Getting Started with the ELM Mailer

The elm mailer is a screen oriented rather than a line oriented mail program. It is designed to be used with little or no need for auxiliary documentation since it lists the alternative actions available at any point and provides on-line help on all of its facilities. Like other mailers, elm enables you to forward or reply to a message, to group messages into folders, to delete and move messages, and to create aliases for mail addresses or groups of addresses that you often use.

Getting started

At an aixterm or vt100 terminal prompt, type elm to enter the email program.

ssc /u/userid $ elm

The following screen will appear:

Mailbox is '/usr/spool/mail/userid' with 0 messages [ELM 2.3 PL11]






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

Command:

To send a message type m at the Command line.

Command: m
Send the message to:

Type in an address, e.g., hackney@ben.franklin.upenn.edu

The address can be a complete internet address or it can be the userid of a user on the ssc.sas.upenn.edu system.

Command: Mail                           To: user@institution.edu 
Subject of message: test

The screen then prompts you for the subject of the message. The next line will be one that asks for copies to. That is, do you want to send this same message to other addresses...

Command: Mail                           To: user@institution.edu
Subject of message: test
Copies to:

At this point, the mail system will put you into the memacs (memacs is another name for MicroEmacs) editor, so that you can process the text of the message.

The text of the message goes in this area.







==== MicroEMACS 3.11c L:1 C:0 (WRAP) == snd.17478 == File: /tmp/snd.17478 ======
------>   x  means  tap ESC, tap x     ^x  means  Hold CTRL, tap x  <-----

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 z = Save and Exit       ^x ^i = Insert File   ^x ^c = Exit  ^z = Page Up
 q = Reformat Paragraph  ^g = Abort Command    ^d = Delete   ^v =
Page Down
 *   MicroEMACS 3.11c [15:10] ()    Quick Help
[Read 0 line]

The cursor will be in the top window of the above figure. You can simply begin typing a message, using the text editing capabilities of the memacs editor. In the bottom screen are the commands for processing the email message. Keep in mind here that the symbol carat ^ denotes the control key. See memacs documentation for further explanation of editing functions.

When you have finished typing your message. Press the escape key and the z key one after the other. You then will be asked whether you want to e)dit, edit h)eaders, s)end or f)orget the message.

You will generally want to type "s" now (no return) to send the message immediately. At this point, you will be put back in the original mail menu. Below the command line will be a message that tells you that the mail has been sent.

Mailbox is '/usr/spool/mail/userid' with 0 messages [ELM 2.3 PL11]



    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

Command:
Mail sent!

To exit from email, simply type q which will put you back at your unix prompt:

		ssc /u/Userid $

If you have any messages still in your incoming mailbox, you will be asked if you want to put mail in your "received" mailbox. Generally, you will want to answer "no" to this prompt. If you do answer "yes", this mail will be saved in your Mail subdirectory.

There are two easy ways to look at the received mail after it has been saved. From within elm from the command prompt, type c.

    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

Command: Change folder                (Use '?' for help/to list your folders.)
Change to which folder:

If you type ?, you will see the following screen.

Enter:  to not change to a new folder,
     '!' to change to your incoming mailbox (/usr/spool/mail/userid)
     '>' to change to your "received" folder (=received)
     '<' to change to your "sent" folder (=sent)
     or a filename (leading'='denotes your folder directory /u/userid/Mail).

Simply type in '>' to change to your received mail folder.

Outside of elm, you can get into the Mail subdirectory (when you are in your home directory) by typing:


		ssc /u/userid $ cd Mail

		ssc /u/userid/Mail$

Then by doing a list files, you will see the received message as a file. To view it, you can type pg filename.