Pine® Email Client at NJIT

Pine® is a powerful text based email and news client available on all Unix AFS clients. It was developed for novice users but is extremely fast and flexible so that advanced users also benefit. PineŽ stands for Program for Internet News and Email; it was developed and is maintained at the University of Washington. The current version of PineŽ at NJIT is 4.21. Version 4.44 is now being tested. It is anticipated that PineŽ will be upgraded to Version 4.44 in the summer of 2002.

Details for using Pine® can be found in this excellent tutorial .

By default, Pine® comes with very few features enabled. It is worthwhile to spend some effort learning about all of the available features so that Pine® can be tailored to fit your personal style. Pine® is meant to be learned by exploring. Use help to learn about a feature. If you are not sure what a feature does, try it anyway. Have fun.

To access the Setup menu, enter s from the Main menu. Then enter c to access the Configuration menu. To get help on any of the features, move the cursor to the desired feature and enter a ? . The help viewer will appear with information specific to the desired feature. Enter e to get back to the configuration menu.

Pine® allows the user to manage all email accounts from one single location. By default, mail on oak.njit.edu and mailhost.njit.edu are available to users using Pine® on AFS.

To access mail from additional servers, the servers must be added to the "Incoming-Folders" collection. The following steps describe the procedure for adding additional servers to the Incoming-Folders collection:

• Select l from the Main Menu to access the Folder lists
• Select Incoming-Folders
• Enter a to add a folder
• Enter the fully qualified domain name (e.g., host.somewhere.com) of the server when prompted. The port defaults to 143, which is the IMAP port. If you want to connect to a POP3 server you must specify this by entering "/pop3" after the fully qualified domain name of the server. For example: mail.somehere.com/pop3 . Note the following about selecting pop3 when using Pine®:
  1. POP3 provides access to only your INBOX. In other words, secondary folders such as your "saved-messages" are inaccessible.
  2. Pine®'s implementation of POP3 does not follow the traditional POP model and will leave your mail on the server.
  3. Pine®'s implementation of POP3 is not fully supported and, as such, has known limitations and inefficiencies.
• Enter inbox at the prompt for the folder.
• Enter a name of your choosing when prompted for the nickname.

Similarly, folders exported from an IMAP server can be accessed via Pine®. The following steps will add an IMAP folder collection:

• Enter s from the Main Menu to access the Setup Menu.
• Enter l to access the folder list setup.
• Enter a to add the folder.
• Enter a nickname of your choosing and the fully qualified domain name of the server. The other fields may be left blank.

The new folder collection can be accessed by choosing l to access the folder list. The name of the added collection should be at the bottom of the list.

NOTE:If the username on the POP3 or IMAP server is different than the username on the machine on which you are running Pine®, you must specify /user=username when you specify the sever. For example:

• imap.somewhere.com/user=username
• pop3.somewhere.com/user=username/pop3/

Public-Access Labs
Students in the public-access labs use the program /usr/ec/bin/ec_bw to print files. At this time there is no way to use this program to print an email directly from Pine®. To print a specific email you must first copy the email to a file in your home directory. You can then use /usr/ec/bin/ec_bw to print the file. To copy the email to a file, select e to export the email. Enter a filename when prompted.

Private Labs and Faculty Workstation
For users who use lp or lpr to print it is simple to configure printing from Pine®. From the Main Menu enter s for Setup and p for Printer. Select the "Standard UNIX print command". When reading an email enter % to print.

Washinton University Pine® Information Center
Pine® Tutorial
Washinton University Pine® FAQ
Search the Washington University Pine® Information Center
Online Man Pages for version 4.44

Other Pine® sites

FAQ for comp.mail.pine
Search comp.mail.pine using Google
Infinite Ink Pine® Pages-- Lots of good practical information here!
Yet another Pine® help page