From dlm@shivafs.cac.washington.edu Wed Aug 24 09:26:18 1994 Date: Tue, 10 Feb 95 15:40:48 -0800 From: The Pine Development Team Message-Id: <9408241626.AA29044@shiva2.cac.washington.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: MULTIPART/DIGEST; BOUNDARY="==========" Subject: Pine Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Summary: This posting contains a list of frequently asked questions (and answers) for the Pine Mail User Agent and Newsreader. Newsgroups: comp.mail.pine,comp.mail.misc,news.software.readers,news.newusers.questions,comp.answers,news.answers Followup-To: comp.mail.pine Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.EDU Archive-name: mail/pine-faq --========== Content-Description: Current Version of this Document From: The Pine Development Team Subject: Current Version of this Document The most up-to-date version of this FAQ can be found at either of these places: http://www.cac.washington.edu/pine/faq/ ftp://ftp.cac.washington.edu/pine/docs/faq Last updated: 940106 Current release: Pine 3.91, Pico 2.5 Pine and Pico are registered trademarks of the University of Washington. Copyright 1995 by the University of Washington. --========== Content-Description: Contents From: The Pine Development Team Subject: Contents PINE FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS The following questions have been compiled from questions asked on the comp.mail.pine newsgroup and the pine-info and pine-bugs mailing lists. General * What is Pine? * What is MIME? * What is IMAP? * How can I get a copy of Pine? * What documentation is available? * What mailing lists and newsgroups are there dealing with Pine? * What are all these funny names in your examples? * How many sites use Pine? * Can we use Pine source code in commercial products? Basic usage problems * Why doesn't Pine's cancel/postpone/etc key work? * How do I keep all of the names from showing up at the top of the message? * How do I use Ispell with Pine and Pico? * How can I have a signature automatically appended to my mail messages? * How can I filter messages into different incoming folders? * How do I define my own headers like Reply-To and Organization? * Can I use Pine non-interactively, e.g., in a shell script? * Can I execute Pine from a shell script so I can use my addressbook? * xbiff lets me know about new mail, but pine doesn't know about it. * How can I read a ROT13 encoded message? * Can I eliminate the @host.domain from local addresses? Printing * Why doesn't printing work? * What PC comm software works with the "Print to ANSI" print option? * What Mac comm software works with the "Print to ANSI" print option? * What Amiga comm software works with the "Print to ANSI" print option? Newsreading and posting * How do I read News with Pine? * Can I post news with Pine? Attachments * Why does Pine encode text attachments? * How can someone without Pine decipher an attachment? * How can I send a text file without it being encoded? * Why does Pine use Base64 instead of UUENCODE? * How do I convert a Sun Mailtool attachment to MIME format? Folder Problems * If I postpone a Reply, Pine never marks it as answered. * "Folder Format Invalidated (consult an expert), aborted" * What is folder locking and how does it work? * What happens when two Pine sessions access the same mailbox simultaneously? * Why did I get the message "locked, override in XXX sec"? * Why doesn't Pine recognize Content-Length header field? Addressbook Usage and Conversions * How do I "paste" an address from the addressbook into the text of a message? * How do I convert Berkeley Mail aliases to Pine Addressbook? * How do I convert Elm aliases to Pine Addressbook? Installation and Configuration * Can Kerberos or AFS authentication be used with Pine? * Can PC-Pine be used with a POP server? * What is a Tenex mailbox and why should I use it? * Where does Unix Pine look for configuration information? * Where does PC-Pine look for configuration information? * How do I make Pine work with my older terminal? * How do I configure Pine to not leave mail in /usr/spool/mail? Platform Specific * To what platforms has Pine been ported? * Pine 3.89 on an IBM RS/6000 running AIX 3.2.3 crashes every time I try to open a folder. * I cannot compile under SCO unix, why not? Bug Reports * Why should I use the builtin Bug Report command? * Why does the bug report screen come up when I didn't ask for it? * I have found a bug in Pine 3.05. Could you please fix it? Development Info * What are the current versions of Pine and related software? * What is new in this version of Pine? * When is the next release of Pine (tentatively) scheduled? * What new features will the next release of Pine include? --========== Content-Description: General Questions About Pine Content-Type: MULTIPART/DIGEST; BOUNDARY="----------" From: The Pine Development Team Subject: General Questions About Pine GENERAL QUESTIONS ABOUT PINE ------------ Content-Description: What is Pine? From: The Pine Development Team Subject: What is Pine? Pine(tm) --a Program for Internet News & Email-- is a tool for reading, sending, and managing electronic messages. It was designed specifically with novice computer users in mind, but can be tailored to accommodate the needs of power users as well. Pine uses Internet message protocols (e.g. RFC822, SMTP, MIME, IMAP, and NNTP) and runs on Unix, MS-DOS, and MS Windows. The guiding principles for Pine's user-interface were: careful limitation of features, one-character mnemonic commands, always-present command menus, immediate user feedback, and high tolerance for user mistakes. It is intended that Pine can be learned by exploration rather than reading manuals. It has the ability to perform full screen editing of messages, include and extract attachments (such as Word or Excel files), and other advanced message system features. Pine uses IMAP for accessing message folders on remote computers and MIME for sending multimedia or other binary files as attachments to normal messages. ------------ Content-Description: What is MIME? From: The Pine Development Team Subject: What is MIME? MIME (RFC1521) stands for "Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions". It is an Internet standard which allows transfer of binary files (word-processing documents, spreadsheets, images, sounds, etc) between any compliant mailers. You can get technical information about MIME from the RFC. Ongoing discussion on MIME takes place in the newsgroup comp.mail.mime. There is also a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list that is posted regularly to comp.mail.mime, comp.answers and news.answers. If you have a Web browser you can access it through: http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/bngusenet/comp/mail/mime/top.html ------------ Content-Description: What is IMAP? From: The Pine Development Team Subject: What is IMAP? IMAP stands for "Internet Message Access Protocol". An IMAP client program on any platform at any location on the Internet can access email folders on an IMAP server. While the messages appear to be local, they reside on the server until the client explicitly moves or deletes them. The IMAP protocol is a functional (but incompatible) superset of POP. A principal advantage of IMAP over POP is that it permits using more than one computer to access your mail. Using multiple computers with POP typically results in your mail ending up scattered across all of those computers. Another key advantage is IMAP's ability to selectively access parts of messages, e.g. you don't have to wait for a 2MB audio attachment to be retrieved until you specifically ask for it. This is a big win over low-speed (e.g. dialup) connections. For a detailed comparison of IMAP and POP, see the paper "Comparing Two Approaches to Remote Mailbox Access: IMAP vs. POP." It is available from: ftp://ftp.cac.washington.edu/mail/imap.vs.pop IMAP is what allows Pine (or any other IMAP client) to access email on a remote mail server, usually one that is shared (central or departmental). The