Configuration and Preferences
There is very little in Pine which requires compile-time
configuration. In most cases, the compiled-in preferences will suit users
and administrators just fine. When running Pine on a UNIX system, the
default built-in configuration can be changed by setting variables in the
system configuration files, /usr/local/lib/pine.conf
or /usr/local/lib/pine.conf.fixed
.
(Actually, these files are whatever the definitions for
SYSTEM_PINERC
and SYSTEM_PINERC_FIXED
in pine/osdep/os-xxx.h are set to.)
Both Pine
and PC-Pine also use personal (user-based) configuration files.
On UNIX machines, the personal configuration file is the
file ~/.pinerc
.
For PC-Pine systems, the personal configuration file is in
$PINERC
or $HOME\PINE\PINERC
or
<PINE.EXE
dir>\PINERC
.
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 the syntax is "". This is equivalent to an absent value
except that it overrides any system-wide 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 Pine 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 Pine, there are five ways in which a variable can be set.
In decreasing order of precedence they are:
- the system-wide fixed configuration file
- a command line argument
- the personal configuration file (which is usually set from the Config
screen)
- the system-wide configuration file
- default in the source code.
So, system-wide fixed settings always take precedence over command line
flags, which take precedence over per-user settings, which take precedence
over system-wide configuration settings, which take precedence over source
code defaults. PC-Pine has the same list, except that it
does not use a system-wide fixed configuration file.
You may get a sample/fresh copy of the system configuration file by
running Pine -conf. The result will be printed on the standard
output with short comments describing each variable. (The online help in
the Setup screens provides 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 Pine.
It is by no means a bullet-proof method.) Pine will automatically create
the personal configuration file the first time it is run, so there is no
need to generate a sample. Pine 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 Pine 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 Pine
configuration files. The format is $variable
or
${variable}.
The character ~
will be expanded to the
$HOME
environment variable.
When environment variables are used for Pine settings which take lists,
you must have an environment variable set for each member of the list.
That is, Pine 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 Pine configuration file, which will expand to
nothing.
The following is a list of all Pine configuration variables, in
alphabetical order. Note that not all variables apply to all versions of
Pine and that some variables are only applicable in a system configuration
file and some are only applicable in a personal configuration file.
These are configuration variables.
Configuration Features
are in a separate section.
- addrbook-sort-rule
- This variable sets up the default address book sorting. Currently,
Pine will accept the values dont-sort,
fullname-with-lists-last, fullname,
nickname-with-lists-last, and nickname. The default is
to sort by fullname with lists last.
- address-book
- A list of personal address books.
Each entry in the list is an
optional nickname followed by a pathname or file name relative to the home
directory.
The nickname is separated from the rest of the line with whitespace.
Instead of a local pathname or file name, a remote folder name can be given.
This causes the address book to
be a Remote address book.
Remote folder syntax is discussed in
Syntax for Remote Folders.
This list of address books will be added to the
global-address-book
list to arrive at the complete set of address books.
- addressbook-formats
- This option specifies the format that address books are displayed in.
By default, address books are displayed with the nicknames in the first
column, the fullnames in the second column, and addresses in the third
column. The system figures out reasonable defaults for the widths of the
columns. An address book may be given a different format by listing
special tokens in the order you want them to display. The possible tokens
are NICKNAME, FULLNAME, ADDRESS, FCC, and COMMENT. More details are included
in the online help for this variable.
- alt-addresses
- This option provides a place for you to list alternate email
addresses you may have. If set, the option affects the behavior of the
Reply command and the + symbol in the "Folder Index", which
denotes that a message has been addressed specifically to you.
With respect to Reply, the Reply to All option will
exclude addresses listed here.
- bugs-additional-data
- System-wide configuration files only. Program/Script used by
Report Bug command. Output from the program/script is
captured and attached to the bug report.
- bugs-fullname,
bugs-address, local-fullname, local-address,
suggest-fullname, and suggest-address
- System-wide configuration files only. These are used by the bug
report commands which can be accessed from some of the Help screens.
- character-set
- This sets the character set used by the terminal. Currently
appropriate values are US-ASCII,
ISO-8859-1 through ISO-8859-9 and
ISO-2022-JP. See the section on
International Character Sets for more
details. The default is US-ASCII.
- color-style
- UNIX Pine only (color is automatically on with PC-Pine).
If the terminal or terminal emulator you are using is capable of displaying
colors, this variable controls whether or not
color will be used in Pine.
If you turn color on and things are set up correctly,
you should see color appear on the screen immmediately.
Modern terminal emulators are usually capable of displaying colors.
This variable may be set to any of the following values:
- no-color
- Don't use color.
- use-termdef
- In order to decide if your terminal is capable of color,
Pine looks in
the terminal capabilities database, TERMINFO or TERMCAP, depending on
how Pine was compiled.
This is a good option to choose if you switch between a color and a non-color
terminal with the same Pine configuration.
Pine will know to use color on the color terminal because
it is described
in the termcap entry, and Pine will know to use black and white on the
non-color terminal.
Color Details
has more information about configuring a termcap entry for color.
This is usually something a system administrator does.
- force-ansi-8color
- Because setting up a termcap entry is confusing and because the
terminal capabilities database is often not correctly configured for color,
this choice and the next may be easier for you to use.
If your terminal emulator responds to ANSI color escape sequences, which
many do, this option will
cause Pine to believe your terminal will respond
to the escape sequences which produce eight different foreground and background
colors.
The escape sequences used to set the foreground colors are
ESC [ 3 <color_number> m
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.
The escape sequences used to set the background colors are the same
as for the foreground colors except a "4" replaces the "3".
- force-ansi-16color
- Many terminal emulators know about the same eight colors above
plus eight more.
This option attempts to use all 16 colors.
The same escape sequences as for the eight-color terminal are used
for the first eight colors.
The escape sequences used to set foreground colors 8-15 are the same as
for 0-7 except the "3" is replaced with a "9".
The background color sequences for colors 8-15 are the same as for 0-7
except the "4" is replaced with "10".
You can tell if the 16 colors are working by turning on this option
and then going into one of the color configuration screens, for example,
the configuration screen for Normal Color.
If you see 16 different colors to select from, it's working.
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 Pine supports are configurable there.
Index line color is configured separately.
- composer-wrap-column
- This option specifies an aspect of Pine's Composer. This gives the
maximum width that auto-wrapped lines will have. It's also the maximum
width of lines justified using the ^J Justify command. The normal default
is 74. The largest allowed setting is normally 80 in order to
prevent very long lines from being sent in outgoing mail. When the mail
is actually sent, trailing spaces will be stripped off of each line.
- customized-hdrs
- Add these custom headers when composing. Also possible to add
default values to these custom headers or to any of the standard headers.
This is a list variable. Each entry in the list is a header name (the
actual header name that will appear in the message) followed by an
optional colon and value. For example, if a Reply-to header was needed
because it was different from the From address, that could be accomplished
with:
customized-hdrs=Reply-to: [email protected]
Leaving the optional value out allows the user to fill it in when composing
a message. If it isn't filled in, it won't be included in the message.
- default-composer-hdrs
- Show only these headers (by default) when composing a message. This
list may include headers defined in the customized-hdrs list.
- default-fcc
- The name of the folder to which all outgoing mail goes is set here.
The compiled-in default is sent-mail (UNIX) or sentmail
(PC). It can be set to "" (two double quotes with nothing between them)
to turn off saving copies of outgoing mail. If default-fcc is a
relative file name, then it is relative to your default collection for
saves (see folder-collections).
- default-saved-msg-folder
- This option determines the default folder name for Saves...
If this is not a path name, it will be in the default collection for saves.
Any valid folder specification, local or IMAP, is allowed. This default
folder only applies when the
saved-msg-name-rule
doesn't override it.
Unix Pine default is normally
saved-messages in the default folder collection.
PC-Pine default is SAVEMAIL
(normally stored as SAVEMAIL.MTX).
- disable-these-drivers
- This variable is a list of mail drivers which will be disabled.
The candidates for disabling are listed below.
There may be more in the future if you compile Pine with
a newer version of the c-client library.
- mbox
- mbx
- mh
- mmdf
- mtx
- mx
- news
- phile
- tenex
- unix
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
- This option defines a list of text-filtering commands (programs or
scripts) that may be used to filter text portions of received messages
prior to their use (e.g., presentation in the "Message Text" display
screen). For security reasons, the full path name of the filter command
must be specified.
The command is executed and the message is piped into its standard input.
The standard output of the command is read back by Pine. 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:
<trigger> <command> <arguments>
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:
- _CHARSET(string)_
- This token tells Pine to invoke the supplied command
if the text is in a character set matching string
(e.g., ISO-8859-2 or ISO-2022-JP).
- _LEADING(string)_
- This token tells Pine to invoke the supplied command
if the enclosed string is found to be the first
non-whitespace text.
NOTE: Quotes are necessary if string contains
the space character.
- _BEGINNING(string)_
- This token tells Pine to invoke the supplied command
if the enclosed string is found at the beginning
of any line in the text.
NOTE: Quotes are necessary if string contains
the space character.
The "command" and "arguments" portion is simply
the command line to be invoked if the trigger string is found. Below
are tokens that Pine will recognize and replace with special values
when the command is actually invoked.
Command Modifying Tokens:
- _TMPFILE_
- When the command is executed, this token is
replaced with the path and name of the temporary
file containing the text to be filtered. Pine
expects the filter to replace this data with the
filter's result.
NOTE: Use of this token implies that the text to
be filtered is not piped into standard input of the
executed command and its standard output is ignored.
Pine restores the tty modes before invoking the
filter in case the filter interacts with the user
via its own standard input and output.
- _RESULTFILE_
- When the command is executed, this token is
replaced with the path and name of a temporary
file intended to contain a status message from the
filter. Pine displays this in the message status
field.
- _DATAFILE_
- When the command is executed, this token is
replaced with the path and name of a temporary
file that Pine creates once per session and deletes
upon exit. The file is intended to be used by the
filter to store state information between instances
of the filter.
- _PREPENDKEY_
- When the command is executed, this token indicates that a random
number will be passed down the input stream before the message text.
This number could be used as a session key.
It does not appear as a command-line argument.
It is sent in this way to improve security.
The number is unique to the current Pine session
and is only generated once per session.
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.
- download-command
- This option affects the behavior of the Export command.
It specifies a Unix program name, and any necessary command line arguments,
that Pine can use to transfer the exported message to your
personal computer's disk.
- download-command-prefix
- This option is used in conjunction with the download-command
option.
It defines text to be written to the terminal emulator (via standard
output) immediately prior to starting the download command. This is
useful for integrated serial line file transfer agents that permit command
passing (e.g., Kermit's APC method).
- editor
- UNIX Pine only. Sets the name of the alternate editor for composing
mail (message text only, not headers). It will be invoked with the "^_"
command or it will be invoked automatically if the
enable-alternate-editor-implicitly
feature is set.
- empty-header-message
- When sending, if all of the To, Cc, and Newsgroups fields are empty,
Pine will put a special address in the To line. The default value is
"Undisclosed recipients: ;". The reason for this is to avoid
embarrassment caused by some Internet mail transfer software that
interprets a "missing" To: header as an error and replaces it with an
Apparently-to: header that may contain the addresses you entered on the
Bcc: line, defeating the purpose of the Bcc. You may change the part
of this message that comes before the ": ;" by setting the
empty-header-message variable to something else.
- fcc-name-rule
- Determines default folder name for fcc when composing. Currently,
Pine will accept the values default-fcc, by-recipient,
or last-fcc-used. If set to default-fcc, then Pine will
use the value defined in the default-fcc
variable (which itself
has a default) for the Fcc header field. If set to by-recipient,
then Pine will use the name of the recipient as a folder name for the fcc.
