/usr/local/lib/pine.conf
or /usr/local/lib/pine.conf.fixed.
(Actually, these files can be changed using the configure arguments
--with-system-pinerc=VALUE or --with-system-fixed-pinerc=VALUE.)
The location of the pine.conf file can be changed with the -P command line
argument.
Both Alpine
and PC-Alpine also use personal (user-based) configuration files.
On UNIX machines, the personal configuration file is the
file ~/.pinerc.
For PC-Alpine systems, the personal configuration file is in
$PINERC or <PineRC registry value> or
${HOME}\ALPINE\PINERC or
<ALPINE.EXE dir>\PINERC.
Or the personal configuration file can be specified with the -p command
line argument.
All of these configuration files, other than the fixed system
config pine.conf.fixed on UNIX systems, may optionally
be remote configuration files instead of local files.
This is discussed further in the following section and in
Remote Configuration.
After the personal configuration, Alpine may optionally use
a personal exceptions configuration file which is specified with the
command line option "-x exceptions_config".
"Exceptions_config" may also be either a local file or a remote
configuration folder.
For Unix Alpine, if you don't have a "-x" command line option,
Alpine will look for the file ".pinercex"
in the same local directory that the regular config file is located in.
If the regular config file is remote then Unix Alpine looks in the home
directory for ".pinercex".
For PC-Alpine, if you don't have a "-x" command line option,
PC-Alpine will use the value of the
environment variable $PINERCEX.
If that is not set, PC-Alpine will look for
the local file "PINERCEX"
in the same local directory that the regular config file is located in.
If the regular config file is remote then PC-Alpine looks in the
local directory specfied by the "-aux local_directory" command
line argument, or the directory ${HOME}\ALPINE, or
in <ALPINE.EXE directory>.
The syntax of a non-list configuration variable is this:
<variable> = <value>If the value is absent then the variable is unset. To set a variable to the empty value two double quotes (""). This is equivalent to an absent value except that it overrides any system-wide default value that may be set. Quotes may be used around any value. All values are strings and end at the end of the line or the closing quote. Leading and trailing space is ignored unless it is included in the quotes. There is one variable, use-only-domain-name, for which the only appropriate values are yes and no. That's because it is a variable from the early days of Alpine before features existed.
There is also a second type of variable, lists. A list is a comma-separated list of values. The syntax for a list is:
<variable> = <value> [, <value> , ... ]A list can be continued on subsequent lines by beginning the line with white-space. Both the per-user and global configuration files may contain comments which are lines beginning with a
#. For UNIX Alpine, there are five ways in which each variable can be set. In decreasing order of precedence they are:
If the variable is not set in any of those places, there is a default setting in the source code.
So, system-wide fixed settings always take precedence over command line flags, which take precedence over per-user exception settings, which take precedence over per-user settings, which take precedence over system-wide configuration settings. PC-Alpine has the same list, except that it does not use a system-wide fixed configuration file. This can be modified slightly by using inheritance, which is covered below.
You may get a sample/fresh copy of the system configuration file by running alpine -conf. The result will be printed on the standard output with very short comments describing each variable. (The online help in the Setup screens provides much longer comments.) If you need to fix some of the configuration variables, you would use the same template for the fixed configuration file as for the regular system-wide configuration file. (If it isn't clear, the purpose of the fixed configuration file is to allow system administrators to restrict the configurability of Alpine. It is by no means a bullet-proof method.) Alpine will automatically create the personal configuration file the first time it is run, so there is no need to generate a sample. Alpine reads and writes the personal configuration file occasionally during normal operation. Users will not normally look at their personal configuration file, but will use the Setup screens from within Alpine to set the values in this file. If a user does add additional comments to the personal configuration file they will be retained.
References to environment variables may be included in the Alpine
configuration files. The format is $variable or
${variable}. The character ~ will be expanded to the
$HOME environment variable.
For a more complete explanation of how environment variables work, see
the section
Using Environment Variables.
When environment variables are used for Alpine settings which take lists, you must have an environment variable set for each member of the list. That is, Alpine won't properly recognize an environment variable which is set equal to a comma-delimited list. It is OK to reference unset environment variables in the Alpine configuration file, which will expand to nothing.
You can use the command line option "-x config" to split your configuration into generic and exceptional pieces. Config may be either local or remote.
For most people, splitting the configuration information into two pieces is only going to be useful if the generic information is accessed remotely. If you already have a local pinerc file with settings you like you may find that the command Setup/RemoteConfigSetup will be useful in helping you convert to a remote configuration. The command line flag copy_pinerc may also be useful.
For configuration variables which are lists, like "smtp-server" or "incoming-folders", the inheritance mechanism makes it possible to combine the values of options from different configuration locations instead of replacing the value. Configuration Inheritance has more information about how inheritance is used.
This option is displayed as "Addressbook Sort Rule".
The matching is case-insensitive, so this would match any of User@example.com, user@Example.Com, or USER@EXAMPLE.COM as well.
If set, the option affects the behavior of the Reply command and the "+" symbol in the MESSAGE INDEX, which denotes that a message has been addressed specifically to you.
In the default INDEX display the personal name (or email address) of the person listed in the message's "From:" header field is usually displayed except when that address is yours or one of your alternate addresses. In that case you will usually see the name of the first person specified in the message's "To:" header field with the prefix "To: " prepended.
