Pine
Tips &
Tricks
A major new version of the Pine message system is available on the Uniform Access computers. You can learn about most of the new features in Pine 3.91 in the online help text in Pine or in the document "Secrets of Pine 3.9," which is offered to you when you first use Pine 3.91.
Some of these new features are automatically available to every Pine 3.91 user, but, to keep Pine from becoming too complicated for the beginning user, most new features must be explicitly enabled, either by you or your system manager before you can use them. The following text gives you a useful example of each.
The first feature, improved take address capabilities, is automatically available; the second feature, aggregate operations, must be enabled. If you are using Pine on a Uniform Access computer, you are in luck: the aggregate operations commands set has been enabled for you. If you are using Pine on a departmental or other computer, you or your system manager must enable it.
The new version of Pine's TakeAddress command is automatically available. It allows you to:
To take one or many addresses from a message you have selected or are viewing:
You can use aggregate operations to select all of the messages in your current folder (e.g., the INBOX) that match a specified criteria (e.g., messages that include the word "meeting" in the subject). Once they are selected, you can then apply any of Pine's ten message operations (Save, Export, Print, Forward, Reply, TakeAddr, Pipe, Flag, Delete, Undelete) to the entire set of messages at one time.
As is the case with most new Pine features, aggregate operations is not automatically available--someone must enable it. If you use the Uniform Access computers to access Pine, it has been done for you and should work unless you have disabled it. If you need to enable it, try the following:
To enable aggregate operations:
Press I (Folder Index) to see the index of messages in your current folder. If you press O (Other Cmds) you see these aggregate commands are now available:
; Select--select a set of
messages
Z Zoom--change the Index>
to show only selected
messages
A Apply--apply an operation
command (e.g., Save) to all
selected messages
Select. You can select messages based on their index number, date, status (e.g., "new" or "answered"), or text from any part of the message (headers or body). To select a group of messages, press ; (Select).
Once you have selected a group of messages, they are denoted by an "X" in the first column of the Folder Index entry. If you want, you can use the ; (Select) command again to unselect any or all of the messages or to increase or decrease the number of messages in the group using other criteria.
Zoom. If you would like to see an index list of only the messages you have selected, press Z (Zoom). Simply press Z again to return to the full index.
Apply. To apply an operation command to your selected messages, press A (Apply). Then, from the menu that appears, choose the command you want. For example, to delete all selected messages, press A (Apply) and then press D (Delete).
Note that a common mistake people make is to forget to type the A command before the D (or other message operation command). If you type D without first typing A, the command only applies to the one current message, not to the selected group.
A source of information about Pine (including recent changes and coming attractions) is the Release Notes. To view them, at the Pine Main Menu, press R (RelNotes). There is also a newsgroup devoted to Pine (comp.mail.pine).
You can retrieve various Pine documentation and code files through FTP or view them on the World Wide Web by opening the following URLs:
ftp://ftp.cac.washington.edu/pine/
http://www.washington.edu/pine/
For departments wishing to install their own copy of Pine 3.91, the distribution is available from ftp.cac.washington.edu in the compressed file named /pine/pine.tar.Z.