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Documentation - Email - Pine

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Pine: Email for Unix

1. Introduction

Electronic mail, or email, is one of the most popular services that Networking Services and Information Technology (NSIT) offers. Email is a service that allows you to communicate by computer with friends and colleagues across the campus and around the world. It is used for everything from informal conversation to scholarly communication, research, and collaboration.

Pine is a Unix-based electronic mail program that allows you to send, receive, and manage your electronic mail messages from your NSIT Server Cluster account (on harper). Unlike many other Unix email clients, which are command-line driven (MM and Mail, for example), pine is controlled through a series of menus located at the bottom of the pine screen.

To issue a command, you press the highlighted character (usually a letter) associated with that command. Unlike most Unix programs, pine's commands are not case-sensitive; if a command is listed as A, you can type A or a to use that command. In this document, commands are capitalized for consistency only. Some commands are listed as "^letter" which means "hold down the control key while you press this letter."

At any given time, your active window occupies the upper part of the screen. The bottom of the screen displays commands that you can use. On the bottom menu line, the left-most command is O OTHER CMDS (other commands); pressing O reveals an additional list of available commands.

2. Getting Started with Pine

Entering the Pine program

To run the pine program, log into harper, then type pine (no quotes, all lowercase) at the Unix prompt:

pine <ENTER>

This will bring you into the opening screen of the pine program, also known as the "Main Menu."

Leaving the Pine program

You can leave pine at almost any point in the program by pressing Q (although this will not work while you are composing an email message). Pine will ask you if you really want to quit; enter Y to exit.

3. Pine Features

This section provides a quick overview of some of pine's fundamental commands.

Main Menu

To return to the Main Menu (the screen you first see when you enter pine), press M. This command works from most screens; however, it will not work when you are composing a message or when you are changing pine's setup.

Switching Folders

When you first enter the pine program, it creates three mail folders: "INBOX," "sent-mail," and "saved-messages." As you continue using pine, it will ask occasionally if you want to create additional folders. If you switched from another mail program to pine, you may have other folders from your old mail program as well.

To switch from one folder to another: press L to display a list of your available folders; select the desired folder using the arrow keys, then press the return key. Pine will then display an index of messages for the selected folder.

Help

There are two help commands in pine. In most cases, pressing ? (question mark) will display the Help file. To get to Help when you are composing a message, giving a command, or changing pine's configuration, press "^ G (control-G).

4. Sending Messages

To create an email message, enter pine, then press C (compose). This command is available from the Main Menu, the folder index, the folders list, and the address book.

Pine will display the Composer window, which looks much like an empty memo form. You will see five lines at the top of the Composer window:

To: [The email address of the recipient.]
 Cc: [The email address of anyone who should receive a "carbon copy" or
 duplicate of the message.]
 Attchmnt: [pine fills this in automatically if you add an attachment.]
 Subject: [The subject of the electronic mail.]
 ---- Message Text ---- [This isn't actually part of the message; pine puts this in as
 separator between the header (the lines above) and the actual text
 of the message.]
  1. You can use the arrow keys to move around in the Composer.
  2. Enter the address of the person to whom you want to send mail. You can send to multiple people by separating the addresses with commas. (You can also create nicknames for addresses that you use often, so you don't have to type in an entire address every time you use it. For more information, see Section 8, Pine's Address Book.)
  3. The "To" field must contain address information - and it must be correctly formatted - in order for pine to send your message. The first part of the address is the username. The rest specifies the name of the machine the username is on, the institution that runs that machine, and what type of institution it is. For example, support@uchicago.edu is a special UChicago account you can write to for computing help:
  1. To send mail to someone on the same mail machine as you, you need only enter the username. To send mail to someone at the University but on a different machine (like "username@cicero.uchicago.edu"), you need only enter the username and mail machine name. In both cases, though, you may use the full address if you choose. Note the punctuation: the @ sign and periods are necessary.
  2. Use the arrow keys (or press TAB) to move to the "Cc" field. If you would like to send a copy of this message to another individual, place the appropriate email address in the "Cc" field (like the "To" field, the "Cc" field may have multiple email addresses separated by commas).
  3. Use the arrow keys to move to the "Subject" field. Enter a line describing the contents of your message.
  4. Use the arrow keys to move to the message area. Enter the text of your message in the "Message Text" area of the Composer window.
  5. When you are finished with the text of your message press, ^X to send the current message and exit the Composer. Pine will ask you "Send current message?"; press Y to send the message, N to continue editing the message.
  6. To discard the message without sending it, press ^C (this cancels the message and exits the Composer).
  7. To postpone the current message, press ^O; this will exit the Composer but allows you to resume editing the message at a later time (during your present session or any future pine session).

