2.2  ELM -- A BETTER WAY 

 
Elm is a combination mailbox and letter-writing system that uses menus to 
help you navigate through mail.  Most Unix-based host systems now have it 
online. To use it, type 
  
     elm 
 
and hit enter.  You'll get a menu of your waiting mail, along with a list 
of commands you can execute, that will look something like this: 
 
 
     Mailbox is '/usr/spool/mail/adamg' with 38 messages [ELM 2.3 PL11]      
                                                                               
                                                                               
   1   Sep 1  Christopher Davis  (13)   here's another message.              
   2   Sep 1  Christopher Davis  (91)   This is a message from Eudora        
   3   Aug 31 Rita Marie Rouvali (161)  First Internet Hunt !!! (fwd)        
   4   Aug 31 Peter Scott/Manage (69)   New File  University of Londo 
   5   Aug 30 Peter Scott/Manage (64)   New File  X.500 service at A 
   6   Aug 30 Peter Scott/Manage (39)   New File  DATAPAC Informatio 
   7   Aug 28 Peter Scott/Manage (67)   Proposed Usenet group for HYTELNET n 
   8   Aug 28 Peter Scott/Manage (56)   New File  JANET Public Acces 
   9   Aug 26 Helen Trillian Ros (15)   Tuesday                              
   10  Aug 26 Peter Scott/Manage (151)  Update  Oxford University OU 
                                                                               
                                                                               
 You can use any of the following commands by pressing the first character;  
d)elete or u)ndelete mail,  m)ail a message,  r)eply or f)orward mail,  q)uit 
  To read a message, press .  j = move down, k = move up, ? = help   
 

Each line shows the date you received the message, who sent it, how many 
lines long the message is, and the message's subject. 

If you are using VT100 or similar emulation, you can move up and down the 
menu with your up and down arrow keys.  Otherwise, type the line number 
of the message you want to read or delete and hit enter. 

When you read a message, it pauses every 24 lines, instead of scrolling 
until it's done.  Hit the space bar to read the next page.  You can type 
a lowercase r to reply or a lower-case q or i to get back to the menu 
(the I stands for "index").  

At the main menu, hitting a lowercase m followed by enter will let you 
start a message.  To delete a message, type a lower-case d.  You can do 
this while reading the message.  Or, if you are in the menu, move the 
cursor to the message's line and then hit d. 

When you're done with elm, type a lower-case q.  The program will ask if 
you really want to delete the messages you marked. Then, it will ask you 
if you want to move any messages you've read but haven't marked for 
deletion to a "received" file.  For now, hit your n key.  Elm has 
a potentially major disadvantage for the beginner. The default text 
editor it often generally calls up when you hit your r or m key is often 
a program called emacs. Unixoids swear by emacs, but everybody else 
almost always finds it impossible.  Unfortunately, you can't always get 
away from it (or vi, another text editor often found on Unix systems), so 
later on we'll talk about some basic commands that will keep you from 
going totally nuts.  If you're lucky, though, your system administrator 
will have changed emacs to Pico, a much easier to use text processor 
(more on that in the Pine section below).

If you want to save a message to your own computer, hit s, either within 
the message or with your cursor on the message entry in the elm menu.  A 
filename will pop up.  If you do not like it, type a new name (you won't 
have to backspace).  Hit enter, and the message will be saved with that 
file name in your "home directory" on your host system.  After you exit 
elm, you can now download it (ask your system administrator for specifics 
on how to download -- and upload -- such files).