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POWER PINE®
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Copyright © Nancy McGough & Infinite Ink
Last modified 10-Dec-2007
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POWER PINE®
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MetaNote I wrote this Power Pine page for someone who wants to really understand the inner workings of Pine, the multi-platform POP, IMAP, NNTP, & ESMTP client, and take advantage of its power features. A lot of the instructions in this article depend on discussion that comes earlier, so if you are having trouble following the instructions, please go back and read the earlier parts of the article.
Version MetaNote The current released version, Pine 4.64, was released 28 September 2005. The current testing version, Alpine 0.999999, was released 6 December 2007.
Searching MetaNote You can use this form to search the web, the Infinite Ink site, or the Deflexion.com site (my blog) for more information about Alpine or Pine (or about anything!).
![[New!]](/images/newan.gif){kind=small}
News MetaNote The Alpine- and Pine-related news items that used to be posted here are now posted
on my Deflexion.com blog
with the label ALPINE. (Alpine is Pine's new name.)
PC-Pine is Unix Pine that the University of Washington Pine team ported to Microsoft's platforms. Versions 4.0 and later — the latest version is 4.64 — are 32-bit and run on Windows 95 and later (98, Me, NT, 2000, XP, etc). Versions 3.96 and earlier are 16-bit and run on all versions of Microsoft Windows and on DOS. In addition to supporting the Unix keyboard shortcuts, PC-Pine has a menu bar with drop-down menus, dialog boxes, clickable buttons, clickable key-menu commands, clickable messages in the Message Index, clickable URLs & web-hostnames, clickable attachments, right-click pop-up menus, scroll bars, and supports cutting, copying, & pasting using the Windows clipboard.
In addition to the many reasons to use Pine that I list on the Infinite Ink main Pine page, MS Windows users have the additional reason that there is no other Windows mail client that I know of that is as powerful and customizable as PC-Pine is. The area that Pine really shines — compared to other MS Windows mail clients — is:
| Security and Privacy |
Unlike Unix mail clients, most MS Windows mail clients do not give users a lot of control over how message headers, message bodies (plain, enriched, or HTML), and attachments are displayed. This lack of control makes you vulnerable to attachments containing viruses and “bugged” HTML messages. I discuss these in Security and Privacy Features on the Infinite Ink main Pine page.
Some ways to secure Pine and your system are described in the Privacy and Security section below. I describe some areas where I think Pine needs to be improved in the Pine Security-Enhancement Wishes section of my main Pine page.
Many people have an account on a Unix system and happily use Pine by SSH'ing from their Windows machine to a Unix machine and running Unix Pine in an SSH window. If your machine is running Windows 95 or higher, there are many reasons you might want to use PC-Pine rather than Unix Pine in an SSH window.
With PC-Pine you can:
Disadvantages of using PC-Pine rather than using Unix Pine in a telnet/ssh window include the following.
In the next section, I describe how you can get many of the advantages of PC-Pine and not have the first two disadvantages that I list above.
With Pine running on one of the Unix-on-Windows
packages, such as Cygwin, you can run Pine on your PC and not have
disadvantage #2 above, i.e., you can view and patch the Pine source
code. The disadvantages of Pine on Unix on Windows are that 1) you need
to install a
| Note | According to this 2004-Dec-10 comp.mail.pine message by Mark Crispin, “No mailbox format except for [c-client] mbx works in Cygwin.” |
This article describes how to set up PC-Pine 4.64 on a system running Microsoft Windows 95 or higher. These instructions do not work for earlier versions of PC-Pine and need to be modified for Windows NT, 2000, and XP (this is noted below).
