Alpine 1.00 Brings Pine Back

by Jimmeney by Anonymous Coward · 2007-12-21 01:19 · Score: 0, Troll

they have invented another email/im client, true genius at work you know it was only the other day i was just saying i wanted an a email messaging app (i hear they are all the rage)and i couldnt find any using that goggle thing, thank goodness i saw this article

Why bother by Chrisq · 2007-12-21 01:24 · Score: 0, Troll

Why bother when you can use gmail or any one of a number of excellent webmail clients.

Re:Why bother by Anonymous Coward · 2007-12-21 01:26 · Score: 5, Funny

You suggested webmail to a pine user? Prepare to be flogged!

The real question is "Why bother when you can use mutt?"

Glad I wore my asbestos boxers today.
Re:Why bother by ThinkingInBinary · 2007-12-21 01:30 · Score: 1

Yes, brave anonymous coward, you are correct. Mutt is the king of mail clients.

But seriously, there are great reasons to use a mail client instead of webmail. Offline access and/or synchronization is a major one. Also it lets you compose in your favorite editor easily.

--
ttuttle is a rankmaniac
Re:Why bother by FireFury03 · 2007-12-21 01:35 · Score: 5, Insightful

Why bother when you can use gmail or any one of a number of excellent webmail clients.

6 very important reasons spring to mind:

1. WebMail is *really* slow compared to PINE
2. FireFox with a webmail system in it takes up many times the screen space
3. I don't especially want to trust a third party with my private data
4. I don't want my mail to be inaccessible when some 3rd party web mail server goes tits-up
5. If I run my own MTA I can do some useful automated stuff with things like procmail
6. I happen to like the interface

I'm sure I could think of plenty of other reasons if pushed. Asking "why bother?" on the assumption that everyone's requirements must be identical to yours is pretty arrogant...

--
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Re:Why bother by morgan_greywolf · 2007-12-21 01:45 · Score: 5, Insightful
I can think of some more:
1. Offline access to your mail (not everyone has an 'always on connection'
2. Sync with your PDA/Phone/Mobile computing device
3. Good mail filtering (gmail's search and tags are okay, but they're not like real filtering)
4. Extra spam protection above and beyond what gmail offers
5. Better handling of attachments
6. Pine/Alpine, unlike GUI clients, will work well on a console. (What do you do if X keeps crashing and you need to e-mail someone to get help?)
7. Works over ssh/telnet
Need I go on? Or should I just say everyone has different requirements like the parent did?
--
My blog
Re:Why bother by TeknoHog · 2007-12-21 01:51 · Score: 1

"I use pine - not because its necessarily the greatest email reader ever, but because Im used to it, and it does what I need it to do with a minimum of fuzz." -- Linus Torvalds

I use it for exactly the same reasons. Actually, when I went to university in 1998, Pine was the recommended mail client. I was a relative n00b to the Internet, though computer savvy, and I liked the text based interface. This was on Windows 3.1 with 32-bit extensions, on a 486 with 8 MB RAM, also my first web server ;)

--
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Re:Why bother by gambolt · 2007-12-21 02:10 · Score: 1

Actualy, I ditched mutt in favor of cone about six months ago. It's got a good chance of stealing the mutt crown.
Re:Why bother by Average · 2007-12-21 02:13 · Score: 2, Informative

My reason for Pine (or mutt or such) as an option (as well as a personal webmail install and using Tbird most of the time):

Nothing... absolutely nothing works as well at 28.8k. This road warrior ends up doing dial-up on a not-infrequent basis, even today.
Re:Why bother by swillden · 2007-12-21 02:14 · Score: 1

I agree that webmail sucks, but 3, 4 and 5 aren't why.
3. I don't especially want to trust a third party with my private data
4. I don't want my mail to be inaccessible when some 3rd party web mail server goes tits-up
5. If I run my own MTA I can do some useful automated stuff with things like procmail

Those are just reasons to run your own MTA. If you happen to like webmail, you can run your own webmail server. I run my own MTA and I use sqwebmail to provide the service for my family members who prefer webmail. I also use it occasionally when I want to check my e-mail from a computer other than one of my own.

--
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Re:Why bother by Anonymous Coward · 2007-12-21 02:15 · Score: 0

Gmail for one allows this with no hassles.

Gmail (the mail provider) allows this with no hassles, but Gmail (the web-based mail client) does not. We're talking about mail clients here, not providers. To use Gmail's IMAP features, you still need a mail client. I suggest Pine/Alpine for this.
Re:Why bother by morgan_greywolf · 2007-12-21 02:16 · Score: 1

Gmail for one allows this with no hassles.
2. Sync with your PDA/Phone/Mobile computing devic Then you're not really using a webmail client, right? You'd still be using some imap client. (Personally, I use pop3 and Thunderbird. Thunderbird's support for imap ain't so great).
Filtering beyond what Gmail offers is again an edge case. I know many non-IT folks who use Thunderbird specifically for it's excellent mail filtering abilities.
Considering the abilities conferred to Gmail's spam filtering through the massive aggregation of email they have available, and considering Gmail's excellent track record, I don't see what more would need to be done. \

You're right. You're probably not going to get much better than Google's spam filter anyway.

--
My blog
Re:Why bother by El_Muerte_TDS · 2007-12-21 02:23 · Score: 3, Funny

Also it lets you compose in your favorite editor easily.

Which would of course be Emacs. /me runs for cover
Re:Why bother by Professor_UNIX · 2007-12-21 02:31 · Score: 1

These are kind of irrelevant now that Gmail supports IMAP. I have my mail stored for offline use in Thunderbird or I can pull it down with fetchmail if I really wanted to, or just have it forwarded to me at my home MTA as well for archival. I can also use Alpine with IMAP so I can access it from a text console.
Re:Why bother by kv9 · 2007-12-21 02:32 · Score: 2, Insightful

I have a question for you: why do you advocate mediocrity? this is slashdot after all, we should be appreciating quality things.
I use pine, GMail and Opera mail and find them all somewhat useful.
pine is good at firing up a quick email or checking something fast because I always have a few terminals open.
Opera mail is my main client because it's fast, has a great interface and does not keep all the emails in one bigass file, which makes me sleep better at night and allows me to just browse/search the filesystem for a particular message.
and GMail is good for those times when I'm not at work or home and I don't have access to my usual machines. but it's slow as shit (the basic HTML interface is OK, but I can't find a way to make it default, I always have to switch to it) and generally awkward to work with. yes, with the introduction of SMTP things are a lot better because of the hefty amount of space it provides. and sane access for once.
so yeah, there's lots of way to read your email but web clients are the "best" only if you have no idea how good the alternatives are. webmail is just a necessary evil. feel free to disagree, but quality != popularity.

--
Stop Computers/Cars Analogies on S
Re:Why bother by FireFury03 · 2007-12-21 02:35 · Score: 1

Absolute speed is important to a fairly small number of users.

Yes. But it is important to me and probably quite a few other people, so it is a factor in "why bother?". Just because _you_ don't consider it important doesn't mean that other people are the same. Just declaring that something is pointless because you don't have a requirement for it seems rather arrogant.

And windowing systems essentially make that complaint obsolete. Unless you weren't aware that resizing, overlapping, and hiding windows are basic features in nearly all windowing systems.

It isn't obsolete at all - if I want my mail client at the front (because I'm using it), I probably want to see other windows at the same time so I can refer to them when writing mail. Having lots of clutter such as forward buttons, back buttons, address bar, etc is completely pointless - it isn't useful when reading and writing email.

Best not let your email get routed over the Internet, then. In general, however, this is the killer feature of hosting your own mail.

Aside from the fact that some of my email goes via secure connections anyway, if someone wants to read my mail they have to sit there watching each one go past on the wire. Whereas if I stored my mail on a third party server, anyone with access to that server would have instant access to several years' worth of archived mail. I know Google have a "don't be evil" policy but I don't have complete faith in *any* large company not to make use of information they have access to.

Doing a statistical analysis on a large mail archive is pretty easy, sitting there doing a similar analysis by watching the data on the wire is much harder.

How many people want to run their own high availability email server?

Not many, but that is hardly the point is it - the fact that some of us want to run our own MTA is enough to answer the "why bother?" question. In the early 90's, not many people wanted to run Linux, so clearly there was absolutely no point in Linus starting to develop it, right?

The mail server doesn't necessarily have to be "high availability" anyway - if my internet connection breaks then I can't send and receive mail. If I were using a third party webmail system then I wouldn't be able to access any of my archived mail either - I consider that a severe disadvantage.

Also, a large service provider is a bigger target for attack (whether that be a DoS, or an actual compromise leading to a data leak).

You've got one there, but like the absolute speed, it's an edge case.

And again you're falling into the trap of thinking "I don't need it, so it's a waste of time for anyone to develop software that does it since everyone has exactly the same requirements as me".

Totally subjective, and definitely not generally applicable.