current IMAP4 Proposed Standard is described in RFC1730. Additional information is included in RFC1731, RFC1732, and RFC1733. ------------ Content-Description: How can I get a copy of Pine? From: The Pine Development Team Subject: How can I get a copy of Pine? Pine is available via anonymous ftp from the pine directory of ftp.cac.washington.edu. ------------ Content-Description: What documentation is available? From: The Pine Development Team Subject: What documentation is available? The Pine program itself includes extensive online help. Additional documentation may be found via anonymous FTP or via World-Wide-Web at the following locations: ftp://ftp.cac.washington.edu/pine/docs http://www.cac.washington.edu/pine The following contributed documentation is also available: http://www.math.utah.edu/~calfeld/creations/ca_pine_guide.html http://www.math.utah.edu/~calfeld/creations/PineIntroduction http://www.math.utah.edu/~calfeld/creations/PineIntermediate If you have documentation that you would like to share, please mail pine@cac.washington.edu a pointer to them and we'll include it here. ------------ Content-Description: What mailing lists and newsgroups are there dealing with Pine? From: The Pine Development Team Subject: What mailing lists and newsgroups are there dealing with Pine? The "comp.mail.pine" newsgroup is devoted to Pine. It is bi-directionally gatewayed to the "pine-info" mailing list described below. The following mailing lists deal with Pine and related topics: Pine-Info@cac.washington.edu Pine-Info is a mailing list for the email program Pine. The mailing list includes discussion of Pine features, bugs, tricks, etc. Often technical and installation questions appear on the list. New releases, fixes and version of Pine are announced on the pine-info mailing list. For official announcements only, you may wish to see pine-announce instead of this list. To subscribe to pine-info, send a message to majordomo@cac.washington.edu with subscribe pine-info in the body of the message. Owners of this mailing list can be contacted at owner-pine-info@cac.washington.edu. Pine-Announce@cac.washington.edu Pine-Announce is a announcement list for the email program Pine. When new Pine products are released and old ones updated, a message goes out to this group describing the development. It is a very low volume list and includes no discussion whatsoever. NOTE: All messages to this list are automatically forwarded to pine-info, so it is not necessary to subscribe to both lists! To subscribe to pine-announce, send a message to majordomo@cac.washington.edu with subscribe pine-announce in the body of the message. Owners of this mailing list can be contacted at owner-pine-announce@cac.washington.edu. IMAP@CAC.Washington.EDU This is the official mailing list for the IETF IMAP working group and other interested parties. Discussion of the evolving IMAP standard and related issues is conducted on this list. To subscribe to IMAP, send a message to imap-request@cac.washington.edu. C-Client@CAC.Washington.EDU This list is for discussion of the C-Client library which is used by Pine and various other mail and IMAP clients and servers. To subscribe to C-Client, send any message to c-client-request@cac.washington.edu. ------------ Content-Description: How many sites use Pine? From: The Pine Development Team Subject: How many sites use Pine? Based on the number of people getting copies of Pine and its documentation, we know for sure that Pine is used at over 12,000 sites in 60 different countries. We do not have any way to count the exact number of sites using Pine or the total number of users, but we estimate that well over one million people use Pine right now (12/94). People are still jumping on the Pine bandwagon -- about 4,000 new users each day -- so any guess about the number of people who use Pine today will surely be too small tomorrow. ------------ Content-Description: Can we use Pine source code in commercial products? From: The Pine Development Team Subject: Can we use Pine source code in commercial products? Pine and C-client source code is copyright by the University of Washington, however it may be used without fee to the University of Washington, even for commercial purposes, subject to the terms of the copyright notice in the code. If you want to use Pine code in commercial products, you must retain the indication of UW trademark and copyright and we ask that you also "explicitly and conspiciously" indicate that there is no business relationship of any kind between you and the University of Washington. Note that the copyright restrictions may not be the same in all versions of the code, but the general information above pertains to all versions of Pine up to and including the current 3.91 release. A related issue concerns use of the name Pine... "Pine and Pico are registered trademarks of the University of Washington. No commercial use of these trademarks may be made without prior written permission of the University of Washington." If you have any doubts about what you need to do to use Pine commercially, write to the Pine Development Team and ask. -------------- --========== Content-Description: Basic Usage Problems Content-Type: MULTIPART/DIGEST; BOUNDARY="----------" From: The Pine Development Team Subject: Basic Usage Problems BASIC USAGE PROBLEMS ------------ Content-Description: Why doesn't Pine's cancel/postpone/etc key work? On some systems, certain control characters are intercepted before they get to Pine. This is usually a problem with the communication software running on a Mac or PC, but terminal servers sometimes intercept certain control characters as well. Control-C and Control-O seem to be two of the most common problem cases. As a work-around, you can press the ESCAPE key twice followed by the desired key. For example, if Control-O (^O) does not work on your system, try typing "ESC ESC O". This trick will work for any control character. ------------ Content-Description: How do I send a message to lots people without showing all the names? From: The Pine Development Team Subject: How do I send a message to lots people without showing all the names? Put addresses and/or list from your address book in the Bcc: (blind carbon copy) header field. You will see all the names and addresses as you compose the message, but they are erased before arriving in other people's INBOXes. The Bcc: header is not displayed automatically in the default Pine configuration, so you may need to use the rich headers command (Ctrl-R) while the cursor is in the header to expose it. ------------ Content-Description: How do I use Ispell with Pine and Pico? From: Mike Ramey , Nancy McGough Subject: How do I use Ispell with Pine and Pico? If you use ispell and have an ispell custom dictionary (usually ispell.words or .ispell_words in your home directory, which contains a list of words, one word to a line) then it is nice to also use ispell for spell checking your outgoing mail messages. There are two methods for setting this up. METHOD 1 ======== If you always use Pine's default composer, Pico, then you can use ispell as your "alternate editor." In your .pinerc set enable-alternate-editor and set the editor variable like this: editor=/usr/local/bin/ispell (See step 1 of Method 2 below for instruction for finding the full path to ispell on your machine.) Then, when you are composing a message you can type ^_ to run ispell on your message and display the output in Pine's viewer. In the viewer you can use ispell's usual commands. While in ispell you can type ? for help on ipell's commands. One useful command is ``I'' which inserts the current word in your custom dictionary. METHOD 2 ======== If you use an alternate editor, such as vi or emacs, then you need to fool Pine into thinking that ispell is spell. Here's how to set this up: 1] Determine what directory ispell is in by using one of these commands: which ispell type ispell whereis ispell where ispell 2] In your bin directory, e.g., $HOME/bin, link spell to ispell with: ln -s /usr/local/bin/ispell $HOME/bin/spell Replace ``/usr/local/bin'' with ispell's path (see #1). 