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It may seem obvious, but one of the things I need to cover at my technology-training workshops is the basic what, why, and how of keyboarding. Without the basic ability to type quickly and accurately, getting your ideas and data into a computer can take a lot of time and can be frustrating. Who really wants to use the hunt-and-peck method of inputting data for the rest of their lives?

Sure, someday we may have foolproof voice-recognition software, which will eliminate the need for typing, but it's not readily available today. So, to use a computer with ease, being able to type is still an important skill. Once students learn to keyboard and learn basic word processing skills, the integration of the computer into all disciplines is much easier.

Technology skills outlined in the No Teacher Left Behind Act require that students be technology literate by the end of the eighth grade. Expectations are that students create reports on a word processor, use a spreadsheet for calculations, and use a presentation tool for demonstrating new knowledge. However, many students have never been taught the basics and continue to use the computer as if it were a typewriter.

Keyboarding should be taught in the early grades -- before students acquire bad habits. Free typing programs can be found on the Internet, and software packages can be purchased. The tried-and-true teacher-taught method -- the method by which most of us learned to keyboard -- is one way to ensure students learn to correctly input data. While students are learning to keyboard, other basic skills can be taught, such as

• use of a mouse (click, double-click, left click, right/control click, click and drag) • opening a new document.

• saving a document (proper naming and location for saving).

• standard fonts, such as Times New Roman, Arial, Georgia, Comic Sans. • appropriate size of font for print and presentations.

• one space after all punctuation, including periods. • alignment (left, center, right).

• printing.

• closing a document and an application.

As students become comfortable with these basics, other skills can be taught. Many skills can be incrementally learned in the third and fourth grades. The left and right margins in

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Microsoft Word by default are unusually wide; therefore, students should be taught to change the margins (and even reset the default, if desired).

Another underused function of the computer is the setting of tabs. To get from one place to another place on a page, many times students will consecutively press the space bar or the preset tab. Because the typewriter had only one kind of tab, the different kinds of tabs on a computer (left, right, center, decimal) are little known. Students must be given examples of when each of these tabs are used, such as

• left tab: indentation of a paragraph.

• Center tab: in headers/footers and certain kinds of poetry.

• right tab: in headers/footers and to place the name, date at top of paper.

The proper use of font styles are also important. For example, underlining on a computer is discouraged because the underline token breaks a font descender (for example, the word young). The bold style is more commonly used for headings. The italics style, not the underline, is used to denote book titles and the like.

Once a student has learned to click and drag the mouse, the commands to copy, cut, and paste, as well as the use of the delete (and backspace) keys, can be taught. Other useful skills include, but are not limited to,

• undo and redo typing. • bullets and numbering.

• headers and footers, including page numbering. • tables.

Other word processing skills, such as columns, breaks, sections, borders, and word count, can be taught in middle school.

Read another post of mine, which answers many of your questions and gives links to free resources on keyboarding and word processing skills.

• Patsy Lanclos's Blog

word processor (more formally known as document preparation system) is a computer application used for the production (including composition, editing, formatting, and possibly printing) of any sort of printable material.

Word processor may also refer to a type of stand-alone office machine, popular in the 1970s and 1980s, combining the keyboard text-entry and printing functions of an electric typewriter with a dedicated processor (like a computer processor) for the editing of text. Although features and design varied between manufacturers and models, with new features added as technology advanced, word processors for several years usually featured a monochrome display and the ability to save documents on memory cards or diskettes. Later models introduced innovations such as spell-checking programs,

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increased formatting options, and dot-matrix printing. As the more versatile combination of a personal computer and separate printer became commonplace, most

business-machine companies stopped manufacturing the word processor as a stand-alone office machine. As of 2009 there were only two U.S. companies, Classic and AlphaSmart, which still made stand-alone word processors.[1]_{Many older machines, however, remain}

in use.

Word processors are descended from early text formatting tools (sometimes called text justification tools, from their only real capability). Word processing was one of the earliest applications for the personal computer in office productivity.

Although early word processors used tag-based markup for document formatting, most modern word processors take advantage of a graphical user interface providing some form of What You See Is What You Get editing. Most are powerful systems consisting of one or more programs that can produce any arbitrary combination of images, graphics and text, the latter handled with type-setting capability.

Microsoft Word is the most widely used word processing software. Microsoft estimates that over 500,000,000 people use the Microsoft Office suite,[2]_{which includes Word.}

Many other word processing applications exist, including WordPerfect (which dominated the market from the mid-1980s to early-1990s on computers running Microsoft's MS-DOSoperating system) and open source applications OpenOffice.org Writer, AbiWord, KWord, and LyX. Web-based word processors, such as Google Docs, are a relatively new category.

[

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] Characteristics

Word processing typically implies the presence of text manipulation functions that extend beyond a basic ability to enter and change text, such as automatic generation of:

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• batch mailings using a form letter template and an address database (also called mail merging);

• indices of keywords and their page numbers;

• tables of contents with section titles and their page numbers; • tables of figures with caption titles and their page numbers; • cross-referencing with section or page numbers;

• footnote numbering;

• new versions of a document using variables (e.g. model numbers, product names, etc.)

Other word processing functions include "spell checking" (actually checks against

wordlists), "grammar checking" (checks for what seem to be simple grammar errors), and a "thesaurus" function (finds words with similar or opposite meanings). Other common features include collaborative editing, comments and annotations, support for images and diagrams and internal cross-referencing.

Word processors can be distinguished from several other, related forms of software: Text editors (modern examples of which include Notepad, BBEdit, Kate, Gedit), were the precursors of word processors. While offering facilities for composing and editing text, they do not format documents. This can be done by batch document processing systems, starting with TJ-2 and RUNOFF and still available in such systems as LaTeX (as well as programs that implement the paged-media extensions to HTML and CSS). Text editors are now used mainly by programmers, website designers, computer system

administrators, and, in the case of LaTeX by mathematicians and scientists (for complex formulas and for citations in rare languages). They are also useful when fast startup times, small file sizes, editing speed and simplicity of operation are preferred over formatting.

