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HELIOS EtherShare 2.6 User manual |
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This chapter describes the configuration and use of the Macintosh program HELIOS Mail, which allows to send and receive electronic mail messages and files from other Macintosh or UNIX users on the network.
If you have a modem attached to the UNIX host and configured for UNIX mail (uucp) or Internet mail (SMTP) you can use HELIOS Mail to communicate with several million users of this worldwide e-mail system. You also receive EtherShare Print Server messages ("paper out" etc.) via electronic mail.
HELIOS Mail is also provided with a "Mail Notification Feature", which displays a flashing mail icon and a notification message and outputs a configurable sound if you receive new mail, regardless of which Macintosh program you happen to be using at the time. The installation of the "Mail Notification Feature" is described in chapter 4.6 "The client installation procedure". Its activation and use are described at the end of this chapter.
In order to use HELIOS Mail, the Mail Server must already be running on the host you want to connect to. EtherShare is configured to start the Mail Server automatically when UNIX is booted. The Mail Server communicates with HELIOS Mail through the Apple Data Stream Protocol (ADSP); the protocol is transparent to other AppleTalk devices.
HELIOS Mail needs to access Apple's ADSP driver (see chapter 4.6 "The client installation procedure" for details).
Important: HELIOS Mail also uses the UNIX "mail" program, which must be installed and working. To test this, make a UNIX login and try to send a mail between two UNIX users. See your UNIX documentation for more details.
EtherShare 2.6 includes a POP3 Server so that it is possible to use a client workstation other than Macintosh and/or a mail application other than HELIOS Mail with the Mail Server on the UNIX host. See chapter 14.4 "The POP3 Server" for details about this.
During the installation of EtherShare, the "install" program automatically creates a public Macintosh volume with the name "EtherShare Applications". This volume is used to store Macintosh applications such as HELIOS Terminal, HELIOS Mail and the EtherShare Admin.
You can start HELIOS Mail from any of the Macintosh workstations on the network by choosing and opening the network volume "EtherShare Applications", opening the HELIOS Mail folder and clicking twice on the HELIOS Mail icon. Alternatively - if you have installed the Macintosh applications on your local Macintosh - you can start HELIOS Mail from the Apple-Menu.
After loading, HELIOS Mail usually shows a copyright notice (see figure 102) - unless you have changed your Preferences (see later) - and a new menu bar.
When you start HELIOS Mail for the first time, you should initially choose Preferences... from the Edit menu in order to specify your standard settings (see figure 103):
Click the OK button in the dialog only after having set up all the different sections. The settings will then be valid. They will be ignored, however, if you click Cancel.
The dialog that lets you define General preferences is shown in figure 104. It contains the following options:
Background windows active specifies whether a background (i.e. non-active) window should react immediately to a mouse click, or whether the mouse click should initially swap the window into the foreground.
The Automatic login option specifies whether HELIOS Mail should immediately start with the login dialog, or whether it should first display the "About HELIOS Mail" dialog. In the latter case, you will have to choose Login in the File menu manually. HELIOS Mail can also be configured to complete the connection to the Mail Server automatically. Save name in the Login dialog also causes auto-login. The Automatic login checkbox is ignored anyway if Save name is ticked (compare chapter 6.4 "Configuring the connection").
You may check the Don't use Navigation Dialogs option if you do not want to use Apple's Navigation Service dialogs (e.g. for faster performance). In this case you will get the conventional "Attach File" dialog without the possibility to select the file encoding format and without features like using shortcuts, bookmarks, or browsing recently used files. For detailed information on how to attach files to a mail see Attaching a file below in this chapter.
The pop-up menu Language is used to select the desired dialog language for menus, messages and screen prompts. The default for this field is the language setting of your Macintosh system file. If you change Language, you must close and re-open each window before the new language will take effect.
The dialog that lets you define Text preferences is shown in figure 105. It contains the following options:
The Horizontal Scrolling option specifies whether each new "Untitled" mail window scrolls horizontally, to allow you to enter up to about 80 "M" characters ("M" is the widest proportional character) on each line, before wrapping. Otherwise, the text will wrap after the right-hand edge of the window that is currently open has been reached.
Translation Table: specifies the character conversion table to be used if you send mail containing national accented characters such as "umlauts". This allows you to send mail containing umlauts to UNIX users, too. You can choose "ISO 8859-1" to specify the extended character set used by almost any e-mail program.
Font: and Size: specify the font and font size of characters to be used when you edit or print mail.
