MATTERS ARISING FROM THE MEETING ON 8th June
The entire meeting was spent continuing our look at Becky, and, gluttons for punishment that you are, you want me to carry on next week, when we will look at how to compose a message or a reply. Here's a taster:
The basics of formatting replies.
(1) When posting, put your name and e-mail address at the end of the
post. It makes it easier for somebody to reply to you off the
group.
(2) When posting, limit your line length to 72 characters, or at most
76. This means your post can be read by any e-mail client
without reformatting.
(3) When replying, put your reply AFTER the portion of the original
message to which you are replying, and ONLY include as much of
the original as is necessary to make your context clear. When
replying to a long message, it is best to interlace quote and
reply. Make it clear who is saying
what by a line such as "On 3rd June, Josephine Bloggs said",
and by using an accepted citation prefix at the beginning of
each quoted line. A greater than sign (>) is by far the most
commonly used. Putting your reply before the original message,
and quoting the whole of the original, is known as top posting
"upside down posting" or posting "OE style" and makes it very
difficult to work out who said what and when in long threads.
TOP POSTING IS VERY MUCH FROWNED UPON
(4) When replying, only quote as much of the original message(s) as is
necessary to make sense of your own comments. Except when an
original is very short, make your reply a series of quote -
reply sections.
(5) On the other hand, snipping others' posts to change the meaning is
VERY much frowned upon.
(6) There is no need to make a post just to say "thank you" (do that by
private e-mail) or "I agree" (try to add something to the
thread rather than just agreeing).
IF THERE'S ANYTHING ELSE YOU'D LIKE ME TO LOOK AT, OR ANYTHING YOU WANT ME TO BRING, JUST E-MAIL ME!
I said I'd post a list of Becky template variables, and it's at the bottom, but it doesn4t format very well on a web page
I tried to do the same for a list of Keyboard shortcuts, but I can't find a list anywhere. Maybe this is something for a spare hour or ten.
Using Templates
Templates allow you to create messages and responses automatically
formatted the way that you want them -- for a mailing list assigned to
its own folder, for example. Think of a template as the outline for a
form letter -- complete with your choice of header lines, boilerplate
text, and information copied from the original message. The "Mailbox
Setup">"Compose" dialog box allows you to specify separate templates
for new messages, replies to messages, and forwarded messages. The
Folder Properties dialog box then allows you to override any or all of
these for particular folders. (There you can specify "@" to cancel the
default mailbox template.)
Creating/Editing a template
The process starts almost the same way as writing a regular message.
Choose "Edit Template" in "File" menu to create a new template or edit
an existing template. This operation can be done either on the main
window or the compose window. Then, type your stock message in the
compose window.
Start by adding Subject:, Cc:, and any other header lines that you wish
to always appear in messages to a mailing list, or business
correspondence mail, for example.
To add flexibility, refer back to the original message with the
following "macro symbols" or placeholders, which the software
automatically fills in when it loads the template.
You can call input helper for macro symbols by right mouse button menu.
%f The data portion of the From: line from the original message,
the one that you are replying to or forwarding.
%t The data portion of the To: line from the original message.
%d The data portion of the Date: line from the original message.
%D{fmt} The data from %d converted to local time and formatted to the
standard date format that you have specified with the Windows'
control panel. You can also supply "fmt" to format date/time
string as you wish to appear. (See the right mouse button menu
for details)
%R{fmt} The date and time when the original message is arrived at your mail server.
%W{fmt} The date and time when the original message is retrieved.
%T{fmt} Current date and time.
%i The data portion of the Message-Id: line from the original message
%I The data portion of the Message-Id: line from the original message without enclosing "<>"
%s The data portion of the Subject:: line from the original message.
%S The data portion of the Subject:: line from the original
message, but "Re:", "Fw:", and "[...]" at the beginning of the
line is omitted.
%n The name portion of the From: line from the original message.
%a The mail address portion of the From: line from the original message.
%h{header} The data portion of the specified header line --
%h{X-mailer}, for example. If you input a certain
string enclosed with "" inside {}, it will be displayed
only when the specified header contains data. e.g.
%h{"CC:"Cc} --> CC: mail@address (only when Cc field is
not empty).
%F{filename} Inserted text file that is referred by "filename".
%B{filename} An attachment file referred by "filename".
%m The original message verbatim.
%M The original message marked with the citation prefix string.
%A Your email address.
%N Your name.
%1 to %0 Signature No.1 to 20. (This macro remains for the
compatibility with Ver.1, it is recommended that you use %G {} macro
instead.)
%G{sign} Signature referred by "sign".
%% %itself
When this outline is complete, save it with the "Save Template" command
in "File" menu.
Quick example:
Hi %n,
On %d
%f wrote:
%M
%1
Saving the above template and specifying it as the account's Reply
Template produces a response similar to the following for a message
from me.
Hi Tomohiro Norimatsu,
On Wed, 20 Sep. 2000 14:56:24
Tomohiro Norimatsu <carty@rimarts.co.jp>wrote:
>Hi,
>What's up?
--
Johnny B. Good <john@blahblah >
Blah-Blah technology Inc.
Loading a template
If you have already opened the Compose window, use the "Load Template" command.
Otherwise, hold down the Shift key when you select the "Compose", "Reply", or "Forward" command.
In addition, you can set particular templates as default templates for
a mailbox or a folder. See "Mailbox Setup"->Compose and Folder Property
for details.
Links for Becky can be found here
Finally, a reminder of my e-mail addresses:
billnot@billnot.com for general mail
questions@billnot.com for questions to be answered in the Grapevine or at a session.