Pine

At A Glance  

  Package Name: Pine
  Latest Version: Pine 3.07
  Developer/Author: Mike Siebel, Mark Crispin, 
                    and Laurence Lundblade <pine@cac.washington.edu>
  Availability: Through anonymous FTP from:
                ftp.cac.washington.edu:
                pub/mail/pine3.07.tar.Z
 
  Sources: Openly available.
  Platforms: UNIX
  Support: Pine mailing list: send a request to 
           pine-info-request@cac.washington.edu
  Folder Format: mbox
  Notable Features: Screen oriented. Good for novices.
 

• From: "UNIX EMail Software - a Survey"

  Pine is a mailer developed by the University of Washington Office of Computing and Communications. It has been designed for ease-of-use and with the novice computer user in mind. It is based on Internet mail protocols (e.g. RFC-822, SMTP, IMAP, and MIME) and currently runs on a variety of UNIX platforms.

  The guiding principles for achieving ease-of-use in Pine 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.

  A stand-alone version of Pico, Pine's message composition editor, is also included. It is a very simple and easy to use text editor with text justification and a spelling checker.

  Features:

  • Mail index showing a message summary which includes the status, sender, size, date and subject of messages.
  • View and process mail with the following commands: forward, reply, save, export, print, delete, capture address and search.
  • Address book for saving long complex addresses and personal distribution lists under a nickname.
  • Multiple folders and folder management screen for filing messages.
  • Message composer with easy-to-use editor and spelling checker. The message composer also assists entering and formatting addresses and provides direct access to the address book.
  • Online help specific to each screen and context.
  • Supports access to remote mail repositories via the IMAP2 protocol defined in RFC-1176.
  • Soon to support multi-part mail conforming to proposed MIME Internet standard, allowing sending of sounds, graphics such as GIF and TIFF files, and binary files such as spreadsheets.
  Pine, including source code, is freely available via anonymous FTP from ftp.cac.washington.edu on the Internet. Other provisions for distribution have not been made. From the Internet, you may try out Pine and leave comments by telneting to "demo.cac.washington.edu" and logging in as "pinedemo". To join the Pine mailing list for announcements send a request to "pine-info-request@cac.washington.edu".

  Pine is very portable and runs on a variety of UNIX machines including DECstations, NeXTs, VAX's and Suns. Pine was originally based on Elm, but it has evolved much since, ("Pine Is No-longer Elm").

  For further information send e-mail to pine@cac.washington.edu. Pine is the work of Mike Siebel, Mark Crispin, and Laurence Lundblade at the University of Washington.