Yes, it's subjective - why does that make my point any less valid? The original question of "why bother?" is answered pretty well by "because quite a few people quite like it" - it applies to a lot of other things too. For example, why are there so many different window managers around? They all do more or less the same stuff, but in different ways - the answer is clearly because some people prefer one interface to another.

Considering the abilities conferred to Gmail's spam filtering through the massive aggregation of email they have available

You should read some analyses on spam - quite a lot of them conclude that there is often very little to be gained by aggregating your filter-training across many users' mail rather than training based on just the individual's mail. This is because the types of mail different people receive are very different and using one persons mail when training another person's filters can increase the false-positive rate.

HTTP can be routed over SSH, so basically, webmail works just fine. Telnet is kind of a joke.

Depends very much on the device you are using. Generally I use an IMA

--
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Re:Why bother by FireFury03 · 2007-12-21 02:40 · Score: 1

Those are just reasons to run your own MTA. If you happen to like webmail, you can run your own webmail server. I run my own MTA and I use sqwebmail to provide the service for my family members who prefer webmail. I also use it occasionally when I want to check my e-mail from a computer other than one of my own.

The original poster cited "like Gmail" - sure, you can run your own webmail system, but it was pretty apparent that the original poster was talking about 3rd party servers.

And yes, I run my own MTA, and read my mail using Alpine. Other members of my family use Thunderbird and Squirrelmail to access the same server. I accept that different people have different requirements - I don't look at a mail client that people obviously find useful and say "why bother?". This is one objection I have to "personal messaging" systems on web-forums - people treat them like email, but you're stuck using whatever crumby interface the forum owner thought was nice instead of getting to choose a client that best meets your requirements.

--
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Re:Why bother by DragonWriter · 2007-12-21 03:01 · Score: 1

Why bother when you can use gmail or any one of a number of excellent webmail clients.

Perhaps because, while you prefer a webmail client, you want to be able to add features on your own, and have control of your own server. From TFS:
All of the source needed to build Unix, Windows, and Web-based mail user agents is included.

Probably not a compelling reason for most Gmail users to switch, but this is Slashdot, not a forum directed at the average user.
Re:Why bother by BlackCreek · 2007-12-21 03:50 · Score: 1

Because:

- Pine is much, much simpler to get started with?

- Pine can do news?

- there is a bunch of people using Pine that are still very happy with it?

Do note that I *do* use Mutt (having spent countless hours reading its manual, and even making questions on mutt-users).
Re:Why bother by morgan_greywolf · 2007-12-21 03:51 · Score: 1

So many people here seem to not be able to make the distinction between a mail provider and a mail client.

We're talking about a mail client -- you know a MUA -- not a mail service provider.

Thunderbird is my mail client of choice. Gmail is my main mail provider. Gmail's web interface is another mail client.

--
My blog
Re:Why bother by eldepeche · 2007-12-21 04:26 · Score: 1

Definitely true about the minimum of fuzz. Mutt is by far the fuzziest MUA out there.
Re:Why bother by jimbojw · 2007-12-21 04:33 · Score: 1

What do you do if X keeps crashing and you need to e-mail someone to get help?
Stand up on your chair, look over your cubical walls and shout, "Does anyone know how to read a manual?"
Re:Why bother by Wdomburg · 2007-12-21 04:35 · Score: 1

Show me a webmail client (or hell, even a desktop client) where I can drill down in my mail box searching for a specific message by applying successive filters (e.g. select from boss@myemployer.om, zoom, select with subject "training", zoom, select with date before "Jan-01-2005", zoom, select with date after "Dec-31-2004", zoom). Sure most clients allow you to build search queries like that all at once but I regularly find myself wanting to refine results after doing an initial search.

I've tried a number of different webmail systems - Outlook Web Access, Zimbra, Squirrelmail, Roundcube, Horde, Hastymail, Gmail. They've all struck me as cumbersome and slow, most are also fairly inflexible on top of that. I keep one enabled for casual access to my mail from public kiosks and the like but stick to a mix of (Al)Pine and Evolution otherwise.

Does that mean my setup is right for everyone? Not by a long shot. It just means that for my typical use patterns and requirements webmail is suboptimal.
Re:Why bother by dosius · 2007-12-21 05:03 · Score: 1

First of all, I've been a PINE user for the greater part of a decade, so it's the interface I'm more comfortable with.

Second of all, I prefer to manage my e-mail at my home computer, which is why my e-mail address ends in @dosius.ath.cx.

-uso.

--
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
Re:Why bother by raddan · 2007-12-21 05:07 · Score: 1

I use PINE on my Blackberry via SSH. I have my own MTA, and on it I run Postfix, courier-imap, RoundCube, and PINE. This gives me great flexibility for checking my email. I can check it on my phone using PINE (I hate the BIS crap, and I don't really trust someone else with my email password). I can check it on a public terminal using RoundCube. And I check it at home using Thunderbird or PINE. procmail deals with all of my rules in one place. All of my mail is in Maildir format, and I use the system "dump" command for backups. I make full use of /etc/mail/aliases for one-off email addresses. As you can tell, I am totally spoiled when it comes to email.

PINE gets a bad rap for, as far as I can tell, not being as hard to set up as mutt. If you like mutt, good for you. I can get a PINE install up and running in under 5 minutes. I don't have to mess around with fetchmail, or some guy's perl script. It all just works. I've been a PINE user for 11 years, so those commands are second-nature. mutt just doesn't cut the mustard for me.
Re:Why bother by MightyMartian · 2007-12-21 05:08 · Score: 1

Because Pine was and is a kick-ass mail client. I used it for several years when I had a shell account, and it was my main mailer. Lean and mean, it had awesome filtering and didn't clutter up with all the graphical and HTML crap.

--
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Re:Why bother by Lord+of+Hyphens · 2007-12-21 05:11 · Score: 1

I know many non-IT folks who use Thunderbird specifically for it's excellent mail filtering abilities. Its spamfilter heuristics seem to leave something to be desired, at least in my experience. Somewhat scary when Vista's built-in mail app tended to get the better coverage compared to Tbird (ran the two over the same set of emails). Also wouldn't mind being able to filter on an arbitary set of conditions--right now seems to be a AND or OR relationship, good luck when you'd like to do something like (subject = "amspam" OR subject = "spamspam" OR subject contains my username) AND (sender is not on my address book).

Yes, this is something I've wanted to do; I tend to get the same kinds of spam on a given POP3 account I have and the username is not related to my real name, so any email that tries to go "Hello XXX, you've got a great stock tip!" or "for XXX" I know immediately that it's bogus.

--
"I've spent my whole life figuring out crazy ways to do things. It'll work." -- Montgomery Scott, "Relics"
Re:Why bother by code65536 · 2007-12-21 05:59 · Score: 1

Or better yet, set up Alpine to access your Gmail ;) (through IMAP+TLS)
Re:Why bother by Reziac · 2007-12-21 06:09 · Score: 1

Being intrigued by the notion of a decent text-style mail client (and well-accustomed to a text-based BBS-messaging client), I just d/l'd Alpine, and quickly discovered that it will not run on this Win98 box. Didn't see anything about expecting some specific version of Windows...?? It doesn't load, just does an instant abend, in Windows or a DOS box. Where did I go wrong??

--
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Re:Why bother by driftingwalrus · 2007-12-21 06:48 · Score: 1

'useful automated stuff with procmail' is a bit of an understatement:) Procmail can do pure, unadulterated email magic.

--
Paul Anderson
"I drank WHAT?!" -- Socrates
Re:Why bother by smoker2 · 2007-12-21 07:34 · Score: 1

Here's another one -
When you have 5000+ spam messages in an account, and pop, imap, or a webmail client will take too long to download/process that many messages.
Log in with pine and just hold the D down till they're gone. (ok so you have to log out to finally delete them but hey...)
Re:Why bother by Anonymous Coward · 2007-12-21 07:35 · Score: 0

Why bother when you can use gmail or any one of a number of excellent webmail clients.

Because Web Browsers suck. The browser is not the best tool to access the Internet. The current batch is a pretty mediocre way of accessing the WWW which WWW != Internet.
Re:Why bother by MightyMartian · 2007-12-21 07:59 · Score: 1

Procmail + Fetchmail = Bliss

--
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Re:Why bother by wwwojtek · 2007-12-21 08:11 · Score: 1

(ok so you have to log out to finally delete them but hey...)
what about Ctrl-X to delete everything?
Re:Why bother by ion.simon.c · 2007-12-21 08:20 · Score: 1

*points to my Bram Moolenaar shrine, glares*
Re:Why bother by Anonymous Coward · 2007-12-21 08:34 · Score: 0

Alpine comes with a webmail client. I've been playing with it and it's pretty nice.
Re:Why bother by mattack2 · 2007-12-21 11:52 · Score: 1

You don't have to log out to finally delete them. Just hit 'x' to expunge them.