3] If you use the csh or tcsh set the SPELL environment variable by putting a line like this in your .cshrc: setenv SPELL "$HOME/bin/spell" If you use the Bourne shell set the SPELL environment variable by putting a line like this in your .profile: SPELL="$HOME/bin/spell" export SPELL 4] In your home directory create a file called ispell.words that contains your private dictionary of words that should pass the spell check. This will probably include your name, email address, etc. 5] Logout and log back in to make sure that your new settings are in place. 6] Test that this is set up correctly by using Pine to compose a message and include words, like your name, that are in your custom dictionary. Spellcheck the message with ^T. If your name passes the spellcheck (and your name isn't in regular dictionaries) then it is set up correctly. With Method 2 you cannot use many of ispell's features, for example, ``I'', which inserts a word in your dictionary doesn't work. ------------ Content-Description: How can I have a signature automatically appended to my mail messages? From: The Pine Development Team Subject: How can I have a signature automatically appended to my mail messages? Using your favorite text editor (e.g. Pico), create a file in your home directory called .signature containing the text you want appended to each message. PC-Pine users should put their signatures in the file \PINE\PINE.SIG. For more details see Nancy McGough's Signature and Finger FAQ. The hypertext version is at: http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/signature_finger_faq/faq.html The plain text version is at: ftp://ftp.halcyon.com/pub/ii/internet/signature_finger_faq ------------ Content-Description: How can I filter messages into different incoming folders? From: The Pine Development Team , Nancy McGough Subject: How can I filter messages into different incoming folders? Pine does not do delivery filtering. That function is done by other programs, such as "procmail" or "filter" or "deliver" or "mailagent." Once you have set-up your delivery filtering, e.g. via the "procmail" program, then you will have new mail arriving in several different mailboxes/folders, in addition to your INBOX. So then the question becomes, how do you access those new "incoming message" folders that your favorite delivery filter program has created? One solution is to just access them the same way you access your other mail folders. If they are in your default folder directory (usually $HOME/mail) then just type L to list your folders and select the folder you'd like to view. If they are in a different directory, for example $HOME/mail/IN, add that directory to your folder-collections by putting this into your .pinerc: folder-collections=mail/[], mail/IN/[], And then when you list your folders by typing L the mail/IN directory will be in your list. Another solution is to use Pine's incoming-folders variable. With this method you can use the Tab key to tab through new messages in all your incoming folders. When you are at the last new message in one incoming folder pressing the Tab key will move you to the next incoming folder with a new message. Here is part of a sample .pinerc for setting up incoming folders: incoming-folders=Art151 {warhol.art.nowhere.edu}IN/art151, Art-L {warhol.art.nowhere.edu}IN/Art-L, Old-Student-Acct {fozzie.elsewhere.edu}INBOX In this case, the pinerc entries presume that your delivery filtering program has been configured to put mail relating to the Art151 class into the folder "IN/art151" and mail relating to the Art-L mailing list into "IN/Art-L". From the Folders List screen, you can then easily access those folders. Eventually we will have a way to indicate which of these may have new mail waiting for you, so that you don't forget that you have more than one place to look for new mail. For a more detailed treatment of filtering, see the Filtering Mail FAQ and the Procmail FAQ. The hypertext version of these are available at: http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/mail/filtering-faq/faq.html http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/mail/procmail-faq/faq.html The plain text versions are available at: ftp://ftp.halcyon.com/pub/ii/internet/filtering_mail_faq ftp://ftp.halcyon.com/pub/ii/internet/procmail_faq ------------ Content-Description: How do I define my own headers like Reply-To and Organization? From: Nancy McGough Subject: How do I define my own headers like Reply-To and Organization? In Pine 3.90, and later versions, you can set Reply-To, Organization, and other headers using the customized-hdrs variable. 1. From the Main Menu type s for Setup 2. Type c for Configuration 3. To change the value of the customized-hdrs variable: a) To use the Where command type: w b) At the prompt type: customized-hdrs c) To Add a value type: a d) At the prompt type: Organization: Your Organization Name e) Repeat steps c and d for other headers such ast Reply-To Note that Pine understands environment variables so you can use lines like the following (if the variables are set): Organization: $ORGANIZATION Reply-To: $REPLYTO While reading a message that you've received you can view all headers by typing h. If h does not work you need to go to your configuration menu and set the enable-full-header-cmd variable. While composing a message you can view all the headers by placing the cursor in the header region and typing ^R (view rich headers). Customized headers are not available in Pine 3.89 and earlier. ------------ Content-Description: Can I use Pine non-interactively, e.g., in a shell script? From: The Pine Development Team Subject: Can I use Pine non-interactively, e.g., in a shell script? This is not currently possible. If it were possible you could use Pine, and your Pine addressbook, to mail people from within a shell script, at the end of a pipeline, etc. ------------ Content-Description: When I get new mail, xbiff lets me know about it, but pine doesn't know about it. From: The Pine Development Team Subject: When I get new mail, xbiff lets me know about it, but pine doesn't know about it. There are currently two ways to force a new mail check. * Press `Ctrl-L' (Refresh Display). * At the last message in a folder, press 'N' 4-5 times. ------------ Content-Description: How can I read a ROT13 encoded message? From: The Pine Development Team Subject: How can I read a ROT13 encoded message? When viewing the message, use the '|' (Pipe) command and give it the following: tr '[A-Za-z]' '[N-ZA-Mn-za-m]' You could also write a script, maybe called unrot, that does this and then pipe the message to the script. In order for the pipe command to work you need to be using Pine 3.90 or higher and have the enable-unix-pipe-cmd variable set. ------------ Content-Description: Can I eliminate the @host.domain from local addresses? From: The Pine Development Team Subject: Can I eliminate the @host.domain from local addresses? This is not a new idea. It's a very old idea, in fact, and just about everyone who has ever dealt with email has had it at one time or another. Regretably, it has come to be recognized as a bad idea. Here's why: An email address without a host name is not syntactically valid according to RFC822. Now, it is true that RFC822 only specifies what must be done in messages which are transmitted over the network, and that strictly local messages are not under RFC822's dictates. This means that there are two formats of email, one that conforms to RFC822 and one that does not. Careful efforts must be made to ensure that the non-conforming mail format never escapes the local system onto the network. Twenty years' of experience has shown that it is impossible to guarantee that the non-conforming format does not escape into the network, even in the face of traps to catch such messages on their way out and convert them to RFC822 conforming format. Indeed, such traps have often contributed additional problems on their own. The