With respect to Reply, the reply-to-all option will exclude addresses listed here.
The feature copy-to-address-to-from-if-it-is-us is somewhat related to this option.
In addition to a list of actual addresses, you may use regular expressions (as used with egrep with the ignore case flag) to describe the addresses you want to match. Alpine will somewhat arbitrarily interpret your entry as a regular expression if it contains any of the characters *, |, +, ?, {, [, ^, $, or \. Otherwise, it will be treated literally. The feature disable-regular-expression-matching-for-alternate-addresses may be used to turn off regular expression processing regardless of whether or not special characters appear in the entry.
A description of how regular expressions work is beyond the scope of this help text, but some examples follow.
The entry
in the alt-addresses list would mean that any address with a domain name of example.com (such as fred@example.com or wilma@example.com) will be considered one of your alternate addresses. Strictly speaking, the dot in example.com ought to be escaped with a backslash, as in example\.com, and a dollar sign anchor ought to come at the end of the expression to prevent a match of example.com.org. Complicating things further, the dollar sign is special in the Alpine configuration (it signifies environment variable expansion) so the dollar sign should be doubled or backslash escaped for Alpine's sake. Quotes around the whole expression will not escape the dollar sign successfully. So this example should look like
The entry
would match fred3@example.com or fred17@example.com as well as fred@example.com.
You could match all addresses that look like fred+stuff@example.com for any value of stuff with the entry
Notice that you have to escape the plus sign with a backslash because plus is a special character in regular expressions. If you wanted to match plain fred as well as fred+stuff the expression
would do it, but it would be easier to just add fred@example.com as a separate entry.
One more example, a match of all first-level subdomains, is given by
Because the regular expression matching is based on an old library (hs_regex) the regular expressions might not work exactly as you expect, but they should be close.
This option is displayed as "Alternate Addresses".
Setting this value to zero will prevent display of the animations altogether.
The option busy-cue-spinner-only can be used to remove the randomness from this animated display.
This variable may be set to any of the following values:
where the color_number is an ASCII digit between 0 and 7. The numbers 0 through 7 should correspond to the colors black, red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan, and white. Some terminal emulators use a pre-ANSI scheme which swaps the colors blue and red and the colors yellow and cyan. This will cause the default colors to be different, but other than that things should work fine. There is also a 9th color available, the last one shown, which is the default color from the terminal emulator. When used as a background color some people refer to this color as "transparent", which is why the letters "TRAN" are shown in the color swatch of the SETUP COLOR screen. The foreground transparent color is shown as the color of the "TRAN" text. (The transparent color will not work correctly in a PC-Alpine configuration.) The escape sequences used to set the background colors are the same as for the foreground colors except a "4" replaces the "3".
Note: With the Tera Term terminal emulator this setting works well. You should also have the Tera Term "Full color" option turned OFF. You may find the "Full color" option in Tera Term's "Setup" menu, in the "Window" submenu.
where the color_number is an ASCII digit between 0 and 255. Background colors are the same with the 38 replaced with a 48. The numbers 0 through 15 are probably similar to the 16 color version above, then comes a 6x6x6 color cube, followed by 24 colors of gray. The terminal default (transparent) color is the 257th color at the bottom. Some terminal emulators will misinterpret these escape sequences causing the terminal to blink or overstrike characters or to do something else undesirable.
The PuTTY terminal emulator has an option called "Allow terminal to use xterm 256-colour mode" which allows PuTTY to work well with this 256-color setting.
There are two other possible color values which may be useful in some situations. In the color configuration screens there will sometimes be a color which has the label "NORM" inside its color swatch. If this is selected the corresponding foreground or background Normal Color will be used. Another similar color is the one that has the label "NONE" inside its color swatch. The meaning of this setting is that no color changing will be done. This NONE color is only useful in contexts where Alpine is already coloring the text some color other than the Normal Color. For example, if the Reverse Color is set then the current line in the MESSAGE INDEX will be colored. If one of the index symbols (for example, the Index-to-me Symbol) has the NONE color as its background then the symbol's foreground color will be used to draw the actual text but the background color will be the same as whatever the background color already was. The color values which end up in the configuration file for these special values are the 11-character words "norm-padded", "none-padded", and "transparent".
The normal default is "no-color".
Once you've turned on color you may set the colors of many objects on the screen individually. The Color Configuration section has more information, or you may just try it by running the "Setup" command and typing "K" for Kolor to enter the color configuration screen (Kolor instead of Color because C means Config). Most categories of color which Alpine supports are configurable there. Index line color is configured separately.
and another showing how you might set a Reply-To address
You may also set non-standard header values here. For example, you could add
or even
If you include a value after the colon then that header will be included in your outgoing messages unless you delete it before sending. If a header in the Customized-Headers list has only a tag but no value, then it will not be included in outgoing messages unless you edit a value in manually. For example, if
is in the list, then the Reply-To header will be available for editing but won't be included unless a value is added while in the composer.
It's actually a little more complicated than that. The values of headers that you set with the Customized-Headers option are defaults. If the message you are about to compose already has a value for a header, that value is used instead of a value from your Customized-Headers. For example, if you are Replying to a message the Subject field will already be filled in. In that case, if the Customized-Headers list contains a Subject line, the custom subject will NOT be used. The subject derived from the subject of the message you are Replying to will be used instead.