Pine was designed to be an IMAP client so if your mail is not delivered to an IMAP server, you probably do not want to use PC-Pine as your primary mail client.
| Tip | If you are looking for an ISP that supports IMAP, see my IMAP Service Providers page, which includes lots of IMAP tips, a growing lists of reasonably-priced & free IMAP service providers, and instructions for setting up Pine to access the INBOX and mailstore at each of these providers. |
In order to set up PC-Pine you need the following information:
If you will use Pine as an NNTP client, you also need to know:
And finally it is useful to know:
![[HOT]](/images/hot.gif){kind=small}
![[Updated!]](/images/updated2.gif){kind=small}
/); MS Windows/NT usually uses backslash
(\); Courier IMAP, Cyrus IMAP, and NNTP use dot (.).If you can not find the answer to these questions on your ISP's web pages, ask in an appropriate local discussion group, i.e., a discussion group that is for discussion among users of your ISP. If you can't find the answers in your ISP's web pages or in their local discussion groups, send these questions to your ISP's technical support. Be forewarned that some ISPs do not (yet) understand IMAP and do not know that PC-Pine exists.
I use a fixed-width font for text that is displayed on
your computer, text that is meant to be typed, and names of files.
Variables and names that depends on your settings are formatted in
italics.
Most Pine commands are not case sensitive so if I say “To go to the Main Menu, type M,” you can type either M or m. Some non-alphabetic characters work without holding down the SHIFT key. For example, if I say “To go to the parent screen, type <” you can type either < (less than) or ,(comma). Some non-alphabetic characters do require the SHIFT key. For example, to use the flag command you need to type * (SHIFT-8). Just typing 8 will not invoke the flag command.
Some Pine commands are issued by pressing the CTRL key and while holding it down, typing a character. For example, to get Pine context-sensitive help, type CTRL-G. CTRL-G is abbreviated ^G and in general CTRL-X is abbreviated ^X. Usually you do not need to hold down all three keys (the CTRL key, the SHIFT key, and the character); just the CTRL key and the unshifted character will do. For example, to set a mark in Pico you can type either CTRL-6 or CTRL-^ (“control caret”). And to get Pine context-sensitive help you can type either CTRL-G or CTRL-g. An exception is CTRL-_ (“control underscore”), which launches an alternate editor. For this command you need to press CTRL-SHIFT-_.
Often there are many ways to issue a Pine command. I usually give only one way but you can sometimes find another equivalent command by looking at the key menu at the bottom of the Pine screen or by consulting Pine's context-sensitive Help by typing ^G.
If I am writing about the Microsoft Windows world, I use %HOME% to mean whatever is specified by the HOME environment variable. If I am writing about the Unix world or about many worlds (e.g., Unix and MS Windows), I use $HOME to mean whatever is specified by the HOME environment variable.
I use the word directory for a place on a computer disk where files and possibly other directories, called subdirectories, are stored. I use mailbox, folder, or message folder for a place on a computer disk where Pine stores messages. I hope the following paragraph illustrates the use of these terms.
PC-Pine was created back in the days when the name of a DOS or MS-Windows file was limited to eight characters followed by a period and a three-character extension. Because of this, the PC-Pine default folder names contain eight characters or fewer. For example, the PC-Pine default is to put a message that you postpone into a folder named “postpond.” The default location for this folder — and all PC-Pine default folders — is your
%HOME%\mail directory.
A special folder name is INBOX. You might not have a folder that is actually named INBOX. INBOX is an abbreviation for whatever you or your system administrator has specified as your primary incoming folder on the IMAP server. When the name INBOX is used in an IMAP client, it is case-insensitive so it is fine to write INBOX, inbox, Inbox, or any other combination of lower and upper case.
For more about these and other email-related terms, see:
The easiest way to set up PC-Pine is to unzip pmxxxw32.zip
into a directory, double click on pine.exe, and leave all
Pine-related files and directories in their default locations. The defaults,
which are discussed in the Pine
man page and Support
Files, Environment Variables, and Registry Settings: PC-Pine, are
as follows.