non-conforming format is ambiguous as to what host is intended. Although the off-the-cuff solution (and the one that everyone implements) is ``use the local host'', numerous examples have occurred in which this leads to wrong behavior. For example, it may be the ``local mail center'' instead of the ``local machine which is a single-user workstation''. Or, if a one of the non-conforming messages escaped on to the network, it's some remote system and we have no idea at all what system that may be! There's no way for the mail reader to tell; a human may infer from context but often does so by using information that is not available to the program. The Pine team has spent long (and at times heated) meetings reviewing this issue, before coming to the conclusion (as other email groups have independently done) that it's a no-win situation. The policy of the email development community for 15 years (since the RFC733 discussions) has been to exterminate the non-conforming format by not implementing it in modern mail tools. It may be feasible to implement a feature in a future version of Pine that would suppress the display of the local host name in email addresses. That is, the host name would still be in the file on disk, but would not show up on the screen. We'll consider it, but we have a large list of very high priority tasks which must be done first. -------------- --========== Content-Description: Printing Content-Type: MULTIPART/DIGEST; BOUNDARY="----------" From: The Pine Development Team Subject: Printing PRINTING ------------ Content-Description: Why doesn't "attached-to-ansi" printing work? From: The Pine Development Team Subject: Why doesn't "attached-to-ansi" printing work? So-called "attached-to-ansi" printing relies on the communication software you are using to interpret certain special characater sequences that tell it to divert the incoming stream of characters to your printer, and then back to your screen. Perhaps 99% of "pine printing problems" are either due to PC or Mac communications software that doesn't understand ANSI escape sequences for printing, *or* (in the dialin case) softare flow- control problems. We didn't understand how big a problem software flow control was until 3.90 came out... we changed pine to intercept flow control characters so that users would not see Pine "wedge" mysteriously if a mis-type or noise generated a control-S, but that did bad things when printers, modems, or comm software was depending on s/w flow control. So in 3.91 we added the "preserve-start-stop-characters" feature, so that Pine could be configured to respect s/w flow control characters (if the operating system did) for those folks who needed them. Enabling this feature should make Pine 3.91 behave the same way as earlier versions. Then we discovered that some operating systems don't enable software flow control by default. So in 3.92, the "preserve-start-stop-characters" feature will do more than simply "not ignoring" them, it will try to force the OS to pay attention to them. So here's the sequence of things to try if you have pine printing problems: 1. CHECK FOR SOFTWARE FLOW-CONTROL PROBLEMS: A. Try enabling "preserve-start-stop-characters" <- requires 3.91 B. If that doesn't help, verify that the OS is enabling s/w flow control; if it isn't, you can either change that in a global .login script, or as a worst case, wrap pine in a script that does it. By the way, on our AIX systems, we had to execute "stty -ixon" followed by "stty ixon" --no one here knows why the first stty is needed. (Note that explicitly enabling s/w flow control in the OS will not be needed in 3.92). C. If neither of the above apply, double-check that you actually have *some* kind of flow control enabled on your system, either hardware or software. 2. CHECK YOUR COMM SOFTWARE FOR ANSI PRINTING CAPABILITY A. After ruling out s/w flow control problems, if printing still doesn't work, the odds are that the PC or Mac comm s/w is at fault. I don't know how to determine this other than via trial-and-error and word-of-mouth. B. The "ansiprt" utility included in the pine distribution can also be used for testing. It simply sends the specified text file to user's terminal device, bracketed with the ANSI escape sequences for print diversion. This is just what Pine does as well (although some versions of ansiprt offer a few options not available via Pine.) 3. POSSIBLE OTHER PRINTING PROBLEMS A. Printing via Pine's "attached-to-ansi" facility to a postscript-only printer. Pine does not yet have the ability to encapsulate text into postscript, ala "enscript", so the custom print option using enscript and ansiprt will be needed in that case. B. Other printer-specific configuration problems. For example, whether or not the printer needs a trailing formfeed to eject the last page, or a control-D, or non-Unix newline conventions, etc. Many of these problem will also require using the custom print command option and "ansiprt". ------------ Content-Description: What PC comm software works with the "Print to ANSI" print option? From: The Pine Development Team Subject: What PC comm software works with the "Print to ANSI" print option? The attached-to-ansi option works on most PC communication packages. In particular, Kermit, NCSA Telnet, and WinQVT have been tested. Brent Blumenstein reports "It works in under OS/2 using IBM's TCP/IP for OS/2 telnet capabilities (provided you have updated to the latest corrective service diskettes - readily available). I do this using both a token ring network connection and SLIP from home." Ryan reports "Works great with QmodemPro for DOS." Ben Cacace reports "I'm using ProComm Plus for Windows ver 1.02: I can print E-Mail if it is *not* a large memo (memos of 48K or larger give me a ProComm error message)." Nancy McGough reports "It works with Delrina's WinComm. Other packages will be listed as reports come in. Please send reports to pine@cac.washington.edu. IMPORTANT NOTE ============== If you have a postscript printer and you are printing from a MS Windows Comm program you need to use a non-postscript printer driver. ------------ Content-Description: What Mac comm software works with the "Print to ANSI" print option? From: The Pine Development Team Subject: What Mac comm software works with the "Print to ANSI" print option? The UW modified versions of Kermit and NCSA Telnet are known to work with the attached-to-ansi print option. Versaterm Pro is also reported to work. Other packages will be listed as reports come in. Please send reports to pine@cac.washington.edu. ------------ Content-Description: What Amiga comm software works with the "Print to ANSI" print option? From: David Miller Subject: What Amiga comm software works with the "Print to ANSI" print option? David Miller reports "Term 3.2 starts printing, but misses the sequence to stop printing. Term 4.1 printing is garbled." Other packages will be listed as reports come in. Please send reports to pine@cac.washington.edu. -------------- --========== Content-Description: Newsreading and Posting Content-Type: MULTIPART/DIGEST; BOUNDARY="----------" From: The Pine Development Team Subject: Newsreading and Posting ------------ Content-Description: How do I read News with Pine? From: The Pine Development Team Subject: How do I read News with Pine? Beginning with version 3.91, it is usually sufficient to set the nntp-server variable, via the Setup/Config menu. This will automatically define a default news-collection. In case the default is not appropriate for your site, the following details may help... Three ways to access news via Pine: 1. Via NNTP. Your .newsrc file must be on the machine where Pine is running. Assuming news is stored on the machine news.nowhere.edu, a typical .pinerc entry would be: news-collections = News *{news.nowhere.edu/nntp}[*] Note that if the nntp-server variable is set, your news-collections will default to NNTP access from that same server. 