It is also possible to make header setting even more complicated and more automatic by using Roles, but if all you want to do is set a default value for a header, you don't need to think about Roles.
If you change your From address you may also find it useful to add the changed From address to the alt-addresses configuration option.
Limitation: Because commas are used to separate the list of Customized-Headers, it is not possible to have the value of a header contain a comma. Nor is there currently an "escape" mechanism provided to make this work.
This option is displayed as "Customized Headers".
If you set this option to a value higher than one, then that many copies of dead letter files will be saved. For example, if you set this option to "3" then you may have files named "DEADLETR", "DEADLETR2", and "DEADLETR3"; or "dead.letter", "dead.letter2", and "dead.letter3". In this example, the most recently cancelled message will be in "dead.letter", and the third most recently cancelled message will be in "dead.letter3". The fourth most recently cancelled message will no longer be saved.
If you set this option to zero, then NO record of canceled messages is maintained.
If the feature Quell-Dead-Letter-On-Cancel is set, that overrides whatever you set for this option. If this option had existed at the time, then the Quell feature would not have been added, but it is still there for backwards compatibility. So, in order for this option to have the desired effect, make sure the Quell feature is turned off.
Note that the "Newsgroups:" header will be abbreviated in the Composer display, but should be spelled out in full here.
This option is displayed as "Default Composer Headers".
This option is displayed as "Default Fcc (File carbon copy)".
This option is displayed as "Default Saved Message Folder".
Alpine matches its list of supported authenticators with the server to determine the most secure authenticator that is supported by both. If no matching authenticators are found, Alpine will revert to plaintext login (or, in the case of SMTP, will be unable to authenticate at all).
The candidates for disabling are listed below. There may be more if you compile Alpine with additional authenticators and/or a newer version of the c-client library.
Normally, you will not disable any authenticators. There are two exceptions:
It is never necessary to disable authenticators, since Alpine will try other authenticators before giving up. However, disabling the relevant authenticator avoids annoying error messages.
The mbox driver enables the following behavior: if there is a
file called mbox
in your home directory, and if that file is either empty or in Unix mailbox
format, then every time you open INBOX the mbox driver
will automatically transfer mail from the system mail spool directory into the
mbox file and
delete it from the spool directory. If you disable the mbox driver,
this will not happen.
It is not recommended to disable the driver which supports the system default mailbox format. On most non-SCO systems, that driver is the unix driver. On most SCO systems, it is the mmdf driver. The system default driver may be configured to something else on your system; check with your system manager for additional information.
It is most likely not very useful for you to disable any of the drivers other than possibly mbox. You could disable some of the others if you know for certain that you don't need them but the performance gain in doing so is very modest.
Display filters do not work with PC-Alpine.
The command is executed and the message is piped into its standard input. The standard output of the command is read back by Alpine. The _TMPFILE_ token (see below) overrides this default behavior.
The filter's use is based on the configured trigger string. The format of a filter definition is:
You can specify as many filters as you wish, separating them with a comma. Each filter can have only one trigger and command. Thus, two trigger strings which invoke the same command require separate filter specifications.
The trigger is simply text that, if found in the message, will invoke the associated command. If the trigger contains any space characters, it must be placed within quotes. Likewise, should you wish a filter to be invoked unconditionally, define the trigger as the null string, "" (two consecutive double-quote characters). If the trigger string is found anywhere in the text of the message the filter is invoked. Placing the trigger text within the tokens defined below changes where within the text the trigger must be before considering it a match.
Trigger Modifying Tokens:
The "command" and "arguments" portion is simply the command line to be invoked if the trigger string is found. Below are tokens that Alpine will recognize and replace with special values when the command is actually invoked.
Command Modifying Tokens:
The feature disable-terminal-reset-for-display-filters is related.
Performance caveat/considerations:
Testing for the trigger and invoking the filter doesn't come for free.
There is overhead associated with searching for the trigger string, testing
for the filter's existence and actually piping the text through the filter.
The impact can be reduced if the Trigger Modifying Tokens above are
employed.
Limitation:
If Header Colors are being used, the sequences of bytes which indicate
color changes will be contained in the text which is passed to the
display-filter.
If this causes problems you'll need to turn off Header Colors.
The thirteen bytes which indicate a color change are
the character \377 followed by
\010 for a foreground color or \011 for a background color.
Then comes eleven characters of RGB data which looks something like
255, 0,255, depending on the particular color, of course.
Normally, when a filename is supplied that lacks a leading "path" component, Alpine assumes the file exists in the user's home directory. Under Windows operating systems, this definition isn't always clear. This feature allows you to explictly set where Alpine should look for files without a leading path.
NOTE: this feature's value is ignored if either use-current-dir feature is set or the PINERC has a value for the operating-dir variable.
.MTX by default.
There are some situations where automatic new-mail checking does not work. For example, if a mail folder is opened using the POP protocol or a newsgroup is being read using the NNTP protocol, then new-mail checking is disabled.
It may be possible to check for new mail in these cases by reopening the folder. Alpine does not do this for you automatically, but you may do the commands manually to cause this to happen. You reopen by going back to the folder list screen from the message index screen with the "<" command, and then going back into the message index screen with the ">" command. (Actually, any method you would normally use to open a folder will work the same as the "<" followed by ">" method. For example, the GoTo Folder command will work, or you may use L to go to the Folder List screen and Carriage Return to reopen the folder.)