Later desktop publishing programs were specifically designed to allow elaborate layout for publication, but often offered only limited support for editing. Typically, desktop publishing programs allowed users to import text that was written using a text editor or word processor.

Almost all word processors enable users to employ styles, which are used to automate consistent formatting of text body, titles, subtitles, highlighted text, and so on.

Styles greatly simplify managing the formatting of large documents, since changing a style automatically changes all text that the style has been applied to. Even in shorter documents styles can save a lot of time while formatting. However, most help files refer to styles as an 'advanced feature' of the word processor, which often discourages users from using styles regularly.

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Most current word processors can calculate various statistics pertaining to a document.

These usually include:

• Character count, word count, sentence count, line count, paragraph count, page count.

• Word, sentence and paragraph length. • Editing time.

Errors are common; for instance, a dash surrounded by spaces — like either of these — may be counted as a word.

[

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] Typical usage

Word processors have a variety of uses and applications within the business world, home, and education.

[

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] Business

Within the business world, word processors are extremely useful tools. Typical uses include:

• legal copies

• letters and letterhead • memos

• reference documents

Businesses tend to have their own format and style for any of these. Thus, versatile word processors with layout editing and similar capabilities find widespread use in most businesses.

[

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] Education

Many schools have begun to teach typing and word processing to their students, starting as early as elementary school. Typically these skills are developed throughout secondary school in preparation for the business world. Undergraduate students typically spend many hours writing essays. Graduate and doctoral students continue this trend, as well as creating works for research and publication.

[

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] Home

While many homes have word processors on their computers, word processing in the home tends to be educational, planning or business related, dealing with assignments or work being completed at home, or occasionally recreational, e.g. writing short stories. Some use word processors for letter writing, résumé creation, and card creation. However, many of these home publishing processes have been taken over by desktop

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publishing programs specifically oriented toward home use. which are better suited to these types of documents.

[

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] History

Toshiba JW-10, the first word processor for the Japanese language (1971-1978 IEEE milestones)

Examples of standalone word processor typefaces c. 1980-1981

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The term word processing was invented by IBM in the late 1960s. By 1971 it was recognized by the New York Times as a "buzz word".[3]_{A 1974 Times article referred to}

"the brave new world of Word Processing or W/P. That's International Business Machines talk... I.B.M. introduced W/P about five years ago for its Magnetic Tape Selectric Typewriter and other electronic razzle-dazzle."[4]

IBM defined the term in a broad and vague way as "the combination of people, procedures, and equipment which transforms ideas into printed communications," and originally used it to include dictating machines and ordinary, manually-operated Selectric typewriters.[5]_{By the early seventies, however, the term was generally understood to}

mean semiautomated typewriters affording at least some form of electronic editing and correction, and the ability to produce perfect "originals." Thus, the Times headlined a 1974 Xerox product as a "speedier electronic typewriter", but went on to describe the product, which had no screen[6]_{, as "a word processor rather than strictly a typewriter, in}

that it stores copy on magnetic tape or magnetic cards for retyping, corrections, and subsequent printout."[7]

Electromechanical paper-tape-based equipment such as the Friden Flexowriter had long been available; the Flexowriter allowed for operations such as repetitive typing of form letters (with a pause for the operator to manually type in the variable information)[8]_{, and}

when equipped with an auxiliary reader, could perform an early version of "mail merge". Circa 1970 it began to be feasible to apply electronic computers to office automation tasks. IBM's Mag Tape Selectric Typewriter (MTST) and later Mag Card Selectric (MCST) were early devices of this kind, which allowed editing, simple revision, and repetitive typing, with a one-line display for editing single lines.[9]

The New York Times, reporting on a 1971 business equipment trade show, said The "buzz word" for this year's show was "word processing," or the use of electronic equipment, such as typewriters; procedures and trained personnel to maximize office efficiency. At the IBM exhibition a girl [sic] typed on an electronic typewriter. The copy was received on a magnetic tape cassette which accepted corrections, deletions, and additions and then produced a perfect letter for the boss's signature....[3]

In 1971, a third of all working women in the United States were secretaries, and they could see that word processing would have an impact on their careers. Some

manufacturers, according to a Times article, urged that "the concept of 'word processing' could be the answer to Women's Lib advocates' prayers. Word processing will replace the 'traditional' secretary and give women new administrative roles in business and

industry."[3]

The 1970s word processing concept did not refer merely to equipment, but, explicitly, to the use of equipment for "breaking down secretarial labor into distinct components, with some staff members handling typing exclusively while others supply administrative support. A typical operation would leave most executives without private secretaries.

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Instead one secretary would perform various administrative tasks for three or more secretaries."[10]_{A 1971 article said that "Some [secretaries] see W/P as a career ladder}

into management; others see it as a dead-end into the automated ghetto; others predict it will lead straight to the picket line." The National Secretaries Association, which defined secretaries as people who "can assume responsibility without direct supervision," feared that W/P would transform secretaries into "space-age typing pools." The article

considered only the organizational changes resulting from secretaries operating word processors rather than typewriters; the possibility that word processors might result in managers creating documents without the intervention of secretaries was not considered —not surprising in an era when few but secretaries possessed keyboarding skills.[4]

In the early 1970s, computer scientist Harold Koplow was hired by Wang Laboratories to program calculators. One of his programs permitted a Wang calculator to interface with an IBM Selectric typewriter, which was at the time used to calculate and print the paperwork for auto sales.

In 1974, Koplow's interface program was developed into the Wang 1200 Word Processor, an IBM Selectric-based text-storage device. The operator of this machine typed text on a conventional IBM Selectric; when the Return key was pressed, the line of text was stored on a cassette tape. One cassette held roughly 20 pages of text, and could be "played back" (i.e., the text retrieved) by printing the contents on continuous-form paper in the 1200 typewriter's "print" mode. The stored text could also be edited, using keys on a simple, six-key array. Basic editing functions included Insert, Delete, Skip (character, line), and so on.

