
            Installation Notes for the AUIS-63L0-MAIL Package



FORWARD

This is another of several planned versions of "packages" of the Andrew
User Interface System (AUIS).  AUIS can be difficult to describe fully
since it encompasses such a large variety of applications and uses.  In
an effort to break this into something more manageable, both in size and
scope, I have created this particular package which is aimed principally
at people interested in those who are seeking a MULTI-MEDIA and BETTER
MAIL INTERFACE.  Messages was the one of the very first MIME-compliant
mailers.

This package requires that you have already installed the AUIS Word
Processing package, auis63L0-wp.tgz.  Do not mix versions (for example,
L1 with L2), as this can result in surprising and undesirable behavior. 
This document assumes you already have a working mail system.  I assume
you already can send mail and have something to receive and display mail
sent to you.  This software will do nothing for you until that works. 
Think of this software as a better version of "elm" (for instance).

Messages is also a MIME mailer.  It was written by the originator of the
MIME rfc, Nathaniel Borenstein.  With messages you can mail pictures and
text with fonts to others who have MIME-compliant mailers.  

Be forewarned.  The messages program is NOT fully compatible with other
mailers.  It saves mail you receive as separate (and indexed) files in
$HOME/Mailbox, rather than in a single file in $HOME/Mail (more on this
elsewhere in the document).

Watch for a series of articles on AUIS to appear in the Linux Journal
beginning sometime the summer of 1994.

                                                            Terry Gliedt	
                                                              tpg@mr.net	


INSTALLATION

This packaged is distributed as a single tar file of approximately 2.0
MB which will expand to approximately 4.8 MB of ADDITIONAL disk space
over that required for the word processing package.  To install this
package, do the following as root:

    cd /
    tar xzf [path]/auis63L0-mail.tgz
    /usr/andrew/etc/complete-setup mail

This will add files to /usr/andrew that you created earlier with the -wp
package.


USING MESSAGES

This assumes you already know your way around ez - because the messages
program uses precisely the same menu-scheme, scroll-bars etc.

You MUST also have a working mail system already in place.  If you do
not, get it working FIRST and THEN try out messages.  Messages will not
magically start making e-mail work for your system.  In particular this
means the /etc/sendmail command works as expected.

Enter "auishelp messages" in your xterm for help on the mail system.

AUIS applications are highly tailorable for your personal needs and
preferences.  This is especially so for the mail application, messages. 
After you become accustomed to messages, you will want to begin enabling
some of the options it provides.  Messages provides its own interface
for setting preferences.  Begin by selecting the Set Options menu item
on the Other menu card.  Messages will write the preference settings you
select to your $HOME/preferences file.

Using messages does not prevent you from sending mail with any other
program or receiving mail with another program.  The only difference is
that once you receive mail, the two mailers (messages and elm, for
instance) will not know about the mail the other received.


NOW WHAT'S THIS ABOUT COMPATIBILITY?

Messages is part of a very complex set of software called the Andrew
Message System (AMS).  This has the ability to act as a news reader, has
support for bulletin boards and can deliver mail directly to other
Andrew File System cells (without using sendmail).  Most of this
function has been disabled in the version you have here.

The reason for telling you this all is that in doing all this, the
original designers chose to not keep messages compatible with mail/elm
mailers with respect to its database.  In conventional Un*x mailers
(e.g. mail) when mail is received, it is stored in /usr/spool/mail/$USER
as a conventional "flat" file.  All the mail is mashed together as one
physical file.  Its up to the mailer to sort these out. This works fine
when the file is small, but when you have 100 pieces of multi-media
mail, each 50K in size, it starts getting unwieldy and slow.

Now when you invoke your mailer (e.g. elm), the mailer shows you whats
in /usr/spool/mail/$USER.  When you save the mail to a folder, the mail
is appended to some file in $HOME/Mail  (e.g. ~/Mail/tpg in my case).
Just as with the mail in /usr/spool/mail, this is also a simple file
with many logical files (pieces of mail) in it.  It will suffer even
more from performance problems as you keep more and more mail around.

In the world where AUIS was developed, it is not unusal for one to have
thousands of pieces of mail (and large multi-media mail at that). So
another, incompatible approach was taken.  Messages keeps each
individual piece of mail as a separate file in a folder (i.e. directory)
and builds an index so it can quickly show whats in the folder. Each of
these folders is kept in the directory $HOME/.MESSAGES.


SWITCHING to MESSAGES

After you've tried messages for a little bit, you might want to
"convert" your existing mail to messages.  Here's a technique I have
found workable.  Now be careful here! This is not guarenteed to work in
all cases. It worked for me.  Be careful.  If you don't erase any files,
the worst case is that you will mess up some copies of mail.  Here's the
approach I have used:

Goal:  Get mail I have received from elm into messages

    Elm saves my mail in the folder $HOME/Mail/$USER (or unread mail
    in $HOME/Mail/received). This looks pretty much like it did when
    it was originally in /usr/spool/mail/tpg.  So the trick is to
    copy it there and tell messages to read the "new" mail.

