Email on the Road: Method Number 2: Pine

More goodies brought to you by email with IMAP: two ways to do your email from anywhere, even when you don't have access to your local email program. Both methods fit right into however you normally do email (though see the note below if you use POP), you don't have to reconfigure anyone else's machine to use them, and, because both methods use IMAP, you won't accidentally download and lose your whole inbox when you use them.

• Important Note to POP Users:
• April 10, 2000: Important Note About Folder Collections and mailserv
• Method Number 2: Pine 4.0
• Other Pine 4 News: Roles

But it's better than you might think. Let's say you have an account on tigger and another one on icarus, or on mailserv, or even another account on a commercial ISP (Internet service provider) that uses IMAP. Now you can use Pine on tigger or icarus to take care all your email, from all these accounts. At one time. Oh, and Netnews/Usenet newsgroups too; Pine is a newsreader. (Pine also supports POP service on remote machines, but as the Pine online help says, "Pine's implementation of POP3 ... has known limitations and inefficiencies." Use it at your own risk.)

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Setting Up Pine Folder Collections

Login to tigger or icarus and enter: pine

In the MAIN MENU, type: s (Setup).

In a highlighted line at the bottom, Pine displays: Choose a setup task from the menu below :

Type: L (collectionList).

In the SETUP COLLECTION LIST, type: a (Add collection).

In Pine's FOLDER COLLECTION ADD screen (see Figure 4):

1. In the Nickname field, type a nickname for the server that your other email account is on, and in the Server field, type the server's Internet domain name, (probably either icarus.cc.uic.edu, tigger.cc.uic.edu, or mailserv.uic.edu), followed by /user=yrloginid
   For example: tigger.cc.uic.edu/user=adabyron
   [Note that for mailserve, you have to also tell pine to use port 1235: mailserv.uic.edu:1235/user=adabyron ]
   Press Enter.
   
   
2. Pine will most likely ask you to login to the server at this point, by displaying something like:
   HOST: whatever.where.ever.edu USER: yrloginid ENTER PASSWORD:
   at the bottom of the screen. Type your account's password and press Enter.
   
   
3. Use Tab or the arrow keys to move to the Path: field and type the path to your mail files on the server. For icarus, tigger, or mailserv, that is: mail/

(Be sure to include the trailing slash.)


4. Type: Ctrl-x (eXit/Save)

Pine will ask: Exit and save changes?
Type: y (yes)


5. This returns you to the SETUP COLLECTION LIST screen; the folder collection you added will be listed.

Type: e (Exit Setup)

[Note: See Important Note About Folder Collections and mailserv above if you receive an error setting pine up to manage your mailserv account.]
 
 

  PINE 4.10   FOLDER COLLECTION EDIT               Folder: INBOX  17 Messages
  
Nickname  : Mailserv
Server    : mailserv.cc.uic.edu:1235/user=adabyron
Path      : mail/
View      :
  
   Fill in the fields above to create a new Folder Collection.
   Use "^G" command to get help specific help for each item, and
   use "^X" when finished.
  
  
  
  
^G Get Help  ^X eXit/Save              ^Y PrvPg/Top ^K Cut Line
^C Cancel    ^D Del Char               ^V NxtPg/End ^U UnDel Line

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For example, I receive email addressed to document, connect, and uic2000@uic.edu. If I create a role for each type of incoming message, my replies to messages sent to these addresses could automatically use different From addresses, Fccs, and/or signatures, or use a special template file (which could even be generated on the fly, by running an external program!) to set up the body of the reply.

Comments are welcome; please send them to
Judith Grobe Sachs, judygs@uic.edu