Advanced features

  • To send a quick message without accessing your incoming mail, enter pine's composer directly from the Unix prompt with the command pine user@email.address.here. Pine's Composer will automatically use the electronic mail address you include at the command line. However, you can change the email address once you are in the Composer.
  • The command ^R (rich header) adds three additional lines to the header area:
Bcc: [The recipients of a "blind" carbon copy.]
 Newsgrps: [An unsupported feature; please use the "trn" program to read and post
 to newsgroups.]
 Fcc: [The folder where a copy of this message will be saved.
 By default, this is the "sent-mail" folder.]

5. Reading Messages

To access your incoming messages in pine, go to your "INBOX" (new messages).

  1. From the Main Menu, press L to bring up the folder list.
  2. Select "INBOX" from the folder list, then press the return key to bring up the message index.
  3. To read a message, press the return key or type V (view message).
  4. While reading your message, pressing N moves you to the next email message; pressing P brings you back to the previous message; pressing the space bar scrolls down one screen; the "-" (hyphen) scrolls you up one screen.
  5. You can also jump directly to a particular message by typing J and entering the number of that message. You can jump directly to the nextnew message by pressing the TAB. Pressing I returns you to the index.

6. Replying to Messages

  1. To reply to a message, press R (reply to the highlighted message). This command is available both from within the message window and from the message index.
  2. When you reply to a message, pine automatically places the email address of the person who sent you the message in the "To" line of your reply. pine also puts the message's subject in the "Subject" line of your reply, preceded by "Re". Both of these lines can be edited normally.
  3. pine will then ask, "Include original message in Reply?" If you say yes, pine will quote the text of the message you're responding to, with a > inserted at the beginning of each line. You may wish to use some or all of this text in a reply. You can delete parts of the quoted message that are not relevant, but it's usually a good idea to leave enough of the message for the recipient to remember what you are responding to.
  4. If appropriate, pine will then ask "Reply to all recipients?" If you say yes, pine will put all addresses from the original "To" and "Cc" lines into your "Cc" line.
  5. Compose and send the message as usual (see Section 4,Sending messages ).
  6. In addition to replying to messages, pine will also let you "forward" a selected message to another user, by pressing F. Pine leaves the "To" line for you to fill in. The text of the original message will be quoted.

7. Deleting and Undeleting Messages

  1. To delete a message, press D (this command is available from within the message and from the message index). This marks the message for later deletion; messages are not actually gone until they are "expunged."
  2. If you change your mind and do not wish to delete a particular message, press U to unmark the current message so it's no longer flagged for deletion.
  3. When you quit pine, the program asks you if you wish to expunge deleted messages. Press Y to expunge messages. Note that once the messages are expunged, they cannot be recovered.
  4. If you want to expunge messages without quitting pine, press X.

8. Folders and Transferring Mail

Pine stores your mail in folders. NSIT's pine comes with three basic folders: "INBOX," "sent-mail," and "saved-messages." Incoming mail is placed in your "INBOX," mail you have read is automatically moved to "saved-messages" when you quit pine; and any outgoing mail is stored in your "sent-mail" folder.

To transfer a message between folders, press S ("Save"), then enter the name of the folder to transfer it to (this works both from within a message and from the message index). To choose from a list of folders, press ^T. Messages may be transferred between any two mailboxes, except no messages may be transferred to the "INBOX" (the INBOX is a representation of your mail spool file on Midway, not an actual folder). After the message has been transferred, the original message will be marked for deletion.

To create a new folder while transferring a message, press S ("Save") then enter a new folder name. Pine will prompt, "Folder doesn't exist. Create?" Press Y to create the new folder and transfer the message.

9. Pine's Address Book

Pine maintains an address book of user-defined nicknames for electronic mail addresses. These nicknames are in one of two forms; "aliases" for single individuals and "distribution lists" for groups (where one alias automatically sends to several people). By default, the information in pine's address book is saved in your home directory in a file named .addressbook (note the period at the beginning).