If you're actually trying to delete MANY items at once, and you're not actually viewing all of them, simply:

1) enable this in Setup/Config:
[X] Enable Aggregate Command Set
and then
I) ;a
to select all and
II) ad
to 'apply' the delete command to the selected items

or
I) ;n
to select by number
II) 1-200
to select 1-200 for example and
III) ad
to 'apply' the delete command to the selected items
Re:Why bother by mattack2 · 2007-12-21 12:08 · Score: 1

I don't know anything about Windows, but since they refer to DOS in the instructions, it seems like it should work. I suggest asking on comp.mail.pine or the mailing lit.
Re:Why bother by petermgreen · 2007-12-21 14:22 · Score: 1

Doing a statistical analysis on a large mail archive is pretty easy, sitting there doing a similar analysis by watching the data on the wire is much harder.
Not really, you just set up a box to watch the wire and add everything it sees to a large mail archive.

--
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Re:Why bother by AlpineFolks · 2007-12-21 14:37 · Score: 1

This is a problem that we'd like to figure out. Could you contact us at alpine-contact@u.washington.edu? We think we know what the problem is and would like for you to try what we believe is the fix.
Re:Why bother by Reziac · 2007-12-21 14:44 · Score: 1

Oddly enough, the PICO.EXE that came with it does the same thing. I wonder if it's choking on the 1GB RAM in this machine, that not being what you'd normally expect with Win98. (Which has no problem with it, itself; this is a 4-RAM-slot mobo, which doesn't gag Win9x the way 3 RAM slots will.)

WinRAR didn't think the archive was bogus, so I don't think that was the problem.

--
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Re:Why bother by Reziac · 2007-12-21 14:51 · Score: 1

Will do. Be warned -- I am the beta tester who can break anything. :)

--
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Re:Why bother by Anonymous Coward · 2007-12-21 15:55 · Score: 0

Hi. Windows98 has been EOL'd for quite some time. Nobody writes software for it anymore. I mean that seriously. The baseline is now Windows XP/2000

Time to upgrade chump.
Re:Why bother by leet · 2007-12-21 19:35 · Score: 1

I didn't know that about Linus Torvalds. I feel the same as you and he do. Minimum of fuss. Funny. I was introduced to email with Pine at my Unversity in 1994. They were running Sparc workstations at the time. I've liked Pine ever since and for years this was my only email experience.
Re:Why bother by Adam+Hazzlebank · 2007-12-22 09:28 · Score: 1

...but...

oh God there has to be some reason I spent a week configuring mutt.
Re:Why bother by FireFury03 · 2007-12-22 21:35 · Score: 1

Not really, you just set up a box to watch the wire and add everything it sees to a large mail archive.

Which means you have to actually set up a box on the route that all the mail is taking (i.e. very close to the mail server) and sit there collecting mail for years. If I were storing my mail on a 3rd party server you would just need to access that server once and you'd get several years worth of archived mail.

--
http://blog.nexusuk.org

I guess I still have to ask by ByOhTek · 2007-12-21 01:25 · Score: 4, Funny

Is Alpine still not elm?

--
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).

Re:I guess I still have to ask by dosowski · 2007-12-21 01:30 · Score: 5, Funny

Alpine's Like Pine: It's Not Elm
Re:I guess I still have to ask by Anonymous Coward · 2007-12-21 01:32 · Score: 0

You must be gnu around here.
Re:I guess I still have to ask by Anonymous Coward · 2007-12-21 01:52 · Score: 0

My guess is: Apache License(d) Program for Internet News and Email
Re:I guess I still have to ask by Anonymous Coward · 2007-12-21 02:25 · Score: 0

**applause** That must be the best recursive acronym ever.
Re:I guess I still have to ask by Hoplite3 · 2007-12-21 02:32 · Score: 2, Funny

That's awesome! But I think they might have intended it to be

Apache License PINE

Of course, since they don't spell it out, we're free to make it whatever we want...

--
Use the Firehose to mod down Second Life stories!
Re:I guess I still have to ask by Anonymous Coward · 2007-12-21 03:03 · Score: 0

Best recursive acronym was the name of an old macintosh editor, FRED, which expanded to Fred Resembles Emacs Deliberately
Re:I guess I still have to ask by ianare · 2007-12-21 03:59 · Score: 1

Actually, they do.
Why Alpine? We just liked the name and the closeness to Pine. The beautiful setting we enjoy here in the Pacific Northwest helped; that is Mt. Rainier on the Alpine logo. Still, the GP is very clever :-)
Re:I guess I still have to ask by freshwillie · 2007-12-21 06:35 · Score: 1

While we know that "P"ine "I"s "N"ot "E"lm, could Alpine be "A"pache "L"icensed "Pine"?

Alpine? Pine? by morgan_greywolf · 2007-12-21 01:27 · Score: 3, Funny

Why, in my day, we just had mail. That was it. Just mail. No fancy HTML support, fonts or colors, no menus. Just commands. And we liked it that way!

You kids and your newfangled elm, pine, alpine, whatever...now you kids get offa my lawn!

--
My blog

Anyone know if it supports S/MIME? by Anonymous Coward · 2007-12-21 01:34 · Score: 1, Interesting

I used Pine as my primary e-mail client for years but in modern times it started to seriously lack important features like real S/MIME support. Anyone know if this has been added yet? There doesn't appear to be any documentation on the site.

I love the webmail responses, LOL. Yeah, you guys just keep trusting some 3rd party to handle your private mail. What could possibly go wrong?

Re:Anyone know if it supports S/MIME? by Anonymous Coward · 2007-12-21 01:39 · Score: 0

Yeah instead lets have the documents local on my HDD which is stealable!
Re:Anyone know if it supports S/MIME? by Just+some+bastard · 2007-12-21 01:54 · Score: 1

Pine supported S/MIME, you just needed to uncomment the SSL lines in platform specific Makefile. UW are now bundling their webmail client, I'm going to play with it over the weekend.
Re:Anyone know if it supports S/MIME? by Hatta · 2007-12-21 03:07 · Score: 1

Yeah, you guys just keep trusting some 3rd party to handle your private mail. What could possibly go wrong?

How do you think email works? Either your mail is being sent plain text through a bunch of intermediary servers so the web host is the least of your concerns -- or you're sending GPG encrypted messages in which case the web host won't be able to read it anyway.

--
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Re:Anyone know if it supports S/MIME? by cHiphead · 2007-12-21 06:25 · Score: 1

I think his point was about trusting a third party server to handle the permanent storage of your private mail (ala IMAP/etc).

Cheers.

--

This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

Re:Inertia? by apathy+maybe · 2007-12-21 01:39 · Score: 4, Insightful

I don't know if vi or vim has a mail client (though I do sometimes use it to edit text), but your comment reminds me of an old quote, which I can't just recall exactly, about programs expanding until they have a mail client... "All programs expand until they can read mail..." perhaps?

Meh, I'm just as happy using mutt if I have to check my email without a GUI, and if I'm doing that it almost always means that I have access to webmail as well ('cause I'd be using SSH to use mutt...).

--
I wank in the shower.

vi mail client by brucehowells · 2007-12-21 01:42 · Score: 1

Does vi /var/spool/mail/$USER count? :-)

Re:Alpine? Pine? by Guinness2702 · 2007-12-21 01:52 · Score: 5, Funny

telnet slashdot.org 25
HELO guinness.internet.outthere
MAIL FROM: guinness2702@slashdot.org
RCPT TO: morgan_greywolf@slashdot.org
DATA
From: Guinness2702
To morgan_greywolf
Subject: Re: Alpine? Pine?

You got to use mail? Luxury! Luxury, I tell's you.
Back in my day, all we got was a telnet client and a dns query tool
Bah, kids don't know they're born these days.
.

--
This space is intentionally left blank

It's alright ... by ThirdPrize · 2007-12-21 01:56 · Score: 0, Troll

two people wrote it and 8 people use it. Not quite sure what its doing on the font page but prob best to leave em to it.

--
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.

Re:It's alright ... by Nex6 · 2007-12-21 02:01 · Score: 0, Redundant

Linus uses it, (i read it in an interview somewhere.
Re:It's alright ... by Confessed+Geek · 2007-12-21 02:27 · Score: 2, Informative

Because its one of fastest most effective mail clients out there?

Pine is awesome because anytime you have an SSH client, you have your mail. You also get to skip most spam, html crap in email, a easy text based interface, and no need for a gui.

The only thing annoying about it was its license, now Alpine has all that minimalistic goodness and is under the Apache license.
Re:It's alright ... by gowakuwa · 2007-12-21 02:52 · Score: 0

You left out the other 7 people. Seriously, if you need a console mail client you are either living in the 1970s or using mail for things that have been rendered obsolete by modern web and OS development. Either way you are outdated.
Re:It's alright ... by Just+some+bastard · 2007-12-21 03:28 · Score: 2, Insightful

Seriously, if you need a console mail client you are either living in the 1970s or using mail for things that have been rendered obsolete by modern web and OS development. Either way you are outdated.