Usually, the number of characters in one line depends on the dimensions of your text window. Here, you can enter a value that specifies a given number of characters for text wrap. If you enter e.g. "72" for Wrap At:, and later choose Wrap from the Edit menu for a selected text in an outgoing mail, all selected text lines will end after the 72nd character - no matter how large the text window might be. The addressee will see the wrap effect, too.
The dialog that lets you define Insert preferences is shown in figure 106. It contains the following options:
Insert Cc: line specifies whether each new "Untitled" mail window should automatically include a "Cc:" (carbon copy to...) line in the header. This saves you typing it manually if you regularly carbon copy mail items to additional recipients. The Insert Bcc: line checkbox would insert a "Bcc:" (blind copy to...) line in the header of each new mail document. This "Bcc:" line lets you enter addresses of people to whom you want to send a copy "secretly". All recipients will see in the header of the mail the name of the addressee and of those who have received a copy - they will not see, however, if anybody has received a blind copy.
Signature specifies whether your individual signature should be added automatically to each new mail you write. How you can set up or change your signature is described later in this chapter.
The dialog for Header preferences is shown in figure 107. It lets you specify what kind of header you prefer:
Important: If you need to save an e-mail message for use on a different e-mail client or unpacking utility the Full Header option must be turned-on.
If Full Header is specified for your incoming mail, the documents will contain all available information about origin, size, and status of the mail. Smart Header will only display the date, the names of the sender and addressee, and the subject line. With No Header you can suppress the header information completely.
The dialog that lets you define Inbox preferences is shown in figure 108. It contains the following options:
Font: and Size: specify the font and font size that will be applied to your "Incoming" mail window (compare chapter 6.5 "Incoming mail").
Mails in the "Incoming" mail window can be sorted - e.g. by subject (see also chapter 6.5 "Incoming mail"). If you check Ignore "Re:" when sorting by subject, the "Re:" - that precedes every reply mail - will be ignored.
When you choose Login in the File menu for the first time, HELIOS Mail opens a window to let you choose the EtherShare host that you want to connect to (see figure 109).
Use the list in the box on the left to choose the zone where the EtherShare host is located. The list shows all known zones. Unless you have other, external routers in your network, only the zones from internal EtherShare routers (e.g. Ethernet) will be visible. If you have no zones (because you have no router, or because zones are not available for some reason), you will see an asterisk "*" as a substitute for zone names.
After choosing the zone, the list in the box on the right shows all UNIX hosts in the chosen zone with which you are able to establish a connection (i.e. all hosts that are running the Mail Server).
Please choose the host you want and click OK.
HELIOS Mail then opens a window to allow you to log on to the Mail Server by entering your EtherShare user name (or full name) and password (see figure 110).
When you log in for the first time, you have the option of choosing Save name and/or Save password. If you check both you do not have to log in manually the next time you start HELIOS Mail. The name and password are stored in a hidden file on your local hard disk. For maximum security, do not use the Save password option.
If you have checked Save name, HELIOS Mail makes a note of your name, and the zone and name of the Mail Server you want to use. Next time you start HELIOS Mail, you only need to enter your password. Furthermore, if you log on to the EtherShare File Server on the same host first, you do not have to enter your name and password for either the Mail Server or the "HELIOS Mail Init" anymore. See the autologin parameter in chapter 14.3 "Parameters of the "mailsrv" program" for related information.
Click the OK button when all inputs have been made. HELIOS Mail then attempts to make the connection to the chosen server. If your inputs were correct, the "Incoming" mail window should appear (see figure 112 in chapter 6.5 "Incoming mail").
If other users want to temporarily use your workstation to send and receive their mail, they should first close the connection to the Mail Server by closing all HELIOS Mail windows, and log in again with Login in the File menu. Guest users should uncheck Save name in the login box, since otherwise the original owner of the workstation will receive new mail notifications for the temporary user rather than for him/herself. If guest users uncheck Save name, no notifications will be received until the next login, which is less confusing.
HELIOS Mail also allows you to log on to more than one Mail Server at the same time and it allows several users to log in simultaneously. You may not log on twice to the same Mail Server with the same user name (not even with different mail programs). This could seriously confuse the Mail Server.
If you just want to see who is currently logged-in from this Macintosh, choose Login from the File menu without closing the connection to the Mail Server (leave at least the "Incoming" mail window open). Information about the current session will then be displayed in a login confirmation box (compare figure 111).
