An Introduction to (UNIX) Pine (Internet Version)

This document is an HTML version of the Introductory Pine Mailer documentation. It was created for SNRE Faculty/Staff/Students who are moving their electronic mail from our Mainframe (MTS) to the Pine mailer. See the legal stuff at the end, or contact altitude@umich.edu for more information.

Table of Contents
Section I - Introduction and General Questions about Pine:
Section II - The MAIN MENU Screen
Section III - Retrieving Your Messages
Section IV - Reading Your Mail
Section V - Creating and Sending Messages (and Replies)
Section VI - Managing Your Mail: Folders
Section VII - Keeping an Addressbook
Section VIII - Personalizing your E-Mail: The .signature file
Section IX - Conclusions, A Test, and Legal Stuff

You can Download a PostScript version of this Document if you like.

Section I - Introduction and General Questions about Pine:

Introduction to Pine

Pine is an easy to use, character based mail client. It has the ability to perform full screen editing of messages, attachments (such as Word or Excel files), and other advanced message system features that were not possible using older electronic mail clients.

Why Should I Use Pine?

Pine is a mail client that follows the IMAP internet standard. IMAP stands for Interactive Mail Access Protocol. Choosing an IMAP client allows you to read your mail from many different places. This differs from LAN based e-mail packages (like Lotus cc:Mail , or Microsoft Mail ), in which reading your mail remotely is more difficult. Pine can be used from any number of locations as long as you have a connection to a UNIX host where pine is enabled. This may be:

How is Pine Different from Other Electronic Mail Clients?

Functionally, most mailers have similar capabilities (i.e. reading, creating, sending, managing mail). Some of Pines features are:

Full Screen Capabilities:
Pine has the ability to use the whole terminal screen. This has many effects, such as full screen editing of your message. If your previous mail client was line based, such as the University of Michigans MTS system, you will now be able to take advantage of full screen capabilities. For example: you can now make corrections on your message while you write it. The ability to scroll up and down through a message while you are reading it. If you get a 100 line message, it won't go flying by on the screen anymore.

Tolerance for New Users:
One of Pine's strong points is that it will not perform any major action without confirming with you first. It is very difficult to mess something up really bad. There's almost always a chance to turn back and look things over.

Online Help:
For every screen and menu, Pine has a help command. It will give you general directions and instructions on every function of Pine.

Sending attachments with your message:
Pine supports the ability to send binary files along with your message. This will allow you to upload a Microsoft Word or Excel document, and send it along with your message.

Name Recognition (Addressbooks):
Pine has the capability to store long internet mail names in an Addressbook. This allows you to only have to remember short nicknames for people you mail often. See section VII for more about addressbooks.

Message Browsing:
The FOLDER INDEX screen (see Section III on FOLDER INDEX), allows you to browse through your messages. This allows you to skim over your messages and read the most important ones first.

Message Printing:
You can print your messages directly from within Pine to network printers.
Saving Messages:
Pine allows you to save your messages into folders, just like you save files on your hard drive. You can then open each folder at a later time. This allows you to save mail to different folders using different criteria.

How do I start Pine?

This document is assuming that you have already made a connection to the host which has Pine running on it. server. If you see a prompt that looks like: 

		 recycle%

just type pine . Remember, Unix is case sensitive, so PINE or Pine is not the same as pine.

OK, I'm in Pine...Now What???

Once you start pine, you will notice a few things about it. There are a few different aspects of pine that are identical throughout the program. Let's go over some of these conventions used in pine.

There are four informational lines on the screen that will have the same format regardless of which screen you are in. The lines are:

Title Line (Line 1):
The first line of each screen (shown in Figure 1) shows you exactly which menu you are in. The figure shows that we are in the "MAIN MENU". For example, if you are browsing through your messages, it will say: "FOLDER INDEX", and the same applies for the other screens as well.

List of Command Keys (Last 2 lines):
The last two lines of the screen show what actions are possible, and the Keyboard Commands to execute them. Pine will show the Keyboard Command as highlighted text, and its corresponding action just to the right of it in normal text. There are two different forms of Key
Commands:
The first type is a one letter abbreviation of the action itself. This form of Keyboard Command is found in all of the menus EXCEPT for the "COMPOSE MESSAGE" screen.

