Pine - DAMTP Computing System FAQ

Questions about pine and the damtp pine setup.

  1. How do I stop pine asking me to save my read mail in a received folder.
  2. I use pine and my email keeps disappearing
  3. How do I stop pine asking me about renaming and deleting folders at the start of every month.
  4. How do I set pine up to use a printer.
  5. I'm used to using the Y key for printing not the % key that pine now defaults to - how can I keep using the Y key.
  6. How do I find large mail messages in my inbox
  7. How do I change the default way messages are sorted by pine to by author or subject or reverse date
  8. Pine keeps printing loads of received lines at the top of each message

  1. How do I stop pine asking me to save my read mail in a received folder.

    From the Start screen in pine, select "S" for setup and then "C" for config. About 11 lines down you will see 
    read-message-folder      = received
    Highlight this line with the cursor keys, press "D" for delete value and press the return/enter key. Press "E" to exit setup and "y" to confirm the change.

  2. I use pine and my email keeps disappearing

    Check the email isn't automatically been saved into your received folder when you quit from pine. See above question.

  3. How do I stop pine asking me about renaming and deleting folders at the start of every month.

    Enter pine, from the startup screen select "S" for setup, then "C" for config. Press "w" for whereis and enter the text pruning-rule. Alternatively scroll down (pressing the space bar about 14 times if you have the standard damtp window size) until you come to the section marked "pruning-rule =" By default this is set to ask about rename and deleting. 
                Set    Rule Values
            ---  ----------------------
            (*)  ask about rename, ask about deleting   (default)
            ( )  ask about rename, don't delete      
            ( )  always rename, ask about deleting   
            ( )  always rename, don't delete         
            ( )  don't rename, ask about deleting    
            ( )  don't rename, don't delete
    Use the cursor keys to highlight the option you'd prefer, then press "*" to select this option. In this case you would want either "always rename, don't don't delete or don't rename, don't delete. The renaming refers to the questions pine asks at the start of each month about renaming your sent-mail and received folders. Press "e" to exit setup and "y" to confirm the change.

  4. How do I set pine up to use a printer.

    Once you have a printer set in your .env_extra file, pine will pick up this printer. See setting my default printer in the printing section for more information about the .env_extra file.

  5. I'm used to using the Y key for printing not the % key that pine now defaults to - how can I keep using the Y key.

    Start pine, from the startup screen press "s" for setup, followed by "c" for config. Type "W" for whereis and type in "printer". This will bring you to the printer preferences. Move the cursor to the line 
    	[ ]  enable-print-via-y-command
    select "X" to set this, then "E" to exit setup and "y" to commit changes.
  6. How do I find large mail messages in my inbox You temporarily sort your inbox (or other mail folder) by size. To do this type the two keys below. 
    $Z
    then to get your inbox back to its normal way of sorting press
    • $S for subject
    • $A for arrival
    • $F for from
    • $D for date
    • $ to see which other options are available

  7. How do I change the default way messages are sorted by pine to by author or subject or reverse date etc?

    Type "W" and enter sort-key, this will bring you to the sort-key section. By default pine sorts in order of arrival. 
     Set    Sort Options
            ---  ----------------------
            ( )  Subject            
            (*)  Arrival               (default)
            ( )  From               
            ( )  To                 
            ( )  Cc                 
            ( )  Date               
            ( )  siZe               
            ( )  OrderedSubj        
            ( )  scorE              
            ( )  tHread             
            ( )  Reverse Subject    
            ( )  Reverse Arrival    
            ( )  Reverse From       
            ( )  Reverse To         
            ( )  Reverse Cc         
            ( )  Reverse Date  
	    ( )  Reverse siZe       
            ( )  Reverse OrderedSubj
            ( )  Reverse scorE      
            ( )  Reverse tHread
    To change this use the arrow keys to highlight the option required. Press the "*" key to select that option. Then "E" to exit and "y" to confirm changes.

  8. Pine keeps printing loads of received lines at the top of each message

    You have probably accidently put pine into full header mode. To stop this press the "h" key, this toggles full headers on and off.

Useful Links

Please email any suggestions, corrections, broken links, or errors to itweb [itweb@damtp.cam.ac.uk]