1. What's Pine?
2. What's electronic mail?
3. Email addresses
4. Using pine
5. Sending mail
6. Reading your mail
7. Replying to a message
8. Advanced features
9. Resources

What's pine?

Pine is a program used to send and receive electronic mail. Pine is available on many Unix systems, including CNS nersp computers, CIRCA's grove computer, and the Alachua County Freenet system. Pine is a trademark of and has been copyrighted by the University of Washington.

Electronic mail, or email, is a message transmitted electronically from an account on one computer to an account on another. Both computers must be connected to a computer network. The major computer network in the world today is the Internet. Almost all of the computers on the UF campus are connected to the Internet.

The use of email is a privilege. Don't abuse it. If you use your computer account to send mail to harass or annoy other computer users, your account may be deleted and other actions taken.

Before anyone can send you email, they must know your email address. Before you can send email to someone else, you must know their email address.

An email address has two parts: the user id and an Internet address. The user id is what you use to log in to the computer. It's the part you can see when you log in, not the secret password. The Internet address is the computer network address of the computer that will receive the mail.

The Internet address has several parts separated by dots. All the Internet addresses connected to the UF computer network end in ufl.edu. Here are some typical Internet addresses:

ufl.edu

grove.ufl.edu

A complete email address has a user id and an address separated by the @ character. Here are some typical email addresses:

jsmith@ufl.edu

afn01234@afn.org

On grove and other Unix computers, start pine by entering the pine command at the Unix prompt:

pine

In the Alachua County Freenet system, select Mail Service for Registered Users at the main menu, then Use E-Mail from the next menu.

In some parts of pine, you will have to type a control character using the control key. The control key is labeled Ctrl on your keyboard and is used like a shift key. For example, to type Ctrl/x, press and hold down the Ctrl key and press the x key.

Pine is designed to be simple and efficient, and the easiest way to learn it is to use it. When you start pine, you'll see a menu of major functions. Select any function by pressing the single letter key next to its description.

Pine will always show you a two-line menu of appropriate functions at the bottom on the screen. The functions are initiated by pressing the single letter key shown or by typing a control character. When a control character is required, it is shown with the ^ character:

^X means type Ctrl/x

Just above the two-line menu is the message line. Pine displays messages or questions on this line. Pine never does anything important without asking you first, so look here for confirmation questions. Usually, you will need to press the Y key for "yes" or the N key for "no".

Press the Q key to exit from pine.

Type Ctrl/g to get help in any pine screen.

After you've started pine, press the C key to select the COMPOSE MESSAGE function. First, you'll have to fill in the mail headings at the top of the screen. Use your arrow keys to move to a heading, and then type the required information:

To : an email address, or a list of addresses separated by commas

Cc : one or more additional recipients of the message

Attchmnt: see Advanced features below

Subject : the subject of the message

Type the text of the message in the blank area below the headings. If you don't what to do, use the arrow keys to move to a field and type Ctrl/g to see help screens.

In the compose screen you must use control keys for pine functions. The functions are shown at the bottom of the screen, but these are the two you'll use most often:

Ctrl/x to send the message

Ctrl/c to cancel the message

When you're composing a message, pine uses a simple text editor called pico, or Pine Composer. Pico can also be used as a general-purpose text editor to modify text files.

The mail you receive and copies of mail you send is stored in folders. Each folder has a name, and incoming mail is stored in a folder named INBOX.

Press the L key. You may now select your INBOX or select and expand a list of your folders.

Once you select a folder name, press the I key to see a list of messages in the selected folder. A one-line description of each message in the folder is displayed on the screen and at the left side of each description, single character codes describe the message:

+ means the message was sent directly to you, and is not a carbon-copy of a message to someone else.

N means it's a new message you haven't read.

A means you've already answered (replied) to this message.

D means it's a message marked to be deleted.

Depending on your terminal, one of the messages will be marked or highlighted. It will be either the first message you haven't read, or if you've read them all, the last message. While in this screen, use these keys to read your mail:

V or Return view the selected message

N or Down arrow select the next message

P or Up arrow select the previous message

While you're reading a message, press the R key to compose a reply to the sender. Sending a reply is just like composing a message except you won't have to fill in the headings at the top. They are extracted from the message you're replying to.

You'll be asked if you want to include the original text of the message in your reply. This makes it easy to annotate or comment on each part of the message.

If you want to change the behavior of pine on your account, select the SETUP command from the main menu. SETUP allows you to specify a signature file that will automatically be inserted into every message you send. You must first create the signature file using a text editor like pico or joe.The signature file can contain your name, email address, or any other information you want someone to see.

Pine has an address book feature so you don't have to enter long email addresses for people you frequently send mail to. At the main pine menu, press the A key, then choose the option to add a new address to the Address Book. You'll be asked for names and addresses.

Pine supports MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) for sending and receiving binary or other non-text files. To send attached files, enter the names of the files on the Attachmnt: line when you're composing a message. You can send attachments to someone only if they use a mail program that supports MIME.