The relevant recipient is the first address in the To field. If set to
"last-fcc-used", then Pine will offer to Fcc to whatever folder
you used previously.
In all cases, the field can still be edited after it is
initially assigned. If the fcc field in the address book is set for the
first To address, that value over-rides any value derived from this rule.
- feature-list
- This is a list of the many features (options) which may be turned on
or off. There is a separate section titled
Configuration Features which explains
each of the features. There is some additional explanation about the
feature-list variable itself
in Feature List Variable.
- file-directory
- PC-Pine only.
This value affects the Composer's "^J Attach" command,
the Attachment Index Screen's "S Save" command, and the
Message Index's "E Export" command.
Normally, when a filename is supplied that lacks a leading "path"
component, Pine 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 Pine 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.
- folder-collections
- This is a list of one or more collections where saved mail is stored.
See the sections describing
folder collections and collection syntax for more information.
The first collection in this list is the default
collection for Saves,
including default-fcc's.
- folder-extension
- PC-Pine only. File extension used for local folder names. This
is
.MTX
by default.
- folder-sort-rule
- This option controls the order in which folder list entries will be
presented in the FOLDER LIST screen. Choose one of the following:
- Alphabetical
- sort by alphabetical name independent of type
- Alpha-with-dirs-last
- sort by alphabetical name grouping directory entries
to the end of the list
- Alpha-with-dirs-first
- sort by alphabetical name grouping directory entries
to the start of the list
The normal default is Alphabetical.
- font-name
- Winsock version of PC-Pine only.
- font-size
- Winsock version of PC-Pine only.
- font-style
- Winsock version of PC-Pine only.
- forced-abook-entry
- System-wide Pine configuration files only.
Force these address book
entries into all writable personal address books.
This is a list variable. Each item in the list has the form:
Nickname | Fullname | Address
with optional whitespace in all the obvious places.
- form-letter-folder
- A Form Letter Folder is a mail folder that is intended to
contain messages that you have composed and that are intended to be
sent in their original form repeatedly.
Setting this variable will alter Pine's usual behavior when you
execute the Compose command. Normally, Pine 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, Pine
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 Pine will not automatically delete
the selected message from the Form Letter Folder.
Setting this variable will also affect Pine's behavior when you
Postpone a message from the composer. Normally, Pine simply stashes
the message away in your
Postponed-Folder.
Regardless of the specified folder's existence, Pine 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 Pine
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. Pine, 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 introduced in Pine 4.10 can be used
to replace the Form Letter Folder.
- global-address-book
- A list of shared address books. Each entry in the list is an
optional nickname followed by a pathname or file name relative to the home
directory.
A SPACE character separates the nickname from the rest of the line.
Instead of a local pathname or file name, a remote folder name can be given.
This causes the address book to
be a Remote address book.
Remote folder syntax is discussed in
Syntax for Remote Folders.
This list will be added to the
address-book list to
arrive at the complete set of address books. Global address books are
defined to be ReadOnly.
- goto-default-rule
- This value affects Pine's behavior when using
the Goto command.
There are five possible values for this option:
- folder-in-first-collection
- Pine will offer the most recently visited folder in the default
collection found in the "Collection List" screen as the default.
- inbox-or-folder-in-first-collection
- If the current folder is INBOX,
Pine will offer the most recently visited folder in the
default collection found in the "Collection List" screen.
If the current folder is other than INBOX,
INBOX is offered as the default.
- inbox-or-folder-in-recent-collection
- This is Pine's default behavior.
If the current folder is INBOX,
Pine will offer the last open
folder as the default.
If the current folder is other than INBOX,
INBOX is offered as the default.
- first-collection-with-inbox-default
- Instead of offering the most recently visited folder in the default
collection, the default collection is offered but with INBOX as
the default folder.
If you type in a folder name it will be in the default collection.
If you simply accept the default, however, your INBOX will be opened.
- most-recent-folder
- The last accepted value simply causes the most recently opened
folder to be offered as the default regardless of the currently opened
folder.
NOTE: The default while a newsgroup is open remains the same; the last
open newsgroup.
- image-viewer
- This variable names the program to call for displaying parts of a
MIME message that are of type IMAGE. If your system supports the
mailcap system, you don't need to set this variable.
- inbox-path
- This specifies the name of the folder to use for the INBOX.
By default this is unset and the system's default is used.
The most common reason for
setting this is to open an IMAP mailbox for the INBOX. For example,
{imap5.u.example.edu}inbox will open the user's standard
INBOX on the mail server, imap5.
- incoming-archive-folders
- This is like read-message-folder,
only more general. This is a list
of folder pairs, with the first separated from the second in the pair by a
space. The first folder in a pair is the folder you want to archive, and
the second folder is the folder that read messages from the first should
be moved to. Depending on how you define the
auto-move-read-messages
feature, you may or may not be asked when you leave
the first folder if you want read messages to be moved to the second
folder. In either case, moving the messages means they will be deleted
from the first 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.
- incoming-folders
- This is a list of one or more folders other than INBOX that
may receive new messages. This list is slightly special in that it is
always expanded in the folder lister. In the future, it may become more
special. For example, it would be nice
if Pine would monitor the folders
in this list for new mail.
- incoming-startup-rule
- This rule affects Pine's behavior when opening
the INBOX or
another folder from the "INCOMING MESSAGE FOLDERS".
This rule tells Pine
which message to make the current message when an incoming folder is opened.
There are three possible values for this option:
- first-unseen
- The current message will be the first unseen message which has not been
marked deleted, or the last message if all of the messages have been seen.
This is the default setting.
- first-recent
- This is similar to first-unseen. Instead of first unseen
it is the first recent message. A message is considered to be recent if it
arrived since the last time the folder was open (by any mail client, not just
the current one). So this option causes the
current message to be set to the first undeleted-recent message, or the
last message if none is both undeleted and recent.
- first
- Set the current message to the first undeleted message unless all
are deleted. In that case set it to the last message.
- last
- Set the current message to the last undeleted message unless all
are deleted. In that case set it to the last message.
- index-answered-background-color
- index-answered-foreground-color
- index-deleted-background-color
- index-deleted-foreground-color
- index-important-background-color
- index-important-foreground-color
- index-new-background-color
- index-new-foreground-color
- index-recent-background-color
- index-recent-foreground-color
- index-to-me-background-color
- index-to-me-foreground-color
- index-unseen-background-color
- index-unseen-foreground-color
- Index Colors.
- index-format
- This option is used to customize the content of lines in the
MESSAGE INDEX screen. Each line is intended
to convey some amount of immediately relevant information about each
message in the current folder.
Pine 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, 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:
index-format=STATUS MSGNO DATE FROMORTO(33%) SIZE SUBJECT(67%)
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.
- initial-keystroke-list
- This is a comma-separated list of keystrokes which Pine executes on
startup. Items in the list are usually just characters, but there are
some special values. SPACE, TAB, and CR mean a
space character, tab character, and a carriage return, respectively.
F1 through F12 stand for the twelve function keys.
UP, DOWN, LEFT, and RIGHT stand for the arrow keys.
Control characters are represented with ^<char>. A
restriction is that you can't mix function keys and character keys in this
list even though you can, in some cases, mix them when running Pine. A
user can always use only character keys in the startup list even
if he or she is using function keys normally, or vice versa. If
an element in this list is a string surrounded by double quotes (")
then it will be expanded into the individual characters in the string,
excluding the double quotes.
- kblock-passwd-count
- System-wide Pine configuration files only. Number of times a user
will have to enter a password when they run the keyboard lock command in
the main menu.
- keylabel-background-color
- keylabel-foreground-color
- KeyLabel Color.
- keyname-background-color
- keyname-foreground-color
- KeyName Color.
- last-time-prune-questioned
- Personal configuration file only. This variable records the month
the user was last asked if his or her sent-mail folders should
be pruned.
The format is yy.mm.
This is automatically updated by Pine when
the the pruning is done or declined.
If a user wanted to make Pine stop
asking this question he or she could set this time to something
far in the future.
This may not be set in the system-wide configuration files.
Note: The yy year is actually the number of years since 1900, so it
will be equal to 101 in the year 2001.
- last-version-used
- Personal configuration file only.
This is set automatically by Pine.
It is used to keep track of the last version of Pine that
was run by the user.
Whenever the version number increases, a new version message is printed out.
This may not be set in the system-wide configuration files.
- ldap-servers
- This is only available if Pine was linked with an LDAP library
when it was compiled. This variable is normally managed by Pine though
it can be set in the system-wide configuration files as well as the personal
configuration. It is a list variable. Each item in the
list contains quite a bit of extra information besides just the server name.
To put this into a system-wide config file the easiest thing to do is to
configure a personal Pine for the LDAP server then copy the
configuration line
into the system-wide config file. Each item in the list looks like:
server_name[:port] "quoted stuff"
The 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:
"/base=o=University of Washington, c=US/impl=0/.../nick=My Server"
This would set the search base for this server to
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.
- mail-check-interval
- This option specifies, in seconds, how often Pine will check for new
mail. If set to zero, new-mail checking is disabled. There is a minimum
value, normally 15 seconds.
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.
- mail-directory
- This variable was more important in previous versions of Pine. Now
it is used only as the default for storing personal folders (and only if
there are no folder-collections defined).
The default value is
~/mail on UNIX and $HOME\MAIL on a PC.
- mailcap-search-path
- This variable is used to replace Pine's default
mailcap file search path.
It takes one or more file names (full paths must be specified) in
which to look for mail capability data.
- mimetype-search-path
- This variable is used to replace Pine's default mime.types file
search path. It takes one or more file names (full paths must be
specified) in which to look for file-name-extension to MIME type mapping
data. See the Config Notes for details on Pine's usage of the MIME.Types File.
- new-version-threshold
- When a new version of Pine is run for the first time it offers a
special explanatory screen to the user upon startup. This option
helps control when and if that special screen appears for users that
have previously run Pine. It takes as its value a Pine version
number. Pine versions less than the specified value will supress this
special screen while versions equal to or greater than that specified
will behave normally.
- news-active-file-path
- This option tells Pine where to look for the "active file" for
newsgroups when accessing news locally, rather than via NNTP. The default
path is usually
/usr/lib/news/active
.
- news-collections
- This is a list of collections where news folders are located. See
the section describing collections
for more information.
- news-spool-directory
- This option tells Pine where to look for the "news spool" for
newsgroups when accessing news locally, rather than via NNTP. The default
path is usually
/usr/spool/news
.
- newsrc-path
- This option overrides the default name Pine uses for your "newsrc"
news status and subscription file. If set, Pine will take this value as
the full pathname for the desired newsrc file.
- nntp-server
- One or more NNTP servers (host name or IP address) which Pine will
use for reading and sending news.
If you read and post news to and from a single
NNTP server, you can get away with only setting the nntp-server
variable and leaving the news-collections variable unset.
- normal-background-color
- normal-foreground-color
- Normal Color.
- operating-dir
- System-wide Pine configuration files only.
This names the root of the
tree to which the user is restricted when reading and writing folders and
files. It is usually used in the fixed configuration file.
- patterns
- Matching patterns and their corresponding actions are stored in
this variable.
These patterns are used with
Roles.
This variable is normally maintained through the Setup/Roles configuration
screen.
This variable is a list.
Each member of the list is a single pattern/action pair, or it can be
a file which contains zero or more lines of pattern/action pairs.
The only way to create a roles file is to use the InsertFile command in
the Setup/Roles screen with a filename which doesn't yet exist. Then use
the Shuffle command to move existing roles from your pinerc into the
file.
This isn't very convenient but it isn't thought that many users will
need this functionality.
The purpose of role files is for sharing roles.
- personal-name
- Personal configuration file only.
User's full personal name. On UNIX systems, the default is taken
from the accounts data base (
/etc/passwd
).