When and how exactly did modern web and OS development render text obsolete?
Re:It's alright ... by gtall · 2007-12-21 05:07 · Score: 1

Bingo, that's why I use Pine too. I could give a flying rat's ass about html mail, I don't appreciate flashy graphics unless someone tells me I need to see it. For that, I fire up OS X's mail. Funny, I cannot stand most of the other command line unix crap. I usually prefer gui so I don't have to remember useless cruft, but not for mail.

Gerry
Re:It's alright ... by gowakuwa · 2007-12-21 09:29 · Score: 0

It isn't text. It is the typewriter paradigm that is obsolete. Just in case you didn't notice we are not using BASIC time-sharing servers anymore. PHP forums and GUI applications(even in text mode) are ways beyond mail-lists and undocumented command line -qwertyuiop mail clients. Support for such obsolete technology should be left to emulator writers.
Re:It's alright ... by leet · 2007-12-21 20:05 · Score: 1

Kinda like my '71 Chevelle. It's outdated but it still kicks everybody's ass on the road. Pine is awesome too. So is outdated Unix. In fact, the word "awesome" is outdated, but you know what? It still works.

Re:Alpine? Pine? by CastrTroy · 2007-12-21 02:00 · Score: 1

If Microsoft keeps on going the way they are going, we might actually arrive back at text-only email at some time in the near future.

--

Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.

Pine vs. mutt? by Anonymous Coward · 2007-12-21 02:03 · Score: 0

Are there any people left who use pine at all when mutt's available? That's like using a horse-drawn cart (to actually get around, not just for fun) instead of a car!

Re:Pine vs. mutt? by Just+some+bastard · 2007-12-21 02:20 · Score: 2

I did switch to mutt a few years back (along with all the cool kids), after 2-3 months I switched back. Pine is available, requires minimal configuration and works the same on every box I have access to.
Re:Pine vs. mutt? by nmills · 2007-12-21 02:28 · Score: 1

And if you add 'editor=/usr/bin/vim' to ~/.pinerc, it's perfect.
Re:Pine vs. mutt? by Just+some+bastard · 2007-12-21 02:40 · Score: 1

I'm a long time vi user but pico feels far more natural for composing an email. If I want to use vi, I do the editing in another terminal and ^R it.
Re:Pine vs. mutt? by nmills · 2007-12-21 03:02 · Score: 1

Yeah, I used pico for years and then decided I liked the ability to shell things through vi/vim straight into pine. Still, pico and vi/vim are both good choices.
Re:Pine vs. mutt? by shawn(at)fsu · 2007-12-21 03:58 · Score: 1

I was hoping this article would bring out some pico users. We should start a club. I miss it every once in a while.

--
500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
Re:Pine vs. mutt? by mattack2 · 2007-12-21 12:12 · Score: 1

You can also just set it "visually" in setup/configure.

It is easier by Kludge · 2007-12-21 02:05 · Score: 5, Insightful

Mut just is not nearly as easy to use as pine/alpine is. I tried mutt once, it went like this:

Q:How do I get mutt to send mail directly to my ISP's SMTP server?
A:Mutt is a mail user agent not a mail transfer agent

Q: How do I get mutt to read mail from my IMAP mailbox?
A:Mutt is a mail user agent not a mail transfer agent

Q: How do I get mutt to keep an address book?
A: Use this extra 3rd party perl script, or this 3rd party perl script or ...

Re:It is easier by Anonymous Coward · 2007-12-21 02:11 · Score: 0

Agreed, if I just wanted to read mail I already had, I'd go to /var/spool/mail and use vi.

Also, the patches for making it do SMTP and IMAP have bizarre implementations (ie, no plaintext login capability... even over SSL) and are poorly documented. If you have more than one email account, good luck. There seems to be a way of using all sorts of weird script commands to change to a different imap server and its matching smtp server.

Hopefully if [al]pine is in active development, it can get better.
Re:It is easier by billcopc · 2007-12-21 03:09 · Score: 2, Funny

So what the heck is mutt, then ? 'ed' with a new name ?

--
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Re:It is easier by Dr.+Smoove · 2007-12-21 03:30 · Score: 1

Was this possibly around a decade ago? I use mutt to test dovecot servers with imap, imaps, and pop, and it works fine.

--
"If you plant ice, you're gonna harvest wind."
Re:It is easier by snoyberg · 2007-12-21 03:45 · Score: 2, Funny

No, silly. Ed is the standard editor

--
Thank God for evolution.
Re:It is easier by hackstraw · 2007-12-21 03:59 · Score: 2, Insightful

Q: How do I get mutt to keep an address book?
A: Use this extra 3rd party perl script, or this 3rd party perl script or ...

Mutt has an addressbook or aliases I believe they call it, works with tab completion.

Mutt even complies with some obscure RFC rule for email where you can resend a mail. I don't know of too many mailers that can do that. Its ESC-e if you care.

Also, mutt can use vim as your editor, which I use all the time anyway, so it keeps my life more consistant than learning different editors.
Re:It is easier by drew · 2007-12-21 04:39 · Score: 3, Informative

Then it must have been an awful long time ago. I used mutt from about '99-'01, and while the first question is accurate, Mutt had great support for IMAP and as far as I recall, a decent address book. The SMTP thing wasn't that big a deal to me, at least - I only used it on Linux, where it was trivially easy to set Postfix to route outgoing email though my ISP. I've actually considered going back to Mutt from time to time, but I have to use Outlook at work, and I don't get enough email at my personal account to be worth it.

--
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
Re:It is easier by value_added · 2007-12-21 04:49 · Score: 2, Interesting

I tried mutt once, it went like this:

Allow me to fix that for you:

I once tried to use mutt to do a number of things an email user agent has no business doing, and all I got was a lousy T-shirt.

If it helps, recent versions of mutt do offer SMTP, IMAP, POP (and even NNTP) support. While occasionaly useful, the additions should placate the complaints of folks who don't understand *nix, can't get past the basics, or otherwise have a desire to see sendmail, mail, fetchmail, procmail, formail, sed, Perl, and spamassassin, along with authentication and encryption (ldap thrown in for good measure), each rewritten into a single, all-singing, all-dancing program.

The mutt mailing list consists almost entirely of friendly, informed, and detailed answers to questions from people of all skill levels, so I think your original comment is unfair and as it disingenuous, particularly for someone who may interested in trying mutt.

For everyone else, the notion that "All mail clients suck. This one just sucks less." remains both valid and funny, just as it did in 1995 when it was first coined. And for the record, I can say that I was once upon a time a Pine user, but only with the same level of uncomfortable embarassment I feel when recalling being initially impressed by the features offered by Outlook and Exchange.
Re:It is easier by Beetle+B. · 2007-12-21 05:16 · Score: 2, Interesting

The mutt mailing list consists almost entirely of friendly, informed, and detailed answers to questions from people of all skill levels, so I think your original comment is unfair and as it disingenuous, particularly for someone who may interested in trying mutt. Actually, it's not. While I never was on the mailing list, I used to post quite a bit on the USENET newsgroup. And there was (perhaps still is) one expert user who would say those exact things in a very condescending manner to newbies. I'm sure he single-handedly drove many people away from Mutt.

I'm a Mutt user. My biggest complaint is that I can't save outgoing emails to more than one folder based on the list of recipients. I've known others on the USENET newsgroup whine about this, as well. Is this a feature Pine/Alpine has?

In fact, out of curiosity, what does Pine/Alpine have that Mutt doesn't and vice versa? (Let's ignore interface issues).

--
Beetle B.
Re:It is easier by OrangeTide · 2007-12-21 06:26 · Score: 1

mutt was dead simple to install and configure. I just installed it, and typed in my account information and I was done. (and I use IMAP-SSL). I don't see why you had any problems. perhaps you were trying to install mutt from source on a distro that does not have things configured properly? Blame the distro for not packaging a system that is configured so that any moron can use it.

--
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Re:It is easier by shutdown+-p+now · 2007-12-21 07:11 · Score: 1

IMAP really can't be replaced with fetchmail and the rest of the bunch. The whole point is to read the messages directly on the server without downloading them!
Then again, the proper Unixy way to do that would probably be a userspace "imapfs" driver that'd mount your IMAP mailbox as a local maildir, which mutt could then access as usual. Any takers?
Re:It is easier by ars · 2007-12-21 08:02 · Score: 1

I'm a Mutt user. My biggest complaint is that I can't save outgoing emails to more than one folder based on the list of recipients. I've known others on the USENET newsgroup whine about this, as well. Is this a feature Pine/Alpine has?

You can do a different sent-mail folder based on a rule. I don't think you can save the same message more then once in different folders if that's what you are asking.

--
-Ariel
Re:It is easier by ars · 2007-12-21 08:06 · Score: 1

Mutt even complies with some obscure RFC rule for email where you can resend a mail. I don't know of too many mailers that can do that. Its ESC-e if you care.

Pine can do that too - command 'b' for bounce.
Also, mutt can use vim as your editor, which I use all the time anyway, so it keeps my life more consistant than learning different editors.

I'm not sure if we are comparing pine here, but it too can use an external editor.