The labor and cost savings of this device were immediate, and remarkable: pages of text no longer had to be retyped to correct simple errors, and projects could be worked on, stored, and then retrieved for use later on. The rudimentary Wang 1200 machine was the precursor of the Wang Office Information System (OIS), introduced in 1976, whose CRT-based system was a major breakthrough in word processing technology. It displayed text on a CRT screen, and incorporated virtually every fundamental characteristic of word processors as we know them today. It was a true office machine, affordable by organizations such as medium-sized law firms, and easily learned and operated by secretarial staff.

The Wang was not the first CRT-based machine nor were all of its innovations unique to Wang. In the early 1970s Linolex, Lexitron and Vydec introduced pioneering word-processing systems with CRTdisplay editing. A Canadian electronics company, Automatic Electronic Systems, had introduced a product with similarities to Wang's product in 1973, but went into bankruptcy a year later. In 1976, refinanced by the Canada Development Corporation, it returned to operation as AES Data, and went on to

successfully market its brand of word processors worldwide until its demise in the mid-1980s. Its first office product, the AES-90[11]_{, combined for the first time a CRT-screen, a}

floppy-disk and a microprocessor,[citation needed]_{that is, the very same winning combination}

that would be used by IBM for its PC seven years later.[citation needed]_{The AES-90 software}

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texts side-by-side, a Canadian government requirement. The first eight units were delivered to the office of the then Prime Minister, Pierre Elliot Trudeau, in February 1974.[citation needed]_{Despite these predecessors, Wang's product was a standout, and by 1978}

it had sold more of these systems than any other vendor.[12]

The phrase "word processor" rapidly came to refer to CRT-based machines similar to Wang's. Numerous machines of this kind emerged, typically marketed by traditional office-equipment companies such as IBM, Lanier (marketing AES Data machines, re-badged), CPT, and NBI.[13]_{All were specialized, dedicated, proprietary systems, with}

prices in the $10,000 ballpark. Cheap general-purpose computers were still the domain of hobbyists.

Some of the earliest CRT-based machines used cassette tapes for removable-memory storage until floppy diskettes became available for this purpose - first the 8-inch floppy, then the 5-1/4-inch (drives by Shugart Associates and diskettes by Dysan).

Printing of documents was initially accomplished using IBM Selectric typewriters modified for ASCII-character input. These were later replaced by application-specific daisy wheel printers (Diablo, which became a Xerox company, and Qume -- both now defunct.) For quicker "draft" printing, dot-matrix line printers were optional alternatives with some word processors.

With the rise of personal computers, and in particular the IBM PC and PC compatibles, software-based word processors running on general-purpose commodity hardware gradually displaced dedicated word processors, and the term came to refer to software rather than hardware. Some programs were modeled after particular dedicated WP hardware. MultiMate, for example, was written for an insurance company that had

hundreds of typists using Wang systems, and spread from there to other Wang customers. To adapt to the smaller PC keyboard, MultiMate used stick-on labels and a large plastic clip-on template to remind users of its dozens of Wang-like functions, using the shift, alt and ctrl keys with the 10 IBM function keys and many of the alphabet keys.

Other early word-processing software required users to memorize semi-mnemonic key combinations rather than pressing keys labelled "copy" or "bold." (In fact, many early PCs lacked cursor keys; WordStar famously used the E-S-D-X-centered "diamond" for cursor navigation, and modern vi-like editors encourage use of hjkl for navigation.) However, the price differences between dedicated word processors and general-purpose PCs, and the value added to the latter by software such as VisiCalc, were so compelling that personal computers and word processing software soon became serious competition for the dedicated machines. Word Perfect, XyWrite, Microsoft Word and dozens of other word processing software brands competed in the 1980s. Development of

higher-resolution monitors allowed them to provide limited WYSIWYG - What You See Is What You Get, to the extent that typographical features like bold and italics, indentation, justification and margins were approximated on screen.

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The mid-to-late 1980s saw the spread of laser printers, a "typographic" approach to word processing, and of true WYSIWYG bitmap displays with multiple fonts (pioneered by the Xerox Alto computer and Bravo word processing program), PostScript, and graphical user interfaces (another Xerox PARC innovation, with the Gypsy word processor which was commercialised in the Xerox Star product range). Standalone word processors adapted by getting smaller and replacing their CRTs with small character-oriented LCD displays. Some models also had computer-like features such as floppy disk drives and the ability to output to an external printer. They also got a name change, now being called "electronic typewriters" and typically occupying a lower end of the market, selling for under $200 USD.

MacWrite, Microsoft Word and other word processing programs for the bit-mapped Apple Macintosh screen, introduced in 1984, were probably the first true WYSIWYG word processors to become known to many people until the introduction of Microsoft Windows. Dedicated word processors eventually became museum pieces.

Electronic mail, commonly called email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages across the Internet or other computer networks. Email systems are based on a store-and-forward model in which email server computer systems accept, forward, deliver and store messages on behalf of users, who only need to connect to the email infrastructure, typically an e-mail server, with a network-enabled device for the duration of message submission or retrieval. Originally, email was transmitted directly from one user's device to another user's computer, which required both computers to be online at the same time.

An electronic mail message consists of two components, the message header, and the message body, which is the email's content. The message header contains control information, including, minimally, an originator's email address and one or more recipient addresses. Usually additional information is added, such as a subject header field.

Originally a text-only communications medium, email was extended to carry multi-media content attachments, which was standardized in RFC 2045 through RFC 2049,

collectively called, Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME).

The foundation for today's global Internet email services reaches back to the early ARPANET and standards for encoding of messages were proposed as early as 1973 (RFC 561). An e-mail sent in the early 1970s looked very similar to one sent on the Internet today. Conversion from the ARPANET to the Internet in the early 1980s produced the core of the current services.