- personal-print-category
- Personal configuration file only.
This is the category that the default print command belongs to. There
are three categories. Category 1 is an attached printer which uses the ANSI
escape sequence, category 2 is the standard system print command, and
category 3 is the set of custom printer commands defined by the user.
This just helps Pine figure out where to put the cursor when the user
runs the Setup/Printer command. This is not used by PC-Pine.
- personal-print-command
- Personal configuration file only.
This corresponds to the third category in the printer menu, the
personally selected print commands. This variable
contains the list of custom commands that the user has entered in the
Setup/Printer screen. This is not used by PC-Pine.
- postponed-folder
- The folder where postponed messages are stored. The default is
postponed-msgs (Unix) or POSTPOND (PC).
- print-font-name
- Winsock version of PC-Pine only.
- print-font-size
- Winsock version of PC-Pine only.
- print-font-style
- Winsock version of PC-Pine only.
- printer
- Personal configuration file only.
This is the current setting for a user's printer.
This variable is set from Pine's Setup/Printer screen.
- prompt-background-color
- prompt-foreground-color
- Prompt Color.
- pruned-folders
- This variable allows you to define a list of one or more folders that
Pine will offer to prune for you in the same way
it automatically offers
to prune your sent-mail folder each month.
That is, once a month for
each folder listed, Pine 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.
Pine 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. Folders
listed are assumed to exist, and the archive folders will be created, in
the first collection defined by the
folder-collections variable.
- quote1-background-color
- quote1-foreground-color
- quote2-background-color
- quote2-foreground-color
- quote3-background-color
- quote3-foreground-color
- Quote Colors.
- read-message-folder
- If set, mail in the INBOX that has been read but not deleted
is moved here, or rather, the user is asked whether or not he or she wants
to move it here upon quitting Pine.
- remote-abook-history
- Sets how many extra copies of
remote address book
data will be kept in each remote address book folder.
The default is three.
These extra copies are simply old versions of the data. Each time a change
is made a new copy of the address book data is appended to the folder. Old
copies are trimmed, if possible, when Pine exits.
An old copy can be put back into use by
deleting and expunging newer versions of the data from the folder.
Don't delete the first message from the folder. It is a special header
message for the remote address book and it must be there.
This is to prevent regular folders from being used as remote address book
folders and having their data destroyed.
- remote-abook-metafile
- Personal configuration file only.
This is usually set by Pine and is the name of a file
that contains data about
remote address books.
- remote-abook-validity
- Sets the minimum number of minutes that a
remote address book will be considered up to date.
Whenever an entry contained in a remote address book is used,
if more than this many minutes have
passed since the last check the remote server will be queried to see if the
address book has changed.
If it has changed, the local copy is updated.
The default value is five minutes.
The special value of -1 means never check.
The special value of zero means only check when the address book is first
opened.
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 (control-L)
while in the address book maintenance screen for the remote address book.
- reply-indent-string
- This variable specifies an aspect of Pine's Reply
command.
When a message is replied to and the text of the message is included, the
included text usually has the string "> " prepended
to each line indicating it is quoted text.
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:
- _FROM_
- This token gets replaced with the message sender's "username".
- _NICK_
- This token gets replaced with the nickname of the message sender's
address as found in your addressbook.
If no addressbook entry is found,
Pine replaces the characters "_NICK_" with nothing.
- _INIT_
- This token gets replaced with the initials of the sender of the message.
When the
enable-reply-indent-string-editing
feature is enabled, you are given the opportunity to edit the string, whether
it is the default or one automatically generated using the above tokens.
- reply-leadin
- This variable specifies an aspect of Pine's Reply
command.
When a message is replied to and the text of the message is included,
that text has an introductory line preceding it.
The normal default if you don't set this variable looks something like:
On Sat, 24 Oct 1998, Fred Flintstone wrote:
where the day of the week is only included if it is available in the
original message.
You may replace this default with text of your own.
The text may contain tokens which are replaced with text
which depends on the message you are replying to.
For example, the default is equivalent to:
On _DAYDATE_, _FROM_ wrote:
The list of available tokens is
here.
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.
If your Reply-Leadin turns out to be longer
than 80 characters when replying to a particular message, it is shortened.
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,
\_DAYDATE_ = _DAYDATE_
would produce something like
_DAYDATE_ = Sat, 24 Oct 1998
It is not possible to have a literal backslash followed by an expanded token.
- reverse-background-color
- reverse-foreground-color
- Reverse Color.
- rsh-command
- Sets the format of the command used to
open a UNIX remote shell connection. The default is
"%s %s -l %s exec /etc/r%sd". All four "%s" entries MUST exist in the
provided command. The first is for the command's pathname, the second is
for the host to connnect to, the third is for the user to connect as, and
the fourth is for the connection method (typically
imap
).
- rsh-open-timeout
- Sets the time in seconds that Pine will
attempt to open a UNIX remote shell connection.
The default is 15, the minimum non-zero value is 5,
and the maximum is unlimited. If this is set to zero rsh connections
will be completely disabled.
- rsh-path
- Sets the name of the command used to open a UNIX remote shell
connection. The default is typically
/usr/ucb/rsh
.
- saved-msg-name-rule
- Determines default folder name when Saving.
If set to default-folder (which is the default setting),
then Pine will offer the folder "saved-messages" (UNIX) or "SAVEMAIL"
(PC) for Saving messages. The default folder offered in this way
may be changed by using the configuration variable
default-saved-msg-folder.
If this rule is set to last-folder-used, Pine 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,
Pine offers to Save the message to the default folder.
Choosing any of the by- options causes Pine to attempt
to get the chosen option's value for the message being Saved.
For example, if by-from is chosen, Pine attempts to
get the value of who the message
came from (i.e. the from address). Pine then attempts to
Save the message to a folder matching that value.
If by-from is chosen and no value is
obtained, Pine uses by-sender.
The opposite is also true.
If by-recipient was chosen and the message was posted to a newsgroup,
Pine will use the newsgroup name.
If any of the by-nick- options are chosen, the resulting address is
looked up in the user's address books 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 no value
is found in the address book, then if the chosen option ends with the
"-then-from", "-then-sender", or "-then-recip" suffix, Pine reverts to
the same behavior as by-from,
by-sender or by-recipient
depending on which option was specified.
If the chosen option doesn't
end with one of the "then-" suffixes, then Pine reverts to the default
folder when no match is found in the address book.
- scroll-margin
- This option controls when Pine's line-by-line scrolling occurs.
Typically, when a selected item is at the top or bottom screen edge
and the UP or DOWN (and Ctrl-P or Ctrl-N) keys are pressed, the
displayed items are scrolled down or up by a single line.
This option allows you to tell Pine the number of lines from the top and
bottom screen edge that line-by-line scrolling should occur. For example,
setting this value to one (1) will cause Pine to scroll the display
when you move to select an item on the display's top or
bottom edge (instead of moving when you move off the edge of the screen).
By default, this variable is zero (0), indicating that scrolling happens
when you move up or down to select an item immediately off the display's
top or bottom edge.
- selectable-item-background-color
- selectable-item-foreground-color
- Selectable-item Color.
- sending-filters
- This option defines a list of text-filtering commands (programs and
scripts) that may be selectively invoked to process a message just before
it is sent. If set, the Composer's ^X Send command will allow you to
select which filter (or none) to apply to the message before it is sent.
For security reasons, the full path of the filter program must be
specified.
Command Modifying Tokens:
- _RECIPIENTS_
- When the command is executed, this token is replaced
with the space delimited list of recipients of the
message being sent.
- _TMPFILE_
-
When the command is executed, this token is
replaced with the path and name of the temporary
file containing the text to be filtered. Pine
expects the filter to replace this data with the
filter's result.
NOTE: Use of this token implies that the text to
be filtered is not piped into standard input of the
executed command and its standard output is ignored.
Pine restores the tty modes before invoking the
filter in case the filter interacts with the user
via its own standard input and output.
- _RESULTFILE_
- When the command is executed, this token is
replaced with the path and name of a temporary
file intended to contain a status message from the
filter. Pine displays this in the message status
field.
- _DATAFILE_
- When the command is executed, this token is replaced
in the command line with the path and name of a
temporary file that Pine creates once per session
and deletes upon exit. The file is intended to be
used by the filter to store state information between
instances of the filter.
- _PREPENDKEY_
- When the command is executed, this token indicates
that a random number will be passed down the input
stream before the message text. It is not included as a command-line argument.
This number could be used as a session key. It is sent in this way
to improve security. The number is unique to the
current Pine session and is only generated once per
session.
- _INCLUDEALLHDRS_
- When the command is executed, this token indicates
that the headers of the message will be passed down the input stream
before the message text.
It is not included as a command-line argument.
The filter should, of course, remove the headers before returning control
to Pine.
- _MIMETYPE_
- When the command is executed, this token is replaced in the
command name with a temporary file name used to accept any new MIME
Content-Type information necessitated by the output of the filter.
Upon the filter's exit, if the file contains new MIME type
information, Pine verifies its format and replaces the outgoing
message's MIME type information with that contained in the file. This
is basically a cheap way of sending something other than Text/Plain.
- sendmail-path
- This names the path to an
alternative program, and any necessary arguments, to be used in posting
mail messages. See the section on SMTP and Sendmail for more details.
- signature-file
- Names the file to be included as the signature. This defaults to
~/.signature
on UNIX and <PINERC
directory>\PINE.SIG
on a PC.
- smtp-server
- One or more SMTP servers (host name or IP address) which Pine will
use for outgoing mail. If not set, Pine passes outgoing email to the
sendmail program on the local machine. PC-Pine users must have
this variable set in order to send mail as they have no sendmail
program. An alternate port may be specified by appending
:port
to the host name or IP address. See the SMTP Servers section for
details.
- sort-key
- This variable sets up the default Message Index sorting.
The default is to
sort by arrival order (the order the messages arrived in the folder).
It has the same functionality as the
-sort command line argument and the $ command in the
"Folder Index". If a sort-key is set, then all folders open during
the session will have that as the default sort order.
- speller
- This option affects the behavior of the ^T (spell check)
command in the Composer.
It specifies the program invoked by ^T in the Composer.
By default, Pine uses the system's "spell" command.
Pine will use the
command defined by this option (if any) instead.
When invoking the spell-checking program,
Pine appends a tempfile name (where the message is passed)
to the command line.
Pine expects the speller to correct the
spelling in that file. When you exit from the speller
program Pine will read the
tmpfile back into the composer.
If this option is not set, then the system's spell command is used.
The spell command does not work the same as the alternate speller.
It produces a list of misspelled words on its standard output, instead,
and doesn't take a tempfile as an argument.
Don't set this speller option to the standard Unix spell command.
That won't work. If you want to use the standard Unix spell command,
set the speller option to nothing.
- ssh-command
- Sets the format of the command used to
open a UNIX secure shell connection. The default is
"%s %s -l %s exec /etc/r%sd". All four "%s" entries MUST exist in the
provided command. The first is for the command's pathname, the second is
for the host to connnect to, the third is for the user to connect as, and
the fourth is for the connection method (typically
imap
).
- ssh-open-timeout
- Sets the time in seconds that Pine will
attempt to open a UNIX secure shell connection.
The default is 15, the minimum non-zero value is 5,
and the maximum is unlimited. If this is set to zero ssh connections
will be completely disabled.
- ssh-path
- Sets the name of the command used to open a UNIX secure shell
connection. The default is typically
/usr/local/bin/ssh
.
- standard-printer
- System-wide configuration file only. Specifies a list of commands
for category 2 of the Setup/Printer screen, the standard print command
section. This is not used by PC-Pine.
- status-background-color
- status-foreground-color
- Status Color.