Pine is actually quite a powerful email client - are there any lists of feature comparisons to mutt? I've been thinking of mutt.

--
-Ariel
Re:It is easier by Beetle+B. · 2007-12-21 08:18 · Score: 1

That is what I'm asking. For a bunch of people, I store all correspondence in separate folders (one for each person). When I want to send the same email to 3 of them, I'd like it to save that email in all 3 folders.

Back when I used to read the newsgroup, this was not a rare query from users.

--
Beetle B.
Re:It is easier by Anonymous Coward · 2007-12-21 08:26 · Score: 0

I'm confused. Remind me again: why does my desktop machine need to run a POP3 deamon and a full blown MTA just to transfer mail over POP3 and SMTP? Something that takes a couple of hundred lines of code to properly, by the way.

Oh, right, because that's just not UNIX-y. Running unnecessary deamons and servers, now that's Real UNIX Power!
Re:It is easier by Trinn · 2007-12-21 10:14 · Score: 2, Funny

So basically.....you want labels :-P (its just funny to see someone want something that so many people don't see the point of)
Re:It is easier by Beetle+B. · 2007-12-21 11:04 · Score: 1

Well, if it's automated and still saves them into different files, I won't complain. I've never had anything against labels.

--
Beetle B.
Re:It is easier by value_added · 2007-12-21 16:29 · Score: 1

While I never was on the mailing list, I used to post quite a bit on the USENET newsgroup. And there was (perhaps still is) one expert user who would say those exact things in a very condescending manner to newbies. I'm sure he single-handedly drove many people away from Mutt.

Welcome to USENET. ;-) I've got about 1000 articles from that group. By comparison, I have about 10K from the mailing list. That would suggest unless you're on Gmane's servers, you're in the wrong place. Again, the mailing list distinguishes itself above most any I've ever subscribed to for the reasons I outlined.

My biggest complaint is that I can't save outgoing emails to more than one folder based on the list of recipients.

I'm a hyper-organised sort, so reading the above makes my eyes cross for a number of reasons. I wouldn't even consider such a scheme, but if I was so inclined, I'd handle like a distribution list and have procmail handle the "put a copy everywhere" part; if it doesn't merit that level of organisation, then it's probably not worth doing. ;-) Sorry I can't help more than to say it's probably possible (save/fcc hooks, send hooks, external scripting, etc.) and that if there is an answer, someone on the mailing list will offer up a definitive response within a day or two.

In fact, out of curiosity, what does Pine/Alpine have that Mutt doesn't and vice versa? (Let's ignore interface issues).

I can't go there. When I fell in love with mutt, I relegated everything else (including nntp clients) to the trash bin and haven't looked back, or needed to consider doing so. If it helps put things in perspective, my needs or requirements are beyond most people's, and all are met with aplomb using mutt alone.
Re:It is easier by Kent+Recal · 2007-12-22 18:44 · Score: 1

Erm. You seem to have missed that mutt does support IMAP.
Searching, subscriptions, it's all there - and damn fast.

Re:Alpine? Pine? by morgan_greywolf · 2007-12-21 02:05 · Score: 3, Funny

You had DNS?!

Lucky.

We just had a really huge, sloppily-maintained copy of /etc/hosts on each systems.

--
My blog

Re:Alpine? Pine? by Guinness2702 · 2007-12-21 02:10 · Score: 1

And you know, if you tell that to the kids today, they don't believe you!

--
This space is intentionally left blank

Proper Tag by Anonymous Coward · 2007-12-21 02:15 · Score: 0

Shouldn't this be tagged !elm?

Re:Why bother (add 7 and 8) by gosand · 2007-12-21 02:16 · Score: 1

You can add

7. It's configurable. I use fetchmail to consolidate email from several accounts, and I access them via Pine. Much more convenient than logging into several different webmail accounts.

8. It is remotely accessible (with SSH). I love the ability to check my email remotely very quickly, without having to do webmail (slow) or download my email to a remote machine. SSH into my machine, run pine. Quick and simple. (even if you have to download putty from a remote site)

I can do everything I need to using pine, but when it is more convenient to use another client (e.g. view an email with many images attached) I just fire up Thunderbird. That happens maybe once every couple of weeks. And no, I don't use mutt... I've heard it's better, but just haven't gotten around to trying it.

--

My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.

Re:Alpine? Pine? by Guinness2702 · 2007-12-21 02:19 · Score: 2, Funny

Hmm, missed an opportunity then. Okay, here goes

*sharp intake of breath*

Why when I was young all we got was a PDP-11 with a card puncher with cards that we had to give to the office boy who'd get on his bike, take to the cards and the one card reader the company had to the other office where they'd read them in reply to the message and the give the cards with the replay, and the reader back to the boy who'd bring the reply back to our office!

--
This space is intentionally left blank

Um... Where pine go? by jchawk · 2007-12-21 02:21 · Score: 2, Insightful

Not to ask the obvious question but where did pine ever go?

I've been using pine for as long as I've had email. Probably for the same reasons everyone else is. It does exactly what I need. I'm lazy. And it's worked for the past 10+ years.

So I'm not sure that pine ever went anywhere to begin with. :-P

Re:Um... Where pine go? by Professor_UNIX · 2007-12-21 02:34 · Score: 4, Informative

The old Pine license precluded it from being included in binary format in any distributions unless they chose to violate the license. Alpine doesn't have that problem. I don't know why this is particularly news though since I've been using Alpine on my Ubuntu Feisty box since May.
Re:Um... Where pine go? by Anonymous Coward · 2007-12-21 02:36 · Score: 0

More license stupidity. UW owns pine and could just relicense it, but instead they release it under a different name and new license? That's just stupid.
Re:Um... Where pine go? by cbart387 · 2007-12-21 03:20 · Score: 1

Pine is installed on my university's unix box, that the comp sci students do their work. If I'm on campus, I'll frequently ssh into that box to use pine instead of using webmail. For all the 'fancy-ness' of these webmail's AJAX crap, pine still outperforms them. So yeah, I'd agree with you that pine still has a use.

--
Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.
Re:Um... Where pine go? by zakezuke · 2007-12-21 03:36 · Score: 1

More license stupidity. UW owns pine and could just relicense it, but instead they release it under a different name and new license? That's just stupid. From the website
The trademark obligation represented an ongoing administrative effort. Coincidentally, the UW is standardizing its license for the several other products we offer to the Apache License, Version 2.0.

The cleanest way to do all this was to stop developing Pine (a registered trademark) and start a new product that would be released under the Apache License, Version 2.0. Thus Alpine was born.

It may sound silly but it makes sense. I mean you have a whole slew of people, businesses, and organizations who agreed to a set of terms who would be most upset if the terms were changed overnight. Not only that but it was possible to distribute derivative works only with written permission. For all we know, this has been done on a commercial level.

While you could get the source to pine, it was NOT what some would call open source.

--
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Re:Um... Where pine go? by Anonymous Coward · 2007-12-21 06:44 · Score: 0

It had serious additional issues. The long refusal to include SSL capability to anyone but UW and the threat of copyright violation lawsuits against anyone who even pointed to overseas patches to provide SSL capability (which were definitely not UW owned code!), the refusal to support Maildir, anc the long-term bug in the c-client library core to both Pine and UW-IMAPD that insisted that every single file in the user's home directory was a potential mail folder and should be scanned, along with following recursive behavior by Pine running on the same host as the IMAP server and scanning its own mail spool, was a serious issue.

The software betrays a lot of Mark Crispin's influence: he's very sharp, but refuses to cooperate with how other people actually want to use things, and the ludicrous re-interpretation of the Pine licensing by UW after the code was already published, in conflict with the actual contents of the license agreement which was pretty sneakily buried in the software, made it unusable.

Pine was good in comparison to Emacs RMAIL, but these days, it's pretty pointless.

Licence Fixed At Last by ajs318 · 2007-12-21 02:23 · Score: 2, Insightful

It's good that they've fixed the licence at last. The old PINE licence was a problem for distributions; getting it to work the way a particular distro wanted required modifying it, which -- for .rpm / .deb based distributions with pre-compiled packages -- was against the strictest interpretation of the terms. UW always tended to turn a blind eye to this (even hosting modified RPMs), but this isn't something you should ever rely on.

--
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!

Re:Licence Fixed At Last by Random+BedHead+Ed · 2007-12-21 04:22 · Score: 1

I had been downloading and compiling PINE because of this license issue, so I expected some third party to create a differently licensed clone for some time. Imagine my surprise when the expected PINE clone (no pun intended, honest) arrived from no less an institution than UW, distributors of the original PINE. For those who, like me, wondered why they didn't just relicense PINE and call it "PINE 5.0," the Alpine story 'splains it. I never realized that trademark issues were involved. Quoth Alpine:

We wanted to reorganize the Pine source code, distribute the Web version that has been very popular here at the Univerity of Washington, and relax our trademark obligation for source code quality control to a world-wide customer base. The trademark obligation represented an ongoing administrative effort. Coincidentally, the UW is standardizing its license for the several other products we offer to the Apache License, Version 2.0. The cleanest way to do all this was to stop developing Pine (a registered trademark) and start a new product that would be released under the Apache License, Version 2.0. Thus Alpine was born.
Re:Licence Fixed At Last by skeeto · 2007-12-21 04:24 · Score: 1

Now that pine, in the form of alpine, is free software, maybe it's worth taking a look at now. I never bothered before due to the non-free license.

