Help

Logging on for the first time
To log on to Milliways, first connect to galaxy.sucs.swan.ac.uk. When you have a prompt (the cursor will be flashing to the right of a $ symbol) type mw and press ENTER. You will be asked to enter your name. Use the user-name you are using for SUCS (it saves confusion that way). At this point the computer should ask you if it's got your name right. If, instead, you are asked for a password, it means that someone else is already using that name, so press ENTER, type mw again and try another name. When you answer 'y' to having your name right, you will be asked to set your new password (twice - to make sure you made no mistakes). When you press ENTER, a list of all the messages in Milliways will appear. This is because it thinks you haven't read them, and will want to. There are far too many, and most are out of date so don't try! You have to make the computer think that you've read all the messages. You can do this by typing catchup all

Reading Messages
To read a message, go to the directory you're interested in and type ls This will list all the messages in that directory. When you find one that you're interested in, press Q and ENTER to stop the list and then type read and the number of the message. Here's a list of the read commands you can use:

read	read message with message-number
first	read the first message in the directory
last	read the last message in the directory
previous or prev or p	read the previous message in the current directory
next or n	read the next message in the current directory

Talking to Others
To find out who is using Milliways you can type who and press return, this will give a list and include your name in it. You can talk to others by typing tell followed by a username and a message. The program only matches the first significant letters with the list of currently logged in users, so you can abbreviate usernames to the minimum number of characters required to make them unique amougnst those logged in.
Another way of talking to people is to use the Milliways Talker. Type talker to join it. All you have to do then is type what you want to say, and it will appear on the screen. You can tell who has said something by the fact that their name appears to the left of what they have said. Within the talker, you can still use the same commands as outside it, but to do this, you must start the line with an exclamation mark ('!'). There is also a set of commands specifically for use in the talker, and these can be accessed by starting the line with a full-stop ('.'). Type .help within the talker to see what commands are available and what they do.