3.5 Creating and Sending a Message

3.51 Writing a Message

By now you should an understanding of the Microdot-II interface, menus and the options available to you. Let's assume you want to write a new message (email or news) straight away within Microdot-II. How do we create a new message?

• Click on the button which looks like a pencil writing on a piece of paper or goto the message menu and select "Write new..". A GUI will appear:

  

• If you are creating an email message enter the email address of the recipient (person receiving the mail) into the To: section. You can add multiple entries into this box.

  Say, for example, we wanted to send an email to Chris Wiles (manager of Active Technologies we would insert the email address chris@active-net.co.uk. Let's say we wanted to send a copy of the email to the other programmers of NetConnect we would enter their email addresses into the Cc: box. For example, we could add owagner@vapor.com (author of Microdot-II) into the cc: box.

  Note: you can add more than one email address into either the to: or cc: boxes. For example, if I wanted to send a mail to the NetConnect mailing list, the STFax mailing list and the CU Amiga mailing list I could enter: netconnect@amigaworld.com, stfax@vapor.com and cu-list@cu-amiga.co.uk into the to: section.

  By clicking on the to: or cc: buttons, you will launch the addressbook or, if you are using NetConnect, you will see the Contact Manager instead. You will be able to select addresses from this, rather than inserting them manually.

• If you wanted to send a news message you would carry out the same procedure as you would for email except you would need to enter the name(s) of the newsgroups into the Group: box.

  By clicking on the group: button, you will be presented with a list of subscribed news groups. You can select one or more from this list to enter into the group: box.

  Note: that you can send a message to more than one news group at the same time. You can also send a message to an email address (or addresses) and to a news group (or groups) in one go!

• You would now enter a subject into the subject: box. This can be anything, but keep it reasonably short.

  The subject line generally gives an indication of what the email is about. For instance of someone sent us an email with 'STFax Order' as the subject line, we would know that this is an order for STFax and it would probably receive top priority.

• Now you are ready to start typing! If you want to import text into the main window click on the Insert text file button and a requestor will appear. You can also launch an external editor if you prefer to use an external text editor.

• To add a signature choose a signature from the cycle gadget. This will be "tagged" to your message when you choose to send it. You will have needed to setup a signature before a signature can be chosen!

3.52 Using the Address Book

Microdot's address book is opened by selecting Open address book... from the Settings menu (Hotkey Amiga-A) or by clicking on to: or cc: from within the 'write new msg' window. Within the internal addressbook you can add, delete or edit email addresses for your own Microdot "phone book".

Remember, however, that Microdot is setup for NetConnect users to use the Contact Manager rather than the internal addressbook (this is selected within the settings menu.

• New group adds a new group name to the listview. This group will contain your addresses for a particular topic. ie. create a group called "friends" and you could put all your friends email addresses into this group, separating them from others.

• New Subgroup allows to create another group within a main group. If you had a group called "business" you could create a sub-group called "contacts" another called "suppliers" etc etc.

• New Entry allows you to add an email address into the "address book". If you have created a group the new entry would go into this group.

• Duplicate button makes a copy of an entry.

• Remove actually removes an entry.

3.53 Attaching Files

Microdot allows you to attach external files to your message. Just click on the "attach files" button and a requestor will appear. Just find the file(s) you want to attach and load them into the mail program.

Your attached files will be shown within a special attachments list which you can view from the write new message window:

You should see something like the above, when you attach your files. Remember - you shouldn't send large attached files unless the recipient knows it is being sent and do not send attached files to newsgroups (except for binary newsgroups).

3.54 Sending Your Message

Now your message is created you can send this to your friends. You have two options:

Send- if you are online this sends your message straight away. If you are offline, the message will be stored and you can send this at a later date.

Store- this option will store the messages so that they can be re-edited at a later date. These messages will not be sent until they have been edited and you choose the 'send' rather than 'store' button.

Most people will create their emails offline. If you press store your mails will be stored within the SPOOL directory.

The next time you go online you need to goto the Microdot menu and select Send Queued Messages

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