| File | Default Location |
all local mailboxes (aka “folders”)sentmail mailboxsavemail mailboxpostpond mailboxintruptd mailbox |
the primary folder collection, which defaults to
(if |
| remote IMAP-accessible mailboxes | not set; to specify this, see Setting IMAP, NNTP, and Local Collections below |
|
|
pine.exe directory |
dict.u |
spell32.dll directory |
|
|
pinerc directory |
deadletr (if it already exists in this directory) |
%HOME% |
newsrc.old |
newsrc directory |
mailbox.lock files |
mailbox directory |
C!!MyHome!Msgs!mailbox (lock file for C:\MyHome\Msgs\mailbox) |
%WINDIR%\Temp
(4.31 and later) %WINDIR% (4.30) %TEMP% (4.21 and earlier) |
mapi_debug.txt (needs to be created by user; new
in 4.30) |
%TEMP% |
|
|
%TMP% |
aeN.txt (alternate editor
temp files) |
%TMPDIR% |
After a lot of experiments, I have decided that I like to keep the Pine program files and my Pine user-specific files in separate directories; and I like my user files to go in a subdirectory of my “home” directory. In the next five sections I discuss Pine configuration files and explain why I set things up the way I do.
| Trivium | The rc in pinerc and newsrc is a Unix naming convention that stands for either runtime configuration, runlevel change, or run commands (take your pick!). Thanks to Richard Smith, the maintainer of geekrave.org, for telling me he thinks of rc as runtime configuration; Elmar Hinz for telling me he thinks of it as runlevel change; and Imperial College for FOLDOC, the Free On-Line Dictionary Of Computing, and its definition and history of rc. |
As you can see in the table above, most Pine user files reside in the directory that the pinerc file is in. PC-Pine finds the pinerc file by looking at:
The first one in this list that exists is what Pine uses as the pinerc file. All user files listed in the fifth (green) row of the table above are read from and written to the directory that the pinerc file is in. More details about where PC-Pine looks for user files is at:
I prefer to use Pine configuration method #3 (%HOME%\Pine\pinerc) and in the next few sections I discuss why. In Setting Environment Variables below, I walk you through setting up a HOME environment variable & directory, and a “Pine” subdirectory.
Separating program files and user files is generally a good idea because it makes it easy to
Separating these files is an example of modular architecture.
Another key feature of my PC-Pine configuration is that I put my Pine user files in a subdirectory named Pine in my “home” directory. Using a home directory is useful because:
-passfile
(discussed below) and -aux command-line
arguments. I go into a lot of detail about local and remote Pine configurations
in Compartmentalizing
and Sharing Your Pine Configuration.
If you are going to use the Pine configuration that I use, you can name your Pine program files directory, messages directory, and “Home” directory anything you like. However, your Pine user-files directory must be named Pine and must reside in your “Home” directory. Here are some suggestions for naming these directories.
| Directory Contents | Name Suggestions |
| Pine Program Files | C:\Program Files\Pine or C:\Proggies\Pine or C:\Proggies\PC-Pine or wherever you like |
| “Home” | C:\Nancy (but use your name instead of mine!) or C:\MyHome or D:\MyHome or C:\Home or C:\Data or wherever you like |
| Pine User Files | %HOME%\Pine (if you want to use Pine configuration method 3, this directory must be named Pine and must reside in your %HOME directory) |
| Local Messages | %HOME%\Msgs or %HOME%\Mail or %HOME%\Messages or wherever you like (the Pine default is %HOME%\mail) |
For security reasons, you might want to use bizarre and completely non-standard file and directory names. I discuss this in the Privacy and Security section below.
The next two sections discuss my personal naming strategies. The section Step by Step Through Downloading and Setting Up PC-Pine walks you through creating the directories and setting the HOME environment variable.
This is where the user-specific files of Pine and many programs that originated in the Unix world go. The Microsoft default is to put user-created documents in C:\My Documents. I like my personal files, including documents and configuration files, to be located together so I use a modified Microsoft naming style and name my download directory C:\MyDownloads, my web sites directory C:\MyWebs, my backup directory C:\MyBackups, and my home directory C:\MyHome. And I set up all my programs to save their configuration files in C:\MyHome. This way when I need to find or backup files I've created or updated—or my programs have created or updated—I can go to Windows Explorer and sort by name and all My directories are alphabetized together. On a machine that has only one disk drive, I use C:\MyHome. On a machine that has more than one drive, I like to keep user files somewhere other than C; for example, in D:\MyHome.
