Reading Email with Pine: Concepts of Pine

Pine was developed at the University of Washington, Seattle. It was originally based on the UNIX elm email software but has evolved so much to be unofficially nicknamed "Pine Is No longer Elm". It is available for UNIX, DOS and OS/2.

Official pine documentation is available from U. of Washington.

Pine was designed with the following design concepts:

• It should be simple and easy-to-use for people who just want to get work done.
• It shouldn't do any surprising things and should provide immediate feedback for each operation.
• It should have a limited set of carefully selected functions.
• It should also have power-user features that can be turned on optionally.

Pine is a UNIX based email system and can be used on both Tigger and Icarus. It is also a command based system meaning that it accepts keyboard commands and does not usually respond to mouse clicks. Every screen in pine has a list of keyboard commands at the bottom.

Note: If a keyboard command refers to ^X, it means hold down the Control Key and hit X simultaneously.

The main screen in pine is shown below. Note the main functions and the keyboard commands at the bottom of the screen. The highlight bar (black bar) moves when you use the arrow keys to move up and down. If you hit enter, that item is selected.

Pine Main Menu:

Compose Message: Allows you to compose a new email message. You would use this option when you want to send email to someone.

Folder Index: This lets you view messages in the current folder. The current folder that is open is listed in the status bar at the very top of the pine main menu.

Folder List: This lets you view all folders of mail or news. Generally, you will want to use this option to read your incoming mail.

Address Book: This allows you to view your database of email addresses. Also, you can add and edit entries.

Setup: Advanced configuration options are available via this option. You can change your UNIX password, edit your signature file or configure pine.

Help: Displays the extensive online help in pine.

Quit: Lets you quit from pine.

To launch pine:

• To start from the main menu, type in "pine" (without the quotes, of course)
• To start pine to quickly email someone, type in "pine netid". (Where netid is the email address of the person who you want to email.
• To start pine and go directly to the Inbox, type in "pine -i"

If this is the first time you are launching pine, you may get the following screen:

Note the question at the bottom of the screen. You are expected to type in either a Y (for yes) or N (for no). If you type in Y, you will be automatically emailed a short document that describes the features and common commands in pine. I suggest that you get this document since it is useful.