CHAPTER 1 QUICKSTART GUIDE This chapter helps the newcomer get started on BIX quickly, with brief explanations of the basic commands. 1 BIX User Manual Introduction 3 How to Get Help On-Line 3 Log-In Problems and Additional Help 4 How to Find Out What's on BIX 4 Finding Out What's in a Conference 4 How to Join a Conference 5 Reading Conference Messages 5 What to Do at a .More.. Prompt 6 How to Quit a Topic 6 Adding Your Own Messages 6 Commenting on a Message 7 Sending Mail 7 A Quick Tutorial on Receiving Files 8 How to Log Off 9 2 BIX User Manual Introduction When you sign on, BIX displays the latest system news bulletin (if any) and lists any unread mail messages waiting for you. New users are told that they are members of a conference called `learn,' an online tutorial on how to use BIX. Any time spent in the `learn' conference for your first two weeks as a BIXen is free of charge. If you leave the `learn' conference standard BIX usage rates will apply, just as they do for most other areas of BIX. You may return to the `learn' conference at any time, but only your first two weeks as a BIX member will be without charge. To enter into the `learn' conference, hit the Return (or Enter) key on your keyboard. To follow this on-line tutorial about BIX, keep pressing the Return key when you come to the end of a message or to a .More.. prompt. You might decide to skip this on-line tutorial and simply wander around BIX, picking up the necessary skills as you go along. The following is a list of the commands you need to get started with BIX quickly. How to Get Help On-Line You can get help from BIX at almost any prompt by typing: help or ? To get a more detailed explanation of a specific command, type help fol- lowed by the command that you don't understand. For example, if you type: help join BIX provides an explanation of the join command. 3 BIX User Manual Log-In Problems and Additional Help If you have trouble signing on to BIX, see Appendix C, "Log-On Instructions," on page 205. BIX offers a variety of ways to get you the help you need. For details, see Chapter 11, "Where to Get Help," on page 165. How to Find Out What's on BIX All conferences on BIX belong to a group. A group is simply a way that BIX categorizes conferences. You use groups to locate those conferences that you wish to join. You cannot join a group, but you can see what's in it. To see a list of the conference groups, at the : prompt (i.e., the main system prompt) or at a Mail: or Read: prompt, type in: show groups Among the groups are computers, languages, bytebix, and vendor.support. To see a list of conferences that make up a group, type in show group followed by the group name. For example, show group computers displays those conferences covering specific computers. Finding Out What's in a Conference To see what topics are open for discussion within a conference, type in show followed by the conference name. For example, show ibm.pc produces the topic list for the `ibm.pc' conference, complete with the name of the moderator and a brief description of what is being discussed in each topic. 4 BIX User Manual How to Join a Conference To enroll in a conference, enter the command join followed by the conference name. For example, to enroll in the `pascal' conference, you would enter: join pascal When you first join a conference, BIX displays a welcome message, conference bulletins (if any), and the conference topic list. When you see the Topic? prompt, press your Return key to go to the first topic or type in the topic name. If you want to go to a different topic within that conference, from a Read: prompt, enter: topic In response, BIX will display the list of topics for that conference and produce the Topic? prompt. Type in the name of the topic you want to go to. To jump from one conference to another, use the join command followed by the new conference name. For example, if you type: join amiga from within the `pascal' conference, you will jump to the `amiga' conference. Reading Conference Messages To read messages in a conference topic, press your Return key at the Read: prompt and BIX will show you the next unread message in the topic. After you've read all the messages in a topic, hitting the Return key takes you to the next topic. When all the messages in all the topics of a conference have been read, BIX moves to the next conference in which you are a member and which has unread messages. To read a specific message in a topic, type the number of that message and hit return. Other reading methods are explained in Chapter 3, page 17. 5 BIX User Manual What to Do at a .More.. Prompt After every 20 lines in a message, BIX produces a .More.. prompt. This provides you with the options of continuing or quitting the message. If you wish to continue, merely press your Return key. If you have had enough of the message and want to go on to the next message, type: quit How to Quit a Topic If you've had enough of the topic that you are reading, you can leave that discussion by entering: quit at a Read: prompt. Alternately, you can leave the present topic and move on to the next topic on your conference list by entering: next at the Read: prompt. If you are not sure which topic in the conference you are reading you would like to read next, enter: topic to see the conference topic list. Respond to the prompt by typing the desired topic name. To leave the Topic? prompt without going into a topic, enter: quit Adding Your Own Messages To add an original message to a topic, type: say BIX will ask you for a message title. Enter a title, 6 BIX User Manual hit Return, and type your message. Enter a carriage return at the end of each line (about 65 characters). When done, type a period ( . ) at the beginning of a new line and hit Return. To post the message you've just written, type: add and press Return. You can also edit the message, leave it in your temporary storage area or clear (i.e., erase) it. For more information on these and other features, see Chapter 5, "Editing Messages," on page 59. Commenting on a Message If you want to make a direct comment on someone else's message, type: comment at the Read: prompt immediately after you finish reading the message and then proceed as above. Sending Mail To send mail to another BIX user, you must explicitly enter the mail area. To do this, enter: mail at the main system prompt ( : ), or a Read: prompt. Then type: to followed by the BIX system name of the user, and press Return. (To find user names, see the discussion on show in Chapter 2 "Getting Your BIX Bear- ings," on page 11.) Then type your message, hitting Return every 60 to 65 characters. When done, type a period ( . ) at the beginning of a new line and press Return. To send the message, type: 7 BIX User Manual send and hit Return. You can also edit the message or clear it from the scratchpad. For more information, see Chapter 4, "Sending and Receiving Mail," on page 39. A Quick Tutorial on Receiving Files Enter the Listings area by typing: join listings at the main ( : ), Mail:, or Read: prompt. You will go to the default listings location, the FROMBYTE89 file area. If you are in a conference and want to go to its Listings area, from a Read: prompt, enter: topic listings Enter the command list all to produce a list of all the files in the FROMBYTE89 file area. To search for a file, use the list name command with as much of the name as you know. The list name command supports the wild cards * and ?. The asterisk ( * ) means any string of characters, and the ? signifies one character. Here are some examples of valid list name command search patterns: foo*, *.bar, fo?.bar, f*.*, fo*.b*. To see a list of the subareas within a Listing area, use the subarea command. Enter a question mark ( ? ) to see a list of subareas. Retype subarea followed by the complete name of the subarea you want to go to. Enter the list all command to see all the files in that subarea. To change file areas, use the area command to see a list of available file areas. Type in the complete name of the area you want in response to the prompt. If you already know the area name, you can jump directly to it by entering area followed by the area name. For example, to jump to the 8 BIX User Manual Amiga area, you would enter: area amiga The receive command tells BIX that you want to receive (or download) a file. At the command line, enter receive alone and BIX prompts you for the filename. You can enter receive followed by the filename. For example, receive foo.bar tells BIX that you want to receive the file "foo.bar." BIX then tells you to get ready to receive a file using XMODEM/checksum. Instruct your communications software to receive the file. If you want to use another protocol, set it from within the options sub- system before you attempt the download. See Chapter 6 for complete details on Listings and its many options. How to Log Off The proper way to sign off BIX is to enter: bye You may notice that the Tymnet log-in prompt returns. To log off from Tymnet, merely instruct your communications software to disconnect. 9 BIX User Manual NOTES: 10 BIX User Manual