- status-message-delay
- If this is set to a positive number, it causes the cursor to move to
the status line whenever a status message is printed and pause there for
this many seconds. It will probably only be useful if the
show-cursor
feature is also turned on. Most users should leave this set to the
default value of zero since its only effect is to slow things down.
- tcp-open-timeout
- Sets the time in seconds that Pine will
attempt to open a network connection. The default is 30, the minimum is 5,
and the maximum is system defined (typically 75). If a connection has not
completed within this many seconds Pine will give up and consider it a
failed connection.
- title-background-color
- title-foreground-color
- Title Color.
- upload-command
- This option affects the behavior of the Composer's ^R (Read File)
and ^J (Attach File, in the header) commands. It
specifies a Unix program name, and any necessary command line arguments,
that Pine can use to transfer files from your personal computer into
messages that you are composing.
- upload-command-prefix
- This option is used in
conjunction with the upload-command option.
It defines text to be written to the terminal emulator (via standard
output) immediately prior to starting the upload command. This is useful for
integrated serial line file transfer agents that permit command passing
(e.g., Kermit's APC method).
- url-viewers
- List of programs to use to open Internet URLs.
This value affects Pine's handling of URLs that are found in the text of
messages you read. Normally, only URLs Pine can handle directly are
automatically offered for selection in the "Message Text" screen. When
one or more comma delimited Web browsers capable of deciphering URLs on
their command line are added here, Pine will choose the first available
browser to display URLs it doesn't recognize.
Additionally, to support various connection methods and browsers, each
entry in this list can begin with the special token
_TEST(test-string)_
.
The test-string
is a shell command that Pine
will run and which must exit with a status of zero for Pine to consider
that browser for use (the other criteria is that the browser must exist
as a full path or a path relative to your home directory).
Now for an example:
url-viewers=_TEST("test -n '${DISPLAY}'")_ /usr/local/bin/netscape,
/usr/local/bin/lynx,
C:\BIN\NETSCAPE.BAT
This example shows that for the first browser in the list to be used the
environment variable DISPLAY
must be defined.
If it is, then the file /usr/local/bin/netscape
must exist.
If either condition is not met, then the file
/usr/local/bin/lynx
must exist.
If it doesn't, then the final path and file must
exist. Note that the last entry is a DOS/Windows path. This is one way
to support Pine running on more than one architecture with the same
configuration file.
- use-only-domain-name
- Can be set to yes or no. Anything but
yes means no. If set to yes the first label in
the host name will be lopped off to get the domain name and the domain
name will be used for outgoing mail and such. That is, if the host name
is carson.u.example.edu and this variable is set to yes,
then u.example.edu will be used on outgoing mail. Only
meaningful if user-domain is NOT set.
- user-domain
- Sets the domain or host name for the user, overriding the system host
or domain name. See the domain name section.
- user-id
- PC-Pine only and personal configuration file only.
Sets the username that is placed on all outgoing
messages. The username is the part of the address that comes before the "@".
- user-input-timeout
- If this is set to an integer greater than zero, then this is the number
of hours to wait for user input before Pine times out.
If Pine is
in the midst of composing a message or is waiting for user response to
a question, then it will not timeout.
However, if Pine is sitting idle waiting for
the user to tell it what to do next and the user does not give any
input for this many hours, Pine will exit.
No expunging or moving of read
messages will take place.
It will exit similarly to the way it would exit
if it received a hangup signal.
This may be useful for cleaning up unused Pine sessions which have been
forgotten by their owners.
The Pine developers envision system administrators
setting this to a value of several hours (24?) so that it won't surprise
a user who didn't want to be disconnected.
- viewer-hdr-colors
- This variable holds the optional Header Colors and patterns which
have been defined by the user. This is usually modified by using
the Header Colors section
of the Setup Color screen.
- viewer-hdrs
- You may change the default list of headers that are viewed by listing
the headers you want to view here. If the headers in your viewer-hdrs
list are present in the message, then they will be shown. The order of
the headers you list will also be honored. If the special
value all-except
is included as the first header in the viewer-hdrs list, then all
headers in the message except those in the list will be shown. The values
are all case insensitive.
- viewer-overlap
- This option specifies an aspect of Pine's Message Viewing screen.
When the space bar is used to page forward in a message, the number of
lines specified by the viewer-overlap variable
will be repeated from the
bottom of the screen. That is, if this was set to two lines, then the
bottom two lines of the screen would be repeated on the top of the next
screen. The normal default value is "2".
- window-position
- Winsock version of PC-Pine only. Window position in the format:
CxR+X+Yn Where C and R are the window size in characters and X and Y are
the screen position of the top left corner of the window.
There are several features (options) which may be turned off or on.
The configuration variable
feature-list is a list of all the
features that are turned on or off.
If the name of a feature is in
the list it will be turned on.
If the name of a feature with the characters
no-
prepended is in the list, it will turn the feature off.
This is useful for overriding system-wide defaults.
This is because, unlike all the other configuration variables,
the feature-list is additive.
That is, first the system-wide feature-list is read
and then the user's feature-list is read. This makes it possible
for the system manager to turn some of the features on by default while
still allowing the user to cancel that default.
For example, if the system manager has
turned on the allow-talk feature by default then a user may turn
it back off by including the feature no-allow-talk in his or her
personal configuration file. Of course, these details are usually handled
by Pine when the user turns an option on or off from inside the
Setup/Config screen.
System managers should take some care when turning on features by default.
Some of the documentation assumes that all of the features are off by
default, so it could be confusing for a user if some are on by default instead.
Here is an alphabetical list of possible features.
- allow-changing-from
- Prior to Pine 4.00 there was a compile-time option called
ALLOW_CHANGING_FROM. That has been replaced by a runtime feature.
If this feature is turned on then the From line can be changed just like
all the other header fields that can be changed. See the configuration
variables customized-hdrs
and default-composer-hdrs
for more information on editing headers.
- allow-talk
- Unix Pine only. By default, permission for
others to talk to your terminal is turned
off when you are running Pine. When this feature is set, permission is
instead turned on.
Note: The talk program has nothing to do with Pine or email. The
talk daemon on your system will
attempt to print a message on your screen
when someone else is trying to contact you. If you wish to see these
messages while you are running Pine, you should enable this feature.
If you do enable this feature and see a talk message, you must
suspend or quit Pine before you can respond.
- assume-slow-link
- This feature affects Pine's display routines. If set, the normal
inverse-video cursor (used to highlight the current item in a list) will be
replaced by an arrow cursor and other screen update optimizations for
low-speed links (e.g. 2400 bps dialup connections) will be activated.
This might be useful if you know you have a slow speed link but for some
reason Pine doesn't know.
- auto-move-read-messages
- This feature controls an aspect
of Pine's behavior upon quitting. If set,
and the read-message-folder
variable is also set, then Pine will
automatically transfer all read messages from the INBOX to
the designated folder and mark
them as deleted in the INBOX. Messages in the INBOX marked
with an N (meaning New, or unseen) are not affected.
- auto-open-next-unread
- This feature controls the behavior of the TAB key when traversing folders
in the optional incoming-folders
collection or in optional news-collections.
When the TAB (Next New) key is pressed, and there are no more unseen
messages in the current (incoming message or news) folder, Pine will
search the list of folders in the current collection for one containing
New or Recent (new since the last time the folder was opened) messages.
By default, when such a folder is found,
Pine will ask whether you wish to
open the folder.
If this feature is set, Pine will automatically open the
folder without prompting.
- auto-unzoom-after-apply
- If set, and if
you are currently looking at a Zoomed Index view of selected messages,
the Apply command will do the operation you specify, but then will
implicitly do an UnZoom, so that you will automatically be back in
the normal Index view after the Apply.
- auto-zoom-after-select
- If set, the ; select command will automatically
perform a Zoom after the select is complete.
- combined-addrbook-display
- This feature affects the address book display screens.
Normally, expanding an address book from the ADDRESS BOOK LIST screen
will cause the remaining address books and directory servers to disappear
from the screen, leaving only the entries of the expanded address book.
If this feature is set, then the other address books will remain on the screen,
so that all of the address books can be present at once.
The way that commands work won't be changed.
For example, the Select All command will select all of the entries in the
current address book, not all of the entries in all of the address books.
The WhereIs command will change a little.
It will search through all of the text on the screen plus all of the entries
from expanded address books.
When this feature is set, the setting of the feature
expanded-view-of-addressbooks
has an effect.
- combined-folder-display
- This feature affects the folder list display screens.
Normally, each folder list is viewed within its collection only. This
command allows folder lists to be viewed within a single screen that
combines the contents of all collections.
The way that commands work won't be changed.
For example, the Select All command will select all of the folders in the
current collection, not all of the entries in all of the collections.
The WhereIs command will change a little.
It will search through all of the folders in the current collection as well
as all the folder in any other expanded collection.
When this feature is set, the setting of the feature
expanded-view-of-folders
has an effect.
- combined-subdirectory-display
- This feature affects the Folder List screen when
the
combined-folder-display
feature is enabled. Normally, selecting a directory from the Folder
List takes you into a new screen displaying only the contents of
that directory.
Enabling this feature will cause the contents of the selected
directory to be
displayed within the boundaries of the
Collection
it is a part of. All previously displayed collections will remain
in the screen.
The way that commands work won't be changed.
For example, the Select All command will select all of the folders in the
directory, as opposed to all of the entries in all of the collections.
The WhereIs command will change a little.
It will search through all of the folders in the current collection as well
as all the folder in any other expanded collection.
- compose-cut-from-cursor
- If set, the ^K command in the composer will cut from the
current cursor position to the end of the line,
rather than cutting the entire line.
- compose-maps-delete-key-to-ctrl-d
- If set, Delete will be equivalent to ^D, and delete
the current character. Normally Pine defines the Delete key
to be equivalent to ^H, which deletes the previous
character.
- compose-rejects-unqualified-addrs
- If set, unqualified names entered as addresses will be treated as errors
unless they match an addressbook nickname or are looked up successfully
on an LDAP server. Pine will not attempt to turn
them into complete addresses by adding your local domain (which Pine normally
does by default).
A complete (fully-qualified) address is one containing a username
followed by an @ symbol, followed by a host or domain name (e.g.
[email protected]). An unqualified name is one without the
@ symbol
and host or domain name (e.g. jsmith).
- compose-send-offers-first-filter
- If you have sending-filters
configured, setting this feature will cause the first filter in the
sending-filters list to be offered as the default
instead of unfiltered, the usual default.
- compose-sets-newsgroup-without-confirm
- If you enter the
composer while reading a newsgroup, you will normally be prompted to
determine whether you intend the new message to be posted to the current
newsgroup or not. If this feature is set, Pine will not prompt you
in this situation, and will assume that you do indeed wish to post
to the newsgroup you are reading.
- confirm-role-even-for-default
- If you have roles, when you Reply to or Forward a message, or Compose
a new message, Pine
will search through your roles for one which matches.
Normally, if no matches are found you will be placed into the composer
with no opportunity to select a role.
If this feature is set, then you will be asked to confirm that you don't
want a role.
This will give you the opportunity to select a role (with the ^T command).
If you confirm no role with a Return, you will be placed in
the composer with no role.
You may also confirm with either an "N" or a "Y".
These behave the same as if you pressed the Return.
(The "N" and "Y" answers are available because they
match what you might type if there was a role match.)
If you are using the alternate form of the Compose command called
"Role", then all of your roles will be available to you,
independent of the value of this feauture and of the values set for all of
Reply Use, Forward Use, and Compose Use.
- delete-skips-deleted
- If set, this
feature will cause the Delete command to
advance past other messages that
are marked deleted. In other words, pressing D will both mark the
current message deleted and advance to the next message that is not marked
deleted.