2. Via IMAP. Your .newsrc file must be on the machine where news is stored. Assuming news is stored on the machine news.nowhere.edu, a typical .pinerc entry would be: news-collections = News *{news.nowhere.edu}[*] 3. Local News. If news is stored on the same machine you run Pine on, you can specify: news-collections = News *[*] The advantage of IMAP newsreading is that the same .newsrc can be used for both Unix Pine and PC-Pine. The disadvantage is that you must have an account on the machine that stores the news and runs the NNTP server. ------------ Content-Description: Can I post news with Pine? From: The Pine Development Team Subject: Can I post news with Pine? Versions of Pine prior to Pine 3.90 do not support posting. In Pine 3.90 and later you can enter a list of newsgroups on the Newsgrps: header to post a message. If the Newsgrps: header is not displayed when you are composing you can view it by putting your cursor in the header and typing ^R to view rich headers. -------------- --========== Content-Description: Attachments Content-Type: MULTIPART/DIGEST; BOUNDARY="----------" From: The Pine Development Team Subject: Attachments ------------ Content-Description: Why does Pine encode text attachments? From: The Pine Development Team Subject: Why does Pine encode text attachments? Pine uses MIME's Base64 encoding for *all* attachments, including text, in order to assure that they are not modified in transit. The goal is make sure that sending file attachments in Pine is as dependable as using FTP. Although it may seem like encoding is unnecessary for files that are plain text, certain email gateway, trasport, and delivery agents pose a threat to the integrity of even text files (much less binary files). For example, long lines may be wrapped, trailing spaces deleted, tabs turned into spaces, lines beginning with "From " modified, etc. Pmay there are actually several potential sources of corruption ------------ Content-Description: How can someone without a MIME-aware mail program decipher an attachment? From: The Pine Development Team Subject: How can someone without Pine decipher an attachment? Pine uses the MIME Internet standard for attaching files to email messages. Any MIME-capable mailer should be able to understand Pine's attachments. If you use Pine's attachment feature, your recipient needs to have either a MIME-capable mail reader or software that can decode MIME. Fortunately, these are not hard to find. The major proprietary mail vendors have committed to MIME support, but some of their upgraded products are some months away. One freely-available program which can decipher a MIME attachment is munpack from Carnegie Mellon. It is available at: ftp://ftp.andrew.cmu.edu//pub/mpack ------------ Content-Description: How can I send a text file without it being encoded? From: The Pine Development Team Subject: How can I send a text file without it being encoded? This is easily done by using Pine's "file inclusion" key (Control-R). Instead of entering the file name on the Attchmnt header line, move the cursor to the bottom of your messaage, and press Control-R, then enter the name of the text file. It will be included at the end of your message without any encoding (unless the file contains 8bit or binary characters, in which case the entire message becomes subject to MIME encoding rules.) ------------ Content-Description: Why does Pine use Base64 instead of UUENCODE? From: The Pine Development Team Subject: Why does Pine use Base64 instead of UUENCODE? Pine uses the Internet MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) standard for all attachments. MIME uses "Base64" encoding rather than uuencode, because uuencode uses characters that are transformed by some email gateways, and there are also several incompatible versions of uuencode. However, if needed, you can certainly uuencode a file outside of Pine, then use the Composer's Ctrl-R (file inclusion) command to insert the uuencoded file into the message. ------------ Content-Type: MULTIPART/MIXED; BOUNDARY="+++++" --+++++ Content-Description: How do I convert a Sun Mailtool attachment to MIME format? From: Keith Moore Subject: How do I convert a Sun Mailtool attachment to MIME format? A perl script (and conversion to C of same) that converts OpenWindows mail to MIME. Body parts currently supported are: text, gif, Sun rasterfile (converted to image/gif), postscript, and audio. Other types default to application/octet-stream. It's easy to extend the set of types supported and to add conversions, if necessary. The script requires uuencode, uudecode, zcat (aka uncompress), and the "convert" program from ImageMagick. If you don't have ImageMagick you can probably substitute the pbm stuff with little fuss. If you are reading this with a MIME browser, the the script and program should be included in the next two attachments. --+++++ Content-Type: MESSAGE/EXTERNAL-BODY; name="sun-to-mime.perl"; site="cs.utk.edu"; access-type=ANON-FTP; directory="pub/MIME"; mode="ASCII" Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN --+++++ Content-Type: MESSAGE/EXTERNAL-BODY; name="sun-to-mime.c"; site="cs.utk.edu"; access-type=ANON-FTP; directory="pub/MIME"; mode="ASCII" Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN --+++++-- -------------- --========== Content-Description: Folder Problems Content-Type: MULTIPART/DIGEST; BOUNDARY="----------" From: The Pine Development Team Subject: Folder Problems FOLDER PROBLEMS ------------ Content-Description: If I postpone a Reply, Pine never marks it as answered. From: The Pine Development Team Subject: If I postpone a Reply, Pine never marks it as answered. This is a known limitation of the current release of Pine. When you postpone a composition, Pine does not have any way to keep track of which message was being replied to (or that it was a reply at all). This limitation will be removed in a future release. ------------ Content-Description: "Folder Format Invalidated (consult an expert), aborted" From: The Pine Development Team Subject: "Folder Format Invalidated (consult an expert), aborted" The message "Folder Format Invalidated (consult an expert), aborted" means that Pine was reading your mail folder, and at the point in which it expected a start-of-message header line, it found something else. The ``format invalidated'' condition can happen in one of three ways: 1. bad data exists at the beginning of the folder. 2. data was appended to the folder after Pine initially read it, and the new data did not begin with a start-of-message-header. 3. the folder was modified without Pine being aware of it. All three problems are generally caused by software external to Pine. Condition (1) can be determined by whether or not the problem repeats itself after restarting Pine. If restarting Pine does not make the problem go away, then you need to look at the actual file for the folder and see what is wrong with the very first line. In particular, make sure that there are no blank lines at the beginning of the file and that the first character of the folder file is a capital ``F'' , the second an ``r'', the third an ``o'', etc. In the case of an INBOX, you may want to rename the folder so that new mail can be delivered while repairs on the corrupt folder are being done. Condition (2) may be caused by a mail delivery process (e.g. /bin/mail) which writes some characters other than ``From '' at the beginning of the new data. Condition (3) is caused by another program manipulating the mail folder without following the normal folder locking protocols. This is a general problem on UNIX. Conditions (2) and (3) have also been known to occur when accessing folders via NFS, if the information returned by the stat() and read() system calls do not correspond with each other as a result of NFS attribute caching. Restarting Pine on that folder always clears conditions (2) and (3). If the problem is chronic, it may be worth an investigation to determine its cause. Usually, it is due to the misbehavior of some external software. The reason why Pine gives up with conditions (2) and (3) is that it does not want to risk damaging user data by guessing what is right. Pine never writes to the folder unless it is absolutely sure it knows what it is doing. There are some steps which can be taken to reduce the risk of these conditions coming up. Some of these steps may require the assistance of your system adminstrator (or whomever it was that built and installed Pine on your system): 1. Use IMAP instead of NFS to access remote folders. Problems with locking over NFS are perhaps the single most important cause of user difficulties. Using IMAP eliminates this class of problem. 