The second type of Keyboard Command is found in the COMPOSE MESSAGE screen. Since all the characters on the keyboard are needed to type a message, Control Key Commands are used. A Control Key Command is performed by holding down the Control Key, and then hitting the appropriate key simultaneously. (Note for Mac Plus users, use the option key and the appropriate 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" (Control C) is the Keyboard Command to Cancel the message in the "COMPOSE MESSAGE Screen.

Sometimes, two or more actions have the same first letter. For example, "Previous Command", and "Print". Therefore, there are Keyboard Commands that are not the first letter of the corresponding action.

  • "Y" is the Keyboard Command to Print a message. Think of it as "PrYnt"

Return Key:
You Do Not have to hit the return key when issuing Key Commands.

Information/Message/Error Line (Third Line from Bottom):
The third line from the bottom is an informative line. It will print notification when new mail arrives, descriptive messages when actions are completed, questions which require a short response, and error messages if something is wrong.

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.

Paging:
Whenever you can use the arrow keys, you can use the space bar and the minus sign (-) to page backwards and forwards. These commands are similar to the arrow keys, but will scroll the text forward or back a full screen.

Mouse:
Since Pine is running on a "server" computer, you Can Not use the mouse to make the cursor appear at different places on the screen. However, you can past text into a message you are composing. See section V, Composing Messages.

Re-Painting the Screen (Ctrl-L):
Since many people will be using pine from home using a modem, pine has a "Re-Paint" command. When you type Ctrl-L, Pine will clear your screen, and put 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 Screen, Ctrl-L will not only re-paint your screen, but it will look to see if you have any new mail as well. See Section III - 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 hitting 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): you can either enter yes, no, or Ctrl-C to abort completely.

Quitting:
From just about any screen within Pine, you can use the "Q" Key command to quit pine.

Click here to return to the Table of Contents

Section II - The MAIN MENU Screen

OK. Now let's take a look at what happens when you first run pine. When you first issue the command pine, you will be place into the Main Menu. Here's what it looks like: 

+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|PINE 3.89   MAIN MENU                           Folder: INBOX  196 Messages   |
|                                                                              |
|                                                                              |
|       ?     HELP               -  Get help using Pine                        |
|                                                                              |
|       C     COMPOSE MESSAGE    -  Compose and send a message                 |
|                                                                              |
|       I     FOLDER INDEX       -  View messages in current folder            |
|                                                                              |
|       L     FOLDER LIST        -  Select a folder to view                    |
|                                                                              |
|       A     ADDRESS BOOK       -  Update address book                        |
|                                                                              |
|       S     SETUP              -  Configure or update Pine                   |
|                                                                              |
|       Q     QUIT               -  Exit the Pine program                      |
|                                                                              |
|                                                                              |
|                                                                              |
|                                                                              |
|  Copyright 1989-1993.  PINE is a trademark of the University of Washington.  |
|                                                                              |
|? Help                     P PrevCmd                  R RelNotes              |
|O OTHER CMDS L [ListFldrs] N NextCmd                  K KBLock                |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

                     FIGURE 1: The MAIN MENU Screen
As you can see, there are a few different choices you have. You can use the arrow keys to move your selection bar to the command you want to perform, or you can enter the letter of the command you want. Here is a brief explanation of the possible commands:

Help (?):
Selecting this command will bring up an on-line help screen. Remember that in pine, there's always on-line help whenever you need it. Just look at the bottom two lines of the screen to find which command key invokes help.

Compose Message (C):
This command will send you straight into the COMPOSE MESSAGE Screen. This screen is where you create your outgoing messages. See Section V - Creating Messages for more information.

Folder Index (I):
This command will allow you to browse through your messages. See Section III - Retrieving Your Messages for more information.

Folder List (F):
This will open the FOLDER LIST screen. You can then view messages that you have saved to different folders.

Address Book (A):
This opens you Addressbook. See Section VI - Keeping an Address Book for more information.

Setup (S):
This sets up various user-configurable options (Printer, Updates, Keyboard Lock).