- disable-busy-alarm
- If set, the spinning bar that sometimes appears in the status line will not
appear when Pine is busy. This might be useful if it is suspected that
the alarm(2) system calls that Pine uses to implement the busy spinner
are suspected of causing a problem.
- disable-config-cmd
- If set, the configuration
screen Setup/Config will not be available at all.
- disable-keyboard-lock-cmd
- In the Main Pine menu there is a Keyboard locking
command (KBLock). If this feature is set, that command won't be
available to the user.
- disable-keymenu
- If set, the command key menu that normally appears on the
bottom two lines of the screen will not usually be there. Asking for
help with ^G or ? will cause the key menu to
appear instead of causing the help message to come up. If you want to
actually see the help text,
another ^G or ? will show it to you.
After the key menu has popped
up with the help key it will remain there for an O Other command but
will disappear if any other command is typed.
- disable-password-cmd
- If set the Newpassword command usually available under the
Setup command will not be available.
- disable-pipes-in-sigs
- If set it will be an error to append a vertical bar (|) to the name
of a signature file.
Appending a vertical bar normally causes the signature file to be executed
to produce the signature.
- disable-pipes-in-templates
- If set it will be an error to append a vertical bar (|) to the name
of a template file.
Appending a vertical bar normally causes the signature file to be executed
to produce the signature.
- disable-roles-setup-cmd
- If set the Roles command usually available under the
Setup command will not be available.
- disable-roles-sig-edit
- If set the roles editor in the Setup/Roles command will not allow
editing of signature files with the F subcommand.
- disable-roles-template-edit
- If set the roles editor in the Setup/Roles command will not allow
editing of template files with the F subcommand.
- disable-signature-edit-cmd
- If set the Signature editing command usually available under the
Setup command will not be available.
- disable-take-last-comma-first
- Normally, when TakeAddr is used to copy an address
from a message into an address book, Pine will attempt to rewrite the
full name of the address in the form:
Last, First
instead of
First Last
It does this because many people find it useful to sort by Last name instead
of First name. If this feature is set, then the TakeAddr command will
not attempt to reverse the name in this manner.
- enable-8bit-esmtp-negotiation
- This feature affects Pine's behavior when sending mail. Internet standards
require that all electronic mail messages traversing the global Internet
consist of 7bit ASCII characters unless a pair of cooperating mail
transfer agents explicitly agree to allow 8bit messages. In general,
then, exchanging messages in non-ASCII characters requires MIME encoding.
However, there are now Internet standards that allow for unencoded 8bit
exchange of messages between cooperating systems. Setting this feature
tells Pine to try to negotiate unencoded 8bit transmission during the
sending process. Should the negotiation fail, Pine will fall back to its
ordinary encoding rules.
Note, this feature relies on your system's mail transport agent or
configured smtp-server
having the negotiation mechanism introduced in
"Extended SMTP" (ESMTP) and the specific extension called 8BITMIME.
- enable-8bit-nntp-posting
- The Internet standard for exchanging USENET news messages (RFC-1036)
specifies that USENET messages should conform to Internet mail standards
and contain only 7bit characters, but much of the news transport software
in use today is capable of successfully sending messages containing 8bit
characters. Hence, many people believe that it is appropriate to send 8bit
news messages without any MIME encoding.
Moreover, there is no Internet standard for explicitly negotiating 8bit
transfer, as there is for Internet email. Therefore, Pine provides the
option of posting unencoded 8bit news messages, though not as the default.
Setting this feature will turn OFF Pine's MIME encoding of newsgroup
postings that contain 8bit characters.
Note, articles may cross a path or pass through news transport software
that is unsafe or even hostile to 8bit characters. At best this will only
cause the posting to become garbled. The safest way to transmit 8bit
characters is to leave Pine's MIME encoding turned on, but recipients
who lack MIME-aware tools are often annoyed when they receive MIME-encoded
messages.
- enable-aggregate-command-set
- Setting this feature enables the commands and subcommands that relate to
performing operations on more than one message at a time.
We call these "aggregate operations".
In particular, the ; Select, A Apply, and
Z Zoom commands are enabled by this feature.
Select is used to tag one
or more messages meeting the specified criteria. Apply can then be used
to apply any message command to all of the selected/tagged messages.
Further, the Zoom command allows you to toggle the "Folder Index" view
between just those Selected and all messages in the folder.
This feature also enables the ^X subcommand in
the "Folder Index" WhereIs
command which causes
all messages matching the WhereIs argument to become
selected.
You may also use aggregate operations in the address book screens where
you are operating on address book entries instead of on messages.
- enable-alternate-editor-cmd
- If this feature is set, and the editor
variable is not set, entering
the ^_ (Control-underscore) key while
composing a message will prompt you
for the name of the editor you would like to use.
If the environment variable $EDITOR
is set,
this value will be offered as a default.
If the editor variable is set, the ^_ key will activate
the specified editor without prompting, in which case it is not necessary to
set the enable-alternate-editor-cmd feature.
This feature is not available in PC-Pine.
- enable-alternate-editor-implicitly
- If this feature and the editor
variable are both set, Pine will
automatically activate the specified editor when the cursor is moved from
the header of the message being composed into the message text. For
replies, the alternate editor will be activated immediately. If this
feature is set but the editor variable is not set,
then Pine will
automatically ask for the name of an alternate editor when the cursor
is moved out of the headers, or if a reply is being done.
This feature is not available in PC-Pine.
- enable-arrow-navigation
- This feature controls the behavior of the left and right arrow keys.
If set, the left and right arrow keys will operate like the usual
navigation keys < and >.
If you set this feature, and do not like the changed behavior of the up/down
arrow keys when navigating through the FOLDER LIST screen --
first from column to column, if more than one folder is
displayed per row,
and then from row to row -- you may either also wish to set the feature
enable-arrow-navigation-relaxed,
single-column-folder-list,
or use the ^P/^N (instead of up/down arrow) keys to move up/down the list of
folders in each column.
- enable-arrow-navigation-relaxed
- This feature controls the behavior of the left and right arrow keys
in the FOLDER LIST screen when the
enable-arrow-navigation
feature is enabled.
Normally, when the "enable-arrow-navigation" feature is set,
the left and
right arrow keys in the Folder List screen strictly track the commands
bound to the < and > keys,
and the up and down arrow keys move the
hilite bar to the previous and next folder or directory name.
When enabled, this feature returns the left, right, up and down arrow
key's functionality in the FOLDER LIST screen to what it was before
enabling "enable-arrow-navigation".
In other words, left and right arrows
move the hilite bar to the left or right, and the up and down arrows
move it up or down.
- enable-background-sending
- If set, this
feature enables a subcommand in the composer's Send? confirmation
prompt. The subcommand allows you to tell Pine to handle the actual
posting in the background. While this feature usually allows posting
to appear to happen very fast, it has no affect on the actual delivery
time it takes a message to arrive at its destination.
This feature isn't supported on all systems. All DOS and Windows,
as well as several Unix ports, do not recognize this feature.
Error handling is significantly different when this feature is
enabled. Any message posting failure results in the message
being appended to your Interrupted mail folder. When you
type the Compose command, Pine will notice this folder and
offer to extract any messages contained. Upon continuing a
failed message, Pine will display the nature of the failure
in the status message line.
Under extreme conditions, it is possible for message data to
get lost. Do not enable this feature if you typically run close
to any sort of disk-space limits or quotas.
- enable-bounce-cmd
- Setting this feature enables the B Bounce command,
which will prompt
for an address and remail the message to the new recipient.
This command
is used to re-direct messages that you have received in error, or need to
be redirected for some other reason (e.g. list moderation). The final
recipient will see a header indicating that you have Resent the msg, but
the message's From: header will show the original author of the message,
and replies to it will go back to that author, and not to you.
- enable-cruise-mode
- This feature affects Pine's behavior when you hit the "Space Bar" at
the end of a displayed message. Typically, Pine complains that the end
of the text has already been reached. Setting this feature causes such
keystrokes to be interpreted as if the Tab key had been hit, thus
taking you to the next interesting message, or scanning ahead to the
next incoming folder with interesting messages.
- enable-cruise-mode-delete
- This feature modifies the behavior of Pine's enable-cruise-mode
feature. Setting this feature causes Pine to implicitly delete read
messages when it moves on to display the next interesting message.
NOTE: Beware when enabling this feature and the
expunge-without-confirm feature.
- enable-delivery-status-notification
- If set, this
feature enables a subcommand in the composer's "Send?" confirmation
prompt. The subcommand allows you to tell Pine to request the type of
Delivery Status Notification (DSN) which you would like. Most users will
be happy with the default, and need not enable this feature. See the online
help for more details.
Note that this is not a method to request READ receipts, which tells
the sender when the receiver has read the message. In this case we're talking
about notification of delivery to the mailbox, not notification that the
message has been seen.
- enable-dot-files
- If set, files beginning with dot (".") will be
visible in the file browser. For example, you'll be able to select them
when using the browser to add an attachment to a message.
- enable-dot-folders
- If set, folders beginning with dot (".") may be added
and viewed.
- enable-exit-via-lessthan-command
- If set, then on screens where there is an Exit command
but no < command, the < key will perform
the same function as the Exit command.
- enable-fast-recent-test
- If set, the TAB key behavior in Incoming folders or News collections
is modified. By default, the TAB will cause each folder in the Incoming
folders collection (or in the news collection) to be examined to see how
many new messages have been delivered since the last time it was viewed.
If this feature is set, the check is for any recent messages instead of
the count of recent messages. This is much faster in many cases.
- enable-flag-cmd
- Setting this feature enables the * Flag command,
which allows you to
manipulate the status flags associated with a message.
By default, Flag
will set the Important flag, which results in an asterisk being
displayed in column one of the "Folder Index" for such messages.
- enable-flag-screen-implicitly
- This feature modifies the behavior of the * Flag command
(provided it too is enabled).
By default, when the * Flag command is selected,
Pine offers a prompt to set one of several flags and also offers the
option of entering the detailed flag manipulation screen via the ^T
key. Enabling this feature causes Pine to immediately enter the detailed
flag screen rather than first offer the simple prompt.
- enable-full-header-cmd
- This feature enables the H Full Headers command which
toggles between
the display of all headers in the message and the normal edited view of
headers. The Full Header command also controls
which headers are included
for Export, Pipe, Print, Forward,
and Reply functions. (For Reply, the
Full Header mode will respect
the include-headers-in-reply feature setting.)
- enable-goto-in-file-browser
- Setting this causes Pine to offer the G Goto command in
the file browser. This command allows you to explicitly set the
displayed directory. Pine's default behavior requires you to visit
each related directory when moving between two distant directories.
- enable-incoming-folders
- If set, this feature defines a pseudo-folder collection called
INCOMING MESSAGE FOLDERS.
Initially, the only folder included in this collection
will be your INBOX, which will no longer show up in your default
saved-message folder collection.
- enable-jump-shortcut
- Setting this feature will allow you to enter a number (followed by RETURN)
and jump to that message number, when in the "Folder Index" or "Message Text"
screens. In other words, it obviates the need for typing the J for the
Jump command.
- enable-lame-list-mode
- This feature modifies the method Pine uses to ask your IMAP
server for folder names to display in the the FOLDER LIST screen.
It is intended to compensate for a small set of IMAP servers that
are programmed to ignore a part of the request, and thus respond
to Pine's query with nonsensical results.
If you find that Pine is erroneously displaying blank folder lists,
try enabling this feature.
NOTE: Enabling this feature has consequences for the Goto and Save
commands. Many servers allow access to folders outside the area
reserved for your personal folders via some reserved character,
typically '#' (sharp), '~' (tilde) or '/' (slash). This mechanism
allows, at the Goto and Save prompts, quick access to folders
outside your personal folder collection without requiring a specific
collection definition. This behavior will generally not be available
when this feature is enabled.