As soon as you log in, HELIOS Mail opens the "Incoming" mail window, which lists all mails in your in-basket (see figure 112). The window title shows the host name, "Incoming" and your user name. The icons in the left column illustrate status information - i.e. they show whether the mail is large, already read or still unopened. If there is no mail, the "Incoming" mail list will be empty.
If you have a large amount of mails (more than 50 items), there might be a slight time delay before you can scroll through the whole list, but you can start using HELIOS Mail immediately because the list is processed in the background.
Use the mouse (or the Windows menu - which is described later in this chapter) to bring one of the items to the foreground if it is hidden behind other windows.
If necessary, you can double-click anywhere in the column titles row (the row starting with "St", "No.", etc.) to force an update of the "Incoming" mail window. The time that is needed for automatic updating depends on the system and configuration of your host computer.
You may click on a column title to sort the contents of the window. In figure 112, e.g., the window is sorted by No.; this is indicated by the column title being underlined. You can select any of the column titles for sorting (and reverse sorting, holding down the Option key when clicking).
Double-click on the item you want to read. Use Shift-click to select several entries at a time and use Command-click to select/deselect individual entries from the list. If you press the Option key while double-clicking the item, the original unfiltered message is loaded into the text window and can be saved to a file.
Note: This complete e-mail may contain large attachments which are loaded into memory. You may need to increase the HELIOS Mail memory partition (File >
Get Info > Memory) to work with unfiltered e-mails in a text window.When you are finished, and while the mail item is still open, you can save the item with Save from the File menu or print it with Print... from the same menu. Adjust the window width to the column width of the printout.
You can re-open saved mails at a later date, e.g. in order to re-read them, print them, send replies, or forward them. Use the menu items File and Open... for that purpose.
- if you double-click on a saved mail with the Finder, HELIOS Mail will be started automatically.
- a saved mail can be edited using any Macintosh word processing application.
If the message contains an attached text or binary (program) file you will see a document icon at the top of the "Incoming" mail window, just below the title bar (compare figure 113). You will also see the name of the attached file(s), the size, and the type of encoding.
Double-click on the document icon below the title bar to save the attached file. You will get a file dialog box that allows you to choose a new name and folder. (See also the paragraph Attaching a file in chapter 6.6 "Sending mail" for information on how to send attached files.)
You can search for specific expressions in incoming mails. For that purpose, open the desired mail and select Edit and Find... from the menu. Then enter the word you are looking for (see figure 114).
Activate the "Incoming" mail window and choose the items to delete. Use Shift-click to select a range of entries and use Command-click to select/deselect individual entries from the list.
Then choose Clear from the Edit menu.
A "Trash" icon will appear in front of every mail you have deleted. You can choose Edit/Clear a second time to undo deletion, if required.
At last, close the "Incoming" mail window to have the deleted items removed. Alternatively, you can select Remove Deleted from the Edit menu to remove deleted items without closing the window (see figure 115).
HELIOS Mail then prompts for acknowledgment of deletion, to allow it to be aborted if required (see figure 116).
Open the File menu and choose New and New Mail as shown in figure 117 (New Template will be described later in this chapter).
An editor window "Untitled" will open, containing a header consisting of a blank "To:" line and a "Subject:" line. Further lines (e.g. a "Cc:" line) in the header are optional - their appearance depends on your settings in the Preferences... dialog (see chapter 6.3.3 "Insert preferences").
Enter the e-mail address of the addressee in the "To:" line. Alternatively, you can choose To... (and optionally Copy to... or Blind Copy to...) from the Mail menu to automatically paste the recipient's mail address from the address book into the header of your message (see figures 118 and 119). You can do this before, during, or after writing the message itself. (For a comprehensive description of the address book, please see chapter 6.7 "Using/editing the address book".)
Note: You can enter several addressees at a time in the "To", "Cc:", and "Bcc:" line. The addresses have to be separated by a comma. Each line is limited to 255 characters.
You can enter a subject in the "Subject:" line to allow the addressee to quickly find out what the mail is about.
Write your message using the normal Macintosh editing keys. If you change the current window size, the text will automatically re-wrap to the new size.
The Macintosh does not save Line Feed characters at the end of each line of your message. If you want to preserve the layout of messages sent to UNIX users, choose a suitable current window size and press the Return-key at the end of each line, or use the Edit > Wrap option instead. This option makes the text lines end after a given number of characters (the number that has been specified in the "Preferences" dialog). You can thereby influence the layout of the entire text or of individual lines you have highlighted before. The wrap option does not hyphenate text. If a word does not fit it is moved to the next line completely. See chapter 6.3.2 "Text preferences" for wrap preferences.
