Pine Email for UNIX

• About pine
• Using pine with Your mailserv Account
• Entering and Exiting pine
• Creating and Sending Outgoing Mail
• Reading, Replying, and Forwarding Mail
• Using the pine Folder Collection List and Folder List Screens
• Using the pine Address Book
• Customizing pine, pt 1

pine

Pine's table of available commands (at the bottom of each Pine screen) and extensive online help make it possible to learn to use Pine just by using it. To execute one of the commands listed in a Pine table of commands, type the indicated character(s). If the character is preceded by a ^, press Ctrl and hold it down while typing the character; Ret means to press Enter. Type ? (or Ctrl-g when composing a note) to use Pine's online help.

The stand-alone text editor pico comes with pine. Pico is the default editor used when composing electronic mail in pine (although you can select any other available editor, including vi, if you wish), and can also be used to as a separate command to edit any of your UNIX files.

Pine is just as easy to use with email accounts on other machines as it is to use with email accounts on the machine that it's running on. (The only requirement is that the machine supports IMAP; pine doesn't support POP very well.)

That's good, because you're going to want to have your email account on mailserv, rather than on tigger or icarus. You can have your email account on mailserv and use pine on tigger or icarus to read it, just as easily as it is to read tigger email with pine on tigger and icarus email with pine on icarus.

Setting pine up to do email on other machines isn't trivial, though. But as its last step, the move to mailserv utility will configure pine to do your mailserv email for you. After that, your mailserv INBOX will be another pine Inbox and your mailserv folder collection will be another folder collection when you use pine on icarus or tigger. See the appendix Setting pine up to Read Your mailserv Mail for more information.

To start pine and display the Main Menu, at the UNIX prompt, enter:

pine

To start pine and display the Compose Message screen to send mail to the electronic mail address user@node:

pine  user@node

To quit pine, in the Main Menu or a mailbox index:

q

When you enter pine without specifying an email address, the program displays its Main Menu, Figure 1.

   PINE 4.58   MAIN MENU                            Folder: INBOX   8 Messages


       ?     HELP               -  Get help using Pine

       C     COMPOSE MESSAGE    -  Compose and send/post a message

       I     MESSAGE INDEX      -  View messages in current folder

       L     FOLDER LIST        -  Select a folder OR news group to view

       A     ADDRESS BOOK       -  Update address book

       S     SETUP              -  Configure or update Pine

       Q     QUIT               -  Exit the Pine program


   Copyright 1989-2003.  PINE is a trademark of the University of Washington.
                   
? Help                     P PrevCmd                  R RelNotes
O OTHER CMDS L [ListFldrs] N NextCmd                  K KBLock

You can choose to read the online help, write (compose) and send a message, look at the index of your incoming email messages, open or maintain your mail folders, update your address book, configure or update pine, or quit pine. You can select your choice either by using the arrow keys on the keyboard to highlight it and then press Enter, or just type the letter which is displayed to the left of each choice.
 

   PINE 4.58   COMPOSE MESSAGE                      Folder: INBOX  13 Messages

To      : _
Cc      :
Attchmnt:
Subject :
----- Message Text -----





^G Get Help  ^X Send      ^R Rich Hdr  ^Y PrvPg/Top ^K Cut Line  ^O Postpone
^C Cancel    ^D Del Char  ^J Attach    ^V NxtPg/End ^U UnDel Line^T To AddrBk

To address and send the message:

1. In the To: field, type the email address to which you want to send mail. and then press Tab or Enter. You can enter your own email address here and send a note to yourself if you just want to test it.
   
   
2. In the Subject: field, type the subject of your email and press Tab or Enter.
   
   
3. Type your message below the Message Text line, type your message. While you are typing your message, you will be using pine's pico editor.
   
   
4. Type the body of your mail message. Pine will automatically move the cursor to the next line as needed, or you can press Enter to add a line and move your cursor to the beginning of the new line. Pine will also scroll the screen when you fill the Message Text area.
   
   
5. When you're finished, type Ctrl-x to send the message. (Or ^X as it says in the table of commands at the bottom of the Compose Message screen.)
   
   
6. Pine will ask you whether you want to send the message. Type y (yes) or press Enter to send the message. (If you type n (no), you will be returned to the message to continue working on it.) The message is sent and a copy is saved to your sent-mail mailbox folder.

  PINE 4.58   MESSAGE INDEX                 Folder: INBOX  Message 2 of 3

+      1 Feb   2 Sleepy                  (4,823)   Re: That apple
+ N   2 Feb  1 Sleeping Beauty     (1,316)  Reminders
+ N    3 Feb   2 Word of the Day          (1,524)  ascetic
 

? Help       < FldrList   P PrevMsg     - PrevPage    D Delete      R Reply
O OTHER CMDS > [ViewMsg]  N NextMsg   Spc NextPage    U Undelete    F Forward

In any pine Message Index screen, there is a mail summary line for each mail message. The pine commands listed in the command menu at the bottom of the Message Index screen act on the mail message whose summary line is currently highlighted.

Please note that you can press u to "Undelete" a mail message only if you have not quit from pine since the message was marked for deletion.

The same set of commands are used used to move through the Collection List and the Folder List screens:

To select a collection or folder:

use Tab or the arrow keys to highlight the one you want to browse.

To open the selected collection or folder:

type: >

To return to the previous screen:

type: <

You can also create nicknames so that you need not remember email addresses of those people to whom you often send email.

1. From the Main menu, choose a (Address Book).
   
   
2. To add a new person, type @ (AddNew).
   
   
3. You can then enter the information for the person:
   • The Nickname: is what you will type later to be able to access the rest of this person's information, so make it something simple.
   • In the Addresses: field, type the person's email address(es).
     
     
4. When you are done, type Ctrl-x to save the entry.

Now, when you compose a message, you may simply type the nickname into the To: field and then press Enter. The rest of the name and address will then appear.

There are other ways to use your pine address book; see More on Using Your pine Address Book.

For example, to change the return address that pine puts on your outgoing messages to yournetid@uic.edu: use the arrow keys to highlight "user-domain", press Enter to edit the string, type uic.edu, then press Enter again (Ret) to set the changes. (Make sure you've also used the Web utility to point your yournetid@uic.edu generic address to your ACCC Unix account.)

When you're finished, type e (Exit Config), and type y or press Enter to keep the changes, or type n or Ctrl-c to cancel them.

There's more you can do to make pine work the way you want it to; see Customizing pine, pt 2.