- enable-mail-check-cue
- If set, this will cause an asterisk to appear in the upper
left-hand corner of the screen whenever Pine checks for new mail, and two
asterisks whenever Pine saves (checkpoints) the state of the current
mailbox to disk.
- enable-mailcap-param-substitution
- If set, this will allow mailcap named parameter substitution to occur
in mailcap entries.
By default, this is turned off to prevent security problems which may occur
with some incorrect mailcap configurations.
For more information, RFC1524 and look for "named parameters" in the
text of the RFC.
- enable-mouse-in-xterm
- This feature controls whether or not an X terminal mouse can be used with
Pine. If set, and the
$DISPLAY
variable indicates that an
X terminal is being used, the left mouse button on the mouse can be
used to select text or commands.
Note: if this feature is set, the behavior of X terminal cut-and-paste is
also modified. It is necessary to hold the shift key down while clicking
left or middle mouse buttons for the normal xterm cut/paste operations.
- enable-msg-view-addresses
- This feature modifies the behavior of Pine's "Message Text" screen.
Setting this feature causes Pine to select possible email addresses
from the displayed text and display them in boldface for selection.
The first available email address is displayed in inverse. This is the
"selected" address.
Pressing RETURN will cause Pine to enter the message
composition screen with the To field filled in with the selected address.
Use the up and down arrow keys to change which of the addresses
displayed in boldface is the current selection.
- enable-msg-view-attachments
- This feature modifies the behavior of Pine's "Message Text" screen.
Setting this feature causes Pine to present attachments in boldface.
The first available attachment is displayed in inverse. This is the
"selected" attachment. Pressing RETURN will cause Pine to display
the selected attachment. Use the up and down arrow keys to change which of the
attachments displayed in boldface is the current selection.
Speaking of arrow keys, the Up and Down Arrows will select the next
and previous attachments if one is available on the screen for selection.
Otherwise, they will simply adjust the viewed text one line up or down.
Similarly, when selectable items are present in a message, the Ctrl-F
key can be used to select the next item in the message independent
of which portion of the viewed message is currently displayed. The
Ctrl-B key can be used to select the previous item in the same way.
- enable-msg-view-forced-arrows
- This feature modifies Up and Down arrow key behavior in Pine's
"Message Text" screen when selectable Attachments, URL's, or
web-hostnames are presented. Pine's usual behavior is to move to
the next or previous selectable item if currently displayed or
simply to adjust the screen view by one line if the next selectable line
is off the screen.
Setting this feature causes the Up and Down arrow keys to behave as
if no selectable items were present in the message.
Note, the Ctrl-F (next selectable item) and
Ctrl-B (previous selectable item) functionality is unchanged.
- enable-msg-view-urls
- This feature modifies the behavior of Pine's "Message Text" screen.
Setting this feature causes Pine to select possible URL's from the
displayed text and display them in boldface for selection.
The first available URL is displayed in inverse. This is the
"selected" URL. Pressing RETURN will cause Pine to display
the selected URL via either built-in means as with mailto:
,
imap:
, news:
, and nntp:
,
or via an external application as defined
by the url-viewers variable.
Use the up and down arrow keys to change which of the URLs displayed in boldface
is the current selection.
- enable-msg-view-web-hostnames
- This feature modifies the behavior of Pine's "Message Text" screen.
Setting this feature causes Pine to select possible web hostnames
from the displayed text and display them in boldface for selection.
The first available hostname is displayed in inverse. This is the
"selected" hostname. Pressing RETURN will cause Pine to display
the selected hostname via an external application as defined
by the url-viewers variable.
Use the up and down arrow keys to change which of the hostnames displayed in
boldface is the current selection.
- enable-newmail-in-xterm-icon
- This feature controls whether or not Pine will attempt to announce new
mail arrival when it is running in an X terminal window and that window
is iconified.
If set, and the
$DISPLAY
variable indicates that an X
terminal is being used, Pine will send appropriate escape sequences to
the X terminal to modify the label on Pine's icon to indicate that new
mail has arrived.
- enable-partial-match-lists
- This feature affects the subcommands available when Saving
or Opening a new folder. If set, the subcommand ^X ListMatches will be
available. This command allows you to type in a substring of the folder
you are looking for and when you type ^X it will display all folders
which contain that substring in their names.
- enable-print-via-y-command
- By default, Pine's print command is available by pressing the %
key. In recent versions prior to 4.00, the print command was accessed by
pressing the Y key.
Enabling this feature will cause Pine to recognize both the old
command, Y, and the new % method for invoking
printing. Note, key menu labels are not changed as a result of
enabling this feature.
- enable-reply-indent-string-editing
- This feature affects the Reply command's "Include original message
in Reply?" prompt. When enabled, it causes the
"Edit Indent String" sub-command to appear which allows
you to edit the string Pine would otherwise use to denote included
text from the message being replied to.
Thus, you can change Pine's default message quote character (usually
an angle bracket) on a per message basis. So you could change your quoted message to
look, for example, like this:
On Tues, 26 Jan 1999, John Q. Smith wrote:
John: I just wanted to say hello and to congratulate you
John: on a job well done!
The configuration option
"reply-indent-string"
may be used to change what appears as the default string to be edited.
NOTE: Edited reply-indent-strings only apply to the message
currently being replied to.
- enable-rules-under-take
- Normally, the Take command takes addresses from a message and helps you
put them into your Address Book.
If you use Rules for Indexcolors, Roles, Filtering, or Scoring;
you may find it useful
to be able to Take information from a message's headers and put it into
a new Rule.
When this feature is set, you will be given an extra prompt which gives
you the choice to Take into the Address Book or Take into a rule.
- enable-search-and-replace
- If set Pine's composer offers the R Replace command
option inside the W WhereIs command.
- enable-sigdashes
- If set and a signature-file exists, the line consisting of
the three characters "
--
" (dash dash space) is included
before the signature.
This only happens if the signature doesn't already contain such a line.
In addition, when you Reply or Followup to a message containing one of
these special lines and choose to include its text, Pine will observe
the convention of not including text beyond the special line in your
reply.
- enable-suspend
- Setting this feature will allow you to type ^Z
and temporarily suspend Pine. Not available on PC-Pine.
- enable-tab-completion
- This feature enables the TAB key when
at a prompt for a filename. In this
case, TAB will cause the
partial name already entered to be automatically
completed, provided the partial name is unambiguous.
- enable-tray-icon
- PC-Pine only.
- enable-unix-pipe-cmd
- This feature enables the | Pipe command
that sends the current message
to the specified Unix command for external processing. Not available on
PC-Pine.
- enable-verbose-smtp-posting
- This feature controls an aspect of Pine's message sending. When enabled,
Pine will send a
VERB
(i.e., VERBose) command
early in the posting process
intended to cause the server SMTP to provide a more detailed account of
the transaction. This feature is typically only useful to system
administrators and other support personel as an aid in troublshooting
problems.
Note, this feature relies on a specific capability of the system's mail
transport agent or configured smtp-server.
- expanded-view-of-addressbooks
- If multiple address books (either personal or global) are defined, and you
wish to have them all expanded implicitly upon entering the ADDRESS BOOK
screen, then set this feature. This feature will have no effect unless the
feature
combined-addrbook-display
is also set.
- expanded-view-of-distribution-lists
- If this feature is set, then distribution lists in the address book
screen will always be expanded automatically.
- expanded-view-of-folders
- If multiple folder collections are defined, and you
wish to have them all expanded implicitly upon entering the FOLDER LIST
screen, then set this feature. This feature will have no effect unless the
feature
combined-folder-display
is also set.
- expunge-without-confirm
- If set, you will not be prompted to confirm your intent before
the expunge takes place. Actually, you will still be prompted for confirmation
if the folder is not the INBOX folder or another folder in the
Incoming Folders collection. See the expunge-without-confirm-everywhere
feature which follows.
- expunge-without-confirm-everywhere
- The regular expunge-without-confirm feature actually only
works for the INBOX folder and for other folders in the "Incoming
Folders" collection. If this feature is set then you also won't be prompted
to confirm expunges for all other folders.
- fcc-on-bounce
- If set, normal Fcc (File Carbon Copy) processing will be
done for bounced messages,
just as if you had composed a message to the address you are
bouncing to. If not set, no Fcc of the message will be saved.
- fcc-only-without-confirm
- This features controls an aspect of Pine's composer.
The only time this feature will be used is if you attempt to send mail
which has no recipients but does have an Fcc.
Normally, Pine will ask if you really mean to copy the message only to
the Fcc.
That is, it asks if you really meant to have no recipients.
If this feature is set, you
will not be prompted to confirm your intent to make only a copy
of a message with no recipients.
- fcc-without-attachments
- This features controls the way FCC's (File Carbon Copies) are
made of the messages you send.
Normally, Pine saves an exact copy of your message as it was sent.
When this feature is enabled, the "body" of the message
you send (the text you type in the composer) is preserved in the
copy as before, however all attachments are replaced with text
explaining what had been sent rather than the attachments themselves.
This feature also affects Pine's "Send ?" confirmation prompt
in that a new "^F Fcc Attchmnts" option becomes available which
allows you to interactively set whether or not attachments are saved
to the Fcc'd copy.
- include-attachments-in-reply
- If set, any MIME
attachments that were part of the original message will automatically be
included in a Reply.
- include-header-in-reply
- If set, and a
message being replied to is included in the Reply,
then headers from that
message will also be part of the reply.
- include-text-in-reply
- Normally, Pine will ask whether you
wish to include the original message in your Reply.
If this feature is set, the original message will be included in the reply
automatically, without prompting.
- ldap-result-to-addrbook-add
- This is only available if Pine was linked with an LDAP library
when it was compiled.
If both the per-directory-server option
use-implicitly-from-composer
and this feature are set,
then when an implicit directory lookup is done from the
composer you will automatically be prompted to add the result of the
directory lookup to your address book.
- news-approximates-new-status
- This feature causes certain messages to be marked as New in the
"Folder Index" of newsgroups.
When opening a newsgroup, Pine will consult
your newsrc file and
determine the last message you have previously disposed of via the D
key. If this feature is set, any subsequent messages will be shown in the
Index with an N, and the first of these messages will be highlighted.
Although this is only an approximation of true New or Unseen
status, it provides a useful cue to distinguish more-or-less recent
messages from those you have seen previously, but are not yet ready to
mark deleted.
Background: your newsrc file (used to store message status information
for newsgroups) is only capable of storing a single flag, and Pine uses
this to record whether or not you are "done with" a message, as
indicated by marking the message as Deleted. Unfortunately, this
means that Pine has no way to record exactly which messages you have
previously seen, so it normally does not show the N status flag for
any messages in a newsgroup. This feature enables a starting
approximation of seen/unseen status that may be useful.
- news-deletes-across-groups
- This feature controls what Pine does when you delete a
message in a newsgroup that appears in more than one newsgroup.
Such a message is sometimes termed a "crossposting"
in that it was posted across several newsgroups.
Pine's default behavior when you delete such a message is to remove
only the copy in the current newsgroup from view when you use the
"Exclude" command or the next time you visit the newsgroup.
Enabling this feature causes Pine to remove every occurrence of the
message from all newsgroups it appears in and to which you are
subscribed.
NOTE: As currently implemented, enabling this feature may increase the
time it takes the Expunge command and newsgroup closing to complete.
- news-offers-catchup-on-close
- This feature controls what Pine does as it closes a newsgroup.
When set, Pine will offer to delete all messages from the newsgroup
as you are quitting Pine or opening a new folder.
This feature is useful if you typically read all the interesting messages
in a newsgroup each time you open it. This feature saves you from
having to delete each message in a newsgroup as you read it or from
selecting all the messages and doing an
aggregate delete before you move on to the next folder or newsgroup.
