| 单词 | electronic mail | |||
| 释义 | electronic mailelectronic mailelectronic mailelectron′ic mail′n.
electron(iˈlektron) nounelectronic mailelectronic mailore-mail,the electronic transmission of messages, letters, and documents. In its broadest sense electronic mail includes point-to-point services such as telegraphtelegraph,term originally applied to any device or system for distant communication by means of visible or audible signals, now commonly restricted to electrically operated devices. Attempts at long-distance communication date back thousands of years (see signaling). ..... Click the link for more information. and facsimilefacsimile or fax, in communications, system for transmitting pictures or other graphic matter by wire or radio. Facsimile is used to transmit such materials as documents, telegrams, drawings, pictures taken from satellites, and even entire newspapers. ..... Click the link for more information. (fax) systems. It is commonly thought of, however, in terms of computer-based message systems where the electronic text file that is received can be edited, replied to, excerpted, or even pasted into another electronic document that can be used or manipulated by a word processorword processing, use of a computer program or a dedicated hardware and software package to write, edit, format, and print a document. Text is most commonly entered using a keyboard similar to a typewriter's, although handwritten input (see pen-based computer) and audio input (as ..... Click the link for more information. , desktop publishingdesktop publishing, system for producing printed materials that consists of a personal computer or computer workstation, a high-resolution printer (usually a laser printer), and a computer program that allows the user to select from a variety of type fonts and sizes, column ..... Click the link for more information. system, or other computer programcomputer program, a series of instructions that a computer can interpret and execute; programs are also called software to distinguish them from hardware, the physical equipment used in data processing. ..... Click the link for more information. . Users of such systems, called store-and-forward or mailbox systems, can broadcast messages to multiple recipients, read and discard messages, file and retrieve messages, or forward messages to other users. Extensions to e-mail allow the user to add graphics and sound to messages, and files can be attached to e-mails. Computer-based messaging can take place on a single computer, a computer networknetwork, in computing, two or more computers connected for the purpose of routing, managing, and storing rapidly changing data. A local area network (LAN), which is restricted by distances of up to one mile, and a metropolitan area network (MAN), which is restricted to distances ..... Click the link for more information. , or across gateways linking different computer networks (as through the InternetInternet, the, international computer network linking together thousands of individual networks at military and government agencies, educational institutions, nonprofit organizations, industrial and financial corporations of all sizes, and commercial enterprises (called gateways ..... Click the link for more information. ). With the increasing use of e-mail, unsolicited commercial e-mail, known as spam, has become a significant problem. E-mail, especially through attachments, has also become a means for disseminating computer virusescomputer virus, rogue computer program, typically a short program designed to disperse copies of itself to other computers and disrupt those computers' normal operations. ..... Click the link for more information. and other malicious programs. BibliographySee D. Angell and B. Heslop, The Elements of E-Mail Style: Communicate Effectively Via Electronic Mail (1994); N. A. Cox, ed., Handbook of Electronic Messaging (1998); J. Tunstall, Better, Faster Email: Getting the Most Out of Email (1999). electronic mail[i‚lek′trän·ik ′māl]Electronic mailThe asynchronous transmission of messages by using computers and data-communication networks. Historically, electronic mail (or e-mail) referred to any of a number of technologies that allowed people to send documents to one another through electronic means. It was frequently used to describe both wirephoto [the precursor of the facsimile (fax) machine] and telegraphy. Subsequently, usage of the term focused upon the narrower sense given above. See Facsimile The use of electronic mail grew continuously until the late 1980s but never achieved widespread use outside of work groups or corporations. The limiting factor was the complicated addressing that had to be worked out before a message could be successfully transmitted. There were two proposed methods to solve the problem of mail-system identification and routing. The Organization for International Standardization (ISO) formulated the X.400 standard, and the Internet community developed an extended use of the domain name system (DNS). Many impediments to the spread of X.400, such as high software costs and delays in standardization, caused the freely available DNS solution to become the de facto standard. The DNS describes a worldwide distributed