Network-based email was initially exchanged on the ARPANET in extensions to the File Transfer Protocol (FTP), but is today carried by the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), first published as Internet standard 10 (RFC 821) in 1982. In the process of transporting email messages between systems, SMTP communicates delivery parameters using a message envelope separately from the message (header and body) itself.

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[

edit

] Spelling

There are several spelling variations that are occasionally the cause of vehement disagreement.[2][3]

• email is the form required by IETFRequest for Comments and working groups[4]

and is also recognized in most dictionaries.[5][6][7][8][9][10]

• e-mail is a form recommended by some prominent journalistic and technical style guides.[11][12]

• mail was the form used in the original RFC. The service is referred to as mail and a single piece of electronic mail is called a message.[13][14][15]

• eMail, capitalizing only the letter M, was common among ARPANET users and early developers from Unix, CMS, AppleLink, eWorld, AOL, GEnie, and Hotmail.[citation needed]

• EMail is a traditional form that has been used in RFCs for the "Author's Address",

[14][15]_{and is expressly required "...for historical reasons...".}[16]

[

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] Origin

Electronic mail predates the inception of the Internet, and was in fact a crucial tool in creating it.

MIT first demonstrated the Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS) in 1961.[17]_It

allowed multiple users to log into the IBM 7094[18]_{from remote dial-up terminals, and to}

store files online on disk. This new ability encouraged users to share information in new ways. E-mail started in 1965 as a way for multiple users of a time-sharingmainframe computer to communicate. Although the exact history is murky, among the first systems to have such a facility were SDC'sQ32 and MIT's CTSS.

[

[21][22]_{The ARPANET significantly increased the popularity of e-mail, and it became the}

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Most other networks had their own email protocols and address formats; as the influence of the ARPANET and later the Internet grew, central sites often hosted email gateways that passed mail between the Internet and these other networks. Internet email addressing is still complicated by the need to handle mail destined for these older networks. Some well-known examples of these were UUCP (mostly Unix computers), BITNET (mostly IBM and VAX mainframes at universities), FidoNet (personal computers), DECNET (various networks) and CSNET a forerunner of NSFNet.

An example of an Internet email address that routed mail to a user at a UUCP host:

hubhost!middlehost!edgehost!user@uucpgateway.somedomain.example.com

This was necessary because in early years UUCP computers did not maintain (or consult servers for) information about the location of all hosts they exchanged mail with, but rather only knew how to communicate with a few network neighbors; email messages (and other data such as Usenet News) were passed along in a chain among hosts who had explicitly agreed to share data with each other.

[

edit

] Operation overview

The diagram to the right shows a typical sequence of events[23]_{that takes place when}

Alice composes a message using her mail user agent (MUA). She enters the e-mail address of her correspondent, and hits the "send" button.

1. Her MUA formats the message in e-mail format and uses the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) to send the message to the local mail transfer agent (MTA), in this case smtp.a.org, run by Alice's internet service provider (ISP).

2. The MTA looks at the destination address provided in the SMTP protocol (not from the message header), in this case [email protected]. An Internet e-mail address is a

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local part of the address, often the username of the recipient, and the part after the @ sign is a domain name or a fully qualified domain name. The MTA resolves a domain name to determine the fully qualified domain name of the mail exchange server in the Domain Name System (DNS).

3. The DNS server for the b.org domain, ns.b.org, responds with any MX records

listing the mail exchange servers for that domain, in this case mx.b.org, a server

run by Bob's ISP.

4. smtp.a.org sends the message to mx.b.org using SMTP, which delivers it to the

mailbox of the user bob.

5. Bob presses the "get mail" button in his MUA, which picks up the message using the Post Office Protocol (POP3).

That sequence of events applies to the majority of e-mail users. However, there are many alternative possibilities and complications to the e-mail system:

• Alice or Bob may use a client connected to a corporate e-mail system, such as IBMLotus Notes or MicrosoftExchange. These systems often have their own internal e-mail format and their clients typically communicate with the e-mail server using a vendor-specific, proprietary protocol. The server sends or receives e-mail via the Internet through the product's Internet mail gateway which also does any necessary reformatting. If Alice and Bob work for the same company, the entire transaction may happen completely within a single corporate e-mail system.

• Alice may not have a MUA on her computer but instead may connect to a webmail service.

• Alice's computer may run its own MTA, so avoiding the transfer at step 1. • Bob may pick up his e-mail in many ways, for example using the Internet

Message Access Protocol, by logging into mx.b.org and reading it directly, or by

using a webmail service.

• Domains usually have several mail exchange servers so that they can continue to accept mail when the main mail exchange server is not available.

• E-mail messages are not secure if e-mail encryption is not used correctly.

Many MTAs used to accept messages for any recipient on the Internet and do their best to deliver them. Such MTAs are called open mail relays. This was very important in the early days of the Internet when network connections were unreliable. If an MTA couldn't reach the destination, it could at least deliver it to a relay closer to the destination. The relay stood a better chance of delivering the message at a later time. However, this mechanism proved to be exploitable by people sending unsolicited bulk e-mail and as a consequence very few modern MTAs are open mail relays, and many MTAs don't accept messages from open mail relays because such messages are very likely to be spam.

[

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] Message format

The Internet e-mail message format is defined in RFC 5322 and a series of RFCs, RFC 2045 through RFC 2049, collectively called, Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions, or

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MIME. Although as of July 13, 2005, RFC 2822 is technically a proposed IETF standard and the MIME RFCs are draft IETF standards,[24]_{these documents are the standards for}

the format of Internet e-mail. Prior to the introduction of RFC 2822 in 2001, the format described by RFC 822 was the standard for Internet e-mail for nearly 20 years; it is still the official IETF standard. The IETF reserved the numbers 5321 and 5322 for the

updated versions of RFC 2821 (SMTP) and RFC 2822, as it previously did with RFC 821 and RFC 822, honoring the extreme importance of these two RFCs. RFC 822 was

published in 1982 and based on the earlier RFC 733 (see [25]_).

Internet e-mail messages consist of two major sections:

• Header — Structured into fields such as summary, sender, receiver, and other information about the e-mail.