Both Unix Pine and PC-Pine use a directory named “mail” in your home directory as the default for where folders are stored. Since Pine is both a mail and news client, you can use Pine to save both mail and news messages in your folders. To me it seems incorrect to call this directory “mail,” so I call it “Msgs.” I capitalize the letter M because my personal naming convention is to name directories using an initial capital letter. You can, of course, name the directory where your folders reside anything you like!
The procedure I describe in this section is one of many ways to set up PC-Pine. I discuss why I like this configuration and give a link to information about alternate configurations in Configuration Overview above. These instructions were originally written for someone using Windows 95 or 98. If you are using another operating system, it should be fairly straightforward to adapt these instructions to your system.
If you have used Pine before on this computer, make a backup of all Pine-related files, especially your pinerc file(s), address book(s), and PASSFILE.
If PC-Pine is currently installed on this computer, clear the Pine-related registry settings before you run a new version. To display the Pine-related registry settings, click on the Windows Start button, choose Run, and type:
\full\path\to\pine.exe -registry dump
To clear these settings, run this:
\full\path\to\pine.exe -registry clear
The next time you run PC-Pine, it will reset the registry with the correct
settings for the PC-Pine that you are currently using. To find out more,
see Support
Files, Environment Variables, and Registry Settings: PC-Pine and Pine
Comand-Line Arguments, especially the section on the -registry
command-line argument, at the UW PIC.
| Tip | ![[W]](/images/webpine.gif "WebPine logo"){kind=small} If you are a user of MyUW.net
or are a University of Washington student, staff, or faculty, the
University of Washington has a step-by-step guide to Configuring
PC-Pine for UW Email. |
openssl and that you are checking the correct
pine.tar.gz, specify the absolute path to each of these./usr/local/bin and on my PC, I use
C:\Program Files\Pine,sudo
command to be able to manage files and directories in the /usr
directory. pine-bin.osx-10.4.Z
on Mac OS X Tiger or, to build Pine yourself, see Using
a PASSFILE with Unix and Mac Pine below.dict.app dict.d dict.i dict.s install.txt ldap32.dll mailcap.sam mimetype.sam pico.exe pine.exe pine.hlp pine.ndx pinerc.adv spell32.dll
| MS- Windows Tip |
If you do not see all these files or their file extensions
in Windows Explorer (or in My Computer), you need to change
your Folder Options. To do this, click the Windows Start button,
choose Settings > Folder Options, and then choose the tab
labeled View. Make sure that the following is not
checked
[ ] Hide file extensions for known file types
and the following, which is in the Hidden Files section, is checked
[X] Show all files
These settings are needed by the set-up procedure below and are also useful for detecting trojans and viruses, which often take advantage of the fact that the default MS Windows configuration hides a lot from users. Here is what the Folder Options window looks like in MS Windows 2000. 
|
Many programs that originated in the Unix world use environment variables for settings that are used by more than one program. An advantage of using environment variables is that if something changes, such as your timezone or the path to your default text editor, you can make the change once — in the environment variable — and the change will be reflected in all the programs that use the environment variable. Another advantage of using environment variables is that a configuration file, such as the pinerc file, can be transferred to another system without needing to be edited because the variables will be set by the local environment variable settings. This section walks you through setting up the environment variables that Pine (and some other programs) use.