There are some cases where Alpine knows that reopening the folder should be useful as a way to discover new mail. At the time of this writing, connections made using the POP protocol, news reading using the NNTP protocol, local news reading, and local ReadOnly folders which are in the traditional UNIX or the MMDF format all fall into this category. There are other cases where it may be a way to discover new mail, but Alpine has no way of knowing, so it might also just be an exercise in futility. All remote, ReadOnly folders other than those listed just above fall into this category. The setting of this option together with the type of folder controls how Alpine will react to the apparent attempt to reopen a folder.
If you don't reopen, then you will just be back in the message index with no change. You left the index and came back, but the folder remained "open" the whole time. However, if you do reopen the folder, the folder is closed and then reopened. In this case, the current state of the open folder is lost. The New status, Important and Answered flags, selected state, Zoom state, collapsed or expanded state of threads, current message number, and any other temporary state is all lost when the reopen happens. For POP folders (but not NNTP newsgroups) the Deleted flags are also lost.
In the possibilities listed below, the text says "POP/NNTP" in several places. That really implies the case where Alpine knows it is a good way to discover new mail, which is more than just POP and NNTP, but POP and NNTP are the cases of most interest. This option probably has more possible values than it deserves. They are:
Remember, wherever it says POP or NNTP above it really means POP or NNTP or any of the other situations where it is likely that reopening is a good way to discover new mail.
There is an alternative that may be of useful in some situations. Instead of manually checking for new mail you can set up a Mail Drop and automatically check for new mail.
Nickname | Fullname | Addresswith optional whitespace in all the obvious places.
Setting this variable will alter Alpine's usual behavior when you execute the Compose command. Normally, Alpine offers a chance to continue a postponed or interrupted message should one or the other exist. When this variable is set to a folder name that exists, Alpine will also offer the chance to select a message from the folder to insert into the composer, much like when continuing a postponed message. The difference, however, is that Alpine will not automatically delete the selected message from the Form Letter Folder.
Setting this variable will also affect Alpine's behavior when you Postpone a message from the composer. Normally, Alpine simply stashes the message away in your Postponed-Folder. Regardless of the specified folder's existence, Alpine will ask which folder you intend the message to be stored in. Choose the "F" option to store the message in your Form Letter Folder. This is the most common way to add a message to the folder.
Another method of adding messages to the folder is via the Alpine composer's Fcc: field. If you are sending a message that you expect to send in the same form again, you can enter the Form Letter Folder's name in this field. Alpine, as usual, will copy the message as it's sent. Note, when you later select this message from your Form Letter Folder, it will have the same recipients as the original message.
To delete a message from the Form Letter Folder, you can either select the folder from a suitable FOLDER LIST screen, or use the Delete command in the MESSAGE INDEX offered when selecting from the folder as part of the Compose command. You can delete a Form Letter Folder just as any other folder from a suitable FOLDER LIST screen.
You may find that the Roles facility can be used to replace the Form Letter Folder.
If these are not path names, they will be in the default collection for Saves. Any valid folder specification, local or remote (via IMAP), is allowed. There is no default.
This option specifies, in seconds, how often Alpine will check for new mail and state changes in Incoming Folders when Incoming Folders Checking is turned on. The default is 3 minutes (180). This value applies only to folders that are local to the system that Alpine is running on or that are accessed using the IMAP protocol. The similar option incoming-check-interval-secondary applies to all other monitored folders.
This option together with the option incoming-check-interval specifies, in seconds, how often Alpine will check for new mail and state changes in Incoming Folders when Incoming Folders Checking is turned on. The default for this option is 3 minutes (180). For folders that are local to this system or that are accessed using the IMAP protocol the value of the option incoming-check-interval is used. For all other monitored folders, the value of this option is used.
The reason there are two separate options is because it is usually less expensive to check local and IMAP folders than it is to check other types, like POP or NNTP folders. You may want to set this secondary value to a higher number than the primary check interval.
When monitoring the Incoming Message Folders for Unseen messages Alpine will normally monitor all Incoming Folders. You may use this option to restrict the list of monitored folders to a subset of all Incoming Folders.
Sets the time in seconds that Alpine will attempt to open a network connection used for monitoring for Unseen messages in Incoming Folders. The default is 5. If a connection has not completed within this many seconds Alpine will give up and consider it a failed connection.
Alpine provides a pre-defined set of informational fields with reasonable column widths automatically computed. You can, however, replace this default set by listing special tokens in the order you want them displayed.
The list of available tokens is here.
Spaces are used to separate listed tokens. Additionally, you can specify how much of the screen's width the taken's associated data should occupy on the index line by appending the token with a pair of parentheses enclosing either a number or percentage. For example, "SUBJECT(13)" means to allocate 13 characters of space to the subject column, and "SUBJECT(20%)" means to allocate 20% of the available space to the subjects column, while plain "SUBJECT" means the system will attempt to figure out a reasonable amount of space.
