Emma 2.1 ======== Documentation Update by Pete Maclean -- ---- ------- This short document describes the changes to Emma made since version 1.7. A full user guide for the program is available separately. As well as a few new features, this edition of Emma has substantial improvements in various types of error handling. For example, it now copes gracefully with a disk-full condition and will not leave fragments of aborted messages cluttering up your MAIL.IN file. New Features --- -------- (*). Three options are available on the 'M' command: send-only, attachment-overwrite and ASCII-mode. Each option is selected by including a key letter in a string argument. In send-only mode, Emma sends MCI any outgoing mail without downloading INBOX messages. The feature is selected thus: M "S" Send-only mode is intended for users with secretaries who create and dispatch mail but who do not handle incoming messages. Normally, when Emma receives an attachment with a name that matches an existing file, it generates a new name for the attachment of the form ATTACHED.xxx. By selecting attachment-overwrite mode, you instruct Emma to store attachments under their original names even if such files already exist. This option is useful for those people who update remote files by MCI. You select this option by editing your 'M' command to read M "O" Finally, Emma's ASCII mode is provided for users of WordStar and similar editors that bend high bits to their own uses. The effect of selecting this option, by M "A" is that all messages are stripped down to 7-bit characters before transmission. (This stripping applies specifically and only to message texts and not to attached files.) You may combine options as in this example: M "AOS" The option letters may appear in the string in any order. (*). The K command tells Emma to transmit a standard BREAK signal on the COM port. (A BREAK consists of approximately 385 milliseconds of SPACE.) It is included for compatibility with certain foreign packet switch networks that require such a signal as a trigger for setting PAD parameters. (*). Suppose you love Emma but are wary about keeping your MCI password in a script file that someone else might look at. Or suppose that you use Emma on a portable PC and need a different dialing code every time you run it. Emma can help. Place a question mark in front of any string argument and Emma displays it on the screen as a prompt for you to type in the "real" string you want used. For example, to avoid putting your password in your EMMA.CSF file, you could set up the appropriate section of it as follows: R 15 "name:" T "your_username" T "/batch:1ST/" T ? "^M^JPlease type your password (and press Enter): " T "^M" R 20 "COM^M^J" You can use this facility with any script command although it is not obviously useful with any but 'T'. Note that while you press Enter to terminate the string that you type in, the Enter itself (i.e. a carriage return) is not included in the string. You may type in strings of up to 80 characters; anything typed beyond this limit is quietly ignored. You can use the Escape key to abort a session while typing a string just as you can at any other time. You can even go one step further with this mechanism. When Emma reads the response to a prompt, it reads standard input (not the keyboard directly). Thus you can redirect input from a file. For example, set up your EMMA.CSF with null prompts (?"") and create a file, RESPONSE, containing the responses, one per line. Then start Emma with the command: EMMA