CONCISE commands

This section is designed to introduce the commands (ie. the instructions) that you can give to CONCISE. It is suggested that you try each of the commands in turn as you read through the text. Use your electronic mail system; send a message to the CONCISE service at one of the addresses given in section 2, and where you usually type the message itself, type in the commands given below. Send the message in the usual way, and wait to see what reply you get. The reply may come back in a few minutes, or you might have to wait longer depending on the speed of the electronic mail. At the beginning of each message, before any of the commands are put in, you must include the following line: start This tells CONCISE to start obeying commands, anything put before this line will be ignored. 5.1 Getting Help To get information on what you can do use the `help' command. Enter the following text in your message and send it: start help You will be sent a message telling you how to access the system, and how to obtain a copy of this user guide and the full reference manual. To get information about a specific command, or something about the system that you do not understand, use the `help' command with a topic you want help on. For example, to get help on the `info' command, send the following: start help info 5.2 Moving around There are two types of information you can get in CONCISE: the first is an overview of the information; this sends you a summary, who wrote the information, when it was written, and various details of a similar nature. The second is the information itself; this is a file (potentially large) containing information about the subject in question. The commands to get these types of information, `overview' and `info' are discussed in 5.4. The basic way to do anything on the CONCISE service is to go to the place, and then perform the action. For example, suppose an overview of netnews is required. Netnews is located at /Services/netnews. The `goto' command will move you around, the `overview' command can be used to get an overview, so the following commands will retrieve the overview on electronic mail: start goto /Services/netnews overview A message may have a number of commands in it, so you can move around several times in one message. Before CONCISE starts to obey the commands you have sent, it puts you at the top of the information, that is at one level above COSINE, Networks and Services. From there you can go anywhere you want. Commands that allow movement around the different items are: goto - goes straight to the item specified; top - goes to the top of the information, ie. where you start from; up - moves up one level from where you are, eg. if you are at /Services/netnews and you use the `up' command, you will got to /Services. 5.3 Getting Indexes In order to move around, it is necessary to know where you can go to. This is achieved using the `index' command. For example, the following commands list the top level index: start top index After obeying this command, CONCISE will send you a message containing an index (ie. a list) of all the main categories. In the example shown in the diagram this would be: COSINE Networks Services Having obtained an index of the top level, you may goto one of the items returned in the list, and perform another index eg: start goto /Services index You would then get a list of Services sent to you. This process can be continued eg: start goto /Networks/dfn index ... and so on. After doing this a few times you will no longer be able to get an index as you will have reached the most detailed index. 5.4 Information and Overviews There are two types of information you can get: the information and the overview (see section 5.2). To get these use the `info' and `overview' commands. Both commands can be used on the same item. For example, to get all the information on the DFN network use the following commands: start goto /Networks/dfn overview info There will be two parts to the message that is sent back to you. The first is the overview, and the second is the information itself. You do not have to send both these commands together, they could be sent separately like this: start goto /Networks/dfn overview and like this: start goto /Networks/dfn info 5.5 Searching Another way of finding out what items there are to go to, is the `find' command. This allows you to obtain a list of items that have got a given keyword attached to them. For example, to get a list of items which have something to do with COSINE, use the following command: start find COSINE You will be sent a list of everything that CONCISE can find which is to do with COSINE. There is no need to do a `goto' command before `find' as it will search everywhere. The word that you put after `find' is called a keyword. To find out what keywords you can use, the `keywords' command can be sent: start keywords This will return a list of all the keywords that CONCISE knows about. 5.6 Making comments and asking questions about CONCISE Any comments, suggestions, or questions about the service may be sent to the CONCISE help desk. These messages can be mailed to the help desk directly, or they can be sent in the commands using the `comment' command. All the text you type after the comment command up to the two semi-colons (;;) will be sent to the CONCISE help desk. For example: start comment The contact name for superfile service mentioned under /Services/superfile is no longer valid - I have just tried to get her, and she has apparently changed jobs. ;; Note that the `;;' on a line by itself ends the comment, other commands may be placed after the `;;' if you want. 5.7 Automatic Flagging of New Information NOTE: ********************************************************** The commands discussed in this section are not yet available on CONCISE. They will be available in the next release. **************************************************************** You may wish to be told when there is new information, or when something is updated. To do this, go to the place of interest and use the `register' command. There are two forms of this command: `register update' and `register new'. The first is used to tell you when a particular item of information has been updated. The second is used to tell you when any new information is added beneath a particular category. For example, to be told when the information on the NISS information service is updated, send the following commands: start goto /Services/niss register update Every time the information on the NISS information service is updated (ie changed) you will now be sent a message to tell you about it. Later you may want to stop these messages being sent to you, so send the following: start goto /Services/niss deregister update Then you will no longer get the messages telling you about changes.