There is always one space between every pair of columns, so if you use fixed column widths (like 13) you should remember to take that into account. Several of the fields are virtually fixed-width, so it doesn't make much sense to specify the width for them. The fields STATUS, FULLSTATUS, IMAPSTATUS, MSGNO, the DATE fields, SIZE, and DESCRIPSIZE all fall into that category. You may specify widths for those if you wish, but you're probably better off letting the system pick those widths.
The default is equivalent to:
This means that the four fields without percentages will be allocated first, and then 33% and 67% of the remaining space will go to the from and subject fields. If one of those two fields is specified as a percentage and the other is left for the system to choose, then the percentage is taken as an absolute percentage of the screen, not of the space remaining after allocating the first four columns. It doesn't usually make sense to do it that way. If you leave off all the widths, then the subject and from fields (if both are present) are allocated space in a 2 to 1 ratio, which is almost exactly the same as the default.
What you are most likely to do with this configuration option is to specify which fields appear at all, which order they appear in, and the percentage of screen that is used for the from and subject fields if you don't like the 2 to 1 default.
If you want to retain the default format that Pine 4.64 had, use
and set the feature Disable-Index-Locale-Dates.
Keywords may be used when Selecting messages (Select Keyword). Keywords may also be used in the Patterns of Rules (Filters, Indexcolors, etc). Filter rules may be used to set keywords automatically. Keywords may be displayed as part of the Subject of a message by using the SUBJKEY or SUBJKEYINIT tokens in the Index-Format option. The Keyword-Surrounding-Chars option may be used to modify the display of keywords using SUBJKEY and SUBJKEYINIT slightly. Keywords may also be displayed in a column of their own in the MESSAGE INDEX screen by using the KEY or KEYINIT tokens. It is also possible to color keywords in the index using the Setup/Kolor screen (Keyword Colors). Keywords are not supported by all mail servers.
You may give keywords nicknames if you wish. If the keyword definition you type in contains a SPACE character, then the actual value of the keyword is everything after the last SPACE and the nickname for that keyword is everything before the last SPACE. For example, suppose you are trying to interoperate with another email program which uses a particular keyword with an unpleasant name. Maybe it uses a keyword called
but for you that keyword means that the message is work-related. You could define a keyword to have the value
and then you would use the name "Work" when dealing with that keyword in Alpine. If you defined it as
the nickname would be everything before the last SPACE, that is the nickname would be "My Work".
Some commonly used keywords begin with dollar signs. This presents a slight complication, because the dollar sign is normally used to signify environment variable expansion in the Alpine configuration. In order to specify a keyword which begins with a dollar sign you must precede the dollar sign with a second dollar sign to escape its special meaning. For example, if you want to include the keyword
as one of your possible keywords, you must enter the text
instead.
and the SUBJKEYINIT token would look like
The default character before the keywords is the left brace ({) and the default after the keywords is the right brace followed by a space (} ).
This option allows you to change that. You should set it to two values separated by a space. The values may be quoted if they include space characters. So, for example, the default value could be specified explicitly by setting this option to
The first part wouldn't need to be quoted (but it doesn't hurt). The second part does need the quotes because it includes a space character. If you wanted to change the braces to brackets you could use
Inside the quotes you can use backslash quote to mean quote, so
would produce
It is also possible to color keywords in the index using the Setup/Kolor screen (Keyword Colors).
It is not possible to change the fact that a space character is used to separate the keywords if more than one keyword is set for a message. It is also not possible to change the fact that there are no separators between the keyword initials if more than one keyword is set.
This option is displayed as "Keyword Surrounding Characters".
Theserver_name[:port]"quoted stuff"
server_name is just a hostname and it is followed by
an optional colon and port number. The default port is 389.
Following the server name is a single SPACE character followed by
a bunch of characters inside double quotes. The part inside the quotes is
a set of tag = value pairs.
Each tag is preceded by a slash (/) and followed
by an equal sign. The value for that tag is the text up to the next slash.
An example of some quoted stuff is:
This would set the search base for this server to"/base=o=University of Washington, c=US/impl=0/.../nick=My Server"
o=University of Washington, c=US, set the implicit bit to zero,
and set the nickname for the server to My Server.
All of the tags correspond directly to items in the Setup/Directory screen
so experiment with that if you want to see what the possible tags and values
are.
This is simply a different way to store the signature data. The signature is stored inside your Alpine configuration file instead of in a separate signature file. Tokens contained in the signature work the same way they do with the regular signature-file.
The Setup/Signature command in Alpine's Main Menu will edit the literal-signature by default. However, if no literal-signature is defined and the file named in the signature-file option exists, then the latter will be used instead. Compose (Reply, Forward, ...) will default to using the literal-signature if defined, otherwise it will use the contents of the file named in signature-file.
The Alpine composer is used to edit the literal-signature. The result of that edit is first converted to a C-style string before it is stored in the configuration file. In particular, the two character sequence \n (backslash followed by the character "n") will be used to signify a line-break in the signature. You don't have to enter the \n, but it will be visible in the SETUP CONFIGURATION window after you are done editing the signature.
There are some situations where automatic new-mail checking does not work. See the discussion about new-mail checking in folder-reopen-rule.
The new-mail checking will not happen exactly at the frequency that you specify. For example, Alpine may elect to defer a non-INBOX mail check if you are busy typing. Or, it may check more frequently than you have specified if that is thought to be necessary to keep the server from closing the connection to the folder due to inactivity. If Alpine checks for new mail as a side effect of another command, it will reset the timer, so that new-mail checking may seem to happen irregularly instead of every X seconds like clockwork.