Quit (Q):
This will quit pine.
Click here to return to the Table of Contents

Section III - Retrieving Your Messages

The FOLDER INDEX Screen To retrieve messages, type "I" (for "FOLDER INDEX"). When you first start pine, the current folder will be your new mail folder (more commonly called your "INBOX"). Here's what the FOLDER INDEX screen looks like: 

+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|  PINE 3.89   FOLDER INDEX               Folder: INBOX  Message 10 of 14      |
|                                                                              |
|+   1   Mar 16 Adobe PostScript F  (3,779) How to use the PostScript File Serv|
|+   2   Apr  6 umnet-admin@umich.  (2,033) Network addresses for E-SNRE       |
|+   3   Apr 23 Todd Hollmann       (1,799) IP numbers                         |
|+   4   Apr 27 umnet-admin@umich.  (1,312) Network addresses for P-SNRE       |
|+   5   Jun  4 To: altitude@umich  (1,481) novell numbers                     |
|+   6   Jun  7 'Matthew Lewis Mor  (5,784) OCR Info (fwd)                     |
|+   7   Jun 20 Matthew Messana     (3,542) You asked for it... :)             |
|+   8   Aug  9 xpress@msw.metrone  (5,126) Online Express(sm) Listing Informat|
|    9   Aug 19 Brian Erwin         (5,558) O'Reilly Internet info service     |
|    10  Sep 13 Roy Hockett         (1,380) SNRE zone rename                   |
|+   11  Sep 20 Alex.Tang@um.cc.um  (3,795)                                    |
|    12  Nov 20 pine-info@cac.washi (4,155) New version of Pine: 3.89          |
|  D 13  Dec  2 Christie Bernabe      (789) Hello From New York                |
|  A 14  Jan  1 Root@recycle.snre.u   (789) Happy New Year!!!!                 |
|  N 15  Jan 11 Test.Mail.User.Rep  (2,967) Congratulations!!!                 |
|                                                                              |
|                                                                              |
|                                                                              |
|[New mail! From Test.Mail.User.Reply@recycle2.snre.umich.edu as regards Cong] |
|? Help       M Main Menu  P PrevMsg     - PrevPage    D Delete      R Reply   |
|O OTHER CMDS V [ViewMsg]  N NextMsg   Spc NextPage    U Undelete    F Forward |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

                     FIGURE 2: The FOLDER INDEX Screen
You can use the arrow keys to move up and down the list, and then press enter to view the message. The FOLDER INDEX screen has a few more items than other screens, so we'll go over each in turn. You should already be familiar with the first line of the screen (The "Title Line"), and the last three lines of the screen (The notification line, and the Keyboard Commands). The rest of the lines are devoted to showing pertinent information about each message. Each line of text is a one line summary of actual message. From left to right, The layout of each message is as follows:

Personal Marker:
The "+" sign in the first column indicates the message was directed specifically to you. In this case, the messages marked with a "+" were addressed directly to "altitude@umich.edu". The other messages (the ones that do not have the "+" marker) could have been sent to class message groups, or other message groups which this user is a part of (e.g., SNRE.Staff.List@umich.edu).

Message Number:
This is just the number of the message. Although this can be configured, most people will have their messages numbered increasingly in the order in which they were received.

Message Status Flag:
There are three different message status flags. Each indicates the present status of a message.
N New Message:
This flag indicates that you have not seen this message.
A Answered:
This flag appears after you have used the "R" command to reply to a message. (See next section on Reply command)
D Deleted Message:
This flag appears when you have deleted a message either by explicitly deleting it, or by saving the message to another folder (See next section on Deleting and Saving messages).
These flags will automatically be updated as you read and send your mail.

Date:
This indicates when the message was sent

From:
This tells who the message is from

Size:
How large the message is

Subject:
What the subject of the message is.

There are many operations that you can perform on your messages. Here is a listing of a few.

View (V):
You can view the message by either typing "V" or by hitting "Enter" when you have selected the message you want to see. See the next section about using the MESSAGE TEXT Screen.

Delete (D):
You can delete the current message with the "D" key command. This will mark the message as deleted, but will not delete it until you quit pine, or you Expunge using the "X" command. If you change your mind, and don't want to delete the message, you can use the "U" key command for UNDELETE. Be aware, if you do quit pine and/or "expunge" your messages, they are gone for good. You can't get them back.

Save (S):
This will save a copy of the message into the folder of your choice. If you don't specify which folder, it will save it to "saved-messages". The feature of specifying folders allows you to save messages according to any criteria you wish (From a certain user, about a certain subject, any thing else you wish.). You will notice that the message will be marked for deletion. Don't worry, a copy of your message has been saved already.

