Pine
From Grokdoc
Pine is an e-mail application, developed at University of Washington, that you use in a text-mode terminal, but it is very user friendly. In every screen of Pine, there is a small tip area that shows you the keys you can use in that screen, and what command it results in. By default, Pine shows you only a minimal set of keys that most people need. You can configure Pine to make additional commands available later on when you get more comfortable. Key label that is prefixed by a caret "^" means you hold down the ctrl key and type the character indicated after the caret.
Pine is by default designed to check e-mail that is handled locally (by a mail server that runs on your machine), and not through your ISP's mail server. It is possible to setup Pine to query a POP3 or IMAP account that your ISP setup for you, but this setup works better if you have a fast Internet.
Alternatively, use "fetchmail" to download the e-mail and handle it through your local mail system, then use the default setup of Pine to check your e-mail. "Fetchmail" is usually used as a background program, which means it doesn't interact with you a whole lot. As a result, it is more difficult to figure out how to get it working. Setting up "fetchmail" involves editing ~/.fetchmailrc, the syntax of which you can find by using the "man fetchmailrc" command.
Pine does not normally work with a webmail account, unless the webmail provider lets you download your e-mail to your computer by either POP3 or IMAP, or unless you use a separate, dedicated webmail downloader program, such as "fetchyahoo" in a similar fashion to "fetchmail."
Note on Debian: Pine is not packaged in the official Debian distribution, but you may obtain a debian package for Pine directly from here, University of Washionton Pine Information Center.
--Likai Liu 13:12, 14 Jun 2004 (EDT)
pine inconsistency:
Return to main menu when:
- editing a mail :
^C
- in (most) other cases:
<
- Also sometimes:
M
- Finally, to logout (from say putty) after finishing with pine:
^D
- You can also quit pine with
Q
I never really noticed that, but my father got stuck on it yesterday. :)
--Iabervon 17:33, 14 Jun 2004 (EDT)
If you are using Pine on a remote machine, you need a separate mechanism to get attachments which Pine can't display internally. That is, if someone sends you a picture and you want to see it, you have to View Attachments with >, move to the one you want, and Save it (not Export). Then you need to get it from the remote machine in some way. My mother puts them in a web-visible directory and looks at them with a browser; other possibilities include scp.
Pine has a nice address book, which lets you make lists of addresses not just with the actual email addresses but with the address book entries. If you use the nicknames in the list, then updating the address for the nickname will take care of all of the lists. Also, you don't have to worry about getting the email address right when making the list.