• Body — The message itself as unstructured text; sometimes containing a signature block at the end. This is exactly the same as the body of a regular letter.

The header is separated from the body by a blank line.

[

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] Message header

Each message has exactly one header, which is structured into fields. Each field has a name and a value. RFC 5322 specifies the precise syntax.

Informally, each line of text in the header that begins with a printable character begins a separate field. The field name starts in the first character of the line and ends before the separator character ":". The separator is then followed by the field value (the "body" of the field). The value is continued onto subsequent lines if those lines have a space or tab as their first character. Field names and values are restricted to 7-bit ASCII characters. Non-ASCII values may be represented using MIME encoded words.

[edit] Header fields

The message header should include at least the following fields:

• From: The e-mail address, and optionally the name of the author(s). In many e-mail clients not changeable except through changing account settings.

• To: The e-mail address(es), and optionally name(s) of the message's recipient(s). Indicates primary recipients (multiple allowed), for secondary recipients see Cc: and Bcc: below.

• Subject: A brief summary of the topic of the message. Certain abbreviations are commonly used in the subject, including "RE:" and "FW:".

• Date: The local time and date when the message was written. Like the From: field, many email clients fill this in automatically when sending. The recipient's client may then display the time in the format and time zone local to him/her. • Message-ID: Also an automatically generated field; used to prevent multiple

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Note that the To: field is not necessarily related to the addresses to which the message is delivered. The actual delivery list is supplied separately to the transport protocol, SMTP, which may or may not originally have been extracted from the header content. The "To:" field is similar to the addressing at the top of a conventional letter which is delivered according to the address on the outer envelope. Also note that the "From:" field does not have to be the real sender of the e-mail message. One reason is that it is very easy to fake the "From:" field and let a message seem to be from any mail address. It is possible to digitally sign e-mail, which is much harder to fake, but such signatures require extra programming and often external programs to verify. Some ISPs do not relay e-mail claiming to come from a domain not hosted by them, but very few (if any) check to make sure that the person or even e-mail address named in the "From:" field is the one

associated with the connection. Some ISPs apply e-mail authentication systems to e-mail being sent through their MTA to allow other MTAs to detect forged spam that might appear to come from them.

RFC 3864 describes registration procedures for message header fields at the IANA; it provides for permanent and provisional message header field names, including also fields defined for MIME, netnews, and http, and referencing relevant RFCs. Common header fields for email include:

• Bcc: Blind Carbon Copy; addresses added to the SMTP delivery list but not (usually) listed in the message data, remaining invisible to other recipients. • Cc: Carbon copy; Many e-mail clients will mark e-mail in your inbox differently

depending on whether you are in the To: or Cc: list.

• Content-Type: Information about how the message is to be displayed, usually a MIME type.

• In-Reply-To: Message-ID of the message that this is a reply to. Used to link related messages together.

• Precedence: commonly with values "bulk", "junk", or "list"; used to indicate that automated "vacation" or "out of office" responses should not be returned for this mail, e.g. to prevent vacation notices from being sent to all other subscribers of a mailinglist.

• Received: Tracking information generated by mail servers that have previously handled a message, in reverse order (last handler first).

• References: Message-ID of the message that this is a reply to, and the message-id of the message the previous was reply a reply to, etc.

• Reply-To: Address that should be used to reply to the message.

• Sender: Address of the actual sender acting on behalf of the author listed in the From: field (secretary, list manager, etc.).

[

edit

] Message body

This section needs additional citations for verification.

Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be

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[edit] Content encoding

E-mail was originally designed for 7-bit ASCII.[26]_{Much e-mail software is}_{8-bit clean}

but must assume it will communicate with 7-bit servers and mail readers. The MIME standard introduced character set specifiers and two content transfer encodings to enable transmission of non-ASCII data: quoted printable for mostly 7 bit content with a few characters outside that range and base64 for arbitrary binary data. The 8BITMIME extension was introduced to allow transmission of mail without the need for these encodings but many mail transport agents still do not support it fully. In some countries, several encoding schemes coexist; as the result, by default, the message in a non-Latin alphabet language appears in non-readable form (the only exception is coincidence, when the sender and receiver use the same encoding scheme). Therefore, for international character sets, Unicode is growing in popularity.

[edit] Plain text and HTML

Most modern graphic e-mail clients allow the use of either plain text or HTML for the message body at the option of the user. HTML e-mail messages often include an automatically-generated plain text copy as well, for compatibility reasons.

Advantages of HTML include the ability to include in-line links and images, set apart previous messages in block quotes, wrap naturally on any display, use emphasis such as underlines and italics, and change font styles. Disadvantages include the increased size of the email, privacy concerns about web bugs, abuse of HTML email as a vector for

phishing attacks and the spread of malicious software.[27]

Some web based Mailing lists recommend that all posts be made in plain-text[28][29]_{for all}

the above reasons, but also because they have a significant number of readers using text-basede-mail clients such as Mutt.

Some Microsofte-mail clients allow rich formatting using RTF, but unless the recipient is guaranteed to have a compatible e-mail client this should be avoided.[30]

In order to ensure that HTML sent in an email is rendered properly by the recipient's client software, an additional header must be specified when sending: "Content-type: text/html". Most email programs send this header automatically.

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The interface of an e-mail client, Thunderbird.

Messages are exchanged between hosts using the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol with software programs called mail transfer agents. Users can retrieve their messages from servers using standard protocols such as POP or IMAP, or, as is more likely in a large corporate environment, with a proprietary protocol specific to Lotus Notes or Microsoft Exchange Servers. Webmail interfaces allow users to access their mail with any standard web browser, from any computer, rather than relying on an e-mail client.

Mail can be stored on the client, on the server side, or in both places. Standard formats for mailboxes include Maildir and mbox. Several prominent e-mail clients use their own proprietary format and require conversion software to transfer e-mail between them. Accepting a message obliges an MTA to deliver it, and when a message cannot be delivered, that MTA must send a bounce message back to the sender, indicating the problem.