| Note |
|
REM The next 3 environment variables are used by PC-Pine SET TZ=EST+05EDT SET HOME=C:\MyHome SET USER_DICTIONARY=%HOME%\Pine\myDic.txtPine uses the
TZ (time zone) environment variable to
construct the Date header in messages that you send. Set this to
the appropriate time
zone setting for your location. For example, since I live in
London, I set TZ to GMT00BST. For more
info, see F. Pollastri's Time
Zones, especially the links in the Other Information section
at the bottom of his page.dict.u and stored in the directory
that spell32.dll is in (and thus not be backed up when you back
up your home directory.) SET EDITOR=C:\Progra~1\Vim\Runtime\gvim.exe -for if your editor, gvim.exe in this example, is on your path, you do not need to specify the absolute path and can use the following instead
SET EDITOR=gvim.exe -fThe second setting is more easily portable to
autoexec.bats
on other MS-Windows machines.pinercEx,
if it exists, and pinerc to read runtime
configuration settings. (These are named .pinercex
and .pinerc in Unix Pine.) If you want PC-Pine to automatically
use a third file, include a line like the following in your autoexec.bat
SET PINECONF=%HOME%\Pine\pinercConf%PINECONF% is used to store “generic” Pine settings that can be used by any Pine user on the system. It can be named anything you like. I suggest the name
pinercConf so that when
you sort your Pine user files, it will be sorted next to pinerc
and pinercEx.| Tip |
To get a quick start customizing Pine, copy and paste my sample pinerc-generic (or a fragment of it) into the file you've specified as %PINECONF%. You can append to or override these settings in your pinerc and pinercex files using MSC and MSXC. I discuss |
\full\path\to\programprogram; instead you can
just type program followed by any arguments you
want to use.
To avoid typing a password when you use Pine to access a password-protected POP, IMAP, NNTP, or ESMTP server, you need to be using either
In this section, I discuss option #1. If you are interested in using
option #2, which involves setting the ssh-command
& the ssh-path in your pinerc, and setting up an SSH
private-public key pair, see Scott Leibrand's 1999-Dec-13 message Re:
Pine config of news server/login/groups (this
message is also available at Archive.org).
All versions of PC-Pine have the ability to store passwords, but non-PC versions of Pine need to be built with this option (details about building Pine with a PASSFILE are below).
In order for Pine to use a PASSFILE, the PASSFILE must exist. In non-PC Pine, the name of the PASSFILE and its location is chosen by the person who built Pine. To create the PASSFILE on a Unix-like system, use commands like this:
touch /path/to/my/secret/passfile chmod 600 /path/to/my/secret/passfile
For example, if you use the pine from rpm.livna.org, use these commands:
touch ~/.pine.pwd chmod 600 ~/.pine.pwd
For another example, see how to create a PASSFILE for Pine running on a DreamHost shell account.
In PC-Pine, the default PASSFILE is named pine.pwd and is
located in the directory where your PINERC is (pine.pwd file,
use Windows Explorer to open the
New Text Document.txt
to pine.pwd.
You can override the name and location of the PASSFILE using Pine's -passfile
command-line argument, which is discussed in the next section.
| Important |
|
-passfile and -nowrite_passfile
Command-Line ArgumentsStarting with version 4.43 for PC-Pine and version 4.55 for Unix and
non-PC versions of Pine, you can specify a non-default location for the
PASSFILE by launching Pine with the -passfile command-line
argument. For example:
pine -passfile /absolute/path/to/your/passfile
If you are on a shared Unix system and you launch Pine with the -passfile
argument, I recommend that you create a shell
script (maybe called mypine or even better something
that will be a mystery to spies) that launches pine with this and possibly
other arguments. Do not name your script pine and do not
use a Unix alias because these are more vulnerable to spies (for example,
if the spy runs the ps, who or w command).
The -nowrite_passfile argument tells Pine to "Read from
a passfile if there is one, but never offer to write a password to the
passfile." This command-line argument was introduced in Pine 4.60.
| Tips |
|
If you are using a non-PC version of Pine, for example Unix Pine or Mac Pine, and if it was built using the default build files, it probably does not support a PASSFILE. To check, run
pine -h
If the -passfile argument is listed, it supports a PASSFILE.
