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.