[

edit

] Filename extensions

Upon reception of e-mail messages, e-mail client applications save message in operating system files in the file-system. Some clients save individual messages as separate files, while others use various database formats, often proprietary, for collective storage. A historical standard of storage is the mbox format. The specific format used is often indicated by special filename extensions:

eml

Used by many e-mail clients including Microsoft Outlook Express, Windows Mail and Mozilla Thunderbird.[31]_{The files are}_{plain text}_in_MIME_format,

containing the e-mail header as well as the message contents and attachments in one or more of several formats.

emlx

Used by Apple Mail.

msg

Used by Microsoft Office Outlook and OfficeLogic Groupware.

mbx

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Some applications (like Apple Mail) leave attachments encoded in messages for searching while also saving separate copies of the attachments. Others separate attachments from messages and save them in a specific directory.

[

Research has shown that people actively use e-mail to maintain core social networks, particularly when others live at a distance. However, contradictory to previous research, the results suggest that increases in Internet usage are associated with decreases in other modes of communication, with proficiency of Internet and e-mail use serving as a mediating factor in this relationship.[33]_{With the introduction of chat messengers and}

video conference, there are more ways to communicate.

[edit] Flaming

Flaming occurs when a person sends a message with angry or antagonistic content. Flaming is assumed to be more common today because of the ease and impersonality of e-mail communications: confrontations in person or via telephone require direct

interaction, where social norms encourage civility, whereas typing a message to another person is an indirect interaction, so civility may be forgotten.[citation needed]_{Flaming is}

generally looked down upon by Internet communities as it is considered rude and non-productive.

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Also known as "e-mail fatigue", e-mail bankruptcy is when a user ignores a large number of e-mail messages after falling behind in reading and answering them. The reason for falling behind is often due to information overload and a general sense there is so much information that it is not possible to read it all. As a solution, people occasionally send a boilerplate message explaining that the e-mail inbox is being cleared out. Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig is credited with coining this term, but he may only have popularized it.[34]

[

edit

] In business

E-mail was widely accepted by the business community as the first broad electronic communication medium and was the first ‘e-revolution’ in business communication. E-mail is very simple to understand and like postal E-mail, e-E-mail solves two basic problems of communication: logistics and synchronization (see below).

LAN based email is also an emerging form of usage for business. It not only allows the business user to download mail when offline, it also provides the small business user to have multiple users e-mail ID's with just one e-mail connection.

[edit] Pros

• The problem of logistics: Much of the business world relies upon communications between people who are not physically in the same building, area or even country; setting up and attending an in-person meeting, telephone call, or conference call can be inconvenient, time-consuming, and costly. E-mail provides a way to

exchange information between two or more people with no set-up costs and that is generally far less expensive than physical meetings or phone calls.

• The problem of synchronisation: With real time communication by meetings or phone calls, participants have to work on the same schedule, and each participant must spend the same amount of time in the meeting or call. E-mail allows

asynchrony: each participant may control their schedule independently.

[edit] Cons

This section may contain original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding references. Statements consisting only of original research may be removed. More details may be available on the talk page. (June 2009)

Most business workers today spend from one to two hours of their working day on e-mail: reading, ordering, sorting, ‘re-contextualizing’ fragmented information, and writing e-mail.[35]_{The use of e-mail is increasing due to increasing levels of globalisation—}

labour division and outsourcing amongst other things. E-mail can lead to some well-known problems:

• Loss of context: which means that the context is lost forever; there is no way to get the text back. Information in context (as in a newspaper) is much easier and

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faster to understand than unedited and sometimes unrelated fragments of

information. Communicating in context can only be achieved when both parties have a full understanding of the context and issue in question.

• Information overload: E-mail is a push technology—the sender controls who receives the information. Convenient availability of mailing lists and use of "copy all" can lead to people receiving unwanted or irrelevant information of no use to them.

• Inconsistency: E-mail can duplicate information. This can be a problem when a large team is working on documents and information while not in constant contact with the other members of their team.

Despite these disadvantages, e-mail has become the most widely used medium of communication within the business world.

[

edit

] Privacy concerns

Main article: e-mail privacy

E-mail privacy, without some security precautions, can be compromised because: • e-mail messages are generally not encrypted.

• e-mail messages have to go through intermediate computers before reaching their destination, meaning it is relatively easy for others to intercept and read messages. • many Internet Service Providers (ISP) store copies of e-mail messages on their

mail servers before they are delivered. The backups of these can remain for up to several months on their server, despite deletion from the mailbox.

• the "Received:"-fields and other information in the e-mail can often identify the sender, preventing anonymous communication.

There are cryptography applications that can serve as a remedy to one or more of the above. For example, Virtual Private Networks or the Tor anonymity network can be used to encrypt traffic from the user machine to a safer network while GPG, PGP, SMEmail,[43]

or S/MIME can be used for end-to-end message encryption, and SMTP STARTTLS or SMTP over Transport Layer Security/Secure Sockets Layer can be used to encrypt communications for a single mail hop between the SMTP client and the SMTP server. Additionally, many mail user agents do not protect logins and passwords, making them easy to intercept by an attacker. Encrypted authentication schemes such as SASL prevent this.

Finally, attached files share many of the same hazards as those found in peer-to-peer filesharing. Attached files may contain trojans or viruses.

[

edit

] Tracking of sent mail

The original SMTP mail service provides limited mechanisms for tracking a transmitted message, and none for verifying that it has been delivered or read. It requires that each mail server must either deliver it onward or return a failure notice (bounce message), but both software bugs and system failures can cause messages to be lost. To remedy this, the IETF introduced Delivery Status Notifications (delivery receipts) and Message

Disposition Notifications (return receipts); however, these are not universally deployed in production.

There are a number of systems that allow the sender to see if messages have been opened.

[44][45][46]

[

edit

] US Government

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Starting in 1977, the US Postal Service (USPS) recognized that electronic mail and electronic transactions posed a significant threat to First Class mail volumes and revenue. Therefore, the USPS initiated an experimental e-mail service known as E-COM.

