Columbia MM
MM Manual

USING THE ONLINE HELP

Use the online help to explore MM or to remember how a command works.


CHECKING WHAT ONLINE HELP IS AVAILABLE

Type help ? (help, space, question-mark) at any prompt to see what help is available. The following example shows the beginning and end of the listing from help ?, which is two screens long:



MM>help ?
  BASIC command, one of the following:
 exit            help            headers         quit            read
 review          send            suspend

  or MESSAGE-HANDLING command, one of the following:
 answer          delete          forward         print           remail
 reply           type            undelete
 ....

  or other topic, one of the following:
 addressing          basic               bitnet              ccmd
 command-history     command-line-edit   customization       directory
 filing              information         internet            message-handling
 message-sequence    message-tagging     other               shell
 signature-file      text-mode           top

  or other mode, one of the following:
 top-level-mode  read-mode       send-mode

  or confirm for a brief help message
MM>help


The first several sections (two are shown above) list MM commands, grouped by purpose. The section labelled or other topic includes information about groups of commands (message-handling) and about general topics (addressing).


GETTING A HELP SCREEN

Type help by itself for a general description of MM.

Type help help for a description of the help command itself.

The main use of help is to type help with the name of a command, or one of the topics, as listed in the help ? display under other topic. For example, help read describes the read command.



MM>help read
READ  -  read messages

Usage:  READ [message-sequence]
  Unless specified, the message-sequence is "unseen".

The READ command is used to read a message or set of messages.  After each
  message is displayed, you will be in READ mode (R> prompt), at which
  point you can take action on the current message, like DELETE, REPLY,
  FORWARD, and so on.  Compare to TYPE, which only displays messages.

Examples:
    MM>read                     #reads unseen messages
    MM>read 4:9                 #reads messages 4 to 9
    MM>read subj meeting        #reads messages with "meeting" in subject

Good use of message-sequences gets useful results, such as:
    MM>read from walter after 4/1/90 subj mail
  You could use HEADERS first, and then READ PREV (previous sequence).

For more help type "help" and one of these topics:
  review   type   headers   message-sequence   basic   read-mode help
  set default-read-command   set dont-type-headers   set only-type-headers
MM>



SEEING SUGGESTIONS

As you can see in the read help screen above, the command read can be followed by a message-sequence. Using the help command, you can get more information on what that means by typing help message-sequence, one of the cross-references at the bottom of the help screen.

Another way to see suggestions is to type a space and question mark after the command, as follows:



MM>read ?message number
  or range of message numbers, n:m
  or range of message numbers, n-m
  or range of message numbers, n+m (m messages beginning with n)
  or "." to specify the current message
  or "*" to specify the last message
  or message sequence, one of the following:
 after               all                 answered            before
 current             deleted             flagged             from
 inverse             keyword             last                longer
 new                 on                  previous-sequence   recent
 seen                shorter             since               subject
 text                to                  unanswered          undeleted
 unflagged           unkeyword           unseen
 or "," and another message sequence
MM>read



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