Re:Alpine? Pine? by Ed+Avis · 2007-12-21 02:23 · Score: 1

YOU HAD LOWERCASE LETTERS? BACK IN MY DAY ASCII WAS UPPERCASE ONLY. DAMN KIDS!

aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa
aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa

--
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com

Re:But by Anonymous Coward · 2007-12-21 02:26 · Score: 2, Informative

Gmail does have more functionality, but I can access PINE from everywhere using PuTTY (which I keep on a flash drive) or a web emulator.

Re:Inertia? by vyrus128 · 2007-12-21 02:27 · Score: 2, Funny

"All programs attempt to expand until they can read mail. Those that can't are replaced by those that can." -- Jamie Zawinzki

Re:Inertia? by archen · 2007-12-21 02:29 · Score: 1

I'm pretty sure mutt lets you use whatever (terminal) text editor you want doesn't it?

set editor=vim

Vim doesn't need to email if email clients can use vim. Aside from that you could always pipe the current document to postfix/sendmail.

Re:But by Yosho · 2007-12-21 02:43 · Score: 1

Hmm. Can I access Gmail when I'm not connected to the internet?

That may seem like a silly question, but there have been many times that I've had my laptop with me somewhere where there's no internet access, and I needed to check something in my e-mail archives.

--
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)

I'm special! by pjt33 · 2007-12-21 02:49 · Score: 1

Okay, I already knew I was special, but to be one of only eight people to use Pine? That's really special!

Re:Why bother (add 7 and 8) by jabuzz · 2007-12-21 02:51 · Score: 1

You can always run your own webmail server, because a webbrowser is much more likely to be available than a ssh client.

Re:Inertia? by grad_devil · 2007-12-21 02:52 · Score: 1

Or you could just use 'vim' as your default editor from within Pine:

--Go to Setup | Enable Alternate Editor && Enable Alternate Editor implicitly
--Also in Setup, set the "Editor" command to "/path/to/vim"

Voila! All your editing is done using good ole vim ;)

A bit of trivia... by spiritraveller · 2007-12-21 03:01 · Score: 1

Linus Torvalds uses alpine. I'm going to try it out just for nostalgia's sake. Pine was the first email client I can remember using (not including compuserve's "email" client or those that ran on private BBSes and didn't allow sending messages outside).

I've tried using mutt, but there seems to be a big learning curve before a mere mortal can use it. Pine was self-explanatory from the start, with on-screen menus that made everything easy. On the other hand, Pine ran on a university server that was already configured for my account. So my memory may be colored by the fact that I didn't have to set up Postfix or create mail directories, which may have been necessary had I run Pine on my own computer.

APC: What software do you use everyday? Your browser, desktop (if any), email client and so on?

LT: Well, ignoring the actual development stuff (make, compiler, editor etc), it ends up being mostly just xterms and "alpine" (the newer version of the venerable old "pine" email reader. Strictly text-based, thank you very much).

Re:A bit of trivia... by Kludge · 2007-12-21 04:20 · Score: 1

set up Postfix or create mail directories, which may have been necessary had I run Pine on my own computer

You don't need to run your own mail transfer agent if you don't want to. You can have alpine read from an IMAP mailbox on another computer, e.g.
inbox-path={mail.foofoo.com/ssl/user=pants}INBOX
and you can have it send mail directly to a mail transfer agent on another computer:
smtp-server=smtp.myisp.net
Re:A bit of trivia... by Fweeky · 2007-12-21 07:27 · Score: 1

I've tried using mutt, but there seems to be a big learning curve before a mere mortal can use it. Nice keybindings help; 98% of my use in mutt is just left/right/up/down -- far left is the mailbox list, right enters a mailbox, right enters a mail, right lists the attachments, right views an attachment. r/g for reply, m to write a new message. l ~s foo to search (limit) by subject, l ~f to search by from, etc.
bind pager <up> previous-line bind pager <down> next-line bind pager <left> exit bind pager <right> view-attachments bind attach <left> exit bind attach <right> view-attach bind index <right> display-message macro index <left> "<sync-mailbox><change-folder>?<toggle-mailboxes>" bind browser <right> select-entry bind browser <left> exit
Granted, getting it all working/looking as you like it can take a while, but a decent example config got me going pretty quickly, and it's served me well for many years. The last I heard about Pine was it finally getting thread support; makes me wonder what else it must be missing. Maybe I'll take a look at Alpine, that was a while ago.
Re:A bit of trivia... by MadChicken · 2007-12-21 09:21 · Score: 1

Mutt is amazing... All you need is a pine muttrc file, one example is here

http://www.dotfiles.com/files/27/263_.muttrc

and then check out Tesla Gwynne's muttrc for more fun:
http://www.linux.org.uk/~telsa/BitsAndPieces/muttrc-1.2

The online muttrc generator
http://muttrcbuilder.org/

It may not win you over, but wow, mutt can be super quick to do mighty things.

--
SYS 64738 NO CARRIER
Re:A bit of trivia... by Anonymous Coward · 2007-12-21 10:01 · Score: 0

Alpine 1.00 is a lot faster than mutt.

Can't be all that great. by Anonymous Coward · 2007-12-21 03:18 · Score: 0

That website is seriously lacking in screenshots.

Re:Why bother (add 7 and 8) and 9 by Creosote · 2007-12-21 03:20 · Score: 1

If I had time I could probably come up with reasons 9 through 20, but an anecdote from a couple of days ago, when I was using Alpine beta 0.999. /ME: sends off a reply to someone's last 4 emails using Alpine's Select-Apply-Reply command (3 keystrokes) /

ME to Eudora-using colleague: Say, with Eudora can you send a reply to an arbitrary number of emails? Like gather someone's last 4 emails and reply to them all with one message?

COLLEAGUE (thinking): No. No, that would be a really nice feature.

ME: Okay, you don't get to tease me about still using Pine any more.

Name change by kvap · 2007-12-21 03:22 · Score: 5, Funny

> Why Alpine Message System (AMS)?

Because Pine Message System sounded too whiney :)

Monzy said it best by Anonymous Coward · 2007-12-21 03:24 · Score: 0

It's like I'm running Thunderbird and you're still stuck with Pine,
Which is why I think it's time for me to KILL DASH NINE.

Monzy, Kill -9

Re:Alpine? Pine? by Darth_brooks · 2007-12-21 03:27 · Score: 1

Knock if off you two. I just finished a two week run with my community theater's production of "Julius Caeser" as Caeser's understudy, and I don't want to have to school you both with an Aldis Lamp!

--
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.

To PINE fans: this is what you were looking for by yooy · 2007-12-21 03:34 · Score: 1

Wyrd - "Because you're tired of waiting for your bloated calendar program to start up." http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~pelzlpj/wyrd/ Enjoy!

Webmail vs. Pine by CompMD · 2007-12-21 03:40 · Score: 1, Troll

Interestingly, all the "OMG GMAIL LOLZ PINE IS FOR LOOSERS" posts are all from people with UIDs greater than 850000. Coincidence?

The kids these days...

Re:Webmail vs. Pine by Unxmaal · 2007-12-21 04:16 · Score: 1

Pine is still my mail reader of choice. Every so often, I'll try using mutt again, and every time I'll switch back to Pine, because those keystrokes are embedded in my brain. I know mutt can "be made to look almost like pine", but there's a big difference between 'almost' and 'exactly'.

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http://unxmaal.com
Re:Webmail vs. Pine by ch-chuck · 2007-12-21 05:00 · Score: 1

Damn straight, I use mutt to read gmail (true).

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try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Re:Webmail vs. Pine by jkerman · 2007-12-21 05:32 · Score: 1

I gave up PINE nearly 6 months ago! it must be slowly working its way back! someone save the 4 digiters!
Re:Webmail vs. Pine by Anonymous Coward · 2007-12-21 09:46 · Score: 1, Funny

Interestingly, all the "HTML email is evil/long live the terminal/80x25 should be enough for anyone" posts are from people with UIDs less than 850000. Coincidence?

The grandfathers these days...

Re:Inertia? by yooy · 2007-12-21 03:41 · Score: 1

Quote: "I don't know if vi or vim has a mail client" I've heard emacs has a great mail client. All emacs lacks is a good editor... **G**

Why? by seebs · 2007-12-21 03:45 · Score: 2, Interesting

PINE was one of the most atrociously-written programs I have ever seen. It was built by people who absolutely failed to understand UNIX, at any level. It used to fail on big-endian systems that used 64-bit file offsets, because rather than using the STANDARD SYSTEM HEADERS, it manually misdefined every UNIX system call itself. Why? Because one of the programmers once saw a system, somewhere, where he claimed was wrong, so they made a consistent practice of, by default, including their own local definitions INSTEAD OF the standard system ones, except on a very few platforms that had to be specially identified.