    1. Be sure no mail is in /usr/spool/mail/$USER.  This should
        be a file of zero bytes.

    2. cp $HOME/Mail/$USER /usr/spool/mail/$USER

    3. Select "Read Mail" on the "messages" menu card.  This
        will copy the mail from /usr/spool/mail to
        $HOME/.MESSAGES/mail and show you the "new" mail. Just like
        it just arrived the first time.


Goal:  Get mail I have received by messages back to something elm understands

    Elm saves my unread mail in $HOME/Mail/received as one large
    file (just like it was in /usr/spool/mail/$USER).  Messages has
    saved my mail in some folder like $HOME/.MESSAGES/mail as a set
    of individual files.  These files all have strange names (since
    you are normally not supposed to even look at these, that's as
    expected).  So suppose you want to "convert" all of these back
    to elm? The trick is to copy the individual files to
    $HOME/Mail/received in the right format.

    1. Be sure no mail is in /usr/spool/mail/$USER.  This should
        be a file of zero bytes.

    2. Copy the files to /usr/spool/mail/$USER with something
        like the following:

            /bin/csh
            cd $HOME/.MESSAGES/mail
            foreach f (*)
              echo $f
              echo "From dummy Sat May 28 11:32:01 1994" >>
            /usr/spool/mail/$USER
              cat $f >> /usr/spool/mail/$USER
              echo "" >> /usr/spool/mail/$USER
            end

    3.  Invoke elm (or whatever your mail reader is) and with
        any luck, they will all be recognized.

Hopefully these notes will make you more comfortable with trying another
mailer.  As long as you do not delete any mail (in either elm or
messages), you still have it.  Give it a try.  I think messages is by
far the best mailer I have seen and I hope you'll agree. 


YOUR FIRST MULTI-MEDIA MAIL

I know you're anxious to try your first multi-media mail, so we have
something all set up for you.  Do the following:

	mkdir $HOME/Mailbox
	cp /usr/andrew/lib/Hello $HOME/Mailbox/mbox 

There is a pre-canned folder which demonstrates various aspects of
messages.  To see these in action, do the following:

	/usr/andrew/etc/gendemo -force ~/.MESSAGES/amsdemo
	cd /usr/andrew/.MESSAGES/demo
	tar cf - . | (cd ~/.MESSAGES/amsdemo; tar xf -)
	Select "Expose All" on the "Messages Folders" menucard
	Click on the "amsdemo folder"

Hold on to your chair and now enter:

	/usr/andrew/bin/messages


CHANGELOG

Release auis63L0-mail has the following changes:

    - Now based on AUIS 6.3

    - An animator object called fad is available in this package.  I
    did not have room in the -wp package and still be able to keep
    the tgz file small evough to fit  on one diskette.


SOME THINGS YOU MIGHT LIKE TO KNOW

This release was built on Slackware 1.2.0.

If you use some sort of POP server, you might want to configure
    messages to call your POP client code (to fetch your mail) directly.
     This can be done by setting the AMS_MailCollectionCommand entry in
    /usr/andrew/etc/AndrewSetup. An example of what this shell might
    look like follows (your mileage may vary):

        #!/bin/csh
        #
        #       Bring up slip if need be
        #       Get whatever mail is queued for me
        #       Invoke pgm to copy from /usr/spool/mail/$USER to
        $HOME/Mailbox
        #
        if (! -e /etc/dip.pid) then     # First time, bring up SLIP
        if you can
          /usr/local/bin/slipup
        endif
        #       Check if SLIP is up now.  If not this time, exit
        with error,
        #       causing messages to generate a somewhat-bogus-looking error
        if (! -e /etc/dip.pid) then
          echo "SLIP connection failed."        
          exit 2
        endif
        sleep 2                 # Just give it a little bit of time

        #       Get mail from SLIP server
        #       Option -v is verbose; -c put data to stdout; -k keep
        mail at MR.NET
        /usr/local/bin/popclient -3 -o /usr/spool/mail/$USER -u
        slipuserid -p slippasswd sliphost.domain

        #       Last step, Get mail into $HOME/Mailbox
        /usr/andrew/bin/eatmail


Now that you are into multi-media mail, you might want to follow the
    newsgroup comp.mail.mime.

If you try messages and get the error message "There are no messages
    in your incoming mailbox.", then you do not have /usr/andrew/bin on
    your PATH or your PATH is set up so that /usr/bin/messages is found
    before /usr/andrew/bin/messages.
