**** The Hebrew University of Jerusalem ****
**** Computation Center ****
News Bulletin #31
27-October-1992
In about a week a new BMAIL will replace the current BMAIL software. The new
BMAIL is menu oriented; it uses the standard VMS screen-management routines
which have their own adavantages and drawbacks which will be described bellow.
If you want to try it now you can issue the BMAIL_NEW command.
The advantages of the screen management routines which are noticeable are
as follows:
1. If the screen gets garbled (because of messages received on the terminal
and other causes) you can hit ^W almost at any place to redraw it.
2. You can use the arrow to move the cursor to the wanted option and then hit
<CR> to select it. You can short-cut this by hitting the first characters
of the option and pressing <CR> which will jump the cursor to the wanted
option. Another <CR> will select that option.
On Xterminals the mouse can be used as well to choose an option.
3. In order to get help text (in English and Hebrew) on a menu option simply
place the cursor on it and hit the <Help> or <PF2> key.
4. Some lists are longer than the screen (the lists that can have this option
are the folders list, the message's list and the nicknames/addresses list).
These lists can be scrolled by pressing the up/down keys, or selecting
directly a message by hitting its number (including the leading zeros)
followed by <CR>. The keys combination <PF1><Up/Down-arrow> can be used to
jump to the top/bottom of the list.
Since most screens are quite obvious we'll describe only the things which are
not quite obvious:
Sending message: When you are asked for To or Cc addresses it is possible to
hit the <Select> or the keypad's <Enter> keys; doing so will display the
list of your nicknames items and you can select one of them.
Commas are not needed anymore after you hit an address in order to type-in
more addresses. BMAIL will ask for more addresses until you enter an empty
address (i.e. <CR> only).
Reading messages: You are displayed two menus: The top one is the message's
listing and the bottom one is the message's operations. Due to the screen
management deficiencies it is possible to select an option from the bottom
menu only after selecting an item from the top one. For reading a message
it is possible to point to it and hit the keypad's <Enter> key; doing so you
won't be asked to select the Read option from the bottom menu.
Replying or forwarding a message: When you do so you are placed in the Send
mode with predefined address and/or subject. You can use the standard VMS
line editing functions (arrows, etc.) in order to modify them.
Set filter: This is a new option which allows you to display only some of the
messages in the menu based on one or more criteria. Please place the cursor on
it and hit the <Help> or <PF2> keys to get a better explanation of it.
Error and informational messages: Are displayed at the bottom of the screen.
For help and bugs reports please write to <a href="mailto:vms-advice@vms.huji.ac.il">VMS-ADVICE@VMS</a>.
__Yehavi:
