More on Pine

And here they are: some pine "tech tips" to give you some new ideas on what you can do with pine, including using pine to read Usenet/Netnews news. There are "how-to" instructions, but pine is easy to use; you might not need them. Just keep an eye on the list of relevant commands at the bottom of every pine screen. If you don't see the command you want, don't worry, there are more -- type o for "other commands", and pine will display additional commands. And remember that ^X means to press the Ctrl key and hold it down while you type x. Help is available on every pine screen, too: type ? (or Ctrl-g when you're composing a note) to see it.

You'll have lots of choices when you configure pine, and they're quite easy to make, too. In the pine Main Menu (type m to return to it if necessary), type s (for Setup). (No, Setup isn't one of the commands listed at the bottom of the Main Menu screen, but type o to display other commands and you'll see it there.) Type c (for Configure).

You may enter values for the first group of options; use Tab or the down arrow key to highlight one, type either a (Add value) or c (Change value), type the value you want, then press Enter. For example, if you're using icarus and you need to select a news server, highlight "nntpserver", type a (for Add Value), type: news.cc.uic.edu and then press: Enter.

After these options comes a list of pine's features. You turn these on or off, one by one; features marked with an "X" are on. When you see a feature you want to turn on, use Tab or an arrow key to highlight the feature's descriptive name and press Enter. Or do the same to turn off a feature that's already on.

The last few pine features are sets of options; you may select only one from each set. The choice that is currently turned on in each set is marked with a "*". Again, highlight the one you want and press Enter to make your choice.

You Might Want to Select...

• auto-open-next-unread if you want Tab (NextNew) to automatically open the next folder containing a new message
• enable-alternate-editor-with-command to change editors on your command, or alternate-editor-implicitly to always use a different editor
• expanded-view-of-addressbooks and expanded-view-of-folders if you want pine to automatically expand folder lists
• expunge-without-confirm if you don't want pine to ask when you quit whether you really want to delete the mail you told it to delete
• quit-without-confirm if you don't want pine asking you whether you really want to quit
• Sort-Key OrderedSubj if you want news articles (and your mail) to be sorted by subject and then by date (which is pretty close to threading)

When you're finished...

When you've finished making your selections, type e (for Exit), q (for Quit), then restart pine.

Because it's "MIME-aware," it's easy to include any type of file in a note using pine.

There are two ways to include a file in a note you're composing with Pine. If it's a regular text file (you can read it and it has no non-displayable characters), and you're not sure the person you're sending mail to uses a MIME-aware mail program, type Ctrl-r (Pine represents this with ^R ) with your cursor in the body of the note to "read" the file. Then type Ctrl-t and select the file you want from your directory list. The file will be included in the text of the note, above the current line; any mail system will be able to handle it.

If the file you want to send isn't meant for people to read, include it as a MIME "attachment." With your cursor in the note's header, type Ctrl-j. Type Ctrl-t and select the file from your directory list. The file will be sent with the note in encoded form, not as text. You need a MIME-aware email program to read a note with a MIME attachment, but all modern email user programs are MIME-aware these days.

You have probably seen a for Address Book in the list of commands at the bottom of the pine Main Menu, and you may already be using it to enter your correspondent's names and email addresses, each labeled with an easy-to-remember nickname. And you probably also know that if you've put your pal Joe's email address in your address book with the nickname joe, you can enter: pine joe to open pine to compose and send a note to him.

But you can use your address book in other ways. For example, you may not know that you can:

Add another recipient to a note you're composing:

Press Ctrl-T (To AddrBk) while the To: (or cc: or whatever) header is highlighted. Highlight the address you want to add, then type s to Select it.

Add the From: address of a note you're reading to your address book:

Press Ctrl-T (TakeAddr); then follow pine's instructions.

Yes, you can use pine to do email on accounts and on other machines. The appendix Setting pine up to Read Your mailserv Mail explains how to set pine up to read email on mailserv; you can follow the same instructions to set pine up to read email on any account, provided that it supports the IMAP protocol for managing email on the remote server. (Actually pine also does POP, but its developers say that pine's POP support is not completely reliable.)

There used to be two ways to do this:

• procmail
• and pine filters: M (main menu) -> S (Setup) -> R (Rules) -> F (Filters) in Pine

Now your best bet is the ACCC's Web-generated procmail filters Web page; for more information, see How-to page for ACCC Web-generated procmail filters or just click the purple Email link at the top of this page.

Pine is almost as easy to use as a newsreader as it is for email. Here are instructions to get you started using pine as a newsreader, but again, you might actually not need them -- you can probably navigate it using the commands listed at the bottom of every pine screen.

But, before you start, you should make sure that you have a Usenet feed selected for your news server: Setup -> Config -> nntp server. The ACCC no longer runs a news server, so you can either find another one or use a Web news reader, such as Google Groups. And you might want to do a bit of reconfiguring (see Customizing Pine above).

To read news with pine, enter: pine
Press Enter or type l (the letter "l", not the number "1") to go to the Folder List screen. Use Tab or an arrow key to highlight "Select here to See Expanded List" under "NewsCollection", and press Enter to see a list of the newsgroups that you're subscribed to. (You won't have to expand the list if you're using pine on icarus or if you configured pine to give you an "expanded view of folders".)

Use Tab or an arrow key to highlight the newsgroup you want to read, then press Enter to display the Folder Index (the list of articles) for that group. The first article will be highlighted; press Enter to read it. Use Space (the spacebar) and - (the minus sign) to scroll down and up within the article text. You'll probably be tempted to use n (for NextMsg) to go to the next message, but use d (for Delete) instead. That will mark the article as read so it will not be displayed the next time you browse the group.

Typing l (the letter "l" again) will return you to the Folder List screen (the list of your subscribed newsgroups) from the Folder Index (the list of articles) or when you're reading an article. If necessary, press Enter on the Folder List screen to expand the list of newsgroups again.

• Replying directly to the article's author; use r for Reply.
• Posting your reply to the newsgroup; use c for Compose.
• Posting new articles; again use c for Compose, then either press Enter to accept the default newsgroup, or press Ctrl-r while you're in the header area of the post note to expand to "rich headers" which includes a "newsgroup:" header field.