2. Consider enabling the mbox driver in Pine. If the mbox driver is enabled, mail is transferred from the /usr/spool/mail mail into a file called mbox in your home directory, if mbox exists. The home directory mbox file is then your INBOX. This has the advantage that Pine and the mail delivery system are less often in contention for the INBOX, and never both trying to update it. Pine only empties the /usr/spool/mail file, it never tries updating it. 3. Be careful not to run other programs that modify your folders while you are running Pine. Such programs may change the folder out from under Pine, and lead Pine to conclude that there is a problem with its view of the file. ------------ Content-Description: What is folder locking and how does it work? From: The Pine Development Team Subject: What is folder locking and how does it work? Locks are used by Pine and other mail programs to prevent damage from occurring to the mail file when multiple programs try to write to the file at the same time. Because there are many different schemes of mail file locking used on UNIX, Pine implements all of them. The result is a lot of complexity. There are several reasons why locking needs to be done: 1. If you want to read the mail file, you want to make sure that no other process will modify the mail file while you are reading it. 2. If you want to write to the mail file, you want to make sure that no other process is accessing the mail file while you are writing it. 3. If you have the mail file open, you want to make sure that no other process can alter any of the internal contents of the mail file that you have read, but it is OK if another process appends new data to the mail file. 4. If you want to alter any of the internal contents of the mail file, you want to make sure that no other process has the mail file open. There are several mechanisms of locking: * The creation of a file which has the same name as the mail file, but with a suffix of ".lock" (for example, this lock for /usr/spool/mail/isma is named /usr/spool/mail/isma.lock). This file accomplishes locks (1) and (2) above. This is an exclusive lock. * The use of an flock() with LOCK_SH on the mail file. This accomplishes lock (1), and prevents lock (2). Multiple processes can do this. * The use of an flock() with LOCK_EX on the mail file. This accomplishes lock (2), and prevents lock (1). This is an exclusive lock. * The use of an flock() with LOCK_EX on a file on /tmp. The file name used depends upon the version of Pine. This accomplishes locks (3) and (4). This is an exclusive lock. On SVR4-based systems, the lockf() subroutine or fcntl() system call it used instead of flock(). It is rumored that this creates a kind of lock file as well, but this has not been directly verified. _NOTE: flock() on BSD systems does not work over NFS, so only the most basic .lock file locking -- locks (1) and (2) happen over NFS. On SVR4 systems, fcntl() locking attempts to work over NFS, but there are known problems in the rpc.lockd daemon which have caused hangs if an application beats on the mechanism too much (and Pine beats on it). All of the above mechanisms work reliably over IMAP connections._ ------------ Content-Description: What happens when two Pine sessions access the same mailbox at the same time? From: The Pine Development Team Subject: What happens when two Pine sessions access the same mailbox at the same time? This varies depending on what format your folders are stored in. With the default Berkeley format, the last session to open a folder will get full access to the folder and the previous session(s) will be changed to read-only access. When a folder is read-only, you will not see any further updates to that folder until it is reopened with full access. Currently the INBOX cannot be reopened without exiting and restarting Pine. With the Tenex format, any number of sessions can simultaneously have full access to a folder, with the exception that expunging is disabled. See "What is a Tenex mailbox and why should I use it?" for more information. ------------ Content-Description: Why did I get the message "locked, override in _XXX_ sec"? From: The Pine Development Team Subject: Why did I get the message "locked, override in _XXX_ sec"? The message "locked, will override in _xxx_ seconds" occurs when Pine has discovered that some other mail program claims to be accessing your mail folder (i.e. _folder_.lock exists). This is a very low-level lock used by programs such as the system mailer in delivering mail, and by certain programs such as mail, elm, babyl, mm, etc. Supposedly, this lock is only to be acquired and held for a very short period of time (less than a second). It starts with 285 seconds, retries every second, and issues that message every 15 seconds. The total period of time, 5 minutes, is the time that it will keep on trying before it concludes that the lock is false -- that is, that whatever program locked the folder forgot to unlock it (perhaps it crashed) -- and Pine will go ahead and claim the lock for itself. This is not due to a conflict between two copies of Pine, since Pine interlocks against itself in a higher-level fashion. _NOTE: On some systems with 14 character filename limits, attempting to open a folder with a 14 character name (e.g. saved-messages) will trigger this sequence. Folder names should be limited to 9 characters or less on those systems._ ------------ Content-Description: Why doesn't Pine recognize Content-Length header field? From: The Pine Development Team Subject: Why doesn't Pine recognize Content-Length header field? It would be a significant detriment to the performance of the Berkeley format mailbox parsing code, as well as to Pine's behavior on normal systems which do not use the Content-Length: header, if any attempt were made to implement Content-Length:. There are many serious technical problems with the Content-Length: header, and we do not recommend its use. Furthermore, we recommend that a mail delivery agent such as our sendit or tmail tool be used that applies smart quoting, as opposed to the ordinary BSD /bin/mail quoting of all lines that begin with "From ". We have installed such tools on all of our systems. For example, one problem is that a system whose mailer does not implement Content-Length: will also not enforce its validity should that header appear. This offers significant potential for mischief. Another problem is that Berkeley format mailbox files which use the Content-Length: header can not be edited with an editor such as emacs or vi without invalidating the Content-Length: field. If this problem is not a consideration at your site, we recommend the use of the tenex format (mail.txt), which is also length tagged but in a much more efficient fashion. From our perspective, these problems outweigh any possible benefit of supporting Content-Length: in Berkeley format mailbox files. At the present time there are no plans to do so. -------------- --========== Content-Description: Addressbook Usage and Conversions Content-Type: MULTIPART/DIGEST; BOUNDARY="----------" From: The Pine Development Team Subject: Addressbook Usage and Conversions ADDRESSBOOK USAGE AND CONVERSIONS ------------ Content-Description: How do I "paste" an address from the addressbook into the text of a message? From: The Pine Development Team Subject: How do I "paste" an address from the addressbook into the text of a message? Pine does not currently support this directly, but here is a work-around: 1. Move the cursor to the Cc: line. 2. Enter the nickname or press Ctrl-T to search the addressbook and select the entry. 