Creating addresses (aliases and distribution lists)

To enter the address book from the Main Menu, press A.

  1. To add an alias to the address book, press A. Pine will prompt you for the necessary information (for example, the name of the alias and the email address associated with the alias).
  2. To delete an alias, select it from the list and press D.
  3. To add a distribution list, press S. Pine will prompt you for a list name, and for the email addresses and names for that list.
  4. To delete an entire list, press D. (you must select the line with the words "DISTRIBUTION LIST:"); to delete an address from a distribution list, select the line with that address, then press D.
  5. To edit any information in an alias or distribution list, press E. Note that in order to edit an email address within a distribution list, you must press E while that address is highlighted (not any other part of the distribution list). You may not add or subtract email addresses while in edit mode.
  • To add an alias for an incoming email message, press "T" (this works both from within a message and from the message index). Note that you can only add aliases in the "Take Address" menu that appears; if you want to do something other than add an alias while in the Take Address menu, you must enter the full address book.

Using addresses

  • Type in an alias in the "To" or "Cc" (or "Bcc") lines; when you scroll off the line the alias should be replaced by the associated address or addresses.
  • Type ^T while in one of the headers, then select an alias or list from the address book that appears.

10. Printing messages

You can print your email messages using pine's "print" function. By default, pine will print to your selected printer. For instance, if you are using a Macintosh, pine will print to the printer you have selected from the Chooser. Printing in pine is accomplished through a process called "attached to ansi" in which the stream of characters that constitute the selected message is routed to your printer. This command may not work with all printers, and only works with some terminal emulation software (such as SSH Secure Shell and Better Telnet).

To print a message, press Y (this command can be run from within a message or from the message index, though not from the Composer).

If you have configured printing for your Unix account (using a Unix-based printer), you can change pine's default to print to that printer instead (see the NSIT document "Basic Unix" for more information on printing from Unix). From pine's Main Menu, press S to enter the Setup menu, then P to configure your printer setup. Enter a "2" to set pine to print to your preferred Unix printer.

11. Sending a text file

To send an unformatted text file with your email message, use pine's "file inclusion" key. To attach a plain-text (ascii) file while composing a new message, move to where you want to include the file, then press "^ R. pine will prompt you for the name of the text file (this file must be on the NSIT Server Cluster). To display a list of available files, press ^T. When you send the email, the text file will be included.

The process for attaching formatted files (MS Word files, graphics, etc.) is a bit more complicated. To learn more about sending these types of files, enter the Composer window, then activate the Help command (press ^G) while your cursor is in the "Attchmnt" field.

12. Using Pine's Help Function

Most of the time, you can access pine's Help screen by pressing ? (question mark); at other times Help is available by pressing ^G (control-G). It is easy to tell which command to use: the Help command is always the first command displayed on pine's menu.

Pine's help is "context-sensitive." This means that if you ask for help while composing a message, you will get a different Help screen than if you asked for help while reading your email.

If you ask for help while in the Main Menu, you will receive a help file of general information about using pine. The Main Menu help file also includes a list of commands available from the Main Menu, explanations of Main Menu commands, and pine command line options (options that you specify when starting pine).

If you go into the Main Menu help, you have one additional help command available: typing Z prints all of pine's help files, over 50 pages worth (pine must be set up for printing) Please do not print pine's help files at an NSIT computing site; doing so exceeds printing limits.

If you ask for help in another menu, you will receive a one-screen-long list of commands which are in the current menu, followed by explanations of each command.

To report a bug in pine, press B (NOTE: do not use this option to request help with using pine; instead send mail to support@uchicago.edu).

To exit the help area at any time, press E.

13. For More Information

There are a host of World Wide Web sites with information on pine:

Getting started:

http://www.cac.washington.edu/pine/tutorial/

General information:

http://www.marshall.edu/pine101/
http://www.umbc.edu/pine.html

The software:

http://www.cac.washington.edu/pine/pine-info/

In addition, typing "man pine" at the Unix prompt will bring up pine's manual page.

If you have any questions about, or problems with pine, contact the NSIT Support Line at 834-8324. You can also send email to the NSIT Support Line at support@uchicago.edu

The NSIT Support Line is open Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. When sending email about pine problems, be sure to include a phone number (so you can be reached, if necessary) and a detailed description of the problem, including any relevant error messages you have received.

Back to pine Documentation Home.

Last updated: 7/15/08