If the -passfile argument is not listed and if it is Pine
4.55 or later, it does not support a PASSFILE. To find out how to build
Pine so that it can optionally store passwords, see:
| Build Tips |
To specify the PASSFILE as an argument to the build
command, run a shell script like the following from your Pine build
directory:
#!/bin/sh ./build clean ./build 'EXTRACFLAGS=-DPASSFILE=\".pine.pwd\"' osx # ^^^ # platform
Important:
To avoid problems with quotation marks and other characters that
might be interpreted as metacharacters by your shell, run this as
a Bourne shell script (that's what To check that your newly built Pine supports a PASSFILE, run Note that PASSFILE, which is
Reference: I found this Pine build syntax in this 2005-March-23 message in the YellowDog-extras mailing list. |
As I discuss in the Privacy and Security section below,
I suggest that you name PASSFILE something non-standard and bizarre to
make it harder for spies to find. Also make sure that you chmod
600
See Also: Pine's Help on the disable-password-caching feature, which is tangentially related to using a PASSFILE.
inbox-path and Other Essential Variables If all your environment variables are set correctly, you are ready to run
Pine for the first time.
| Tip | In Pine you can get context-sensitive help by typing either ?
or ^G (“Get help”).
|
pine.exe
and double click it. Alternatively, you can use the Windows Find command
to locate and launch pine.exe (Start > Find > Files
and Folders).Use configuration
file stored on an IMAP server or Use local
configuration file. For now, I recommend that you use the default
local configuration file and check the box labeled Use this
as the default PC-Pine configuration. If you are interested in
using a remote configuration, see the Infinite Ink page about Compartmentalizing
and Sharing Your Pine Configuration.E.
You will get a prompt that saysNo inbox! Folder to open as inbox:If your ISP uses IMAP, type
{your.imap.server/user=LoginName}INBOX
If your server supports secure IMAP connections, then include /tls
(available in 4.40 and later), /ssl, or /secure
inside the curly braces. With some servers you need to use the /novalidate-cert
(which is unsafe)
or the /notls qualifier. For details about these and other
qualifiers that can be used in a Pine server specification, see Do
Not Send Your Password in Plaintext below and Server
Name Syntax at the UW Pine Information Center. If you are using
Unix Pine and if you do not want to use rsh or ssh to connect to your
IMAP server, you can either explicitly specify the IMAP port number
using, for example
{your.imap.server:143/user=LoginName}INBOX
^^^
port
or include /norsh inside the curly braces. The /norsh
qualifier is not relevant to PC-Pine users and is available only in
Unix Pine 4.41 or higher. [Can't connect to your.server,143: Unknown error (10051)]it means that port 143, which is the default IMAP port, is not accessible.
{your.pop.server/user=LoginName/pop3}INBOX
^^^^^
Note
Near the bottom of this page, there is more information about using Pine to access POP INBOXes.
Preserve folder as "inbox-path" in PINERC?To answer yes, type Y.
HOST: your.imap.server USER: LoginName ENTER PASSWORD:Type your password and press RETURN.
Preserve password on DISK for next login?To answer yes, type Y.
PINE 4.64 SETUP CONFIGURATION
personal-name = <No Value Set: using "">
user-id = <No Value Set: using "">
user-domain = <No Value Set>
smtp-server = <No Value Set>
nntp-server = <No Value Set>
inbox-path = {your.imap.server/tls/user=LoginName}INBOX
To change any of these, move the cursor to the relevant line and type
C for Change. Details about the inbox-path, which specifies
your Pine primary INBOX, are in Step
5D above.From: personal-name <user-id@user-domain>If you are using Unix, Mac, or any non-PC Pine, your Pine user-id is your login name and you do not have the option to change it within Pine. You can, however, change your From header either by using a role or by setting some of Pine's
*-hdr variables.
I discuss these and other options in detail in Changing
Your From Header in Pine.smtp-server and instead you should
leave it as it is (even if it says <No Value Set>).