3. Use Ctrl-K to delete that address from the Cc: line. 4. Move the cursor where you want it in the body of the message. 5. Press Ctrl-U to insert the address. This is a round-about way to get the job done, but it works... ------------ Content-Description: How do I convert Berkeley Mail aliases to Pine Addressbook? From: The Pine Development Team Subject: How do I convert Berkeley Mail aliases to Pine Addressbook? The Pine source distribution includes a shell script to do this in the contrib/utils directory. It is called brk2pine.sh. ------------ Content-Type: MULTIPART/MIXED; BOUNDARY="+++++" --+++++ Content-Description: How do I convert Elm aliases to Pine Addressbook? From: Klaus Wacker Subject: How do I convert Elm aliases to Pine Addressbook? I wrote my own perl script, which I claim digests everything elm accepts and converts it into something pine accepts. Please tell me if you find otherwise. I intend to use this script regularly to keep system-wide aliases and addressbooks in synch. It is archived at: http://www.Physik.Uni-Dortmund.DE/wacker/elm-to-pine A copy is below. --+++++ Content-Description: elm-to-pine: Convert elm aliases file to Pine Addressbook Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; name="elm-to-pine" #!/usr/local/bin/perl # # elm-to-pine: Convert elm aliases file to pine address book # Author: Klaus Wacker (wacker@Physik.Uni-Dortmund.DE) # # Usage e.g. # elm-to-pine ~/.elm/aliases.text >~/.addressbook # # get a line, combining continuation lines # that start with whitespace # (taken from the perl man page and modified) sub get_line { return 0 if eof(); $thisline = $lookahead; line: while ($lookahead = <>) { if ($lookahead =~ /^[ \t]/) { $thisline .= $lookahead; } else { last line; } } $thisline; } $lookahead = <>; # get first line while ($_ = do get_line()) { next if /^\#/; # Skip comments chop; s/\t/ /g; # Lets not get confused by any tabs in the file ($nicks,$name,$address)=split(/ *= */,$_,3); @nick=split(/ *, */,$nicks); ($fullname,$remark)=split(/ *, */,$name,2); $fullname =~ s/;/,/; # Lastname[;,] Firstname if ($address =~ /,/ ) {$address="(".$address.")";} # Its a list foreach $nicki (@nick) { # Pine doesn't allow multiple nicknames printf "%s\t%s\t%s\t\t%s\n", $nicki, $fullname, $address, $remark; $address = $nick[0]; # Let additional nicks point to the first one } } --+++++-- -------------- --========== Content-Description: Installation and Configuration Content-Type: MULTIPART/DIGEST; BOUNDARY="----------" From: The Pine Development Team Subject: Installation and Configuration INSTALLATION AND CONFIGURATION ------------ Content-Description: Can Kerberos or AFS authentication be used with Pine? From: The Pine Development Team Subject: Can Kerberos or AFS authentication be used with Pine? Not yet, but Kerberos support is planned for a future release of Pine. If you have access to Kerberos or AFS compatible IMAP clients already, the following information may be useful. The current version of imapd does not support AFS or Kerberos authentication. However, the routine which validates authentication is designed as a drop-in module, to allow you to replace with alternative authentication schemes such as AFS, Kerberos, S/Key, etc. This routine is server_login(). Depending upon which version of c-client you have, it is either in the os__xxx_.c (where _xxx_ is the name of your port) or it is in a file named log__yyy_.c which is included by the os_xxx.c file. The log__yyy_.c is usually log_std.c (std for "standard UNIX"), but it may be log_sv4.c (SVR4) or a couple of other variants. This file only contains that one routine, so it should be a simple matter to modify that file and rebuild imapd. ------------ Content-Description: Can PC-Pine be used with a POP server? From: The Pine Development Team Subject: Can PC-Pine be used with a POP server? No. Neither Pine nor PC-Pine currently support POP's offline mail model (wherein pending mail is pulled from the mail server to the local machine and deleted from the server). However, it is likely that this model will be supported, with a choice of either IMAP or POP as the access protocol, in a future release. ------------ Content-Description: What is a Tenex mailbox and why should I use it? From: The Pine Development Team Subject: What is a Tenex mailbox and why should I use it? Using the Tenex format for INBOXes allows multiple sessions (or mulitple users, subject to the usual access controls) to have *almost* full Read-Write access to the INBOX. The only limitation on full RW access is that if there are multiple sessions at a given moment, no one can do an Expunge. However, message state changes (e.g. marking a msg as deleted) *can* be done, and this state is preserved across sessions. If an explicit Expunge command fails, it will say so and tell you that the mailbox is in use by another process. When there is only one session left using that mailbox, expunge will resume working again. In contrast: the normal Berkeley style folders can have only one RW client at a time, so _given the current software_ the latest session steals the RW lock away from any previous session, with the earlier session becoming RO. NOTE: Mailbox format for INBOX is a function of the mail transfer agent (sendmail, tmail), not the mail user agent (Pine), so this is a decision for sys/mail admins, not for regular Pine users. ------------ Content-Description: Where does Pine look for configuration information? From: The Pine Development Team Subject: Where does Pine look for configuration information? In Unix and PC Pine 3.90 and higher, the Release Notes (Press "R" on the Main Menu) contain a section on Configuration, including default file names and environment variables. Almost all personal configuration can be accomplished through the Setup (S) command on the main menu. Unix Pine uses three configuration files: a system-wide defaults file, a system-wide non-overridable settings file and a personal coniguration file. If you need to generate a "blank" copy of the system wide configuration files, run "pine -conf > /usr/local/lib". If, for some reason, you need to generate a blank personal configuration file, run "pine -P pinerc.blank". ------------ Content-Description: How do I make Pine work with my older terminal? From: The Pine Development Team Subject: How do I make Pine work with my older terminal? Pine does not support some older terminals (e.g. tvi925, WYSE-60) very well. Some problems can be overcome with a proper termcap entry, but others, such as handling cursor keys, do not have a good solution. ------------ Content-Description: How do I configure Pine to not leave mail in /usr/spool/mail? From: The Pine Development Team Subject: How do I configure Pine to not leave mail in /usr/spool/mail? You have several options: 1. Leave inbox in /usr/spool/mail, but turn on the Pine option to prompt users to move read messages to a folder in their home directory upon exiting Pine. 2. Modify your mail delivery program to deliver mail directly into the user's home directory, and specify that inbox-path in your global pine.conf (See the "tmail" program on ftp.cac.washington.edu for an example.) 3. "touch mail.txt" in each home directory, which will cause Pine (upon startup) to pull mail from /usr/spool/mail into ~/mail.txt -- however, mail.txt will be a Tenex-format, rather than Berkeley mail format folder (faster, but non-standard). 