If you are anxious to know about new mail as soon as possible, set the check interval low, and you'll know about the new mail by approximately that amount of time after it arrives. If you aren't so worried about knowing right away, set this option to a higher value. That will save the server some processing time and may save you some of the time you spend waiting for new-mail checks to happen if you are dealing with a slow server or slow network connection.
If you suspect that new-mail checking is causing slow downs for you, you may want to look into the options Quell-Mailchecks-Composing-Except-Inbox, Quell-Mailchecks-Composing-Inbox and Mail-Check-Interval-Noncurrent, which refine when mail checking is done.
If the mailbox being check uses a Mail Drop then there is a minimum time (maildrop-check-minimum) between new-mail checks. Because of this minimum you may notice that new mail does not appear promptly when you expect it. The reason for this is to protect the server from over-zealous opening and closing of the Mail Drop folder, since that is a costly operation.
A side effect of disabling mail checking is that there will be situations in which the user's IMAP connection will be broken due to inactivity timers on the server. Another side effect is that the user-input-timeout option won't work.
Normally this option is set to zero, which means that the value used will be the same as the value for the "Mail-Check-Interval". If you set this option to a value different from zero (usually larger than the value for "Mail-Check-Interval") then that is the check interval that will be used for folders which are not the currently open folder or the INBOX. You may not even have any folders that are noncurrent and not the INBOX. If you do, it is likely that they are due to Stay-Open-Folders you have configured. This option also affects the rate of mail checking done on cached connections to folders you previously had open but are no longer actively using. You aren't expected to understand that last sentence, but if you are interested take a look at Max-Remote-Connections, and the related options.
This option specifies, in seconds, the minimum time between Mail Drop new-mail checks. You may want to set this minimum high in order to avoid experiencing some of the delays associated with the checks. Note that the time between checks is still controlled by the regular Mail-Check-Interval option. When Alpine is about to do an automatic check for new mail (because the Mail-Check-Interval has expired) then if the time since the last new-mail check of any open Mail Drops has been greater than the MailDrop-Check-Minimum, the Mail Drop is checked for new mail as well. Therefore, it is only useful to set this option to a value that is higher than the Mail-Check-Interval.
If this option is set to zero, automatic Mail Drop new-mail checking is disabled. There is a minimum value, normally 60 seconds. The default value is normally 60 seconds as well. This applies to the INBOX and to the currently open folder if that is different from the INBOX.
There are some time costs involved in opening and closing remote IMAP folders, the main costs being the time you have to wait for the connection to the server and the time for the folder to open. Opening a folder may involve not only the time the server takes to do its processing but time that Alpine uses to do filtering. These times can vary widely. They depend on how loaded the server is, how large the folder being opened is, and how you set up filtering, among other things. Once Alpine has opened a connection to a particular folder, it will attempt to keep that connection open in case you use it again. In order to do this, Alpine will attempt to use the Max-Remote-Connections (the value of this option) IMAP connections you have alloted for this purpose.
For example, suppose the value of this option is set to "2". If your INBOX is accessed on a remote server using the IMAP protocol, that doesn't count as one of the remote connections but it is always kept open. If you then open another IMAP folder, that would be your first remote connection counted as one of the Max-Remote-Connections connections. If you open a third folder the second will be left open, in case you return to it. You won't be able to tell it has been left open. It will appear to be closed when you leave the folder but the connection will remain in the background. Now suppose you go back to the second folder (the first folder after the INBOX). A connection to that folder is still open so you won't have to wait for the startup time to open it. Meanwhile, the connection to the third folder will be left behind. Now, if you open a fourth folder, you will bump into the Max-Remote-Connections limit, because this will be the third folder other than INBOX and you have the option set to "2". The connection that is being used for the third folder will be re-used for this new fourth folder. If you go back to the third folder after this, it is no longer already connected when you get there. You'll still save some time since Alpine will re-use the connection to the fourth folder and you have already logged in on that connection, but the folder will have to be re-opened from scratch.
If a folder is large and the startup cost is dominated by the time it takes to open that folder or to run filters on it, then it will pay to make the value of this option large enough to keep it open. On the other hand, if you only revisit a handful of folders or if the folders are small, then it might make more sense to keep this number small so that the reconnect time (the time to start up a new connection and authenticate) is eliminated instead.
You may also need to consider the impact on the server. On the surface, a larger number here may cause a larger impact on the server, since you will have more connections open to the server. On the other hand, not only will you be avoiding the startup costs associated with reopening a folder, but the server will be avoiding those costs as well.
When twenty five minutes pass without any active use of an IMAP connection being saved for possible re-use, that connection will be shut down,
This option is displayed as "Maximum Remote Connections".
You may have Alpine create a FIFO special file (also called a named pipe, see mkfifo(3) and fifo(4)) where it will send a one-line message each time a new message is received in the current folder, the INBOX, or any open Stay-Open-Folders. To protect against two different Alpines both writing to the same FIFO, Alpine will only create the FIFO and write to it if it doesn't already exist.
A possible way to use this option would be to have a separate window on your screen running the command
where "filename" is the name of the file given for this option. Because the file won't exist until after you start Alpine, you must first start Alpine and then run the "cat" command. You may be tempted to use "tail -f filename" to view the new mail log. However, the common implementations of the tail command will not do what you are hoping.