database in which each site maintains its own information about how to route messages to a computer within its administrative domain. A computer wishing to send a message to another asks the DNS for the routing information and uses the information returned to make the connection. This allows a person on virtually any online networking service to send mail to another person by giving only the personal identification and the e-mail system name of the recipient. See Distributed systems (computers) From the time the usage of the term narrowed to exclude facsimile until the early 1990s, generally only coded textual information could be transferred via e-mail. The transmission of nontextual data required special preprocessing, postprocessing, and prior arrangements between the sending and receiving parties. It was very difficult to make these kinds of transfers if the sending and receiving computers were different types. This restriction was lifted with the adoption of the MIME (Multimedia Internet Mail Enhancements) standard. It described a way of encoding an arbitrary list of media types within a normal textual message in an operating-system-independent manner. Finally, different types of systems could send executable, sound, picture, movie, and other kinds of files to each other via e-mail. See Multimedia technology The spread of electronic mail was also hampered by its lack of security. As mail was passed from one site to another closer to its destination, system administrators at each intermediate site could read messages. Also, the source of an e-mail message may be fairly easily forged to make it either untraceable or appear to come from another person. This limited the use of e-mail to so-called friendly applications. Public-key cryptography has been applied to e-mail messaging, notably in PEM (Privacy Enhanced Mail), in response to these security concerns. See Computer security, Cryptography Since the communications speeds required for e-mail are quite modest, messages are sometimes transmitted by wireless means. Cell phones and personal digital assistants can send and receive e-mail through Earth-satellite relay. See Internet electronic mail(messaging)A message, especially one following the common RFC 822standard, begins with several lines of headers, followedby a blank line, and the body of the message. Most e-mailsystems now support the MIME standard which allows themessage body to contain "attachments" of different kindsrather than just one block of plain ASCII text. It isconventional for the body to end with a signature. Headers give the name and electronic mail address of thesender and recipient(s), the time and date when it was sentand a subject. There are many other headers which may getadded by different message handling systems during delivery. The message is "composed" by the sender, usually using aspecial program - a "Mail User Agent" (MUA). It is thenpassed to some kind of "Message Transfer Agent" (MTA) - aprogram which is responsible for either delivering the messagelocally or passing it to another MTA, often on another host.MTAs on different hosts on a network often communicate usingSMTP. The message is eventually delivered to therecipient's mailbox - normally a file on his computer - fromwhere he can read it using a mail reading program (which mayor may not be the same MUA as used by the sender). Contrast snail-mail, paper-net, voice-net. The form "email" is also common, but is less suggestive of thecorrect pronunciation and derivation than "e-mail". The wordis used as a noun for the concept ("Isn't e-mail great?", "Areyou on e-mail?"), a collection of (unread) messages ("I spentall night reading my e-mail"), and as a verb meaning "to send(something in) an e-mail message" ("I'll e-mail you (myreport)"). The use of "an e-mail" as a count noun for ane-mail message, and plural "e-mails", is now (2000) also wellestablished despite the fact that "mail" is definitely a massnoun. Oddly enough, the word "emailed" is actually listed in theOxford English Dictionary. It means "embossed (with a raisedpattern) or arranged in a net work". A use from 1480 isgiven. The word is derived from French "emmailleure",network. Also, "email" is German for enamel. The story of the first e-mail message. electronic mailelectronic mailfor the purposes of the regulations on privacy and electronic communications controlling marketing, electronic mail means email and text/picture/video messages.electronic mailelectronic mail (e-mail)a form of COMMUNICATION which involves sending COMPUTER-originated messages and information across a telecommunications network. E-mail usage is expanding rapidly, partly reflected in the introduction of new facilities which provide an integrated approach to sending messages to any combination of fax, telex and electronic mail addresses. See INFORMATION MANAGEMENT, NETWORKING.See EML electronic mail
Synonyms for electronic mail
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electronic mail - (computer science) a system of world-wide electronic communication in which a computer user can compose a message at one terminal that can be regenerated at the recipient's terminal when the recipient logs in; "you cannot send packages by electronic mail"