Discworld player help |
Name
mail - Mailing other players.
Syntax
mail [name] [name] ...
Description
The mailer enables players to send and receive mail to and from other players. In the mail room of post offices you may "mail <person>" to send mail to a person, or simply type "mail" to look at mail sent to you.
Sending mail
Once you have typed "mail <person>", you are prompted for a subject. Note that you can mail more than one person in one go, by simply mentioning more names, separated by commas.
The subject is a one line summary of what the mail is about. If you leave it blank, you leave the sending mail process. After this you are asked for Cc's, or Carbon-Copy recipients. Enter anyone else who should receive the mail, one per line. Enter a blank line to stop. Then you can enter the body of the mail itself. This will be edited with your default editor, the default editor is a menu editor. Please see "help edit_help" for its use. If you have an alias for ".signature", then, in a similar format to that of .plan (see finger), it will be appended to your mail.
Please note that you cannot send or receive mail when you have become inactive.
Reading mail
Typing "mail" takes you to the main screen of the Discworld mailer. This consists of as many message headers as will fit your screen, and a brief description of all the options you have. To read the next unread mail message, you can just press <enter>. The last read message has a '>' in front of it and is highlighted. This is the default message that will be used with a number of options if you don't supply a number. To read a specific mail message, you may enter its number. You get a number of other options at this point, all of which can also be viewed by typing '?' in the main menu:
h [range] ............ Main menu (showing subjects and stuff). If you
give a range, the subjects in the range will be
displayed. Otherwise as many as will fit your
screen. "h all" will show all subjects, even
if that means you get 6 screens at once :-).
$ .................... Reloads the current folder, so anything you
changed will not be saved (like marking as
read/deleting).
m <name> ............. Mails to the given person(s).
r [num] .............. Replies to the message number or the last read
message if none given.
R [num] .............. As above but sends to the Cc's as well.
d [range] ............ Deletes a range of messages.
u [range] ............ Undeletes a range of messages.
f [num] <name> ....... Forwards the message to the person(s) given.
F [num] .............. Forwards the message to your email address, if set.
Please make sure that this is a valid address!
> [range] <folder>.... Copies given message(s) to a folder. It will
be created if it doesn't exist yet.
s [range] <filename> . Creators only: saves given message(s) to given
file. If no full pathname is given it will be
saved in the current directory(!). The
resulting file is in email format, so it can
be read by an email program.
i .................... Index of your mail folders. You always have at
least an inbox.
c <name> ............. Change to given folder (if it exists).
l .................... List the currently available mailing lists.
l <list> ............. List the members of the mailing list <list>.
L .................... Toggles showing of full/abbreviated header for
messages. The default is abbreviated.
q .................... Quit, the mailer will ask if you want to
delete/move marked/read messages. It asks if
you want to move the read messages from your
inbox to the received folder.
? .................... Display this help file.
<num> ................ Display given message.
Return on a blank line will display the next unread message.
A range is defined as a list of comma separated numbers or spans. So "1-2" is defined as well as "1,2,3" and "all" is a special case that means all messages, so "d all" is a valid command.
It does intelligent matching, so if there are 4 messages and you typed "d 1-30" it will delete the 4 messages and will not complain.
You can execute all commands by just typing the letter, the mailer will then explain what you have to type.
Nicknames
The mailer can use nicknames, and as just more than nickname-to-name replacement. The mailer will recognise nicknames when you "mail <person>", "mail <person1>, <person2>", enter Cc's, forward mail, or "m <person>" from the main menu.
With the "mail <person1>, <person2>" format, it will expand the entire line as a nickname first. You could use this for your own form of mailing lists. Nicknames within these lists are also expanded.
Examples
> mail signe Subject: Hiya sis! Cc: Enter your text. Use ** on a line by itself to exit. 1 ] Hiya sis! Love you lots. 2 ] 3 ] *hugs* 4 ] 5 ] Chrisy. 6 ] ** 5 lines - Choose from IDLMCESQ or H for help. s Quitting and saving. Sending to: Signe Message sent.
> nickname oo Setting for nickname oo is ooeeoo. > mail oo Subject: Burble Cc: Enter your text. Use ** on a line by itself to exit. 1 ] Chrisy 2 ] ** 1 lines - Choose from IDLMCESQ or H for help. s Quitting and saving. Sending to: Ooeeoo Message sent.
