Overview: What is the Pine Messaging System?
Background
The guiding principles for Pine's user-interface 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. Feedback from the
user community at the University of Washington and a growing
number of Internet sites has been encouraging.
Pine uses Internet message protocols
(e.g. RFC-822,
SMTP,
MIME,
IMAP,
NNTP)
and runs on Unix and PCs.
Pine's message composition editor, Pico, is also available
as a separate stand-alone program. Pico is a very simple and easy-to-use text editor offering paragraph
justification, cut/paste, and a spelling checker.
Features
- Online help specific to each screen and context.
- Message index showing a message summary which includes the status, sender, size, date and subject of messages.
- Commands to view and process messages: Forward, Reply, Save, Export, Print, Delete, capture address, and search.
- 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.
- Address book for saving long complex addresses and personal distribution lists under a nickname.
- Message attachments via the Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) specification. MIME allows sending/receiving non-text objects, such as binary files, spreadsheets, graphics, and sound.
- Folder management commands for creating, deleting, listing, or renaming message folders. Folders may be local or on remote hosts.
- Access to remote message folders and archives via the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP).
- Internet news support via either NNTP or IMAP.
- Aggregate operations, e.g. saving a selected set of messages at once.
The creation and continuing development of Pine is the result of the work of many individuals.
For further information, contact us. Pine and Pico are trademarks
of the University of Washington.
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