The whole program is like that. It's full of cargo cult nonsense, attempts to reinvent other languages in C, and so on.

If you like the interface, the thing to do would be to start from scratch and write a program with that interface, but to do it competently, using programmers who have some basic understanding of C. If you start from the PINE base, you are doomed.

--
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/

Re:Why? by Abcd1234 · 2007-12-21 04:05 · Score: 1

PINE was one of the most atrociously-written programs I have ever seen.

And that has bearing on it's value to it's end users, how?
Re:Why? by seebs · 2007-12-21 04:49 · Score: 1

(http://www.angryflower.com/itsits.gif)

Bad code is unmaintainable code.

Consider the end users who suffered with various PINE bugs relating to not detecting incoming mail or truncating files, due to the offset bug described. Consider all the vulnerabilities, crashes, and so on, which necessarily entail from badly-written code.

Code style isn't purely for the convenience of programmers. Programmer convenience means more time spent actually working on the problem you're supposed to be working on, and less time fighting the computer... And that means fewer bugs and more features.

--
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Re:Why? by Abcd1234 · 2007-12-21 05:01 · Score: 1

Bad code is unmaintainable code.

Given how long PINE has been around, and how easily it's evolved to changing requirements (ffs, it supports acting as a webmail client, now!), I'd say that means the original supposition (that PINE is poorly written) has been refuted, then.

Consider the end users who suffered with various PINE bugs relating to not detecting incoming mail or truncating files, due to the offset bug described.

Oh please. There is a ton of well-written code out there that isn't 64-bit clean.

Consider all the vulnerabilities, crashes, and so on, which necessarily entail from badly-written code.

Funny, I've found PINE to be nothing but incredibly stable. In fact, aside from the 64-bit bug you previously described, you have yet to attribute such behaviour to PINE itself, instead referring to general "vulnerabilities, crashes, and so on".

So, in short, unless you can demonstrate that PINE is unusually bug-ridden or difficult to maintain or alter, I'll have to conclude that the original poster was either wrong, or simply venting his own prejudices toward the codebase (after all, style is, more than anything else, a passionate topic for programmers... unfortunately, often times, such style issues have little effect on the ultimate maintainability or functionality of code (see emacs vs Vi, tabs vs spaces, braces on the next or same line, etc, for classic examples)).
Re:Why? by Abcd1234 · 2007-12-21 05:10 · Score: 1

And, BTW, I'm fully aware of the usage of "it's" and "its"... oddly enough, I, like many others, suffer from typos. However, mine often involve homophone substitutions, particularly since I tend to write out full words before my brain has an opportunity to validate that the spelling is correct.
Re:Why? by raddan · 2007-12-21 05:13 · Score: 1

Fortunately, most of us use PINE's commands and not its C functions.
Re:Why? by seebs · 2007-12-21 09:38 · Score: 1

It's not just the code isn't clean, it's that it went out of its way to REVERSE the way that anyone else would have done it.

The fact that the code had to be altered because the maintainers chose to replace UNIX headers with their own misconfigured variants IS an example of the code being unusually difficult to maintain or alter.

Have you READ the code? I have. It's crap.

--
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Re:Why? by Just+Some+Guy · 2007-12-21 10:13 · Score: 1

Fortunately, most of us use PINE's commands and not its C functions.
Yes, but you don't get more PINE commands unless a C programmer can figure out how to add them.

--
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · 2007-12-21 11:49 · Score: 0

The preceding message has been brought to you by MUWHP - Mutt Users Who Hate Pine.
Re:Why? by Reaperducer · 2007-12-21 12:18 · Score: 1

However, mine often involve homophone substitutions,
So you're homophonic? Looks like you've been outed by a Grammar Nazi. *ducks*

--
-- I'm old enough to have lived through six different meanings of the word "hacker."
Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · 2007-12-21 13:20 · Score: 0

Wow, I had no idea that Mutt users had no life outside of hating Pine. It seems to define you. That's so sad.
Re:Why? by Abcd1234 · 2007-12-24 03:30 · Score: 1

It's not just the code isn't clean, it's that it went out of its way to REVERSE the way that anyone else would have done it.

So? I understand you don't like it, but you still haven't demonstrated, with actual evidence (and no, your opinions and suppositions don't qualify) that PINE is either unmaintainable or unusually buggy. I'm beginning to think that's because you can't.

The fact that the code had to be altered because the maintainers chose to replace UNIX headers with their own misconfigured variants IS an example of the code being unusually difficult to maintain or alter.

Uhh... why? Do you have examples where this has proven unusually onerous? I mean, given PINE's overall portability, it seems to me that there has been little negative effect, but perhaps you can provide examples to the contrary?

Have you READ the code? I have. It's crap.

Again, in your personal opinion. But unless you can prove to me that it really is buggy or unmaintainable, that's all it is: opinion.

Re: attachments and search by wwwrench · 2007-12-21 03:51 · Score: 2, Interesting

I use pine and I love it -- it's far faster than webmail or thunderbird. But the list you mention contain items which make me sometimes want to switch to another client.

Take attachments. I'm running pine over ssh, and almost all the time, I can't just view the attachment by clicking on it. I have to save it, then scp it over, then open it. A pain in the ass.

Then there is the lack of search functionality. This is a bit of a killer. Sure I can run some script to search the files, but it is not very convenient. And finally, I would like to be able to tag an email in multiple ways, rather than just save it into a particular file.

Perhaps there is a way to do these things, in which case, please let me know, but otherwise, I will always use pine with a bit of gmail-envy.

--

Deconstruct the State

Re:Alpine? Pine? by dubl-u · 2007-12-21 03:55 · Score: 1

Back in my day, all we got was a telnet client and a dns query tool

You had DNS? Luxury! Why back in my day, there was just one HOSTS file, and everybody shared it.

Oh, and Bitnet. We had Bitnet, too. Yes kids, way back when, there were competitors to the Internet.

Christ, I wish I were kidding. KA9Q represent, yo!

And of course... by Noryungi · 2007-12-21 03:57 · Score: 3, Informative

Pine = Program for Internet News and Email
Pine = Pine Is Not Elm
Alpine = Apache Licensed Pine

Just so you know... :-)

--
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)

UID p*ssing contest... (was: Re:Webmail vs. Pine) by beh · 2007-12-21 04:01 · Score: 1

Well, I'm sure we can assume that anyone with a 6 digit UID calling those with 7 digits 'kids' is merely just precotious - you're not THAT much older, kiddo... ;-)

I'm perfectly happy with my 4 digit ID - though, yes, for a brief moment I *was* thinking about bidding on the 3digit one a few months back (auction for EFF); but then - there are less than 5k users that can claim a lower UID, so why bother...

Re:Alpine? Pine? by Anonymous Coward · 2007-12-21 04:04 · Score: 0

At least your office boy had legs.

As a mutt user let me say that... by Anonymous Coward · 2007-12-21 04:08 · Score: 0

...my dog pees on your tree.

*woof*

Re:As a mutt user let me say that... by Anonymous Coward · 2007-12-21 09:47 · Score: 0

And my tree will outlive your dog. Chew on that, fido.

Who needs Pine ... by VeteranNoob · 2007-12-21 04:20 · Score: 2, Funny

... when there is a venerable email client installed by default in almost every O/S.

Yes, I'm speaking of telnet.

If god wanted you to use a GUI, he wouldn't have invented ASCII!

--
Adapt, adopt, or get out of the way!

Re:Alpine? Pine? by Anonymous Coward · 2007-12-21 04:27 · Score: 0

... and pull up your pants!

Why bother with cone by paulproteus · 2007-12-21 04:49 · Score: 1

Isn't cone just a poor man's PINE written by the Courier guys?

Why not just use alpine, now that it's Free Software/Open Source?

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|/usr/games/fortune

Re:Why bother with cone by mattack2 · 2007-12-21 11:35 · Score: 1

Yikes, if that's true, it's scary. Based upon my reading of the pine & alpine mailing lists for a few years, Courier IMAP is really buggy and they won't fix the problems. (i.e. they willingly fail to follow the RFCs, and IMAP was invented by one of the guys who works on pine/alpine.)

That is, I'm not sure if I'd want to try out a "poor man's pine" written by people who won't follow the proper IMAP protocol.

He's not dead .... by Mean+Variance · 2007-12-21 04:49 · Score: 2, Funny

He's pining for the fjords.

Re: attachments and search by paulproteus · 2007-12-21 04:55 · Score: 2, Interesting

I understand what you mean about Gmail envy. I've been using PINE since 1999, before this Gee-mail fad started, but everyone around me uses a web browser for email and claims to love it.

PINE is best used when coupled with a good IMAP server. The best Free Software IMAP server seems to be Dovecot these days, and includes indexed (read: "FAST") full-text search in the 1.1 beta releases.