4. Link in the "mbox" driver when you build Pine. This driver will (upon Pine startup) pull mail from /usr/spool/mail into ~/mbox, which will be a Bky-format folder. -------------- --========== Content-Description: Platform-specific Issues Content-Type: MULTIPART/DIGEST; BOUNDARY="----------" From: The Pine Development Team Subject: Platform-specific Issues PLATFORM-SPECIFIC ISSUES ------------ Content-Description: To what platforms has Pine been ported? From: The Pine Development Team Subject: To what platforms has Pine been ported? The Pine distribution includes binaries for AIX 3.2 (on RS/6000), HP/UX 9.0, Linux 1.1, NeXTStep (on NeXT hardware), SunOS 4.1 (on SPARCStations), Solaris 2.2, Ultrix 4.1 and 4.2 (on DECStations), MS-DOS (PC-Pine) and MS-Windows (PC-Pine for Windows). PC-Pine is available for the following TCP/IP stacks: FTP's PC/TCP, University of Waterloo's WATTCP stack with packet drivers, Novell's LAN Workplace, Sun's PC/NFS, and Winsock. Pine has been compiled on other UNIX platforms (4.3 Berkeley UNIX, DEC OSF/1 V1.2A, Dynix/PTX V1.4.0, VAX Ultrix 4.1, A/UX 3.0, BSD/386 Gamma 4.1, Convex, Dynix 3.0 and 3.1 on Sequent Symmetry, Interactive Systems Corporation UNIX, Silicon Graphics IRIS with IRIX 4.0.1, SCO Unix, System V release 4) as well. ------------ Content-Description: Pine 3.89 on an IBM RS/6000 running AIX 3.2.3 crashes every time I try to open a folder. From: The Pine Development Team Subject: Pine 3.89 on an IBM RS/6000 running AIX 3.2.3 crashes every time I try to open a folder. Some AIX distributions apparently include a compiler that does not correctly compile certain constructs used in Pine 3.89 and earlier. We think that Pine 3.90 works around the problems but it is difficult for us to confirm this since there is considerable variation among AIX systems. We have also not been able to identify a particular version or patch of AIX or the compiler that is the culprit. ------------ Content-Description: I cannot compile under SCO unix, why not? From: Gunther Anderson Subject: I cannot compile under SCO unix, why not? Pine has been tested and compiles just fine on a suitably equipped SCO Unix 3.2.4, and probably works on the whole 3.2 series (testing has not been as extensive). It handles both MMDF and sendmail mailboxes without needing recompilation. It should be sufficient just to unpack the source tree and run "sh build sco" at the top level. You need to own the complete Development System, and the Developer's Versions of the other packages. Pine will not compile without TCP/IP support. The most common problem is when people own the Development System, but keep getting missing header files (netbd.h is one) in their builds. This is a common problem on SCO systems because of the great fragmentation SCO enjoys in the marketing of system components. It is easy to get confused about just what you've bought. And in this case, haven't bought. What you need is the "Developer's Version" of the TCP/IP product. The normal version just supports the TCP/IP protocol, but doesn't include tools (including header files) to compile TCP/IP-specific programs. Alas, the only remedies available to you are to pick up a pre-compiled version (mine is on odi.cwc.whecn.edu, ftp.celestial.com has their own, which prefers Bezerk mailboxes, though it supports MMDF too), or to buy the Developer's Version of TCP/IP. If you intend to do any serious compiling of Internet- available programs, I'd recommend the latter, though many of the most useful ones are available precompiled on other FTP sites. -------------- --========== Content-Description: Bug Reports Content-Type: MULTIPART/DIGEST; BOUNDARY="----------" From: The Pine Development Team Subject: Bug Reports BUG REPORTS ------------ Content-Description: Why should I use the builtin Bug Report command? From: The Pine Development Team Subject: Why should I use the builtin Bug Report command? Using the built-in Bug Report command (B on the Main Menu or any Help screen) is useful because it will automatically include configuration information that may be essential to determining the cause of the problem you are experiencing. It also gives you the opportunity to conveniently include the current message as an attachment in case you believe that the problem is specific to that message. ------------ Content-Description: Why does the Bug Report Screen come up when I didn't ask for it? From: The Pine Development Team Subject: Why does the Bug Report Screen come up when I didn't ask for it? We don't know yet. ------------ Content-Description: I have found a bug in Pine 3.05. Could you please fix it? From: The Pine Development Team Subject: I have found a bug in Pine 3.05. Could you please fix it? When a bug is identified in an old release, there is a very strong possibility that the associated code has been re-written to the point that a fix will not apply to the current release. Hence, if we can't reproduce the problem in the current version, our standard response will be to ask you to upgrade. -------------- --========== Content-Description: Development Info Content-Type: MULTIPART/DIGEST; BOUNDARY="----------" From: The Pine Development Team Subject: Development Info DEVELOPMENT INFO ------------ Content-Description: What are the current versions of Pine and related software? From: The Pine Development Team Subject: What are the current versions of Pine and related software? The current version of Pine is 3.91. The current version of Pico is 2.5. ------------ Content-Description: What is new in this version of Pine? From: The Pine Development Team Subject: What is new in this version of Pine? These are the changes and improvements since Pine 3.89: * Finished all the "Not implemented yet" commands: + Bounce (Remail) + Flag (Set message status) + Pipe (Pipe msg to external cmd; Unix only) + Select,Apply,Zoom (Aggregate operations) + Setup/Config (Pinerc configuration screen) * News posting * News subscription/unsubscription * Multiple address books * Postpone multiple messages * Customizable headers for Composer * Mailcap support * Improved support for multiple incoming message folders * enable-alternate-editor-implicitly feature (except for editing headers) * All .pinerc features now settable from command line * Way to control which options are user-configurable (Unix only) * Way to have Save *not* implicitly delete * Way to use current-working-directory for Export, Read File, etc. * A _preliminary_ version of PC-Pine for Windows/Winsock (but not OS/2) ------------ Content-Description: When is the next release of Pine (tentatively) scheduled? From: The Pine Development Team Subject: When is the next release of Pine (tentatively) scheduled? We don't know right now. 3.92 is under active development, but no dates yet. Besides, our track-record on meeting projected release schedules is terrible, so you shouldn't believe any dates we are foolish enough to suggest anyway. ------------ Content-Description: What new features will the future releases of Pine include? From: The Pine Development Team Subject: What new features will future releases of Pine include? The list for 3.92 is not frozen yet. This release will have a number of bug fixes, but it will also introduce several new features. Some of the things we know will be there include: o Fix for some pine.conf variables not working (e.g. local bug address). o Delete flag will no longer be preserved on Save. o Bky mbox format performance bug fixed. o Reply prompt will change if there is a Newsgroups header present. o Improvements in software flow-control handling. o Improvements in bug report command. o Ability to specify an alternative to the sendmail MTA. o Support for negotiating 8BITMIME with an ESMTP server. o Mouse support for use with X terminals. o Pull-down command menus in the Windows version. o Feature to disable capture of pipe command output. o Ability to use mailcap viewer for attachments of type TEXT. o Support for .mime.types file to specify attachment types. After 3.92 is released, here are a few of the things that we plan to work on: * Additional MIME support, esp. controlling file TYPING * PEM and/or PGP support * External directory services access * Kerberos support * RFC1522 header encoding for 8bit character sets * Location independence of support files * Offline support * Hierarchy support (awaits IMAP4) * Answered flag not set if reply is postponed (awaits IMAP4) * Faster detection of folders with Recent messages (awaits IMAP4) * Faster fetching of headers (awaits IMAP4) * Determination of which flags are permanent (awaits IMAP4) -------------- --==========--