The width of the messages produced for the FIFO may be altered with the NewMail-Window-Width option.
On some systems, fifos may only be created in a local filesystem. In other words, they may not be in NFS filesystems. This requirement is not universal. If the system you are using supports it, it should work. (It is often the case that your home directory is in an NFS filesystem. If that is the case, you might try using a file in the "/tmp" filesystem, which is usually a local filesytem.) Even when it is possible to use an NFS-mounted filesystem as a place to name the fifo (for example, your home directory), it will still be the case that the reader (probably the "cat" command) and the writer (Alpine) of the fifo must be running on the same system.
This option is only useful if you have turned on the NewMail-FIFO-Path option. That option causes new mail messages to be sent to a fifo file. Those messages will be 80 characters wide by default. You can change the width of the messages by changing this option. For example, if you are reading those messages in another window you might want to set this width to the width of that other window.
For UNIX Alpine, this option is only useful if you have turned on the NewMail-FIFO-Path option. That option causes new mail messages to be sent to a fifo file. Those messages will be 80 characters wide by default. You can change the width of those messages by changing this option. For example, if you are reading those messages in another window you might want to set this width to the width of that other window.
If you are using PC-Alpine, it has an option in the Config menu to turn on the "New Mail Window". The present option also controls the width of that window.
/usr/lib/news/active.
/usr/spool/news.
When you open a connection to a News server using the NNTP protocol, you normally have access to all of the articles in each newsgroup. If a server keeps a large backlog of messages it may speed performance some to restrict attention to only the newer messages in a group. This option allows you to set how many article numbers should be checked when opening a newsgroup. You can think of "nntp-range" as specifying the maximum number of messages you ever want to see. For example, if you only ever wanted to look at the last 500 messages in each newsgroup you could set this option to 500. In actuality, it isn't quite that. Instead, for performance reasons, it specifies the range of article numbers to be checked, beginning with the highest numbered article and going backwards from there. If there are messages that have been canceled or deleted their article numbers are still counted as part of the range.
So, more precisely, setting the "nntp-range" will cause article numbers
to be considered when reading a newsgroup. The number of messages that show up in your index will be less than or equal to the value of "nntp-range".
The purpose of this option is simply to speed up access when reading news. The speedup comes because Alpine can ignore all but the last nntp-range article numbers, and can avoid downloading any information about the ignored articles. There is a cost you pay for this speedup. That cost is that there is no way for you to see those ignored articles. The articles that come before the range you specify are invisible to you and to Alpine, as if they did not exist at all. There is no way to see those messages using, for example, an unexclude command or something similar. The only way to see those articles is to set this option high enough (or set it to zero) and then to reopen the newsgroup.
If this option is set to 0 (which is also the default), then the range is unlimited. This option applies globally to all NNTP servers and to all newsgroups on those servers. There is no way to set different values for different newsgroups or servers.
When you define an NNTP server, Alpine implicitly defines a news collection for you, assuming that server as the news server and assuming that you will use the NNTP protocol and a local newsrc configuration file for reading news. See also Configuring News.
Your NNTP server may offer NNTP "AUTHINFO SASL" or "AUTHINFO USER" authentication. It may even require it. If your NNTP server does offer such authentication you may specify a user name parameter to cause Alpine to attempt to authenticate. The same is true for the server name in a folder collection which uses NNTP. This parameter requires an associated value, the username identifier with which to establish the server connection. An example might be:
If authentication is offered by the server, this will cause Alpine to attempt to use it. If authentication is not offered by the server, this will cause Alpine to fail with an error similar to:
For more details about the server name possibilities see Server Name Syntax.
Use this option to set it to something different. The value must be quoted if it includes any space characters. For example, the default value could be specified explicitly by setting this option to
This option is displayed as "Opening Text Separator Characters".
This option is displayed as "Patterns Filters".
This option is displayed as "Patterns Scores".
/etc/passwd).
The easiest way to change the full From address is with the
customized-hdrs variable.
the correct value to use would be
There is an assumption here that your first collection is the folders in
Once a month, for each folder listed, Alpine will offer to move the contents of the folder to a new folder of the same name but with the previous month's date appended. Alpine will then look for any such date-appended folder names created for a previous month, and offer each one it finds for deletion.
If you decline the first offer, no mail is moved and no new folder is created.
The new folders will be created in your default folder collection.
Enable the feature Quote-Replace-Nonflowed to also have quote-replacement performed on non-flowed messages.
Setting this option will replace ">" and "> " with the new setting. This string may include trailing spaces. To preserve those spaces enclose the full string in double quotes.
No padding to separate the text of the message from the quote string is added. This means that if you do not add trailing spaces to the value of this variable, text will be displayed right next to the quote string, which may be undesirable. This can be avoided by adding a new string separated by a space from your selection of quote string replacement. This last string will be used for padding. For example, setting this variable to ">" " " has the effect of setting ">" as the quote-replace-string, with the text padded by a space from the last quote string to make it more readable.
One possible setting for this variable could be " " (four spaces wrapped in quotes), which would have the effect of indenting each level of quoting four spaces and removing the ">"'s. Different levels of quoting could be made more discernible by setting colors for quoted text.
