Section I - Introduction and General Questions about Pine
Introduction to Pine
Pine is an easy to use, character based mail client. It supports full screen
editing of messages, binary attachments (such as GIF or ZIP files), and other
advanced message system features that were not possible using older electronic
mail clients.
Functionally, most mailers have the same basic capabilities (reading,
creating, sending, and managing mail). Pine's features include the following:
Pine allows full screen reading and editing of messages. For example, you
can make corrections in your message while you write it, and you can scroll up
and down through a message while you are reading it.
One of Pine's strong points is that it will not perform any major action
without asking you first. This helps prevent accidental deletions of messages,
overwriting of files, etc. There's almost always a chance to turn back and
think things over.
For every screen and menu, Pine has a help command that lists the commands
available in that screen, with comments and explanations.
Pine has a feature (known as MIME encoding) for sending binary files along
with your message. If your correspondent also has MIME capability, you can
transmit, for example, a graphics file or a formatted word processor document
via mail.
Pine can store Internet mail addresses in an address book. This allows you
only to have to remember short nicknames for people you mail often. See Section
VII for more about address books.
The FOLDER INDEX screen (cf. Section III) allows you to browse through your
messages. For instance, you can skim past some messages and read the most
important ones first.
From within Pine, you can print your messages on any networked printer
accessible to Helix's lpr command. Many Macintosh and PC users are able to
print to an attached desktop printer as well.
Pine allows you to save your messages into folders, which you can open at a later time. This allows you to "sort" your mail into different folders.
To run Pine, at the helix% prompt just type pine.
Once you start pine, you will notice a few characteristics that are
consistent throughout the program. Let's go over some of these.
There are four informational lines on the screen that will have the same
format regardless of which screen you are viewing. The lines are:
- Title Line (Line 1)
The first line of each screen (see Figure 1) shows you exactly where
you are within Pine. The figure shows that we are in the MAIN MENU. If you are
browsing through your messages, the title line will say FOLDER INDEX, and so on
for the other screens.
Information/Message/Error Line (Third Line from Bottom)
The third line from the bottom is an informational line. It will print
notifications when new mail arrives, descriptive messages when actions are
completed, questions which require short responses, and error messages if
something is wrong.
List of Command Keys (Last 2 lines)
The last two lines on the screen show what possible actions, together
with Keyboard Commands to execute them. Pine displays a Keyboard Command as
highlighted text with the corresponding action just to its right in normal text.
Keyboard Commands have two forms. The first form is a one-letter
abbreviation of the action itself. This form is found in all of the menus
except the COMPOSE MESSAGE screen.
The second form is found in the COMPOSE MESSAGE screen. Since all the
characters on the keyboard are reserved for typing the message, the commands
are invoked by a combination of keys, one of which is the Control key (often
labeled Ctrl). That is, the command is performed by holding down the Control
key and pressing the appropriate secondary key simultaneously.
Usually, the Keyboard Command is the first letter of the corresponding action. For example,
- C is the Keyboard Command to Compose a message in the MAIN MENU
and the FOLDER INDEX.
- ^C (Ctrl-C) is the Keyboard Command to Cancel the message in the
COMPOSE MESSAGE Screen.
Sometimes two or more actions have the same first letter, as, for example,
"Previous Command" and "Print." Therefore, some keyboard commands cannot
represent the first letter of the corresponding actions.
- Y is the Keyboard Command to Print a message. Think of it as
"PrYnt".
- Return Key
You do not have to press the Return key when issuing keyboard commands.
Arrow Keys
In addition to the way things appear on the screen, Pine also has
conventions in the way actions or commands are chosen. When a menu appears,
you will see a highlighted bar. This is the "Selection Bar," and you can use
the arrow keys to move the bar over the part of the screen you want to select.
You can also use the arrow keys to correct mistakes when viewing and
editing a message.
Alternatives are available: Ctrl-P to move to the previous line
and Ctrl-N to move to the next line.
Paging
Whenever you can use the arrow keys, you can use the space bar and the
minus sign (-) to page downward and upward. These commands are similar
to the arrow keys but scroll the text a full screen at a time.
v
Re-Painting the Screen (Ctrl-L)
When you press Ctrl-L, Pine will clear your screen and print
everything back on the screen again. This command is used when your screen has
extra, unwanted characters due to line noise or system messages. In the FOLDER
INDEX and MESSAGE TEXT Screens, Ctrl-L will look to see if you have any
new mail as well. See Section III - Retrieving Your Messages for more
information.
Canceling Commands (Ctrl-C)
The command Ctrl-C is used to abort any actions that you have
started and do not want to finish. Examples are pressing Ctrl-X before
you really want to send your message, and aborting a reply command. You will
notice that whenever Pine displays Y/N/^C options you can enter y or
n, or press Ctrl-C to abort completely.
Quitting
From just about any screen within Pine, you can use the Q Key
Command to quit Pine.
The Pine e-mail client program is copyright 1989-1994 University of Washington.
Pine is a trademark of the University of Washington.
This document was subsequently modified for use on systems administered by the High
Performance Scientific Computing Section, DCRT, National Institutes of Health. This is
the HPSCS version.
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