USING E-MAIL AT BOSTON UNIVERSITY

Access to electronic mail (e-mail) is one of the most popular reasons for using a computer; everyone from novice to expert uses it often and comes to depend upon it. The Office of Information Technology (OIT) supports a number of e-mail programs for both ACS and for personal computers.

E-MAIL PROGRAMS ON ACS

OIT's Central Consulting group provides support for:
Pine
Pine is a menu-driven electronic mail program for UNIX and IBM PCs and compatibles. The UNIX version is available on ACS. Features of Pine include a menu-driven interface; on-line, context-sensitive help; and an address book. To use Pine, type pine at the system prompt. To view online documentation, type man pine at the system prompt, or from within Pine type "?" or <Ctrl>-g (depending on which screen you are on). In addition, free, hands-on tutorials are offered each semester.
Elm
Elm has menus at the bottom of the screen to guide you. To use Elm, type elm at the system prompt. Elm has excellent documentation. To view on-line documentation and help, type man elm at the system prompt or "?" at the Elm Command prompt. To print a complete set of Elm documentation, type elmdoc at the system prompt. Handouts are also available at the Help Desk.
UNIX mail
This program is standard on all UNIX systems. The interface is fairly simple and powerful, but is not menu-driven. To use UNIX mail, type mail at the system prompt. To view on-line documentation and help, type man mail at the system prompt, "?" at the "&" mail prompt, or "~?" in the first column while composing a mail message.

Choosing a Text Editor to use with ACS E-mail Programs

Pine, Elm, and UNIX mail have the ability to call your choice of editor to compose messages. In addition to Emacs and vi, we have installed a new editor that you may want to try: Pico (type pico to run, man pico for information). Pico looks much like a very simple version of Emacs, with the commands appearing at the bottom of the screen. By default, Pine uses a version of Pico as its editor; Elm and UNIX mail can be configured to use Pico.

We have tried to configure Elm and Pine to make it easy to switch back and forth between the two, so that you can try both before making any decisions. If you decide to switch permanently from UNIX mail to one of the other two, you will probably want to make your old mail automatically visible to Elm and Pine. You can do this by moving your mbox file, which contains previously read mail, to your Mail subdirectory. To do so, type: mv ~/mbox ~/Mail/mbox.

Help

If you have questions on any of these packages, send mail to help@acs.bu.edu or see a consultant at the Help Desk in the basement of 111 Cummington Street.

E-MAIL PROGRAMS FOR PERSONAL COMPUTERS

OIT's Personal Computing Support Center provides support for:

Help

For a comparison of these programs, see the PCSC handout Comparing E-mail Programs. Numerous help documents on these packages and a variety of other topics are available in Understanding Your E-mail Options.

Send questions about any of these programs to pcsc@bu.edu or visit the PCSC at 111 Cummington St., Rm. B19.

Accessing E-mail when away From Boston University

Incoming mail to BU is stored on a central mail server (usually ACS). See the PCSC handout Reading BU E-mail When You Are Not Connected to the BU Network to learn how to read your mail when you don't have local access to the Boston University Campus Network.