Replying to or forwarding the viewed message will preserve the original formatting of the message, so quote-replacement will not be performed on messages that are being composed.
As a special case, if exactly one line of quoted text would be hidden, the entire quote will be shown instead. So for the above example, quoted text which is exactly six lines long will will be shown in its entirety. (In other words, instead of hiding a single line and adding a line that announces that one line was hidden, the line is just shown.)
If the sender of a message has carefully chosen the quotes that he or she includes, hiding those quotes may change the meaning of the message. For that reason, Alpine requires that when you want to set the value of this variable to something less than four lines, you actually have to set it to the negative of that number. So if you want to set this option to "3", you actually have to set it to "-3". The only purpose of this is to get you to think about whether or not you really want to do this! If you want to delete all quoted text you set the value of this option to the special value "-10".
The legal values for this option are
| 0 | Default, don't hide anything |
| -1,-2,-3 | Suppress quote lines past 1, 2, or 3 lines |
| 4,5,6,... | Suppress if more than that many lines |
| -10 | Suppress all quoted lines |
If you set this option to a non-default value you may sometimes wish to view the quoted text that is not shown. When this is the case, the HdrMode (Header Mode) command may be used to show the hidden text. Typing the "H" command once will show the hidden text. Typing a second "H" will also turn on Full Header mode. The presence or absence of the HdrMode command is determined by the "Enable-Full-Header-Cmd" Feature-List option in your Alpine configuration, so you will want to be sure that is turned on if you use quote suppression.
For the purposes of this option, a quote is a line that begins with the character ">".
Quotes are only suppressed when displaying a message on the screen. The entire quote will be left intact when printing or forwarding or something similar.
No matter what the value, the validity check is always done when the address book is about to be changed by the user. The check can be initiated manually by typing ^L (Ctrl-L) while in the address book maintenance screen for the remote address book.
This option specifies a different value for that string. If you wish to use a string which begins or ends with a space, enclose the string in double quotes.
Besides simple text, the prepended string can be based on the message being replied to. The following tokens are substituted for the message's corresponding value:
where the day of the week is only included if it is available in the original message. You can replace this default with text of your own. The text may contain tokens that are replaced with text that depends on the message you are replying to. For example, the default is equivalent to:
Since this variable includes regular text mixed with special tokens the tokens have to be surrounded by underscore characters. For example, to use the token "PREFDATE" you would need to use "_PREFDATE_", not "PREFDATE".
The list of available tokens is here.
By default, the text is all on a single line and is followed by a blank line. If your Reply-Leadin turns out to be longer than 80 characters when replying to a particular message, it is shortened. However, if you use the token
anywhere in the value, no end of line or blank line is appended, and no shortening is done. The _NEWLINE_ token may be used to get rid of the blank line following the text, to add more blank lines, or to form a multi-line Reply-Leadin. To clarify how _NEWLINE_ works recall that the default value is:
That is equivalent to
In the former case, two newlines are added automatically because no _NEWLINE_ token appears in the value of the option (for backwards compatibility). In the latter case, the newlines are explicit. If you want to remove the blank line that follows the Reply-Leadin text use a single _NEWLINE_ token like
Because of the backwards compatibility problem, it is not possible to remove all of the ends of lines, because then there will be no _NEWLINE_ tokens and that will cause the automatic adding of two newlines! If you want, you may embed newlines in the middle of the text, as well, producing a multi-line Reply-Leadin.
By default, no attempt is made to localize the date. If you prefer a localized form you may find that one of the tokens _PREFDATE_ or _PREFDATETIME_ is a satisfactory substitute. If you want more control one of the many other date tokens, such as _DATEISO_, might be better.
For the adventurous, there is a way to conditionally include text based on whether or not a token would result in specific replacement text. For example, you could include some text based on whether or not the _NEWS_ token would result in any newsgroups if it was used. It's explained in detail here.
In the very unlikely event that you want to include a literal token in the introduction line you must precede it with a backslash character. For example,
would produce something like
It is not possible to have a literal backslash followed by an expanded token.
imap).
/usr/ucb/rsh.
If this rule is set to last-folder-used, Alpine offers to Save to the folder you last successfully Saved a message to (this session). The first time you Save a message in a session, Alpine offers to Save the message to the default folder.
Choosing any of the by- options causes Alpine to attempt to get the chosen option's value for the message being Saved (or for the first message being Saved if using an aggregate Save). For example, if by-from is chosen, Alpine attempts to get the value of who the message came from (i.e. the from address). Alpine then attempts to Save the message to a folder matching that value. If by-from is chosen and no value is obtained, Alpine uses by-sender. The opposite is also true. If by-recipient was chosen and the message was posted to a newsgroup, Alpine will use the newsgroup name. If by-replyto is chosen and no value is obtained, Alpine uses by-from.
If any of the "by-realname" options are chosen, Alpine will attempt to use the personal name part of the address instead of the mailbox part. If any of the "by-nick" options are chosen, the address is looked up in your address book and if found, the nickname for that entry is used. Only simple address book entries are checked, not distribution lists. Similarly, if any of the "by-fcc" options are chosen, the fcc from the corresponding address book entry is used. If by-realname, or the by-nick or by-fcc lookups result in no value, then if the chosen option ends with the "then-from", "then-sender",