CCN Userhelp FAQ

by
Andrew D. Wright
CCN Userhelp Volunteer

          Here are three commonly asked questions to CCN's Userhelp, in no particular order.

 

          How do I send an attachment with my email?

          The PINE email program is really pretty versatile and its abilities are often overlooked behind what appears at first to be a cryptic text based interface.

          To send an attachment in your email, the file that you wish to attach must be in your files area on Chebucto. If you don't know how to upload it there, read this past Userhelp FAQ column.

          First start the new letter with 'c' (without the quotes) for Compose. Put your cursor into the Attchmnt: part of the email header and hit '^j' (the Ctrl key and letter j key - without the quotes). Now hit '^t' (the Ctrl key and letter t key - without the quotes) to browse your files area on Chebucto. Anything with '(dir)' after it is a directory which contains more files. When you have found the file you want to attach, highlight it with the cursor and hit Enter. You will then be back in your letter and will be prompted for an Attachment comment. This is where you can, if you wish, put in a couple of words of description about the file you attached; i.e. 'Dad's birthday photo'. If you don't want to put in a comment, simply hit Enter here.

          You'll now see something like this in the Attchmnt: header (except with your own account's directory path there):

Attchmnt: 1. /csuite/home/99/az999/dad.jpg (51 KB) "Dad's birthday photo"

Now finish your letter and send it as usual. You should be aware that a copy of the letter, complete with attachment, is saved in your sent-mail folder in case you're low on disk quota and are counting every k of space. You can stop the message from being saved there before you send the letter by putting your cursor into the header part of the letter (where the Subject: and To: parts are) and hitting '^r' (that is, Ctrl and r - without the quotes), showing the full mail headers, then highlight the FCC part and erase where it says sent-mail.

          It's generally considered to be a bad idea to send large files through email, so if you have to do this, you should compress the file with a zip program to make it smaller and if necessary find a file cutting utility that can chop the file into smaller pieces which can be sent in separate emails and then reassembled by the person at the other end. One DOS-based program that does this that is recommended by Userhelp guru Norman De Forest is called Carve and can be downloaded as a zip file including its documentation from ftp://ftp.agt.net/pub/simtelnet/msdos/fileutil/carve20a.zip.

 

 

          How can I receive an attachment in my email?

          A family member has sent you your Dad's birthday photo as an email attachment and you want to see it. All you can see now is this text below the message part of the letter:

[Part 2, "Dad's birthday photo" Image/JPEG 51Kb]
[Cannot display this part. Press "V" then "S" to save in a file]

You then press 'v' (without the quotes) and see:

1 10 lines Text/PLAIN
2 51 Kb Image/JPEG, "Dad's birthday photo"

The Text/PLAIN part was the email message itself. The second item is the photo attached to the letter. Highlight the Image/JPEG item then hit 's' (without the quotes) for Save. You'll see something like this at the bottom of the screen:

Copy attachment to file in home directory: dad.jpg
^G Help     ^T To Files
^C Cancel     Ret Accept

Hitting Enter now will save the attachment to the top level of your files area. You can also rename the file to something else if you like, but be sure to save it with its proper extension (usually the last three letters to the right of the dot) so other programs will know what to do with it. The '^' symbol stands for the Ctrl key on your keyboard. You would use '^t' (Ctrl and the letter t - without the quotes) if you wanted to browse your files and save the file in a sub-directory rather than your top level files area. For example you could browse to your public_html directory and save the file there so that it could be viewed from any graphic browser on the internet.

          Now that the attachment has been saved as a file, you can quit the mail program and go to your files area and download the file to your home computer to view it there. If you don't know how to download, read this past Userhelp FAQ column.

          The most common attachments are pictures, word processing files and small executable programs. Be sure to virus scan any documents or programs that you download. Once on your home computer you can view the file with the appropriate viewer program.

         

 

 

          How can I see pictures on Chebucto?

          There is a common misconception that you cannot see pictures on Chebucto. This is not completely true. There are in fact two different ways to see pictures.

          The first is to hit Shift and 8 while looking at a web page. This causes the page to reload with all the pictures appearing as downloadable links. Simply highlight the link and press 'd' (without the quotes) for Download and follow the rest of the usual download procedure. Don't know how to download? Read this past Userhelp FAQ column. If you hit Shift and 8 again, you turn off the images and the page will load again normally. Once you've downloaded an image you can view it on your home computer with any graphics program or graphical web browser program such as Netscape or Internet Explorer.

          The second way to see images through Chebucto is by upgrading to a Sustaining level membership and getting the Chebucto Plus graphical service. This type of connection allows you to see web pages with full graphics or any other multimedia.

 

You may direct comments or suggestions about this column to:

Andrew D. Wright,  au141@chebucto.ns.ca

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