MAIL READER Becky Burwell P.K. Halvorsen February 28, 1985 Comments and Complaints to Burwell.pa The mail reader allows a user to have old and new electronic mail read over the telephone. A text-to-speech synthesizer converts mail messages to speech. Commands can be entered simply by using a touchtone telephone. All mail operations are accomplished using Lafite. The mail reader is not a server and thus may not be available at times. Generally, if the mail reader does not answer it is not available and the user should probably try later in the day. If the busy signal occurs the mail reader is in use by someone else and it is best to calls back in five or ten minutes. Note: in the following description of commands the character in square brackets indicates the touchtone key that is to be entered. That is to say the user is to touch the key on which that character appears. Generally, commands MUST be terminated by a [#] except for interrupt commands which are indicated by [*]. How to login It is assumed that the user's name has been registered with the mail reader. This must be done before the mail reader can be used. However, everybody who appears on the ISL/AISBU locator who is in the PA registry has already been registered. To login to the mail reader the user first dials 494-4377. If the mail reader is available it will answer and ask the user to enter their user name. How to enter a user name The user name is entered by touching those keys on which the letters in the user name appear. For example, Jones would touch [56637#]. If the user name contains a hyphen, Q or Z touch the 1 key. If the name is recognized by the mail reader the password will be asked for. How to enter a password The password must be entered unambiguously. For this reason it is not sufficient to simply touch the keys on which the letters or numbers in the password appear. If the user's password consists of letters or letters and numbers then the following encoding scheme should be used: simply entering a key signifies the first letter on the key 0 followed by a key signifies the second letter on the key 1 followed by a key signifies the third letter on the key 00 followed by a key signifies the number on that key 01 signifies Q 11 signifies Z 10 rubs out the last encoded character Examples: ABZRYK= [2 02 11 07 19 05 #] R2D4 = [07 002 3 004 #] 42G27 = [004 002 4 002 007 #] Rubout: If the user touched [004 003 10 002 4 002 007 #] this is 4 3 2 G 2 7 # which is 42G27. If the user's password is all numeric the entry of the password is much simpler. The user should touch [#] to signal that the password is all numeric, followed by the keys that the numbers appear on and terminated by [#]. Example: 2453778 could be entered by touching [# 2 4 5 3 7 7 8 #]. The more cumbersome way would be [002 004 005 003 007 007 008 #] Mail Files The home directory and file server for USER is established by choosing the first occurrence of found by searching Phylum, Eris, and Ivy, in that order. The default mail file is the first file with the name ACTIVE.MAIL encountered when the home directory with all its subdirectories is enumerated. If there is no such file MAILREADER.MAIL will be created and used as the default file. The default file can be changed on request. Reading Mail Once the user is logged in the mail reader will automatically retrieve new mail if there is any. If there is no new mail, or if new mail cannot be retrieved because all mail servers are down, the user has the option of reading the old mail in their default file. The system will say how many messages there are in the file. The user can cycle through the messages by typing [#] for each message. The header of the message will be read, and the user has the choice of whether to hear the message. Enter [#] to hear it and [*] to skip to the next message. The user can also hear a specific message by typing in its number (e.g. message 16 will be selected by typing [16#]). [#] will always give you the next message in the file. While the body of a message is being read the reading can be aborted by touching [*]. At this point the user has the choice of backing up by a specific number of sentences, aborting the playing of the message altogether or changing the speed of the reader. To back up n sentences touch [n#]. To abort playing altogether touch [*]. To change speed: [0*] will slow the speech down a little (approx. 20 words per minute slower); [1*] will speed it up a little (approx. 20 words per minute faster). If n is in the range 80 to 200 touching [n*] will set the speed to n words per minute. Initially the speed is 160 words per minute. Help At the moment help is only available at login. To get this help touch [0#]. Exiting the mail reader To exit the mail reader the user should type [*] at a time where a message number is expected. The user will be asked to verify the fact by touching another [*]. To continue on specify another message. If you hang up during a session with the mail reader your connection will eventually be timed out. When the mailreader is waiting for input you have to enter a touchtone at least every 30 seconds, or you will automatically be logged out after a warning message. Warning Currently there are some problems associated with having multiple Lafite mail browsers open on one and the same mail file. You should therefore always close the mail file and browser that the mail reader will use prior to using the mail reader. The mail reader increases the possibility of opening two browsers on the same file since you can access Lafite from outside the office while you may have left your mailbrowsers open on your machine at work. In the worst case newly retrieved messages can be lost unless some care is taken. If you happen to open two browsers on the same file do not perform an EXPUNGE or GET MAIL in the browser which has been idle longest (typically the browser on your machine at work if you call up the mail reader). Instead simply close the browser without doing an update. The Lafite supporters are aware to these problems and plan to make fixes in the next release. 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