Working Mail and News Software
This article describes how to save mail and news from other software in
order to decode articles with UUDeview. The first section gives
general hints, further downwards are step-by-step instructions for
popular Unix and Windows software.
General: Saving Articles
As far as I know, any mail or news reading software allows to save one
or more articles to your local disk. So to decode files, all you have
to do is to save the encoded articles, and later run these files through
UUDeview.
Note: In the following text, I will use the word "article" synonymous for
both email messages and news articles. From the decoder's standpoint,
they're the same.
The advantage of UUDeview is that you do not have to worry about the
ordering of articles. It doesn't matter if you save part 7 before part 5,
or if some parts of file B suddenly appear among file A's parts. You must
only make sure that you save all parts of a multipart message.
Saving just a single article is never a problem, but there are usually
three methods for saving multiple articles for decoding. Your software might
not support all of them. They're listed here from "best" to "worst":
- Tagging (Selecting, Marking) and Saving
- Some software allows you, usually while viewing an overview of
all articles (seeing only the article's subjects), to tag (sometimes
also called "select" or "mark") multiple articles. In Windows, the
policy is usually to hold down the CTRL key and then clicking on the
desired subjects. Then, all tagged articles can be saved at once into
a single file.
- Sequential Saving into one File
- This method involves visiting and saving each article individually.
You select "save article" for each article in turn, but using
the same filename again and again. The software should then
append each article to the existing file (some software will
ask you whether you want to append; choose "yes"). Alas, a few
programs will just overwrite the existing file with the new article,
causing the final file to hold only the last article in the series.
You should check the behaviour of your software by saving two articles
this way and then looking at the resulting file.
In that case, you're stuck with the worst method:
- Saving into multiple Files
- The most inconvenient method works with any program: you select
each article separately, and save it into its own file, using
different filenames. You don't need to use sensible filenames,
a series of numbers (001.uu, 002.uu etc) is enough. Make sure
you use the same directory for all files. The problem with this
method is that it leaves plenty of room for mistakes (such as
overlooking an article, using the same file name twice etc), and
that you'll need to hand over lots of files to UUDeview lateron.
Two minor matters to settle are the directory where to save articles,
and the file names to use. As for the directory, I suggest creating a
separate directory. This has the advantage that you can later, in
UUDeview, just select all files from that directory for decoding,
which is usually much simpler than picking out five files out of two
dozen. Also, after a successful decoding run, you can simply delete the
entire directory's contents without worrying what's within.
The matter of file names is equally simple: it doesn't matter. Just use
something you can remember. UUDeview does not evaluate the file name or
extension in any way. You might find an extension of "uu" convenient.
Some software allows you to select whether you want to save articles with
or without header. If it does, always select with header. Many
features of UUDeview depend on the headers. Stripping them disables part
reordering and other smartness.
Step-by-Step Instructions
These are precise instructions how to save articles from a couple of
popular mail and news readers. Even if your favourite software is not
listed here, the basic handling is usually quite similar to one of
those presented here.
- Unix Software
- Windows Software
Unix Software
Go to each mail, and tag it by pressing 't' (a plus sign will appear
at the beginning of the current line, meaning the article is tagged).
After repeating this procedure for all desired articles, hit the 's'
("save") key. Elm will offer a mail folder to save the article to;
just overwrite it with a proper file name (which may include directory
names). You can cancel the save operation by giving an empty file name.
Otherwise, all tagged mails are saved at once to the given file (if the
file exists, they're appended).
You can save multiple articles from a single newsgroup at once.
If you want to save articles from different newsgroups, you'll have to
repeat this procedure for each of them.
You can tag a single article by pressing the letter displayed in the
first column (left of the author name), or multiple articles by a
sequence like 'f-o', which would tag all articles from 'f' to 'o'.
You can also skip pages forward and backward using the '>' and '<'
keys to tag article on different pages within a newsgroup. Then, press
a capital 'S' (using the shift key) to save the articles. It will
then ask you where to save the articles to ("Save on"), with the
newsgroup name being the default. Remove this name with the backspace
key (don't forget the leading plus sign) and enter a filename of your
choice (may include a directory name). After hitting return, all tagged
articles from this newsgroup are saved at once to the given file (if it
exists, the articles are appended).
You can save multiple articles from a single newsgroup at once.
If you want to save articles from different newsgroups, you'll have to
repeat this procedure for each of them.
If you click on one subject, then hold down the shift key and click on
another subject, all articles inbetween are tagged (so to tag all articles
in the newsgroup, click on the first, browse the listbox to its end, hold
down shift, then click on the last article). By holding down the CTRL key
and then clicking on articles' subjects, you can tag multiple individual
articles. While operating the scrollbar, you'll have to let go of the
shift or CTRL key, but don't forget to press it again before the next
clicking.
After all articles have been selected, click on the 'Save' button in the
lower left corner of the screen, anter a filename, and XRN will save all
selected articles into that file. And you're done!
Windows Software
- Open the mailbox (usually the incoming mailbox). You see the
collection of email subjects.
- Tag the appropriate mails by holding down the CTRL key and
clicking on the subject lines.
- Choose "Save As" from the "File" menu.
- Browse to the appropriate directory and enter a filename of
your choice.
- Unselect (uncheck if checked) the "Guess Paragraphs" option,
and Select (check if unchecked) the "Include Headers" option.
- Click on OK to save all tagged emails to the given file.
- Choose the newsgroup you want to save articles from.
- Tag the appropriate articles by holding down the CTRL key and
clicking on the subject lines in the subject window (usually
in the top right of the screen).
- Choose "Save Articles As" from the "File" menu.
- Browse to the appropriate directory and enter a filename of
your choice.
- For the option "Header Fields to Include", select "All fields".
- Select (check if unchecked) the "Append to existing File" option.
- Click on OK to save all tagged articles to the given file.
Frank Pilhofer <fp@informatik.uni-frankfurt.de>