\section{Purpose and Conventions}

The Student Information Processing Board (SIPB) compiled this document
to provide an introduction to MIT's mailing lists for users who have
mastered the basics of Unix.  If you are a complete newcomer to
Athena, we suggest that you begin with the Athena documents.  These
documents are available at Copy Tech in the basement of building 11 or
the Student Center.

File names throughout this document are indicated in
{\it italics}.  

Program names, commands to be typed to the shell, and
text that is returned by a command are in {\tt typewriter text}.

Document names are in {\tt typewriter text}.

Commands for GNU Emacs and other interactive programs are in {\bf
  boldface}.

A C- prefix indicates Control character. For instance, C-x
means that you hold down the Control key and hit the ``x'' key. A M-
prefix indicates a Meta character, so for M-a you would hold down the
``Alt'' (or ``Compose Character'' on some keyboards) key and type ``a''.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask us
by coming to the SIPB office (W20-575), emailing us
({\it sipb@mit.edu}), calling us (253-7788) or zephyring 
us (class ``sipb'', instance ``mailinglists'').