Pine will then use the default outgoing SMTP server for that system. For
example, this
is the case at Dreamhost.com. If you are not able to send email from
Pine running on a remote Unix system, ask the system administrator of that
system how you should configure Pine's smtp-server when Pine is running
on their system.smtp-server to something like this:
your.smtp.server/user=UserNameNote that if your SMTP server requires a fully qualified user name, it will look something like this:
your.smtp.server/user=UserName@domain.nameIf your SMTP server supports SMTP AUTH over SSL or TLS, append the
/ssl
or /tls qualifier so that you have something like this:
your.smtp.server/user=UserName/tlsIf you need to use an SMTP server port other than port 25, for example port 26, use something like this:
your.smtp.server:26
If your SMTP server uses a Submit server (usually
port 587) and if you are using Pine 4.64+, you can use this:
your.smtp.server/submitIf your SMTP server uses all of the above (alternate port, SMTP AUTH, and TLS), use something like this:
your.smtp.server:26/tls/user=UserName
Or this:
your.smtp.server/submit/user=UserName
^^^^^^^
Works in Pine 4.64+ with a Submit server (usually port 587)
Submit servers automatically use TLS so you do not need /tls
your.nntp.server/user=UserNameOnNNTPServerNote that usually you will not need to specify a user name for the NNTP server of your IAP (Internet access provider).
inbox-path should already be filled in with the information
that you gave in Step 5D above.
To use the bare-bones Pine, these are the only Pine settings you need.
| SMTP & NNTP Tips |
|
If you have the time and energy, page through the rest of the Pine SETUP CONFIGURATION screen, read Pine's context-sensitive help by typing ? or ^G, and experiment with your settings.
| Tip |
If you use some or all of my
generic pine settings, many settings in this section will already
be set. In PC-Pine, you can set the PINECONF environment variable
and then “plug in” system-wide generic Pine settings.
I discuss setting this environment variable in step
2E above. For more ways to plug & play with Pine settings and details about how it works in both PC and Unix Pine, see Compartmentalizing and Sharing Your Pine Configuration. |
sentmail (in PC-Pine) or sent-mail
(in non PC-Pine). If you would like these Fcc'd messages to be accessible
to
default-fcc to something like this:
default-fcc = {imap.server.of.your.webmail.provider}INBOX.Sent Items
^^^^^^
path & delimiter depend on IMAP server
To find out the imap.server.of.your.webmail.provider and
the “Sent” folder on that system, consult your webmail provider's
documentation. Details for some providers are in The
Table on the IMAP Service Providers page. default-fcc
depends on the variable fcc-name-rule
and on a number of feature-list settings (search for the
string fcc on the SETUP CONFIGURATION screen). It also
depends on whether the recipient of the message is in your address book with an Fcc setting and whether
a role with an Fcc setting was used to construct the message.Fcc in your
Pine default-composer-hdrs
list. This also makes it easy to change the Fcc during message composition.
This is one of the settings that I suggest in the Sample
Settings section of Compartmentalizing and Sharing Your Pine
Configuration.default-fcc
to be the same as your saved-msg
folder. Doing this makes it easy to review entire conversations
(rather than only one side of a conversation).Fcc to “deliver”
a newly composed message directly to an IMAP mailbox to which you have
write access. This is an easy way to “send” yourself, or
anyone who can read the Fcc'd mailbox, a message without using SMTP.
This is one way to use IMAP for blogging (which might
more appropriately be called plogging, i.e., IMAP logging
as opposed to web logging). If you do this regularly,
you might want to set the feature fcc-only-without-confirm.default-fcc folder.feature-list settings that I find especially
useful. If you set your EDITOR environment variable (step
2D above) and if you want the option to use it to compose a message,
make sure that you set enable-alternate-editor-cmd (the first feature
that I list below). An easy way to put these settings in your pinerc
is to copy & paste them from the
feature-list in the generic pinerc on the Compartmentalizing
and Sharing Your Pine Configuration page.