- news-post-without-validation
- This feature controls whether the NNTP server is queried as newsgroups
are entered for posting. Validation over slow links (e.g. dialup using
SLIP or PPP) can cause delays. Set this feature to eliminate such delays.
- news-read-in-newsrc-order
- This feature controls the order that newsgroups will be presented. If
set, they will be presented in the same order as they occur in
your newsrc file.
If not set, the newsgroups
will be presented in alphabetical order.
- pass-control-characters-as-is
- If set, all characters in a message will be sent to the
screen. Normally, control characters are automatically suppressed in
order to avoid inadvertently changing terminal setup parameters.
- preserve-start-stop-characters
- This feature controls how special control key characters, typically
^S and ^Q, are interpreted when input to Pine.
These characters
are known as the "start" and "stop" characters and are sometimes used in
communications paths to control data flow between devices that operate at
different speeds.
By default, Pine turns the system's handling of these special characters
off except during printing. However, if you see Pine reporting input errors
such as:
[ Command "^Q" not defined for this screen. ]
and, at the same time, see your display become garbled, then it is likely
that setting this option will solve the problem. Be aware, though, that
enabling this feature will also cause Pine to ostensibly "hang"
whenever the Ctrl-S key combination is entered as the system is now
interpreting such input as a "stop output" command. To "start
output" again, simply type Ctrl-Q.
- print-formfeed-between-messages
- Setting this feature causes a formfeed to be printed between messages when
printing multiple messages with the Apply Print command.
- print-includes-from-line
- If this feature is set, then the Unix mail style From line is included
at the start of each message that is printed. This line looks something
like the following, with the address replaced by the address from the
From line of the message being printed:
From [email protected] Mon May 13 14:11:06 1996
- print-index-enabled
- This feature controls the behavior of the Print command
when in the
"Folder Index" screen.
If set, the Print command will give you a prompt
asking if you wish to print the message index, or the currently highlighted
message. If not set, the message will be printed.
- print-offers-custom-cmd-prompt
- When this feature is set, the Print command
will have an additional
subcommand called C CustomPrint.
If selected, you will have
the opportunity to enter any system print command, instead of being
restricted to using those that have been previously configured in the
Setup/Printer screen.
- quell-berkeley-format-timezone
- POSIX mandates a timezone in UNIX mailbox format folder delimiters
(the line which begins with From ).
Some versions of Berkeley mail have trouble with this, and don't recognize
the line as a message delimiter.
If this feature is set, the timezone will be left off the delimiter line.
- quell-dead-letter-on-cancel
- This feature affects Pine's behavior when you cancel a message being
composed. Pine's usual behavior is to write the canceled message to
a file named
dead.letter
in your home directory (under UNIX;
DEADLETR
under WINDOWS/DOS) overwriting any previous message.
Under some conditions (some routine), this can introduce a noticeable delay.
Setting this feature will cause Pine NOT to write canceled compositions
into the file called dead.letter
.
- quell-empty-directories
- This feature causes Pine to remove from the display any directories
that do not contain at least one file or directory. This can be useful
to prevent overly cluttered folder lists when a collection is stored on
a server that treats all names as both a folder and a directory.
Note, enabling this feature can cause surprising behavior! For example,
you can still use Add to create a directory, but unless you immediately
enter that directory and create a folder, that newly created directory
may not be displayed next time you enter the folder list.
- quell-folder-internal-msg
- This feature determines whether or not Pine will create
"pseudo messages" in folders that are in standard Unix or
MMDF format.
Pine will normally create these
pseudo messages when they are not already
present in a standard Unix or MMDF folder.
Their purpose is to record
certain mailbox state data needed for correct IMAP and POP server operation,
and also for Pine to be able to mark messages as Answered when
the Reply has been postponed.
Sites which do not use IMAP/POP for remote mail access, and which need to
support mail tools that are adversely affected by the presence of the
pseudo-messages (e.g. some mail notification tools) may enable this
feature to tell Pine not to create them.
Note that Pine's "Answered" flag
capability will be adversely affected if this is done.
Note too that, even if this feature is enabled, Pine will not remove
pseudo-messages when it encounters them (e.g. those created by UW's imapd
or ipopd servers.)
This feature has no effect on folders that are not in
standard Unix or MMDF format, as pseudo-messages are not needed in the
other formats to record mailbox state information.
- quell-imap-envelope-update
- In the MESSAGE INDEX screen, if the open folder is being accessed
using IMAP, Pine normally tries to paint the index lines on the screen
as soon as the information arrives from the IMAP server.
This means that the index information makes it onto the screen more quickly
than it otherwise would.
This sometimes results in behavior that bothers some users.
For example, when paging to a new page of the index, it may be possible for
the lines to be painted on the screen in a random order, rather than from
top to bottom.
Setting this feature causes Pine to wait for all of the information
to be gathered before it paints the index screen.
Once it collects all of the information, the screen will be painted quickly
from top to bottom.
- quell-lock-failure-warnings
- This feature affects Pine's behavior when it encounters a problem
acquiring a mail folder lock. Typically, a secondary file associated
with the mail folder being opened is created as part of the locking
process. On some systems, such file creation has been administratively
precluded by the system configuration.
Pine issues a warning when such failures occur, which can become bothersome
if the system is configured to disallow such actions. Setting this
feature causes Pine to remain silent when this part of lock creation fails.
WARNING: systems that have been configured in a way that precludes locking
introduce some risk of mail folder corruption when more than one program
attempts to modify the mail folder. This is most likely to occur to one's
INBOX or other "Incoming Message Folder".
- quell-news-envelope-update
- In the MESSAGE INDEX screen, if the open folder is being accessed
using NNTP (News), Pine normally tries to paint the index lines on the screen
as soon as the information arrives from the NNTP server.
This means that the index information makes it onto the screen more quickly
than it otherwise would.
This sometimes results in behavior that bothers some users.
For example, when paging to a new page of the index, it may be possible for
the lines to be painted on the screen in a random order, rather than from
top to bottom.
Setting this feature causes Pine to wait for all of the information
to be gathered before it paints the index screen.
Once it collects all of the information, the screen will be painted quickly
from top to bottom.
- quell-partial-fetching
- Partial fetching is a feature of the IMAP protocol.
By default, Pine
will use partial fetching when copying the contents of a message or attachment
from the IMAP server to Pine.
This means that the fetch will be done in many
small chunks instead of one big chunk. The main benefit of this approach is
that the fetch becomes interruptible. That is, the user can type ^C
to stop the fetch early. In some cases partial fetching may cause a performance
problem so that the fetching of data takes significantly longer when partial
fetching is used. Turning on this feature will turn off partial fetching.
- quell-status-message-beeping
- If set status messages will never emit a beep.
- quell-user-lookup-in-passwd-file
- This feature controls an aspect of
Pine's Composer, and if needed, will usually be set by the
system manager in Pine's system-wide configuration file.
Specifically, if this feature is set, Pine will not attempt to look
in the system password file to find a Full Name for the entered address.
Normally, names you enter into address fields (e.g. To: or Cc:) are
checked against your address book(s) to see if they match an address book
nickname.
Failing that, (in Unix Pine) the name is then checked against
the Unix password file. If the entered name matches a username in the
system password file, Pine extracts the corresponding Full Name information
for that individual, and adds that to the address being entered.
However, password file matching can have surprising (incorrect) results if
other users of the system do not receive mail at the domain you are using.
That is, if either the user-domain
or use-only-domain-name option
is set such that the administrative domain of other users on the system
isn't accurately reflected, Pine should be told that a password
file match is coincidental,
and Full Name info will be incorrect.
For example, a
personal name from the password file could get falsely paired with the
entered name as it is turned into an address in the configured domain.
If you are seeing this behavior, enabling this feature will prevent Unix
Pine from looking up names in the password file to find the Full Name
for incomplete addresses you enter.
- quit-without-confirm
- This feature controls whether or not Pine will ask for confirmation when a
Quit command is received.
- reply-always-uses-reply-to
- If set, Pine
will not prompt when a message being replied to contains a Reply-To:
header value, but will simply use its value (as opposed to using the
From: field's value).
- quell-berkeley-format-timezone
-
Versions of Pine prior to 4.20 would write Berkeley format
message delimiters with a trailing timezone offset. On rare occurances
this can cause an incompatibility with other mail access utilities.
Enabling this hidden feature will cause Pine to refrain from writing
this timezone to the "From " delimiter.
- save-aggregates-copy-sequence
- This feature will optimize an aggregate copy operation, if
possible, by issuing a single IMAP COPY command with a
list of the messages to be copied.
This may save network traffic when the source and destination
folders are on the same IMAP server.
However, many IMAP servers (including the UW IMAP server) do
not preserve the order of messages when this optimization is applied.
If this feature is not enabled, or if
the folders are on different IMAP servers, or the folders are local and in
different formats, Pine will copy each message individually.
- save-will-advance
- If set, Save will
(in addition to copying the current message to the designated folder) also
advance to the next message.
- save-will-not-delete
- If set, Save will
not mark the message Deleted (its default behavior) after it has been
copied to the designated folder.
- save-will-quote-leading-froms
- This feature controls an aspect of the Save command
(and also the way
outgoing messages are saved to an FCC folder). If set, Pine will add
a leading
>
character in front of message
lines beginning with "From" when they are
saved to another folder, including lines syntactically
distinguishable from the type of message separator line commonly used on
Unix systems.
The default behavior is that a >
will be prepended only to lines
beginning with "From " that might otherwise be confused with a message
separator line on Unix systems. If Pine is the only mail program you use,
this default is reasonable. If another program you use has trouble
displaying a message with an unquoted From saved by Pine, you should
enable this feature. This feature only applies to the common Unix mailbox
format that uses message separator lines beginning with "From ". If
Pine has been configured to use a different mailbox format (possibly
incompatible with other mail programs), then this issue does not arise,
and the feature is irrelevant.
- select-without-confirm
- This feature controls an aspect of
Pine's Save, Export, and Goto commands.
These commands all take text input to specify the name of the folder or
file to be used, but allow you to press ^T for a
list of possible names.
If set, the selected name will be used immediately, without further
opportunity to confirm or edit the name.
- separate-folder-and-directory-display
- This feature affects folder collections wherein a folder
and directory can have the same name. By default, Pine displays them
only once, denoting that it is both a folder and directory by appending
the folder name with the hierarchy character enclosed
in square brackets.
Enabling this feature will cause Pine to display such names
separately marking the name representing a directory with a trailing
hierarchy delimiter (typically the slash, "/", character).
The feature also alters the command set slightly. By default, the
right-arrow descends into the directory, while hitting the Return key will
cause the folder by that name to be opened.
With this feature set, the Return key will open the hilited folder, or
enter the hilited directory.
- show-cursor
- If set, the system
cursor will move to convenient locations in the displays. For example,
to the beginning of the status field of the highlighted index line, or
to the highlighted word after a successful WhereIs command.
It is intended to draw your attention to the interesting
spot on the screen.
- show-plain-text-internally
- This feature modifies the method Pine uses to display Text/Plain
MIME attachments from the Attachment Index screen. Normally, the
"View" command searches for any externally defined (usually
via the Mailcap file) viewer,
and displays the selected text within that viewer.
Enabling this feature causes Pine to ignore any external viewer
settings and always display text with Pine's internal viewer.
- show-selected-in-boldface
- This feature controls an aspect of Pine's aggregate operation commands;
in particular, the Select and WhereIs commands.
Select and WhereIs (with
the ^X subcommand) will search the current folder
for messages meeting a
specified criteria, and tag the resulting
messages with an X in the
first column of the applicable lines in the "Folder Index". If this feature
is set, instead of using the X to denote a selected message,
Pine will attempt to display those index lines in boldface.
Whether this is preferable to the X will depend on personal
taste and the type of terminal being used.
