How to Mail and Extract an EZ Document


Yes, it is possible to mail your EZ file. There are several ways to do this, depending upon whether the recipient has access to the EZ program. (Most sites outside of Athena do NOT have access to the EZ program.)
  1. If the recipient does have access to EZ, then just do, from your athena% prompt:
    mhmail username < file.ez
    For example, to send the file paper1.ez to user jqdoe, just type:
    mhmail jqdoe < paper1.ez
    The recipient will receive the file in the same manner as any other piece of mail. S/he will have to strip all the header information off the file in order to be able to view it with EZ. The easiest way to do this is:
    show messagenumber > filename.ez
    The use emacs to strip unecessary comments off. If the file is a formatted EZ file, you should delete everything up to (but not including) the line that begins:
    \begindata{text,
    There may be a line that begins:
    \begindata{text822,
    Do not be confused by this line, delete it too!

    After deleting the headers, if there was a line with text822 in it, you must go to the bottom of the file and delete the line that begins:

    \enddata{text822,
    There should be a line just before it that begins:
    \enddata{text,
    Do not delete that one.

    Then save the file, exit emacs, and then enter EZ again. The file should now be viewable as a normal EZ file.

  2. If the recipient does not have access to EZ, but does have access to Postscript, you can use the ez2ps converter to create a document that the recipient will be able to print. (It will not, however, be easy to modify.) To do this type:
    ez2ps filename.ez filename.ez.PS
    mhmail username < filename.ez.PS
    The recipient will have to strip off the mail header information in order to be able to print the file as postscript. That is, everything up to the first !% has to be deleted. Then the file can be printed as usual.

  3. If the recipient has neither EZ nor POSTSCRIPT available, you will not be able to send the file such that it's formatted the way you're used to. Instead, you'll have to run the ez2ascii program so that the formatting is removed, and then send the file that way. To do this:
    ez2ascii filename.ez
    The ez2ascii converter will remove all the special EZ commands, but will preserve as much of the formatting as is possible for an ascii file. For example, fonts such as bold, italic, larger, and smaller will all come out alike as regular text, but indentations and line spacing will come out as usual. Then, use the mhmail command as outlined above, with filename.ez.ascii. For example:
    mhmail jqdoe < filename.ez.ascii
For further information, type
man mhmail
man ez2ascii
man ez2ps
from your athena% prompt, for whichever program you'd like to know more about.