Reply (R):
This command allows you to reply to the original author. It's useful when discussing topics via E-Mail. Pine will ask you if you want to include the original message in return. Since the new system doesn't have History Messages, it is a good idea to return the relevant portions of the text. Even using the editor to intersperse your text through the original message. As general E-Mail etiquette, delete any non-relevant portions of the text.

Forward (F):
You can forward the message to another person or persons using the "F" command. Use this if you feel that the message should be looked at by someone else. Pine will ask if you want to include the original message.

Export (E):
Exporting a messages is only subtly different from the save command. It saves the file into a different directory than your mail directory. Use this command if you want to use the message outside of pine.

Print (Y):
You no longer have to print your message by selecting the text and printing the selected text. The Print command will print your whole message to a printer.

Help (?):
There are more commands that you can use, at the FOLDER INDEX Screen, type "?" to see the Help Screen.

***NOTE:
Pine will check to see if you have new mail every 2 and a half minutes. If you want to check to see if you have new mail right NOW, get into the FOLDER INDEX, and type Control-L (^L). This will refresh your screen and also check for new mail.

Click here to return to the Table of Contents

Section IV - Reading Your Mail

I Want it ALL! -- The MESSAGE TEXT Screen.

Well, This is the real meat of an E-Mail client. The VIEW TEXT SCREEN is where you read your messages. When you view a message, it will look like: 

+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| PINE 3.89   MESSAGE TEXT              Folder: INBOX  Message 15 of 15  35%   |
|                                                                              |
|Date: Tue, 11 Jan 94 00:48:29 EST                                             |
|From: Test.Mail.User.Reply@recycle2.snre.umich.edu                            |
|Subject: Congratulations!!!                                                   |
|                                                                              |
|Congratulations!!! If you are reading this message with pine, then you have   |
|successfuly Created a test message to the test user with the subject:         |
|--> This is a Test Message Created in PINE < --,                                |
|and it has replied to you.                                                    |
|                                                                              |
|                                                                              |
|                                                                              |
|                                                                              |
|                                                                              |
|                                                                              |
|                                                                              |
|                                                                              |
|                                                                              |
|                                                                              |
|? Help       M Main Menu  P PrevMsg     - PrevPage    D Delete      R Reply   |
|O OTHER CMDS V ViewAttch  N NextMsg   Spc NextPage    U Undelete    F Forward |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

                    FIGURE 3: The MESSAGE TEXT Screen
There are many actions that you can perform on your messages. Most likely, you will use the following keys:

Space Bar:
The space bar will scroll the text of the message one screen at a time.

Up and Down Arrow Keys:
The arrow keys allow scrolling of the text one line at a time.
The following key commands are the same as in the FOLDER INDEX screen.

Space Bar and Minus sign:
If the text is more than one full screen, you can use the space bar to page down one whole screen, and the minus sign (-) to page up one full screen of text.

"R": Reply to the message.
See Section V, part 2 for more information about replying to a message.

"F":
Forward the message.

"S":
Save the message.

"Y":
Print the message.

For more information on these commands, Section III - Retrieving Your Messages. Click here to return to the Table of Contents

Section V - Creating and Sending Messages (and Replies)

Sending A Message: -- The COMPOSE MESSAGE Screen.

When you compose an outgoing message, you will see the following screen: 

+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|  PINE 3.89   COMPOSE MESSAGE                     Folder: INBOX   15 Messages |
|                                                                              |
|To      : Mail Test Account < mailtest@recycle.snre.umich.edu >               |
|Cc      :                                                                     |
|Attchmnt:                                                                     |
|Subject : Hello Mr. Test User                                                 |
|----- Message Text -----                                                      |
|Hello There.                                                                  |
|This is a test message                                                        |
|Have a nice day.                                                              |
|                                                                              |
|                                                                              |
|                                                                              |
|                                                                              |
|                                                                              |
|                                                                              |
|                                                                              |
|                                                                              |
|                                                                              |
|                                                                              |
|^G Get Help  ^C Cancel    ^R Read File ^Y Prev Pg   ^K Cut Text  ^O Postpone  |
|^X Send      ^J Justify   ^W Where is  ^V Next Pg   ^U UnCut Text^T To Spell  |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

                   FIGURE 4: The COMPOSE MESSAGE Screen
The compose message screen consists of a few different fields:

To:
Your cursor will appear at the first position of the "To:" Field. Enter the person you want to send the mail to. With the new system, there are few new conventions for sending mail. :

If the person you are sending the message to has an account on the same computer, you can enter their login name. Pine will look through the system and try to find the person's real name.