You can add one text or binary (program) file to your message. Please note that if you attach a very large file, you and the addressee may have to change the "Memory Requirements" (File > Get Info > Memory) for the HELIOS Mail program in order to allow proper handling of the attached file.
Choose Attach File... from the Mail menu to send one text or binary (program) file with your message. You will get a file dialog to allow you to choose the file (see figure 120). Then, you may select the type of file encoding from the Format pull-down menu.
Note: If you use the Navigation Dialog consider that this may slightly slow down the performance of HELIOS Mail.
For the different types of file encoding and their compatibility with different operating systems see Table 1.
Note: "Data files", e.g. ".doc" or ".pdf", contain plain data information. "Mac files", on the other hand, additionally contain a resource fork beneath the data fork (e.g. given an ".eps" file, the data fork contains the PostScript information whereas the resource fork holds a "PICT" preview of the file).
E-mail attachments without "Type" and "Creator" info are automatically classified according to their file name suffix:
After choosing the file, you will see a document icon at the top of the "Untitled" window, just below the title bar (see figure 121). You will see the name of the attached file, its size, and the type of encoding.
If the receiving mail host does not have the EtherShare Mail Server installed and running, you can still unpack attachments by using HELIOS Mail stand-alone, as follows: copy the mail including attachment as a plain text file from the UNIX host to a Macintosh, start HELIOS Mail, open the file with Open... in the File menu and save the attachment as described above in Saving an attachment.
Note: If your Macintosh client runs Mac OS < 8.5, Helios Mail will start up with the Don't use Navigation Dialogs checkbox (in Edit > Preferences... > General) ticked. This means that - by default - files are attached in "Mime-base64" format or, if you press the Option key while attaching a file to the mail, in "Mac-binhex40".
If you want to send several files to another Macintosh user, use an archiving program such as Stuffit to create a single compressed file to attach since HELIOS mail can only attach one file at a time although it is capable of receiving more than one attached file at a time (see Saving an attachment above).
HELIOS Mail allows to create and use templates. You may create a template if you have to send a certain text several times to different people on different occasions.
For creating a template, use the items File/New, and New Template from the HELIOS Mail menu (see figure 122). Once you have edited the text you can save the template (favorably to the same folder where HELIOS Mail is located) using Save as....
All templates that are stored in the same folder than HELIOS Mail will be added to the submenu as shown in figure 122 and can be opened by selecting the respective item. You can also create text files with a word processing application and use them as templates. They will also be available in the submenu after you have moved them to the folder where HELIOS Mail resides.
If you want to send a mail to a specific person, you can open a new mail or reply to a mail you have received from him/her. In that case, sending a reply mail is much more comfortable, because the new editing window already includes the correct address as well as a complete "Subject:" line that starts with "Re:", indicating the reply mail status.
To send a reply mail, highlight the mail you have received in the "Incoming" mail window (or open it) and then select Reply from the Mail menu. See figure 123 as an example for a reply mail.
- if you have opened several mail items simultaneously, Reply opens a new window to reply to the currently active (foreground) item.
- if you have selected several items in the "Incoming" mail window but not opened them, Reply opens new windows to reply to all of them.
- you may select Reply including Letter from the Mail menu instead of Reply. This will include the letter you have received (without its header) into your reply mail. It allows you to refer to specific sentences without having to re-type them.
- you may select Reply including Template from the Mail menu. This lets you send a reply to a letter you have received with your personal template. This might be quite reasonable if you want to reply to a few mails of the same kind.
You can now start to write your reply. The "Subject:" line can be kept as is, or changed, if required.
Instead of replying to just one addressee you can reply to a previously defined group of addressees with all the features Reply offers. Just hold down the Option key when clicking into Mail in the menu bar. Now, you can do a Group Reply, Group Reply including Letter, and Group Reply including Template.
Important: The "Incoming" mail window has to be open, i.e. you have to be logged-in, if you want to send a mail. Otherwise, the send command will not do anything.
Choose Send from the Mail menu to simply send the mail.
Mails that have not been written, but received can be sent to further addressees using the "Forward" option. When making use of this feature, you should select Full Header in the "Preferences" dialog to allow the complete header of the original mail to be forwarded. Otherwise, it may happen that the addressee will only see your e-mail address in the "From:" line, but has no chance of seeing the address of the person who sent the original mail.
