I P Compose Message N

The compose message screen is where you type your e-mail message. It uses the Pico editor on UNIX. It is not absolutely necessary right now, but there is a separate Pico editor tutorial.

You should know the e-mail address of the person you are writing. Currently, the best way to get someone's e-mail address is to ask them. The bottom two lines of Pine contain a short menu. These commands are control characters so you must hold down the < B>control key (shown with a ^ key) and type the other letter to perform the command.

An e-mail address has two basic parts. The first part is the person's account name and the last part is the host name.

Example: (username@host).
username
is assigned by the administrators of the system. Locally, it is usually the first letter of your first name followed by the next 7 letters of your last name. Because of possible duplications, there are times that you might get a slight variation.
host
is a series of information strung together with periods (.) between:
typically machine name
followed by institution
followed by a code to denote what type of institution
For more info on addresses click here.

SHORT DESCRIPTIONS

To:
the e-mail address of the person you are sending the message.
Cc:
the e-mail address of the persons to whom you are sending copies. Separate their addresses with commas if there are more than one. Leave blank if no copies are to be sent.
Attachments:
this is an advanced feature of Pine that allows you to attach documents created with other programs. If you wanted to send someone a 40 page paper you have been working on, I'm sure you would not want to type it into an e-mail message.
Subject:
a one line description of your message.
----Message Text----
This is where you type the actual message. You can edit the information using the arrow keys to move up, down, left and right. The delete key (or backspace) will delete the character in-front of the cursor. You can spell-check the message using control-t. 

PINE 3.91   COMPOSE MESSAGE                  Folder:INBOX 0 Messages

To       : 
Cc       :
Attachmnt:
Subject  : 
----- Message Text -----









^G Get Help ^X Send     ^R Read File  ^Y Prev Pg  ^K Cut Text   ^O Postpone
^C Cancel   ^J Justify  ^W Where is   ^V Next Pg  ^U UnCut Text ^T To Spell

Send your self a test message.

If everything goes okay, you should see something similar to the window below. 

PINE 3.91   COMPOSE MESSAGE                  Folder:INBOX 0 Messages

To       : username@sunburst.usd.edu
Cc       : trio@sunburst.usd.edu
Attachmnt:
Subject  : assignment 1
----- Message Text -----
This is just a short message.  This is my first e-mail message.
I am sending a copy to the trio account.

Soon I will be sending e-mail to others.





^G Get Help ^X Send     ^R Read File  ^Y Prev Pg  ^K Cut Text   ^O Postpone
^C Cancel   ^J Justify  ^W Where is   ^V Next Pg  ^U UnCut Text ^T To Spell

If you decide against sending a message you started, you can cancel the e-mail you are currently writing with the control-c. If you run out of time and are not finished, you can postpone the message with the control-o. Postponed messages can be finished later when you have more time.

When you type the control-x to send the message you will be prompted with the message: Send message?: You can answer yes, no or cancel. If everything looks okay, go ahead and type y (yes) and send the message. If you select n ( no), you will be put back into the editor. Cancel will abandon the message without saving.

Go ahead and type control-x to send the message and answer y (yes to send). You will see a short message [Writing FCC...]. Pine is telling you that it is writing a File Carbon Copy (duplicate of the message that you are sending) to your sent-mail folder. We will talk about folders later.

I P Compose Message N

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