If the person has been entered into your addressbook, you can just type in their nickname. See Section VI - Keeping an Addressbook for more information.

For people outside of your local university or organization, you will need their full Internet address.

If you want to specify more than one person to send the message to, separate the names with commas (i.e. To: andyb@umich.edu, altitude@umich.edu). If you have an addressbook, you can enter the person's nickname here too. See Section VI - Keeping an Addressbook for more information.

Cc:
The Cc: field is the "Carbon Copy" field. Enter any people you want to send the message to, who aren't the direct recipient (i.e. sending a message to the Dean, and Cc'ing it to the assistant dean.). Use the same type of comma separated list as in the To: field for multiple recipients.

Attchmnt:
The Attachments field is where you would specify whatever documents you want to include with your message. Since this is UNIX pine, you will have to first get the file from your computer to the Unix machine.

Subject:
The Subject field is just like the MTS Subject field. Enter a short one line subject about your message.

-- Message Text ---:
Enter the text of your message here.

There are a few different commands that you will want to be familiar with in the message text screen:

Arrow Keys:
You can use the arrow keys just like you would in a regular text editor (i.e. Microsoft Word, or WordPerfect).

Control-E (^E, in Pine notation):
This will move your cursor to the end of the line.

Control-A (^A):
This will move your cursor to the beginning of the line.

Control-K (^K):
Kills the line of text that your cursor is resting on. This is similar to cutting part of your text directly to the clipboard. The text be retrieved using ^U.

Control-^ (Control-Shift-6):
Start marking the text. You can then use the arrow keys to move around the text and then use ^K to kill the block of text This is similar to using the mouse to select a certain part of text in Microsoft Word. NOTE, this doesn't work on all platforms.

Control-U (^U):
Unkills the last line of text you killed, or the text that you have marked. This is similar to the "Paste" command within Microsoft Word.

Control-X (^X):
Sends the message when you are done.

Control-C (^C):
Cancels the current message.

Control-O (^O):
Postpones the message until a later time. The next time you compose a message, it will ask you if you want to resume the postponed message. If you don't, fear not, you can keep writing more messages. You can NOT, however, postpone more than one message.

Control-G (^G):
The "Get HELP" command. Pine will give you help on sending messages..

Replying to a Message. Is That Different?

Many times, you will want to respond to a piece of mail that someone has sent to you. Pine has a Reply command, which allows you to reply to the author of the message (and anyone else too). You can invoke the Reply command from either the FOLDER INDEX Screen, or the VIEW TEXT Screen. When you reply to a message, one or two questions will appear in the Information Line of your screen depending on the circumstances of the message. The first is: 

           Include original message in Reply? (y/n/^C) [n]:

Pine is asking if you want to include the original message in the reply. The letter n that appears inside the brackets "[n]" is the default command. If you just hit the Return Key, you will select what is inside the brackets. Pine does not have MTS History Messages, so usually it's a good idea to include the text.

If you choose to include the text, your COMPOSE MESSAGE REPLY Screen will have the original author's name on the "To:" line, and the original text will have a "> " in the first character of each line. This is to indicate that the text is a reply. For Example: 

+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| PINE 3.89   COMPOSE MESSAGE REPLY               Folder: INBOX   15 Messages  |
|                                                                              |
|To      : John Doe < Johnd@adx.adelphi.edu >                                  |
|Cc      :                                                                     |
||Attchmnt:                                                                    |
|Subject : Re: Hi There                                                        |
|----- Message Text -----                                                      |
|On Thu, 3 Feb 1994, John Doe wrote:                                           |
|                                                                              |
|> Hi.  How are you.  Things are OK.  A little slow, but not too bad.  How     |
|> are things in Michigan?  It's REALLY COLD here!  I want to move to          |
|> Hawaii....wanna come with me?  We can sell Surfboards. :)                   |
|> John.                                                                       |
|                                                                              |
|Hiya John.  Things are good here.  I'm working a lot.  Yes, It's been         |
|really cold here too.  Hawaii sounds great, when do we leave? :)              |
|                                                                              |
|...alex...                                                                    |
|Alex Tang  ---  ALTITUDE@UMICH.EDU...USERW00Y@UMICHUM.BITNET                  |
|                                                                              |
|                                                                              |
|^G Get Help  ^C Cancel    ^R Read File ^Y Prev Pg   ^K Cut Text   ^O Postpone |
|^X Send      ^J Justify   ^_ Alt Edit  ^V Next Pg   ^U UnCut Text ^T To Spell |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

