Notes on the email system, elm The Math Sciences mail system is designed to be used either on site or by remote connection. The system is designed to work via a telnet window and does not have a GUI interface. Nor does it support attachments directly. One can receive an attached file with it but must save the attachment to a file handle it separately. The reason for this is security.
Attachments are a major source of virus infection of computer systems.
Several hundred people depenend om the Math Sciences system to do their work and to protect the integrity and security of their research, tests, correspondence, etc. A huge amnout of work goes into protecting the system from hackers and virus infection - and to keep it from being used to infect people's home machines. Part of the price of that security is a more primitive mailer. If you have configured the elmrc file as above then you should see a list of your mail messages arranged with the most recently received ones last. Each message will have a number and a letter.