named files. TCP Trace Log File (TCPLOG) This file is present if you have specified TCPLOG=name-of-log-file in the Tool Types parameters or named a "TCP Logging File" in the Default Path Parameters section of the Configuration screen. Since "name-of-log-file" must be the full path name of the log file, this file may or may not reside in the AEMAIL: directory The TCP Trace Log File traces every TCP transaction. Each time AEMAIL is started the following record is written to the file: Logging Beginning at DD MMM YR HH:MM:SS where DD is the day of the week, MMM is the month (Jan, Feb, Mar, etc), YY is the 2 digit year (96) and HH, MM, and SS are the hour (24 hour clock), minutes, and seconds. Each logging record will consist of a 38 byte header and up to 82 bytes of either descriptive information or actual data received or sent over the TCP interface. The header consists of a 21 byte date/time stamp (DD MMM YR HH:MM:SS) and 16 byte routine name of the routine in AEMAIL that called the trace. If data is displayed, instances of a CARRAGE RETURN will be displayed as and of LINE FEEDS as . If the data exceeds 82 bytes, <---> will be placed at the end of the line. When AEMAIL terminates, or the TCPLOG file name is changed by the Default Path Parameters section of the Configuration screen, the following record is written to the file: Logging Ending at DD MMM YY HH:MM:SS Each AEMAIL session is stacked behind the previous one, so that the file can become quite large. Periodic purging of the file can occur by deleting the TCPLOG file in between sessions of AEMAIL. Also, a new file is created when you change the name of the TCPLOG file with the Configuration screen. X. BUG REPORTS AND SUGGESTIONS Bugs should be reported to: jzachar@calweb.com by email. You can also use the nickname AEMAIL which has been automatically stored in your address book. In reporting bugs, be as complete as possible in describing the circumstances leading up to the bug. It would be helpful if you indicate all actions (mouse clicks, etc) that you took before the problem occurred. If you are having problems connecting to your Internet provider, or sending or receiving mail, you should activate the TCP Log file (See Section IX, AEMAIL FILES: TCP Trace Log File) and send a copy of the log as an attachment to your message. You might want to block out any password that is contained in the file before you send it to me, however. You can do that with any text editor. I would also appreciate any suggestions that you have for improving AEMAIL. I will not guarantee that I will accept all suggestions or that I will necessarily implement them in the next release; however, I do take each suggestion seriously. In the past I have implemented a number of suggestions made by my testers. I will attempt to respond to each suggestion that is made. In making suggestions keep in mind some of the restraints that I have placed on AEMAIL: (1) The program should be able to be run on any version of AmigaDos 2.1 or greater, and (2) with the exception of AmiTCP, AEMAIL should not require any extension to your system that does not come with a standard AmigaDOS release. This effectively rules out MUI. Using an editor of your choice meets this criteria since you can use the standard AmigaDOS editors, ED or MEMACS, which come with the standard AMIGA systems. When reporting bugs or making suggestions, please be as complete as possible in describing the circumstances that brought about the problem or how the suggestion could be implemented. XI. REFERENCES A number of software packages are mentioned in this documentation. Details on how to obtain these packages are given below: TCP/IP STACKS AmiTCP A TCP/IP stack for use with the Amiga. AmiTCP is copyright (c) 1994, 1995 by Network Solutions Development, Inc. AmiTCP was developed by Network Solutions Development, Inc., P.O. Box 32, FIN-02151 Espoo, Finland. A demo 4.0 version is available on AmiNet sites in countries other than USA or Australia. It can also be found on many BBS's. The commercial version is distributed by Village Tronic Marketing GmbH, Wellweg 95, D-31157 Sarstedt, Germany, and is available from many Amiga dealers and mail order houses. World Wide Web home page for Network Solutions Development, Inc is: http://www.xgu.fi/biz/NSDI/ email addresses: info@nsdi.fi AmiTCP-Support@nsdi.fi AmiTCP-Group@nsdi.fi Miami A TCP/IP stack compatible with AmiTCP. This stack is very simple to install and configure. Miami is copyright (c) 1996, 1997 by Holger Kruse. It is currently shareware and is available at http://www.nordicglobal.com/miami.html on the WWW or it may be available on local BBS's. Some versions are available on AmiNet, but if you want the latest version consult the web page listed above. email addresses: kruse@nordicglobal.com kruse@america.com If you are using Miami, the "Down when Offline" item in the TCP/IP Settings page for Miami should be checked and your settings saved. This will prevent Miami from waiting 80 seconds before returning a failure when you try to access the Internet when you are "Offline". TermiteTCP A TCP/IP stack compatible with AmiTCP. This stack is very simple to install and configure. TermiteTCP is copyright (c) 1996 by Oregon Research, 16200 S.W. Pacific Hwy, Suite 162, Tigard, OR 97224. This is a commercial product available at many Amiga dealers, mail order houses, or directly from Oregon Research. World Wide Web home page for Oregon Research is: http://www.orres.com/~orres/ email address: support@orres.com WWW BROWSERS Voyager Copyright (c) 1995-96 by Oiver Wagner. Voyager 1.0 is available for download from AmiNet or the http://www.vapor.com/support WWW site. A commercial Version 2.0 is planned but is not available as yet. email address: owagner@lsd.wupper.de AWeb Copyright (c) Both a public domain demo (AWEB) and a commercial (AWEB II) version is available. The public domain demo version can be found on AmiNet (AWeb v1.2b), many BBS's, or on the AmiTrix WWW site: http://www.networkx.com/amitrix/aweb.html The commercial version (AWEB II) can be obtained from Amiga dealers or mail order houses. email addresses: sales@amitrix.com support@amitrix.com Mailing address: AmiTrix Development 5312-47 Street Beaumont Alberta, Canada T4X 1H9 XII. IN CONCLUSION As payment for receiving and using this unregestered BETA version of AEMAIL, I would like any bugs, comments, or suggestions reported to me. You can send me email at jzachar@calweb.com or use the AEMAIL Nickname created in your Address Book. You can also register AEMail for a shareware fee of $30. See the discussion on REGISTRATION under Section II. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS. See the Section X, Bug Reports and Suggestions above for the reporting procedure. If you give this program to anyone else to use and evaluate, please include the complete archive as distributed. This includes the AEMail program, the installation script, and all documentation and readme files. The complete archive is being posted on AmiNet and may be posted to any BBS. If it is posted to any particular BBS, I would appreciate it if the SYSOP of that BBS would send me an email message indicating the BBS it was posted to. Future versions of AEMail are planned that will implement the following features: AREXX Support Filtering incoming messages to specified folders Asynchronous retrieval of messages from a POP server Asynchronous sending of messages to the SMTP server Even faster message display routines with several added features including saving portions of the message to the clipboard and transferring embedded email addresses to the address book. Built in message editor Other features suggested by users I have a web site at: http://www.calweb.com/~jzachar The latest version of AEMail will be posted to this web site. Major releases will also be posted on AmiNet. Whenever a new version of AEMail is available, I will email all users for which I have received notification messages (see Registration in Section II) with notice of the new version. Thanks, John Zacharias jzachar@calweb.com www: http://www.calweb.com/~jzachar