                 FIGURE 5: The COMPOSE MESSAGE REPLY Screen

It is a good idea (as well as general Network Etiquette) to only include the relevant portions of the original text. In the above example, you should remove the line "> John." because the person's name is irrelevant to the reply and the first three lines alone are sufficient to give John the context of your comments.

The second question will be appear if the original message was sent to multiple recipients or a group. 

                  Reply to all recipients? (y/n/^C) [n]:

Pine is asking if you want everyone who received the original message, to receive your response as well. For example, if altitude@umich.edu sent a message to SNRE.Faculty@umich.edu, and you wanted to respond only to altitude, then you would not reply to all the recipients.

Click here to return to the Table of Contents

Section VI - Managing Your Mail (Folders)

Why do need to manage my mail?

There are a few different reasons why managing your mail is important. In the dark ages, when everyone read their mail on MTS, it was very difficult to archive mail to read at a later date. The easiest way was to print out the message to the nearest printer. With the new mail system, this has changed. It is very easy to save mail to folders ( A folder is a container of messages, just like a physical folder is a container of papers). You can then save your messages into the folder. This makes tracking a long message chain easier.

The second reason is that unlike some electronic mail clients, mail you receive on the new system will not be deleted after a certain amount of time..in fact, it will never go away until you tell it to. So if you dont delete or save your messages, your mailbox will keep filling up. This causes two problems:

First, you will find that after 100 or so messages, Pine will become slower.

Second, your mailbox will get bigger and bigger. If your INBOX becomes too large, bad things can happen (i.e. you could stop mail from functioning. This tends to make other people angry, and then they might come to your home at midnight and flog you in the streets...get the picture?)

How do I manage my mail?

Pine has two ways that it allows you to manage your mail. First is that it automatically saves all of your outgoing mail into a folder called sent-mail. You can use your sent-mail folder to check on messages that youve sent to colleagues at a later date. On the first of every month, this folder is renamed and you are asked if you want to remove the old copy. This is so that you dont have to worry about your old outgoing mail taking up too much space.

NOTE: Actually, the first time you start pine in a new month, your sent-mail folder is renamed to: sent-mail-< month > - < year> . The < month > and < year > are previous month and current year. You are then asked if you want to delete this folder. For example, if you invoke Pine on May 1, 1994, you will be asked if you want to move your sent-mail folder to sent-mail-apr-1994. Then you will be asked if you want to delete sent-mail-apr-1994.

The second way to manage your mail is to save your mail into different folders. Folders allow you to separate your messages by subject, person, topic, or anything else that you can think of.

There is one special folder in the list: Your INBOX. This is a special folder because it represents your new mail. You are not permitted to delete or rename your INBOX.

How do I manage my Folders?

You can create, delete, move, view, and perform other actions on your folders. This discussion will only cover viewing, switching, creating and deleting folders.

When you are in the MAIN MENU, or the FOLDER INDEX screen, you can view a list of your folders. The following is the FOLDER LIST screen: 

+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|  PINE 3.89   FOLDER LIST                          Folder: INBOX  15 Messages |
|                                                                              |
|INBOX               sent-mail           4help               Class-work        |
|UM-SNRE             Work                sent-mail-mar-1994                    |
|                                                                              |
|                                                                              |
|                                                                              |
|                                                                              |
|                                                                              |
|                                                                              |
|                                                                              |
|                                                                              |
|                                                                              |
|                                                                              |
|                                                                              |
|                                                                              |
|                                                                              |
|                         [Folder "Class-work" created]                        |
|? Help       M Main Menu  P PrevFldr    - PrevPage    D Delete      R Rename  |
|O OTHER CMDS V [ViewFldr] N NextFldr  Spc NextPage    A Add                   |
|                                                                              |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

                         FIGURE 6: Folder List Screen
As you can see, this screen lists all of the folders that you own. There are a few functions that you can perform at this screen:

Add (A):
This function allows you to Add a new folder. You do not need to explicitly create a folder in order to save to it. You can create a folder from either the FOLDER INDEX or VIEW MESSAGE screens as well. When you choose the Save option, and specify a folder name, Pine will check to see if the folder exists. If the folder does not exist, Pine will ask if you want to create a new folder with the name you gave.

