10.6 FYI
The clari.net.newusers newsgroup on Usenet provides a number of articles about Clarinet and ways of finding news stories of interest to you. To discuss the future of newspapers and newsrooms in the new electronic medium, subscribe to the Computer Assisted Reporting and Research mailing list on Bitnet. Send a mail message of
Subscribe carr-l Your Name
to listserv@ulkyvm.bitnet.
Chapter 9: ADVANCED E-MAIL
9.1 THE FILE'S IN THE MAIL
E-mail by itself is a powerful tool, and by now you may be sending e-mail messages all over the place. You might even be on a mailing list or two. But there is a lot more to e-mail than just sending messages. If your host system does not have access to ftp, or it doesn't have access to every ftp site on the Net, you can have programs and files sent right to your mailbox. And using some simple techniques, you can use e-mail to send data files such as spreadsheets, or even whole programs, to friends and colleagues around the world. A key to both is a set of programs known as encoders and decoders. For all its basic power, Net e-mail has a big problem: it can't handle graphics characters or the control codes found in even the simplest of computer programs. Encoders however, can translate these into forms usable in e-mail, while decoders turn them back into a form that you can actually use. If you are using a Unix-based host system, chances are it already has an encoder and decoder online that you can use. These programs will also let you use programs posted in several Usenet newsgroups, such as comp.binaries.ibm.pc. If both you and the person with whom you want to exchange files use Unix host systems, you're in luck because virtually all Unix host systems have encoder/decoder programs online. For now, let's assume that's the case. First, upload the file you want to send to your friend to your host site (ask your system administrator how to upload a file to your name or "home" directory if you don't already know how). Then type
uuencode file file > file.uu
and hit enter. "File" is the name of the file you want to prepare for mailing, and yes, you have to type the name twice! The > is a Unix command that tells the system to call the "encoded" file "file.uu" (you could actually call it anything you want). Now to get it into a mail message. The quick and dirty way is to type
mail friend