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The ADN Connection, November/December 1995 The A3C Connection
Nov/Dec 1995 Contents When a Good Computer Goes Bad Word Macro Viruses What viruses are "going around" at UIC today? Mac Viruses
Free Seminars for Spring 1995 More on Pine: Email and a Newsreader, Too Through an X Window Darkly About the ADN Connection  

More on pine: Email and a Newsreader, Too

 
Tech Tips
UNIX Novice

You may have learned to how to send and receive mail with pine, the electronic mail system that the Computer Center recommends for UNIX, without reading any documentation on it; lots of people do. And that's just fine. In fact, it's one of pine's best features. However, if you learned by doing it, you might have overlooked some of pine's other features, ones that might make it faster, easier, or even more useful.

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. I've included "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.

Configuring pine

Would you like to make pine easier for you to use? You probably can. Pine has a number of options that you can use to tailor it to your liking. For example, you can tell it to quit without asking you whether you really want to. Or to automatically expand your folder lists. Or you can tell it what you want it to use as your name, what folder to put your outgoing mail into, or what news server to use when you're reading Usenet/Netnews news.

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)
While pine's features and options have (excessively) descriptive names, if you want to know exactly what a feature or option does, type ? while its name is highlighted to see a short description. 		 
     
When you're finished...
  When you've finished making your selections, type e (for Exit), q (for Quit), then restart pine.  
     
Using Your pine Address Book
  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. 

What do "folders" have to do with newsgroups? Pine treats newsgroups exactly as it treats mail folders, including referring to them as "news folders". So think "newsgroup" whenever you see "Fldr" when you read news with pine. 
 
 
     
Reading News in pine
  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, if you've never used pine to read news before, you should make sure that you have news.cc.uic.edu selected for your news server, and you might want to do a bit of reconfiguring (see "Configuring pine" above).

 
     
Setting Up Your .newsrc file
  If you've read news from your ADN UNIX account before, you're all set. All three UNIX newsreaders (pine, tin, and trn and xrn) use the same .newsrc file to keep track of your newsgroup subscriptions and the articles you've read. So you can go back and forth between them as often as you want.

But if you've never read news on tigger or icarus before, before you try to read it with pine, enter: trn and follow the instructions you're given. This will subscribe you to a small starter set of newsgroups, mainly newsgroups of local interest -- about UIC, Chicago, and Illinois -- and a few more specifically for beginners. (Do use trn for this; neither tin nor pine react particularly well if you've never read news before. I wouldn't continue to use trn, though. After the first time, I think you'll be happier using tin or pine.)

 
     
Reading News
  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.

 
     
Subscribing to Newsgroups
  This is not something that you'll really want to do in pine because it only allows you to add one newsgroup at a time. I'd use tin or trn for heavy-duty subscribing. But if you only want to subscribe to one or two additional newsgroups, say for example, one of the UIC class lists, you could do that in pine. Go to the Folder List screen and move to somewhere in the News collection list. Type a (for Subscribe). All the UIC class groups start with "uic.class", so type: uic.class* by the "Enter group to subscribe to:" prompt. Type Ctrl-x, then use Tab or the arrow keys to highlight the name of a newsgroup you want to subscribe to, and type s (for Subscribe). You'll return to the Folder List screen; press Enter to accept the subscription.  
     
Posting to Newsgroups
  On the other hand, posting to newsgroups is something that pine is very good at. You have your choice of:
  • 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.
When you use pine to post an article to a newsgroup, it very politely reminds you that posted articles may be read by thousands of people and gives you a chance to reconsider. And that's a good thing to do, if only to take the time to reread your article to make sure you didn't make a glaring typo or a revealing Freudian slip.
Comments are appreciated; send them to
Judith Grobe Sachs, judygs@uic.edu
  
 

The ADN Connection, Nov/Dec 1995 Previous: Free Seminars for Spring 1995 Next: Through an X Window Darkly

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