Delete (D):
This function deletes a folder and all of the messages in it. Be careful when using this function. When you delete a folder, it, and all the messages within it will be gone forever. Note, you can not delete the special folder INBOX

Rename (R):
You can rename your folders. Note, you can not rename the special folder INBOX.

View Folder (V):
When you select a folder with a your selection bar, the View function will move you directly into the FOLDER INDEX screen. Note, This is the default command, so you can also press the return key to view a folder.

Click here to return to the Table of Contents

Section VII - Keeping an Address Book

What is an Addressbook?

Sometimes it's very confusing to keep track of long Internet mail names. Pine has an addressbook, which is a list of people or groups and their associated E-Mail names. The Pine Addressbook is very similar to a real addressbook, but has added functionality. It not only lets you reference people and their E-Mail names, but allows you to enter a "nickname" on the "To:" or "Cc:" lines in the COMPOSE MESSAGE screen. When you enter a nickname, Pine will look in your addressbook automatically, and find their full name and it also allows you to automatically place someone's full E-Mail name in place of a short nickname. Here's what the Addressbook Screen looks like: 

+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|  PINE 3.89   ADDRESS BOOK     Folder: INBOX(READONLY)  Message 172 of 174    |
|									       |
|Andy                Beaver, Andy                        andyb@umich.edu       |
|Christie            Bernabe, Christie                   Alumni_clb@willet.wesl|
|HELP                Online Consulting Help              Online.Consulting.Help|
|Effie               Dimitrakopoulos, Effie              effied@midd.cc.middleb|
|Suwalee             Ingkanart, Suwalee                  si2636f90@auvax1.adelp|
|bobbi               Low, Bobbi                          bobbi.low@um.cc.umich.|
|SNRE.Fac	     SNRE Faculty			 SNRE.FACULTY@um.cc.umi|
|									       |
|SNRE.ALL	     Most of SNRE			 DISTRIBUTION LIST:    |
|							 SNRE.FACULTY@um.cc.umi|
|							 SNRE.STAFF.LIST@um.cc.|
|							 SNRE.PHD@um.cc.umich.e|
|							 SNRE.Consultants@umich|
|									       |
|									       |
|									       |
|									       |
|									       |
|? Help       M MainMenu  P PrevField   - PrevPage    D Delete    S CreateList |
|O OTHER CMDS E [Edit]    N NextField Spc NextPage    A Add       Z AddToList  |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

                      FIGURE 7: The ADDRESSBOOK Screen

Some of the key commands and their actions are explained below.

Add (A):
This command adds a new person to your addressbook. Pine will ask you three questions about the new user.

Create List (S):
You can create personal lists of names so you don't have to type in many different E-Mail names or nicknames. These lists can be a group of people in the same project, or just a group of friends. Note: these lists are private. If you want to create a public mailing list, see your system administrator

Delete (D):
If you select a person or distribution list, you can delete them from your addressbook with the "D" command.

Arrow Keys/Space Bar/Minus Sign:
As always, you can use the arrow keys to move your selection bar to different locations on the screen. The space bar will scroll a full page, and the minus sign (-) will scroll back a page.

Click here to return to the Table of Contents

Section VIII - Personalization of Your Mail: A .signature file

What is a .signature file, and why should use one?

In this day and age, electronic mail has invaded our lives almost as much as US Postal Mail, or the Telephone. However, unlike the telephone where moods can be projected with the tone of ones voice, and where formal US Postal mail often is often written on Letterhead, electronic mail can often seem impersonal and vague to the recipient. One way to automatically transfer information about you or your organization is to create a .signature file.