PINE 4.64 SETUP CONFIGURATION
:
Set Feature Name
--- ----------------------
[ Composer Preferences ]
:
[X] enable-alternate-editor-cmd
:
[ Reply Preferences ]
:
[ ] reply-always-uses-reply-to (unset this so Pine will give you the option to not use the Reply-To header)
:
[ Sending Preferences ]
[X] disable-sender (available in 4.51+)
:
[ ] send-without-confirm (unset this so you can use sending-filters, which are useful for greenlisting, & use ^V to control flowed text)
[ ] use-sender-not-x-sender (unsetting this may prevent spammers from getting your private - as opposed to public - email address)
[X] warn-if-blank-to-and-cc-and-newsgroups (available in 4.55+)
[X] warn-if-blank-subject (available in 4.55+)
[ Folder Preferences ]
:
[X] separate-folder-and-directory-entries (useful if you access Cyrus or other servers that support dual-use names; discussed below)
:
[ Viewer Preferences ]
:
[X] enable-msg-view-urls (available in 4.00+; discussed below)
[X] enable-msg-view-web-hostnames (available in 4.00+; discussed below)
:
[X] quell-charset-warning (available in 4.60+)
[ News Preferences ]
:
[X] enable-multiple-newsrcs (useful even if you use only one NNTP server; discussed below; available in 4.56+)
[X] hide-nntp-path (available in 4.60+)
:
[X] news-post-without-validation
:
[ ] quell-extra-post-prompt (because of this problem, I recommend unsetting this; available in 4.30+)
[ Advanced Command Preferences ]
[X] enable-aggregate-command-set (aggregate operations are discussed below)
[X] enable-arrow-navigation (makes Pine menu navigation easier)
:
[X] enable-bounce-cmd ("bounce forward" can be used to update a greenlist, train Spambayes, use SMTP to transfer msgs)
[X] enable-exit-via-lessthan-command (makes Pine menu navigation easier)
[X] enable-flag-cmd (enables manual setting and clearing of status flags and keywords (labels))
:
[X] enable-flag-screen-keyword-shortcut (available in 4.62+)
:
[X] enable-full-header-cmd (also consider enable-full-header-and-text)
:
[X] enable-unix-pipe-cmd (available in PC-Pine 4.60+; available in non-PC-Pine for 10+ years)
[ Advanced User Preferences ]
:
[X] expose-hidden-config (available in 4.40+)
:
[ ] quell-attachment-extension-warn (available in 4.60+)
[ ] quell-attachment-extra-prompt (unset this so Pine will notify you if you try to launch an attachment; available in 4.50+)
:
:
: (next section is at the bottom of the Config screen & viewable only after setting expose-hidden-config & restarting Pine )
:
--- [ Normally hidden configuration features ] ---
:
[X] allow-changing-from
:
See Also: The section below about Privacy
Configuration Settings, which lists some of the above settings, as
well as some other useful settings.
character-set variable. Alternatively, search for the string
character-set using Pine's Where (^W) command.
Set this to the character coding that you use for most of your correspondence.
For example, if you usually correspond in a Western European language,
such as English, you will might set this to ISO-8859-1
or ISO-8859-15.
For example:
character-set = ISO-8859-1
Starting with Alpine,
the Apache-Licensed Pine, you can specify UTF-8,
i.e.:
character-set = UTF-8
UTF-8 can represent any character in the Unicode
standard and is what I use and recommend. Note:
UTF-8 is available only in Alpine and is not available
in Pine.
 Note |
Unfortunately, there are currently many problems using the euro sign in email and I, along with many others, recommend that you Do not use the euro sign in an email or news message. Instead, type the string EUR rather
than the character €. For a discussion
of the problems, including why you may not see the euro sign
that is the last character before the period in the previous
sentence, see Jukka "Yucca" Korpela's the
euro sign in HTML and in some other contexts. If you need
to send the euro sign in an email message, 1] set your Pine
Thanks to Jukka for for the graphic of the euro sign and his wonderful material on international character sets! |
For correct results when viewing a character coding, you must choose
a corresponding font. For example, the vt100.fon font,
which I discuss below in the Setting Fonts section,
can be used for ISO-8859-1
but it cannot be used for the Windows-1252, ISO-8859-15, or UTF-8
full character repertoire because vt100.fon does not
contain the euro sign and some other non-ASCII characters.
When you receive a message that is in a different coding from your
Pine character-set setting, Pine displays a warning:
[ Some characters may be displayed incorrectly. ]You can turn off this warning by setting quell-charset-warning, which is one of the feature settings that I recommend above.
character-set
has the focus on the Pine configuration screen