The Pine e-mail client was developed by the University of Washington. In 2006 Pine was superseded by Alpine. In 2008 UW released Alpine 2.0 and stopped development. In 2009 the re-alpine project was started as a continuation of Alpine; as of 2018 Sep 29 the latest version is dated 2012 Dec 21. In 2013 Eduardo Chappa released Alpine 2.1.
As of 2020 May 17, Chappa’s latest version is 2.22 dated 2020 Apr 5. The source and the MS Windows binary can be downloaded from GitHub or repo.or.cz. The latest fully patched version for MS Windows can be downloaded from http://alpine.x10host.com/alpine/info/windows.html.
See also Nancy McGough’s All about Pine (last modified 2007 Sep 27).
When a message contains multiple attachments and you want to
save them all at once:
use E to export the message then use ^P
to activate AllParts. The text of the message will be
save in the directory that you specify with the file name
that you specify, and the attachments will
be saved in a specially created subdirectory.
Type ^\ followed by a character for the accent
(e.g., ') and the character to be accented
(e.g., e for é)
(details).
After typing W to search, type ^W to toggle between forward and backward searching (new in version 2.22).
Type ^W^X (details).
When you save a message, Alpine checks the message size against the size
specified by the IMAP server and complains if they don't match. This is
very annoying with Windows servers which often report the wrong size.
To suppress the error message, set the ignore-size-changes
option in .
Use ; to select the desired messages, then do A (Apply), * (Flag), ! (Not) and N (New).
To specify, for example, that PDF files are to be opened using Evince,
create a file ~/.mailcap with a line like the following:
application/pdf; evince '%s'; test=test -n "$DISPLAY" ; nametemplate=%s.pdf
The text test=test -n "$DISPLAY" tests whether the string
length of the value of $DISPLAY is nonzero.
Sometimes certain kinds of attachments aren't opened successfully
because after creating a temporary file Alpine deletes it before the
invoked application gets around to opening it. I experienced this
for .doc and .docx files, and sometimes .odt files, that were to be
opened by LibreOffice. A
kluge is to add a sleep command to the mailcap line
for that attachment type. For example, I rather crudely added
Application/MSWORD; libreoffice '%s' \; sleep 5; test=test -n "$DISPLAY"
Application/VND.OPENXMLFORMATS-OFFICEDOCUMENT.WORDPROCESSINGML.DOCUMENT; \
libreoffice '%s' \; sleep 5; test=test -n "$DISPLAY"
Application/VND.OASIS.OPENDOCUMENT.TEXT; \
libreoffice '%s' \; sleep 5; test=test -n "$DISPLAY"
to my ~/.mailcap file. (refs
1,
2,
3,
4)
Most of the following was written for Pine; some has been updated for Alpine.
When run the first time without any configuration file specified,
Alpine will prompt for a user-id (e.g.,
Linux username),
personal-name (e.g., James Kirk),
user-domain (e.g., Local exceptions to the settings in
Note slightly different syntax for invoking a remote configuration file:
mcgill.ca) and
smtp-server
(e.g.,
mailhost.mcgill.ca or
smtp.mcgill.ca/submit/user=first.last@mcgill.ca)
and inbox-path
(e.g., {exchange.mcgill.ca/ssl/user=first.last@mcgill.ca}inbox).
(The /submit option sets the port to 587, equivalent
to hostname:587, rather than the SMTP port, which is 25
(ref).
Using the server on port 25 is much faster than using the more
secure server on port 587 but is only permitted if connected to the VPN.)
It will record these in
pinerc in the same directory as pine.exe;
I haven't figured out
how to make it put the file into $HOME\pine\
but it can be moved
there later. Things to be set up (if desired) include
A remote configuration file can be used by specifying it in a
shortcut used to invoke Pine, e.g.,aspell
(for MS Windows,
aspell.net/win32/)
hostname.biomed.mcgill.ca/user=username
and path = mail/)
to collection list using
default-fcc
(e.g., sent-mail, assuming that the appropriate
folder collection has been defined)
enable-alternate-editor-cmd
enable-sigdashes
include-text-in-reply
signature-at-bottom
enable-full-header-cmd
customized-hdrs = e.g.,
From: name <e-mail-address>
X-Message-Flag: Avoid Outlook Viruses: Switch to Alpine! www.washington.edu/alpine/
Under some circumstances the X-Message-Flag
seems to cause a recipient's Outlook e-mail client to display
a follow-up flag.
save-msg-name-rule = last-folder-used
initial-keystroke-list: specify i
to start in the Inbox index, rather than in the Main Menu
font-name (e.g., Lucida Console),
font-size
"C:\Program Files\Pine444\pine.exe" -p {funsan.biomed.mcgill.ca/user=username}remote_pinerc
If the official Pine installer is used, Pine will use the Windows
Registry to specify where to find the resource file, and also
to specify the window size and position; e.g.,
remote_pinerc can
be specified in pinercex. The location of this file can
be specified on the command line with, for
example, -x c:\users\username\alpine\pinercex.
If no -x is specified, Alpine is supposed to look
in ${HOME}\ALPINE but this didn't work for me (see
my posting, which was never answered).
pine -p '{funsan.biomed.mcgill.ca/user=username}remote_pinerc'
"C:\Program Files\Pine444\pine.exe"
-p {funsan.biomed.mcgill.ca/user=username}remote_pinerc
R. Funnell
Last modified: 2020-09-27 08:29:18