A .signature file appears at the end of your message. It is completely free form, so there isnt a set pattern or template that people use to create one. Often people put their full name, E-Mail address, organization, phone number, fax number, and sometimes a quote or disclaimer.

The only suggestion about .signature files is their length. It is considered general network etiquette to keep your signature files to four lines or less.

To create a signature file, use your favorite editor and create a file called .signature in your home directory. .Remember to save the file into your home directory, if you save it somewhere else, it will not appear in your messages.

Now, every time you create a message, the text from your .signature file will appear at the bottom of your message.

Here are some examples of .signature files: 

Alex Tang  ---  ALTITUDE@UMICH.EDU...USERW00Y@UMICHUM.BITNET
-----------+    UM-SNRE: Student, Computer Consultant III, & SysAdmin
PGP on req.|    ITD/CSS Consultant, Short Asian with long hair :)
or via fing|    WWW -> http://www.snre.umich.edu/users/altitude/



--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Brian W. Spolarich                           "If life is a dream, then
UM ITD/US Consulting and Support Services     we should be friends.  After
briansp@umich.edu                             all, we are dreaming each
finger briansp@css.itd.umich.edu for PGP key. other."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------



|\ |  |\/|  David L. Miller    dlm@cac.washington.edu  (206) 685-6240
|/ |_ |  |  Software Engineer, Pine Development Team   (206) 685-4045 (FAX)
University of Washington, Networks & Distributed Computing, JE-20
4545 15th Ave NE, Seattle WA 98105, USA
Click here to return to the Table of Contents

Section IX - Conclusions, A Test, and Legal Stuff.

READY, SET, GO! Let's Try It Out!

OK, Let's test all this stuff out. We'll run through a test message to see if we get the proper results.

  1. If you are not already in pine, run it by typing "pine" at the command line.

  2. Enter the Compose message screen by typing "C".

  3. For the "To:" field, enter "mailtest@imap.snre.umich.edu". You will notice that pine knows who people are, and will substitute their names. This only applies for users of recycle, and people in your addressbook.

  4. You can enter anything else you would like for the subject and Message text field.

  5. When you are done, type "^X" (Control-X) to send the message.

There. You've just sent your first pine mail message. You should be getting a response very shortly. If you feel impatient, you could type ^L from the FOLDER INDEX screen, and pine will check for your new mail right away. You may now read your message.

Well...That's about it for Pine. There are more features that haven't been discussed in this documentation. Use the online help to find out more, or ask one of your friendly neighborhood system administrators.

In Conclusion: Some General Notes and Comments

The original form of this document was created for the University of Michigan, School of Natural Resources and Environment. The reason that I wrote it was to aid SNREs faculty, staff, and students in the transition from our mainframe based electronic mail system (MTS), to a UNIX/IMAP/Pine system.

It was envisioned to be a short introduction to Pine and it's most common uses. From speaking with SNRE faculty and staff, I found that people wanted documentation that would be clear enough for someone who has little to no experience with computers to follow, yet explain what was going on as well. It was first intended to be one sheet of paper, printed on both sides. As I quickly learned, Pine is a very robust program. It has many more capabilities than this documentation has explained. The once two page document quickly became 4, then 6 then 9 Still, the documentation is far from a comprehensive guide to all of Pine's features.

Pine has many more capabilities than this document has listed. Most of the one page summaries have left out a lot of the features of pine. Pine has the ability to be configured in many ways. If you have any questions about how Pine works, or would like to see Pine do something that hasn't been mentioned in this document, please let the your system administratorknow. There probably is a way to do it.

This piece of documentation was written by me (Alex Tang, altitude@umich.edu). It is Copyright University of Michigan, School of Natural Resources and the Regents of the University of Michigan, 1994. You may copy, forward, read, and enjoy this documentation. You can modify it too, as long as you keep the author's name and the Univerity of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment's name on it. It may not be used for commercial purposes.

Please feel free to send me email (altitude@umich.edu), if you have other questions about this document.

The Pine E-Mail client program is copyright 1989-1993 University of Washington. Pine is a trademark of theUniversity of Washington.

cc:Mail is copyright 1992 Lotus Corporation.

Microsoft Mail, Microsoft Word, Word, and Excel are copyright Microsoft Corporation.

WordPerfect is copyright WordPerfect Corporation

Last Updated: 5-11-94. Alex Tang,

altitude@umich.edu