Getting Started with NUPop 1.1

(by Eric Martz, Professor, Dept. Microbiology, Univ. Mass., Amherst MA USA.

Send errors or omissions to emartz@microbio.umass.edu)

Why Electronic Mail?

Electonic mail (email) is more convenient to send and receive than snail-mail, almost as fast as FAX, and costs nothing to send anywhere in the world from most universities.

How Does It Get There? (The Internet)

Academic email is transmitted over an international communications network called the internet. The internet is supported by governments (especially the NSF), businesses, the military, and universities. US internet addresses end in edu (an educational institution), gov (e.g. nsf.gov), com (a company), org (an organization), or ins (an institution), and sometimes may have '.us' tacked onto the end to indicate the country. Non-USA internet addresses may end in one of the above, but always followed by a two-letter code for the country (e.g. au=Australia, za=Zuid Afrika, uk=United Kingdom, hu=Hungary, de=Deutschland).

Some (mostly non-university) people use Bitnet or commercial email services, such as Compuserve. Their internet addresses must end in .compuserve.com or .bitnet. There are 'gateways' on the internet which transfer email between these networks.

Why NUPop?

NUPop is an electronic mail program designed for PC's with access to an internet-connected POP-supporting mail server computer. It is perhaps the best such program available. It was developed by staff at Northwestern University (NU), notably Phil Burns, and continues to be enhanced by them. NU has made the program available free to the rest of the world, and it is in wide use in many countries. NUPop stands for NU Post office protocol.

One of the major advantages of NUPop is that all mail is delivered to, and created on, your PC. The files of mail you receive and send are disk files on your PC.

NUPop is for IBM compatible PC's only. Macintosh users may avail themselves of an excellent free program with similar advantages called Eudora.

NUPop Manuals

There are three manuals for NUPop:

1. Getting started with NUPop (this document -- start here).

2. Using NUPop (NU draft document -- more technical and comprehensive).

3. NUPop Installation Guide (very technical -- only needed for installation).

"Getting started with NUPop" will take you through some of the basic features of the program. By exploring NUPop's menus, you can discover additional features. You probably won't need to look at "Using NUPop".

Basics

Before you can use NUPop, you must get your local expert to create a mail account for you on the the local mail host computer. All you need to know is the account name (typically your first initial plus your last name, e.g. aeinstein) plus your password. Choose a password which you can remember easily but which others could not guess. Passwords should have at least 5 characters and should not be in the dictionary; that is, they should have a digit or a capital letter in an unexpected place. If you use a digit, use the row of numbers across the top of the keyboard; the numeric keypad won't work properly for passwords. Don't use function keys in passwords.

Consult your local expert about what your email address will be. Your return address will automatically be included in all mail you send.

NUPop can be set up so that only one person's mail can be handled from one computer. Alternatively, it is possible to set it up so that several people can handle their mail from one computer. The mail files can be kept on the hard disk (in which case other people could read your mail), or on a floppy disk (more secure), as you wish. Ask your local expert to install NUPop in the mode you need.

This document assumes that NUPop has been installed and tested on your computer. When you type 'nupop' and press <enter>, it should run.

NUPop can work very nicely with a mouse. This document will be phrased in terms of the keyboard; however, many of the operations can be accomplished equally well with your mouse.

Each menu selection visible on a NUPop screen contains a highlighted letter, for example Acquire, MailBox, Reply. These functions can be activated by holding down the Alt key while pressing the highlighted letter; or by using Tab or Shift-Tab to move the highlight to the function and pressing Enter; or by moving the cursor with the mouse and clicking. For example, if this document says 'press Alt-Y(replY)', you can use any of these methods.

* is used to mark behaviors of NUPop which you can change. Many behaviors of NUPop can be turned on or off from NUPop's Options -> Preferences menu. We will assume particular settings, but behaviors which can be modified in this way will be marked with *.

Where to Process Your Mail

It is best to get and send your mail only from one place. If you use NUPop from two places, you will end up with part of your mail files at one place and part at the other place, and different sets of addresses at each place. This can be a problem when you wish to refer to mail you received previously, or when you have someone's address at the 'other place but not here'.

Starting Up NUPop

The method for starting NUPop may vary depending on your installation -- consult the person who installed it for you. Often, from the DOS prompt, you simply type 'nupop' (without the quotes) and press Enter. After a short pause, NUPop may* ask you for your password. After you enter your password, it may* acquire your mail automatically.

Acquiring your mail involves using a connection between your PC and the mail host computer (which needs to run 24 hours/day) to download files of mail which you have received. Once these files are downloaded, the only* copy is the copy on your PC. The connection can be via a network cable, or via a serial modem device (though the latter may be problematic).

Sending Mail

NUPop starts out on the Index screen displaying the contents of the IN mailbox. Since you probably don't have any incoming mail, let's send yourself a message. To switch to the compose screen, you can press Alt-C(ompose) (note the second row of menu choices, second item from the left) or press F8. (To remind yourself of F8, press Alt-W(indows)). To escape from this menu box, press the Esc key.