Electronic messages were transmitted to a post office, printed out, and delivered as hard copy. To take advantage of the service, an individual had to transmit at least 200

messages. The delivery time of the messages was the same as First Class mail and cost 26 cents. Both the Postal Regulatory Commission and the Federal Communications

Commission opposed E-COM. The FCC concluded that E-COM constituted common carriage under its jurisdiction and the USPS would have to file a tariff.[47]_{Three years}

after initiating the service, USPS canceled E-COM and attempted to sell it off.[48][49][50][51] [52][53][54]

The early ARPANET dealt with multiple e-mail clients that had various, and at times incompatible, formats. For example, in the system Multics, the "@" sign meant "kill line" and anything after the "@" sign was ignored.[55]_The_{Department of Defense}_DARPA

desired to have uniformity and interoperability for e-mail and therefore funded efforts to drive towards unified inter-operable standards. This led to David Crocker, John Vittal, Kenneth Pogran, and Austin Henderson publishing RFC 733, "Standard for the Format of ARPA Network Text Message" (November 21, 1977), which was apparently not

effective. In 1979, a meeting was held at BBN to resolve incompatibility issues. Jon Postel recounted the meeting in RFC 808, "Summary of Computer Mail Services Meeting Held at BBN on 10 January 1979" (March 1, 1982), which includes an appendix listing the varying e-mail systems at the time. This, in turn, lead to the release of David

Crocker's RFC 822, "Standard for the Format of ARPA Internet Text Messages" (August 13, 1982).[56]

The National Science Foundation took over operations of the ARPANET and Internet from the Department of Defense, and initiated NSFNet, a new backbone for the network. A part of the NSFNet AUP forbade commercial traffic.[57]_{In 1988,}_{Vint Cerf}_{arranged for}

an interconnection of MCI Mail with NSFNET on an experimental basis. The following year Compuserve e-mail interconnected with NSFNET. Within a few years the

commercial traffic restriction was removed from NSFNETs AUP, and NSFNET was privatised.

In the late 1990s, the Federal Trade Commission grew concerned with fraud transpiring in e-mail, and initiated a series of procedures on spam, fraud, and phishing.[58]_{In 2004,}

FTC jurisdiction over spam was codified into law in the form of the CAN SPAM Act.[59]

Several other US Federal Agencies have also exercised jurisdiction including the Department of Justice and the Secret Service.

A spreadsheet is a computer application that simulates a paper, accounting worksheet. It displays multiple cells that together make up a grid consisting of rows and columns, each cell containing alphanumeric text, numeric values or formulas. A formula defines how the content of that cell is to be calculated from the contents of any other cell (or

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financial information because of their ability to re-calculate the entire sheet automatically after a change to a single cell is made.

Visicalc is usually considered the first electronic spreadsheet (although this has been challenged), and it helped turn the Apple II computer into a success and greatly assisted in their widespread application. Lotus 1-2-3 was the leading spreadsheet when DOS was the dominant operating system. Excel now has the largest market share on the Windows and Macintosh platforms.[1][2][3]

OpenOffice.org Calc spreadsheet

o 2.1 Cells  2.1.1 Values  2.1.2 Automatic recalculation  2.1.3 Real-time update  2.1.4 Locked cell  2.1.5 Data format  2.1.6 Cell formatting  2.1.7 Named cells  2.1.7.1 Cell reference  2.1.7.2 Cell ranges o 2.2 Sheets o 2.3 Formulas o 2.4 Functions o 2.5 Subroutines o 2.6 Remote spreadsheet o 2.7 Charts o 2.8 Multi-dimensional spreadsheets o 2.9 Logical spreadsheets • 3 Programming issues • 4 Shortcomings • 5 See also • 6 References • 7 External links o 7.1 History of spreadsheets o 7.2 General information

[

edit

] History

[

edit

] Paper spreadsheets

The word "spreadsheet" came from "spread" in its sense of a newspaper or magazine item (text and/or graphics) that covers two facing pages, extending across the center fold and treating the two pages as one large one. The compound word "spread-sheet" came to mean the format used to present book-keeping ledgers—with columns for categories of expenditures across the top, invoices listed down the left margin, and the amount of each payment in the cell where its row and column intersect—which were, traditionally, a "spread" across facing pages of a bound ledger (book for keeping accounting records) or on oversized sheets of paper ruled into rows and columns in that format and

approximately twice as wide as ordinary paper.

[

edit

] Early implementations

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A batch 'spreadsheet' is indistinguishable from a batch compiler with added input data, producing an output report (i.e. a 4GL or conventional, non-interactive, batch computer program). However, this concept of an electronic spreadsheet was outlined in the 1961 paper "Budgeting Models and System Simulation" by Richard Mattessich.[4]_The

subsequent work by Mattessich (1964a, Chpt. 9, Accounting and Analytical Methods) and its companion volume, Mattessich (1964b, Simulation of the Firm through a Budget Computer Program) applied computerized spreadsheets to accounting and budgeting systems (on mainframe computers programmed in FORTRAN IV). These batch Spreadsheets dealt primarily with the addition or subtraction of entire columns or rows (of input variables) - rather than individual 'cells'.

In 1962 this 'concept' of the spreadsheet (called BCL for Business Computer Language) was implemented on an IBM 1130 and in 1963 was ported to an IBM 7040 by R. Brian Walsh at Marquette University, Wisconsin. This program was written in Fortran. Primitive timesharing was available on those machines. In 1968 BCL was ported by Walsh to the IBM 360/67 timesharing machine at Washington State University. It was used to assist in the teaching of finance to business students. Students were able to take information prepared by the professor and manipulate it to represent it and show ratios etc. In 1964, A book entitled Business Computer Language written by Kimball, Stoffells and Walsh and both the book and program were copyrighted in 1966 and years later that copyright was renewed [5]

In the late 60's Xerox used BCL to develop a more sophisticated version for their timesharing system.