What I do is enable full-text indexing on my email with Dovecot, and then you can use PINE's regular ; (Select) operator to search on all text, and bam - you get results practically instantly.

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|/usr/games/fortune

You can lose the apostrophes, too by JavaRob · 2007-12-21 05:07 · Score: 2, Funny

Alpine's Like Pine: It's Not Elm Alpine, Like Pine, Is Not Elm

Re: attachments and search by Beetle+B. · 2007-12-21 05:19 · Score: 2, Funny

Take attachments. I'm running pine over ssh, There's your problem.

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Beetle B.

You didn't lose 'em ... by Anonymous Coward · 2007-12-21 05:26 · Score: 0

You dropped them!

Maildir support? by fongaboo · 2007-12-21 05:39 · Score: 1

Does this new alpine app have Maildir support?

Re:Maildir support? by Whip-hero · 2007-12-21 08:47 · Score: 1

Does this new alpine app have Maildir support? There is a patch that adds Maildir support as a driver. It seems to build ok, and I'm getting ready to try it out.

FYI, if you build on Debian, you will need to install (at least) libssl-dev and libpam0g-dev.

-A

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--WH--
Re:Maildir support? by fongaboo · 2007-12-24 02:11 · Score: 1

Any tips for what I am doing wrong on my FreeBSD Intel box?: patch -p 1 ../../patches/maildir.patch Hmm... Looks like a new-style context diff to me... The text leading up to this was: |diff -rc alpine-1.00/alpine/alpine.c alpine-1.00.maildir/alpine/alpine.c |*** alpine-1.00/alpine/alpine.c 2007-12-18 10:29:24.000000000 -0800 |--- alpine-1.00.maildir/alpine/alpine.c 2007-12-20 18:29:24.000000000 -0800 patch: **** can't find 1
Re:Maildir support? by Whip-hero · 2007-12-25 11:28 · Score: 1

Well, I don't if things are very different on FreeBSD, but my Debian version of patch seems to work a little differently. Don't put a space between the -p and the 1, and feed the patch file in on stdin, instead of naming it as an argument:

patch -p1 < ../../patches/maildir.patch

Of course, use -p1 if you're in the root of the alpine-1.00 source directory, otherwise the number will be different.

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--WH--

Re:Alpine? Pine? by Lennie · 2007-12-21 06:28 · Score: 1

You had DNS ? What a luxery, we just had a large host-file.

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New things are always on the horizon

Re:Alpine? Pine? by Anonymous Coward · 2007-12-21 06:41 · Score: 0

*sharp intake of breath* Why when I was young all we got was an abacus and a strong mind to imagine and run the outcome. We just wrote the solutions on scratch papers and got the answers back ourselves!

Re:Inertia? by Antique+Geekmeister · 2007-12-21 06:46 · Score: 1

Emacs does! How many unique, completely unusable together mail clients would you like to run today from Emacs?

Re:Alpine? Pine? by multipartmixed · 2007-12-21 06:53 · Score: 1

You had large files?

In my day, files were 2GB or less!

--

Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?

Re:Alpine? Pine? by Haeleth · 2007-12-21 07:02 · Score: 1

THINK YOURE JOKING QUERY ASSURE YOU ALL TRUE STOP PUNCTUATION COSTS EXTRA STOP

And once again we run into Slashdot's charming lameness filter, forcing me to pad out the post with fluff to get it to pass.

Re:Inertia? by shutdown+-p+now · 2007-12-21 07:14 · Score: 1

Today, a slight correction is needed to keep it spot on: s/read mail/browse the web/.

(This post was written in Microsoft Visual Studio 2008)

Hey wait a minute! by conares · 2007-12-21 07:24 · Score: 0, Troll

Pine Message System...PMS anyone?

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That, that really grinds my gears!

Re:Why bother (add 7 and 8) by gosand · 2007-12-21 07:55 · Score: 1

You can always run your own webmail server, because a webbrowser is much more likely to be available than a ssh client.

If you have a web browser, you can get an ssh client, putty, very quickly. And you can't always run your own webmail server, because your ISP may not allow incoming HTTP traffic. Yeah, you could probably run it on a different port, but then you may have issues of firewalls. Most places allow ssh, it is secure, and webmail is still webmail.

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My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.

Re:Alpine? Pine? by turgid · 2007-12-21 08:05 · Score: 1

*sharp intake of breath* Why when I was young, we had to wait until the tide was out and write in the sand with a pointed stick.

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Stick Men

Re:Alpine? Pine? by An+ominous+Cow+art · 2007-12-21 08:30 · Score: 1

Puff of smoke.
Puff of smoke.
Streamer of smoke.
Puff of smoke.
Streamer of smoke.

why pine? by my_left_nut · 2007-12-21 09:55 · Score: 0

I haven't ever gotten p0wn3d by previewing something in pine. In fact, I've never "previewed" anything in pine, since I couldn't figure out how. ;-)

Can't say the same for Outlook.

Outlook 2007... by Anonymous Coward · 2007-12-21 10:01 · Score: 0

"from:boss@myemployer.com subject:training sent:dec-31-2004"

Outlook 2007 instant search lets you just string together multiple search terms - it's following the 'web search' model of searching your email. Just click on the 'double arrow' to drop down the critera panel and off you go. You can use simple comparison operators.

I realise it's not quite the same as 'zooming' in, but you do end up in a simlar place in the end.

Re:Inertia? by wolverine1999 · 2007-12-21 10:28 · Score: 1

I used to like to use ream a while ago...
now I use gmail mostly..

--
SCIREV.NET - fanfics,reviews & more

Re: attachments and search by mattack2 · 2007-12-21 11:45 · Score: 1

You can add user-definable keywords on IMAP servers with pine/alpine. That sounds like it might fit your definition of "tag an email in multiple ways".

Also, there was talk about how to view attachments locally when running pine over ssh just the other day on the pine or alpine mailing list. It sounded like someone had a reasonable workaround for this. (But why not just run it locally?)

BTW, one thing people haven't mentioned so far is that alpine supports the keychain on Mac OS X (at my suggestion), so it can safely store your passwords for you.

Re: attachments and search by Anonymous Coward · 2007-12-21 12:15 · Score: 0

Why is it a problem? Just forward X11 over ssh and run a local X-server. I do it even on Windows under Cygwin. A windows laptop wit X-server, PuTTY to a Linux box, Pine on the box. With X-forwarding enabled attachments work just fine.

Re:Alpine? Pine? by GaryOlson · 2007-12-21 12:38 · Score: 1

*gasping for breath*

When I started in the business, messages were delivered by a courier who ran the whole distance and repeated the original message without error. Honor was accorded to those who died delivering their messages

You kids have no sense of history.

--
Every mans' island needs an ocean; choose your ocean carefully.

Help with alpine by paulproteus · 2007-12-21 14:30 · Score: 1

If you need help with alpine, your best bet is to sign up for the alpine-alpha email list at http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/alpine-alpha and ask your question there. The developers already have some ideas on what might be wrong in Windows 98, and how to fix it, but do keep in mind that Windows 98 is a rather old system these days.

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|/usr/games/fortune

Re:Help with alpine by Reziac · 2007-12-21 14:47 · Score: 1

What's the traffic on the list? It won't let me read the archives unless I sign up first. :(

Of course, the problem could be merely my fearsome repute as "the beta-tester who can break anything" at work :)

Yeah, Win98 is old now, but if it ain't broke... kindof the same reason a lot of folks still use PINE, for that matter. :)

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~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Re:Help with alpine by paulproteus · 2007-12-21 20:03 · Score: 1

Yes, that's why I said you should "sign up". (-:

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|/usr/games/fortune
Re:Help with alpine by Reziac · 2007-12-21 20:56 · Score: 1

Aha. Well, by amazing coincidence, I did so, but turned off delivery... no worries now :)

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~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?

Re: attachments and search by Beetle+B. · 2007-12-21 15:21 · Score: 1

The original post was about not being able to view binary attachments. If you're forwarding X11, then that's not an issue.

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Beetle B.

Re:But by zakezuke · 2007-12-21 17:36 · Score: 1

Hmm. Can I access Gmail when I'm not connected to the internet? I hope you mean... read gmail while not online.

You would think there would be an option to cache a site but it's safe to assume no.

However, IIRC g-mail offers pop3 and/or imap. You can use another client, such as al/pine, outlook/express, or whatever.

I've seen references to g-mail clients but you can google this subject on your own.

--
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.

Re:Why bother (add 7 and 8) by leet · 2007-12-21 19:31 · Score: 1

Unless you use this:

http://www.ece.osu.edu/ssh/

Ah, no... by JavaRob · 2007-12-21 23:46 · Score: 1

I loosed them.

Fly free, little apostrophes! You're free! You're free!

Re:Alpine? Pine? by Lennie · 2007-12-22 22:43 · Score: 1

In the time of I 'spoke' about, there we're no filesystems as large as a GB, let a lone store a 2GB file.

--
New things are always on the horizon

204 comments