To forward a received mail, highlight the mail you have received in the "Incoming" mail window (or open it) and then select Forward to... or Edit and Forward... (first edit - then forward) from the Mail menu.
The address book pops up automatically, allowing you to select the addressee(s). See also chapter 6.7 "Using/editing the address book".
The address book is a file containing a global list of e-mail addresses (see figure 124). User specific address books are not supported.
You can use this list to save time when you often send mail to the same people. When sending new mail, carbon copying mail or forwarding mail, choose To..., Copy to.../BlindCopy to... or Forward to.../Edit and Forward from the Mail menu to automatically open the address book and paste the user's address into your message header.
In the address book, use Shift-click to select a range of entries and use Command-click to select/deselect individual entries from the list. Press the first letter of a name to jump forward to the first name which starts with that letter (backward searching is not supported). Click OK when you have made your selection.
When you installed EtherShare, a new address book was automatically created as the empty UNIX text file "addressbook" in "$ESDIR/conf".
Choose New Address... in the Addresses menu to add a new address to the list (see figure 125).
Enter the recipient's first name or a nickname in the Real name: field and the users's e-mail address in the Electronic address: field (see figure 126).
Addresses of users reachable via "uucp" on other hosts are specified according to standard uucp conventions as "username@hostname. domain_name". Sometimes you need to specify them as "hostname!hostname!...!username". If you have already received mail from someone, his mail header will usually show the correct address format to use - provided that it has been set up properly.
You may choose Delete Address... from the Addresses menu to open the address book for deletion. Highlight the address you want to remove and click the OK button.
You can save your personal signature in a file and configure the mail program to add the signature automatically to every mail you write.
To create a signature, open a new mail using File/New/
New Mail. Then enter your signature, and select from the File menu Save As Signature (see figure 127).Your signature will be stored on the server and automatically added to any mail you send - provided that the Signature checkbox is activated in the Preferences... - Insert: window (compare with figure 106 in chapter 6.3 "Setting Mail preferences").
In addition to the "Signature" file, you can set up a vacation message. This message contains information about the time you will be on vacation. HELIOS Mail, or - to be precise -the "sendmail" program on the server, can be configured to automatically send the vacation message as a reply mail to all the people who try to contact you during your holidays.
Write your message into a new mail window and select Save As Vacation Message from the File menu to store your note on the server.
You can activate or de-activate automatic sending of the message by selecting Edit > Vacation (see figure 129).
The option Stack Windows neatly re-arranges all the windows on the screen (see figure 131). The options Next Window and Previous Window let you switch back and forth.
When you installed the Macintosh utilities for EtherShare, you copied the "HELIOS Mail Init" into your system folder. After the "init" has been activated as described below, it will inform you immediately if any new mail arrives, regardless of which Macintosh program you happen to be using at the time. It notifies you with a flashing mail icon, a notification message, and a sound (see figure 132).
The "init" does not need to poll the network to do its job. This minimizes network loading, a factor which can become significant in large networks.
In order to work, the "Mail Notification Feature", activated by the "HELIOS Mail Init" in the Extensions Manager folder, has to know for whom a particular mail item is destined, i.e. your user name. The "init" you receive on your HELIOS CD-ROM must be activated before it will work.
You activate the "init" by logging on to the Mail Server with HELIOS Mail as described earlier, and checking the Save name box (and optionally, the Save password box) in the login window (see figure 133).
The "init" will then be active the next time you start your Macintosh. If you only checked Save name, the "init" will always show a login box when starting the system, to let you enter your password (see figure 133 again).
If you have checked Save password, too, the "init" will make the connection to the Mail Server automatically, and no login box will appear.
In either case, having logged-in with the "init" you will not have to log in a second time when you start HELIOS Mail. See also the autologin parameter in chapter 14.3 "Parameters of the "mailsrv" program" for related information.
- if you have not initialized the "Mail Notification Feature" in this way, no login box will appear and the "init" will not be active. This does not stop you from using HELIOS Mail. You just will not get any automatic notification.
- both the "Mail Notification Feature" and HELIOS Mail notice automatically if you have already mounted EtherShare volumes on the desktop with the Chooser from the host where the Mail Server is installed. In this case, you do not have to log in a second time.
Choose Control Panels from the Apple menu and then select the Extensions Manager. In the "Extensions" folder, uncheck the "Helios Mail Init" icon and click the Restart button.
| © 2002 HELIOS Software GmbH |
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