[edit] LANPAR spreadsheet compiler

Key invention in the development of electronic spreadsheets was made by Rene K. Pardo and Remy Landau, who filed in 1971 U.S. Patent 4,398,249 on spreadsheet automatic natural order recalculation algorithm in 1970. While the patent was initially rejected by the patent office as being a purely mathematical invention, following 12 years of appeals, Pardo and Landau won a landmark court case at the CCPA (Predecessor Court of the Federal Circuit) overturning the Patent Office in 1983 - establishing that "something does not cease to become patentable merely because the point of novelty is in an algorithm." However, in 1995 the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled the patent unenforceable [6]_.

The actual software was called LANPAR - LANguage for Programming Arrays at Random. This was conceived and entirely developed in the summer of 1969 following Pardo and Landau's recent graduation from Harvard University. Co-inventor Rene Pardo recalls that he felt that one manager at Bell Canada should not have to depend on

programmers to program and modify budgeting forms, and he thought of letting users type out forms in any order and having computer calculating results in the right order. The software was developed in 1969.[7]

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LANPAR was used by Bell Canada, AT&T and the 18 operating telcos nationwide for their local and national budgeting operations. LANPAR was also used by General Motors. Its uniqueness was the incorporation of natural order recalculation,[8]_{as opposed}

to left-to-right, top to bottom sequence for calculating the results in each cell that was used by Visicalc, Supercalc and the first version of Multiplan. Without natural order recalculation the users had to manually recalculate the spreadsheet as many times as necessary until the values in all the cells had stopped changing.

The LANPAR system was implemented on GE400 and Honeywell 6000 online timesharing systems enabling users to program remotely via computer terminals and modems. Data could be entered dynamically either by paper tape, specific file access, on line, or even external data bases. Sophisticated mathematical expressions including logical comparisons and "if/then" statements could be used in any cell, and cells could be presented in any order.

[edit] Autoplan/Autotab spreadsheet programming language

In 1968, three former employees from the General Electric computer company

headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona set out to start their own software development house. A. Leroy Ellison, Harry N. Cantrell, and Russell E. Edwards found themselves doing a large number of calculations when making tables for the business plans that they were presenting to venture capitalists. They decided to save themselves a lot of effort and wrote a computer program that produced their tables for them. This program, originally conceived as a simple utility for their personal use, would turn out to be the first software product offered by the company that would become known as Capex Corporation.

"AutoPlan" ran on GE’s Time-sharing service; afterward, a version that ran on IBM mainframes was introduced under the name "AutoTab". (National CSS offered a similar product, CSSTAB, which had a moderate timesharing user base by the early 70s. A major application was opinion research tabulation.) AutoPlan/AutoTab was not a WYSIWYG interactive spreadsheet program, it was a simple scripting language for spreadsheets. The user defined the names and labels for the rows and columns, then the formulas that defined each row or column.

[edit] APLDOT modeling language

An example of an early "industrial weight" spreadsheet was APLDOT, developed in 1976 at the United States Railway Association on an IBM 360/91, running at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, MD.[9]_{The application was}

used successfully for many years in developing such applications as financial and costing models for the US Congress and for Conrail. APLDOT was dubbed a "spreadsheet" because financial analysts and strategic planners used it to solve the same problems they addressed with paper spreadsheet pads.

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The spreadsheet concept became widely known in the late 1970s and early 1980s because of Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston's implementation of VisiCalc. VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet that combined all essential features of modern spreadsheet applications, such as WYSIWYG interactive user interface, automatic recalculation, status and formula lines, range copying with relative and absolute references, formula building by selecting referenced cells. PC World magazine has called VisiCalc the first electronic spreadsheet.

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Bricklin has spoken of watching his university professor create a table of calculation results on a blackboard. When the professor found an error, he had to tediously erase and rewrite a number of sequential entries in the table, triggering Bricklin to think that he could replicate the process on a computer, using the blackboard as the model to view results of underlying formulas. His idea became VisiCalc, the first application that turned the personal computer from a hobby for computer enthusiasts into a business tool.

Screenshot of VisiCalc, the first PC spreadsheet.

VisiCalc went on to become the first "killer app", an application that was so compelling, people would buy a particular computer just to own it. In this case the computer was the Apple II, and VisiCalc was no small part in that machine's success. The program was later ported to a number of other early computers, notably CP/M machines, the Atari 8-bit family and various Commodore platforms. Nevertheless, VisiCalc remains best known as "an Apple II program".

[

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] Lotus 1-2-3 and other MS-DOS spreadsheets

The acceptance of the IBM PC following its introduction in August, 1981, began slowly, because most of the programs available for it were translations from other from other computer models. Things changed dramatically with the introduction of Lotus 1-2-3 in November, 1982, and release for sale in January, 1983. Since it was written especially for the IBM PC, it had good performance[citation needed]_{and became the killer app for this PC.}

Lotus 1-2-3 drove sales of the PC due to the improvements in speed and graphics compared to VisiCalc on the Apple II.

Lotus 1-2-3, along with its competitor BorlandQuattro, soon displaced VisiCalc. Lotus 1-2-3 was released on January 26, 1983, started outselling then-most-popular VisiCalc the very same year, and for a number of years was the leading spreadsheet for DOS.

ziel

Contents

[

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] Characteristics

[

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] Typical usage

[

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] Business

[

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] Education

[

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] Home

[

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] History

Contents

[

edit

] Spelling

[

edit

] Origin

[

edit

] Host-based mail systems

[

edit

] LAN-based mail systems

[

edit

] Attempts at interoperability

[

edit

] From SNDMSG to MSG

[

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] The rise of ARPANET mail

[

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] Operation overview

[

edit

] Message format

[

edit

] Message header

[

edit

] Message body

[

edit

] Filename extensions

[

edit

] URI scheme mailto:

[

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] Use

[

edit

] In society

[

edit

] In business

[

edit

] Problems

[

edit

] Attachment size limitation

[

edit

] Information overload

[

edit