Accessing your Math account using Emacs Rmail

rmail may be invoked in two ways.

• inside Emacs by typing esc-x rmail <CR>
• directly from the shell, by typing emacs -f rmail <CR>

The mail facility is invoked in an analogous fashion by replacing the word `rmail' by `mail'. The file RMAIL in your directory is used by Emacs to store your messages. When you invoke rmail, the first new message (or last old one if there is no new mail) is displayed. Some special commands are available to help process your mail. A complete list may be obtained by typing ? (after you have invoked rmail). Some of the most basic commands are:

n                move to next non-deleted message 
p 		 move to previous non-deleted message 
d 		 delete this message and move to next non-deleted message 
u 		 undelete message. Tries current message, then earlier messages
		      until  a deleted message is found. 
q 		 quit rmail: expunge, save, then switch to another buffer
h 		 shows summary of all messages in another window 
r 		 reply to this message 
f 		 forward this message to another user 
x 		 expunge deleted messages 
ctr-o 		 append this message to a file (Emacs prompts for file name) 
SPC 		 (i.e., hit space bar) scroll to next screen of this message
DEL 		 (i.e., hit del key) scroll to previous screen of this message
m 		 to send a message

Note that there is a difference between deleting and expunging messages. Deleted messages may be undeleted and therefore are still being stored. To completely remove messages which have been deleted, type x or q, explained above. Otherwise, you will have a very large RMAIL file.

Note that when two windows are created within Emacs mail, the Emacs commands ctr- x o (move cursor to other window) and ctr- x 1 (change to only one window) may be used.

To send mail, only two things need to be specified: an address to which the mail is to be sent and the body of the message. The address is of the form ``username@computer''. The Emacs editor provides a template showing lines for ``to'', ``subject.'' Use the normal Emacs editing commands to compose your message and to add a ``cc:'' line after the subject line if you would like a copy of the message to be sent to additional people. To send the message, type ctr-c ctr-c. A useful Emacs command when sending messages is ctr-x i, which inserts a file at the position of the cursor (Emacs prompts for a file name).

If you would like to automatically receive a copy of all messages you are sending, a simple way to do this is to add the line

(setq mail-archive-file-name "/fermat/u1/yourname/mail.sent")

to your .emacs file, where /fermat/u1/yourname should be replaced by the full path name of your home directory. Copies of all mail messages you send will be placed in the file mail.sent.