At the To: line, type your address. (For more on the Cc: and BlCc: lines, see below; ignore them for now.) Then press Tab to move to the Subject: line, and type a subject. Although the subject can be a full line in length, only the first 25 or so characters will be easily visible to the recipient, so make your subjects only two or three words long.

Press Tab to move to the -Text: box, and type the message. (See below for editing commands.) Notice the choices at the right end of the second menu line. Typically*, they will be Send Queue and Queue. Since there is a short delay whenever you request NUPop to connect to the mail host, it is convenient to have NUPop save up outgoing messages in a queue, and transfer them to the mail host all at once when you are finished with a NUPop session. For this example, we want to send the message at once, so press Alt-Q, then Alt-D. Then press F9 to return to the Index screen.

The mail host transfers mail once every 15 minutes, so your message to yourself may not be received for up to 15 minutes. It will be difficult to explore some of the features below until you have received some mail. You may want to send yourself several messages to assist in testing other features.

Your Personal Address Book (Groups)

NUPop will keep a convenient list of names and addresses for you. From the composer screen, press Alt-G(roups), M(ake groups). Press Alt-N(ew group), and type 'einstein.a', then Enter. Now type into the "Means:" box the corresponding address 'aeinstein@ias.princeton.edu'. Press Alt-K(oK) to return to the compose screen.

Now, press Alt-T(o) to be sure your cursor is in the To: field, then F5 to select an address. Group names are alphabetized, hence we recommend naming them with lastname.initial so that they sort by last name. By typing the first letter or two of the last name, the highlight will jump to the name you want (even if it is outside of the view box). Then press Enter, and you will return to the compose screen, NUPop having inserted the corresponding address in the To: field.

Groups can also designate multiple addressees. Suppose you want to have a group which includes three people. First, you could define three single-member groups for einstein.a, clinton.b, jackson.m. Then you could define a new group named bigshots (or g.bigshots, see below). In the 'Means:' box for this group, you could* type 'einstein.a clinton.b jackson.m'. (Be sure that Options, Preferences, Messages has the 'Expand group names when sending messages' option checked.) Now, when you select the addressee bigshots, all three addressees will receive the same message.

You may prefer to prefix with 'g.' (for group) the names of all groups which contain multiple addressees. This makes them appear together in the alphabetical list of group names, so it is easier to find them. For example, you may forget whether you named it bigshots or famous, but if you named it g.bigshots then it will be under 'g...'.

Cc, Blcc

The Cc field is used to send copies of a message to addressees other than the primary addresse(s) (whose address is in the To: field). Messages sent to Cc recipients show all other Cc addresses, so the recipient knows who else got the message. Messages sent to Blcc (blind cc) recipients do not show the other addressees.

You can put as many addressees in each category (To, Cc, Blcc) as you wish.

Signature

You will probably want to create a standard 'signature' which NUPop will append to all messages you send. Typically, this may include your full name, title, snail-mail address, voice and fax phone numbers, and anything else you wish. It is convenient to include your email address, although this usually appears on the From: line in the NUPop viewer. However, the recipient may not be using NUPop.

Press Alt-O(ptions), S(ignature) and a box will appear in which you can create a signature. After creating a signature, mail a test message to yourself to see how it looks when received.

Enclosures

As explained below, NUPop can insert the contents of an existing DOS/ASCII text file into a message. Alternatively, NUPop allows you to enclose files of DOS/ASCII text. An enclosed file does not appear in the message, but will appear as a file in \NUPOP\ENCL.

NUPop can also enclose word processor files (which contain formatting commands specific to the word processor, hence cannot be viewed in NUPop), binary data files, or even programs. When enclosing such files (which are not plain DOS/ASCII text), use the 'Add Binhex' mode of enclosure. If you do not, the file will be received in a corrupted form, or may cause the entire message to be deleted by the mail system. If the receiving program is also NUPop, the file will be decoded and restored to its original form automatically at the receiving end, showing up in \NUPOP\ENCL. If the receiving program is not NUPop, this may not work. (There are alternative protocols; one of the most popular is called uuencode/uudecode).

Typically, the recipient would move the received enclosure file to another location on their hard disk and then use it with the appropriate program (e.g. WordPerfect, MS Word, etc.).

To try out enclosures, enclose a file in a message to yourself.

Editing in the Compose Screen

Below is a most-useful subset of the NUPop editing commands. Additional commands can be found at the end of the document 'Using NUPop'.

NUPop will automatically* wrap lines to form a paragraph as they are typed. However, if you insert text into the middle of an existing paragraph, it does not automatically wrap. You can reform the paragraph with Ctrl-B.

Arrow keys: move cursor.

Shift-Arrow keys: mark block of text.

Home, End: left or right end of current line.

PgUp, PgDn: move up/down one screen.

Ctrl-PgUp, Ctrl-PgDn: top or bottom of entire message.

Backspace, Delete: delete characters to left or right; delete block (use Shift-Del if you want to paste it!).

Insert: toggles between insert and overstrike modes.

Shift-Insert: paste text block cut with Shift-Del.

Ctrl-B: reformat current paragraph.

Ctrl-Q-U: reformat entire document (use with caution!)

Ctrl-Q-F: find first instance of a word below cursor.

Ctrl-L: find next instance of same word.

You can insert the contents of a DOS/ASCII text file at the cursor into a message in the compose screen by selecting Alt-M(essage), Append file. (To enclose a word-processed file, see Enclosures, above). A box will appear to allow you to specify the name of the text file. Use the Name line to specify the disk, e.g. 'd:\', Enter. The files box will then show the files and subdirectories on d:. By selecting the correct subdirectory (use PgDn to see more), you can move down the tree until the file you want appears in the box. Highlight its name and press Enter. (Sometimes NUPop reports an error when there is no error; as long as the file contained text in plain DOS/ASCII form, there should be no problem.)

Receiving Mail, Replying, and Forwarding

If you want to check whether you have received mail during the current NUPop session, go to the Index screen (F9) and press Alt-A(cquire).

Each message you receive will show up as one line on the Index screen. You can view the message by highlighting it and pressing Enter.

If you wish to reply to a message, first View it, then press Alt-Y(replY). This automatically addresses your reply to the sender. The message to which you are replying will appear* in the compose box. This makes it easy to refer to the message while composing your reply. If you don't wish to repeat the sender's message in your reply, simply block it and delete it.

If you wish to forward to a third party a message you received, from the viewer, press Alt-R(forward).

Printing or Deleting Mail.

From the Index screen, you can tag one or more messages for operations by highlighting them and pressing the space bar: a check mark will appear at the left of tagged messages. The mailBox menu includes options for tagging or untagging (selecting or unselecting) all messages in the box.

Press Alt-P to print tagged messages. Press Alt-D to delete tagged messages (careful -- NUPop doesn't ask for confirmation).

Saving (Transferring) Mail

To save a message for future reference, it is best to create a "mailbox" named after the person from whom you received it, or named after the subject of the message. It is a good idea to create a large number of mailboxes so that you can find old messages by looking in the correct mailbox.

Tag the message you wish to save, and press Alt-T(ransfer). A list of mailboxes will pop up. If you need to create a new mailbox, press Alt-N(ame) and type a name of up to 8 characters, and press Enter. If the mailbox already exists, type the first letter or two of the mailbox name, and the cursor will jump to the matching name (even if it is not in the view box). When the correct mailbox name is highlighted, press Enter.

Reviewing Old Mail

You can view the contents of any mailbox. From the Index, press

Alt-B(mailBox), B (change mailBox), and choose the desired mailbox. When the contents of any mailbox are in the Index window, you can delete, print, view, forward, transfer, or reply just as when the IN mailbox is in the index.

Disposing of Your Copies of Sent Mail

NUPop keeps* a copy of all outgoing mail in the mailbox named SENT. Once each day, you should dispose of the contents of SENT. Most of its contents can usually be deleted. You may wish to save these copies of some of your outgoing messages in suitably named mailboxes using the Transfer function. By saving both incoming and outgoing mail from/to one person in a mailbox named after that person, you have a complete record of correspondence.

Bells and Whistles

NUPop has some convenience features which you may wish to explore. The triple-equal sign menu in the far upper left corner (press F10 to go to the top menu line, then use left arrow to highlight , press Enter) contains a calculator and a calendar.

NUPop's File menu allows you to create or edit DOS/ASCII text files other than mail messages. To save and exit, press Alt-W(indow), L(cLose).

The mailBox menu includes options to renumber, or sort in various possible orders, the contents of a mailbox. Also, if some message(s) appear to have been lost, try the 'recreate message index' option.

If you wish to perform some DOS functions without terminating your NUPop session, you can press Alt-U(tilities), J(ump to DOS). When you are finished with the DOS operations, type 'exit' at the DOS prompt, and Enter. NUPop will reappear where you left off.

Acknowledgement

Thanks to George Drake for explaining many aspects of networking to me and for specific suggestions about this document.

This extra copy of the most-useful NUPop editing commands can be posted in a convenient location.

NUPop Editing Keys (Most-Useful Subset)

Arrow keys: move cursor.

Shift-Arrow keys: mark block of text.

Home, End: left or right end of current line.

PgUp, PgDn: move up/down one screen.

Ctrl-PgUp, Ctrl-PgDn: top or bottom of entire message.

Backspace, Delete: delete characters to left or right; delete block (use Shift-Del if you want to paste it!).

Insert: toggles between insert and overstrike modes.

Shift-Insert: paste text block cut with Shift-Del.

Ctrl-B: reformat current paragraph.

Ctrl-Q-U: reformat entire document (use with caution!)

Ctrl-Q-F: find first instance of a word below cursor.

Ctrl-L: find next instance of same word.