- signature-at-bottom
- If this feature
is set, and a message being Replied to is being included in
the reply, then the
contents of the signature file (if any) will be inserted after the included
message.
This feature does not affect the results of a Forward command.
- single-column-folder-list
- If set, the "Folder List" screen will list one folder per line
instead of several per line.
- strip-from-sigdashes-on-reply
- This feature doesn't do anything if the feature
enable-sigdashes is turned on.
However, if the enable-sigdashes feature is not turned on,
then turning on this feature enables support for the convention
of not including text beyond the sigdashes line when Replying or Following
up to a message and including the text of that message.
In other words, this is a way to turn on the signature stripping behavior
without also turning on the dashes-adding behavior.
- tab-visits-next-new-message-only
- This feature affects Pine's behavior when using the TAB
key to move from one message to the next.
Pine's usual behavior is to select the next
Unread message or message flagged as Important.
Setting this feature causes Pine to skip the
messages flagged as Important,
and select Unread messages exclusively.
Tab behavior when there are no
new messages left to select remains unchanged.
- termdef-takes-precedence
- In some versions of Pine before 4.00 there was a compile-time macro
called TERMCAP_WINS which could be set to cause the termcap
or terminfo definitions to be used instead of the built in definitions.
Beginning with 4.00 this hidden runtime feature can be turned
on to accomplish the same thing.
- use-old-unix-format-write
- With version 4.20 of Pine came significant improvements to
the methods used to write Berkeley format folders. It's known to improve
Expunge and flag state update performance substantially. while we're
unaware of any problems associated with these new methods, this hidden
feature is provided to restore the use of the older, slower methods
should the unexpected occur.
- try-alternative-authentication-driver-first
- This feature controls how Pine provides authentication credentials
to the IMAP server you are connecting to.
Normally, Pine and the server
negotiate the most secure method to exchange such information.
However, some methods aren't available for negotiation, and thus
require pre-configuration (typically, per server) on Pine's part.
This feature allows Pine to implicitly try an alternative to the
default methods that may have been added to Pine when it was built.
- use-current-dir
- This feature controls an aspect of several commands. If set, your
"current working directory" will be used instead of your home directory
for all of the following operations:
- Export in the "Folder Index" and "Message Text" screens
- Attachment Save in the "Message Text" and "Attachment Text" screens
- ^R file inclusion in the Composer
- ^J file attachment in the Composer
- use-function-keys
- This feature specifies that Pine will
respond to function keys instead of
the normal single-letter commands. In this mode, the key menus at the
bottom of each screen will show function key designations instead of the
normal mnemonic key.
- use-sender-not-x-sender
- Normally Pine adds a header line labeled X-Sender,
if the sender is different from the From: line.
The standard specifies that this header
line should be labeled Sender, not X-Sender.
Setting this feature causes
Sender to be used instead of X-Sender.
- use-subshell-for-suspend
- This feature affects Pine's behavior when process suspension
is enabled and then activated via the ^Z key.
Pine suspension allows one to
temporarily interact with the operating system command "shell" without
quitting Pine,
and then subsequently resume the still-active Pine session.
When the enable-suspend feature is set and subsequently the
^Z key is pressed,
Pine will normally suspend itself and return temporary
control to Pine's parent shell process.
However, if this feature is set, Pine will instead create an
inferior subshell process.
This is useful when the parent process is not intended to be used
interactively.
Examples include invoking Pine via the -e
argument
of the Unix xterm program, or via a menu system.
Note that one typically resumes a suspended Pine by entering the Unix
fg command, but if this feature is set, it will be necessary to enter
the exit command instead.
- vertical-folder-list
- This feature controls an aspect of Pine's FOLDER LIST screen. If set,
the folders will be listed alphabetically down the columns rather
than across the columns as is the default.
There are several configuration variables and features which are hidden
from the user. That is, they don't appear on any of the configuration
screens. Some of these are suppressed because they are intended to be used
by system administrators, and in fact may only be set in system-wide
configuration files. Others are available to users but are thought to be
of such little value to most users that their presence on the Config
screens would cause more confusion than help. Those features may only be
set by hand editing the configuration file.
Hidden Variables Not Settable by Users
These variables are settable only in system-wide configuration files.
Hidden Variables Which are Settable by Users
These variables are not shown to users but are settable by means
of hand editing the personal configuration file. This first group
is usually maintained by Pine and there should be no reason to edit
them.
This group is usually correct but may be changed by system managers or
users in special cases.
System managers are usually interested in setting these in the system-wide
configuration files, though users may set them if they wish.
Hidden Features Which are Settable by Users
These are features (as opposed to variables) which users or system
administrators may set. Some of them only make sense for administrators.
To turn these on manually, the configuration file should be edited and the
feature added to the feature-list variable.
Variables that are no longer used by the current Pine version.
When an obsolete variable is encountered, its value is applied to any new
corresponding setting and a comment is placed before it noting that it is
no longer in used.
The replaced values include:
- compose-mime
- elm-style-save
- Replaced by saved-msg-name-rule
- expanded-view-of-addressbooks
- This one was retired in 4.00 but made a comeback in 4.10.
This is now an
active
feature.
- expanded-view-of-folders
- This one was retired in 4.00 but made a comeback in 4.10.
This is now an
active
feature.
- feature-level
- Replaced by feature-list.
- header-in-reply
- Replaced by include-header-in-reply in the
feature-list.
- old-style-reply
- Replaced by signature-at-bottom in the
feature-list.
- save-by-sender
- Replaced by saved-msg-name-rule.
- show-all-characters
- No replacement, it always works this way now.
Tokens for Index and Replying
This set of special tokens may be used in the
index-format option,
in the reply-leadin option,
in signature files,
and in template files used in
roles.
The tokens are used as they appear below for the Index-Format
option, but they must be surrounded by underscores for the
Reply-Leadin option, and in signature and template files.
Tokens Available for all Cases
- DATE
-
This token represents the date on which the message was sent, according
to the "Date" header field.
It has the format MMM DD. For example, "Oct 23".
- SMARTDATE
-
This token represents the date on which the message was sent, according
to the "Date" header field.
It is "Today" if the message was sent today,
"Yesterday" for yesterday,
"Wednesday" if it was last Wednesday, and so on. If the
message is from more than six months ago it includes the year, as well.
There is no adjustment made for different time zones, so you'll get
the day the message was sent according to the time zone the sender
was in.
- LONGDATE
-
This token represents the date on which the message was sent, according
to the "Date" header field.
It has the format MMM DD, YYYY. For example, "Oct 23, 1998".
- DATEISO
-
This token represents the date on which the message was sent, according
to the "Date" header field.
It has the format YYYY-MM-DD. For example, "1998-10-23".
- SHORTDATEISO
-
This token represents the date on which the message was sent, according
to the "Date" header field.
It has the format YY-MM-DD. For example, "98-10-23".
- SHORTDATE1
-
This token represents the date on which the message was sent, according
to the "Date" header field.
It has the format MM/DD/YY. For example, "10/23/98".
- SHORTDATE2
-
This token represents the date on which the message was sent, according
to the "Date" header field.
It has the format DD/MM/YY. For example, "23/10/98".
- SHORTDATE3
-
This token represents the date on which the message was sent, according
to the "Date" header field.
It has the format DD.MM.YY. For example, "23.10.98".
- SHORTDATE4
-
This token represents the date on which the message was sent, according
to the "Date" header field.
It has the format YY.MM.DD. For example, "98.10.23".
- TIME24
-
This token represents the time at which the message was sent, according
to the "Date" header field.
There is no adjustment made for different time zones, so you'll get
the time the message was sent according to the time zone the sender
was in.
It has the format HH:MM. For example, "17:28".
- TIME12
-
This token represents the time at which the message was sent, according
to the "Date" header field.
This time is for a 12 hour clock.
It has the format HH:MMpm.
For example, "5:28pm" or "11:13am".
- TIMEZONE
-
This token represents the numeric timezone from
the "Date" header field.
It has the format [+-]HHMM. For example, "-0800".
- SUBJECT
-
This token represents the Subject the sender gave the message.
- FROM
-
This token represents the personal name (or email address if the name
is unavailable) of the person specified in the message's "From:"
header field.
- SENDER
-
This token represents the personal name (or email address) of the person
listed in the message's "Sender:" header field.
- TO
-
This token represents the personal names (or email addresses if the names
are unavailable) of the persons specified in the
message's "To:" header field.
- NEWSANDTO
-
This token represents the newsgroups from the
message's "Newsgroups:" header field and
the personal names (or email addresses if the names
are unavailable) of the persons specified in the
message's "To:" header field.
- TOANDNEWS
-
Same as "NEWSANDTO" except in the opposite order.
- NEWS
-
This token represents the newsgroups from the
message's "Newsgroups:" header field.
- CC
-
This token represents the personal names (or email addresses if the names
are unavailable) of the persons specified in the
message's "Cc:" header field.
- RECIPS
-
This token represents the personal names (or email addresses if the names
are unavailable) of the persons specified in both the
message's "To:" header field and
the message's "Cc:" header field.
- NEWSANDRECIPS
-
This token represents the newsgroups from the
message's "Newsgroups:" header field and
the personal names (or email addresses if the names
are unavailable) of the persons specified in the
message's "To:" and "Cc:" header fields.
- RECIPSANDNEWS
-
Same as "NEWSANDRECIPS" except in the opposite order.
- MONTHABBREV
-
This token represents the month the message was sent, according
to the "Date" header field.
For example, "Oct".
Tokens Available Only for Index-Format
- MSGNO
-
This token represents the message's current position in the folder which,
of course, may change as the folder is sorted or new mail arrives.
- STATUS
-
This token represents a three character wide field displaying various
aspects of the message's state.
The first character is either blank,
a '*' for message marked Important, or a '+' indicating a message
addressed directly to you (as opposed to your having received it via a
mailing list, for example).
The second character is typically blank,
though the arrow cursor may occupy it if the
assume-slow-link
feature is set, or you actually are on a slow link.
The third character is either the letter 'D' if the
message is deleted, 'A' if it is answered (but not deleted), or 'N' if
it is new (but not deleted or answered), or blank if it is neither
deleted, answered nor new.
- FULLSTATUS
-
This token represents a less abbreviated alternative
to the "STATUS" field.
It is six characters wide.
The first character is '+' or blank, the
second blank, the third either '*' or blank, the fourth 'N' or blank,
the fifth 'A' or blank, and the sixth character is either 'D' or
blank.
- IMAPSTATUS
-
This token represents an even less abbreviated alternative to the
"FULLSTATUS" field.
It differs in only the fourth character which is
either an 'N' if the message is new to this folder since the last time
it was opened and it has not been viewed, an 'R' if the message
is new to the folder and has been viewed (Recent), a 'U' if the message is not
new to the folder since it was last opened but has not been
viewed (Unseen), or a blank if the message has been in the folder since it was
last opened and has been viewed.
- SIZE
-
This token represents the total size, in bytes, of the message.
- DESCRIPSIZE
-
This token is intended to represent a more useful description of the
message than just its size, but it isn't very useful at this point.
The plus sign in this view means there are attachments.
Note that including this token in
the "Index-Format" could slow down the
display a little while Pine collects the necessary information.
- ATT
-
This is a one column wide field which represents the number of attachments
a message has. It will be blank if there are no attachments, a single
digit for one to nine attachments, or an asterisk for more than nine.
Note that including this token in
the "Index-Format" could slow down the
display a little while Pine collects the necessary information.
- FROMORTO
-
This token represents either the personal name (or email address) of
the person listed in the message's "From:" header
field, or, if that address is yours or one of your
alternate addresses,
the first person specified in the
message's "To:" header field
with the prefix "To: " prepended.
Tokens Available for all but Index-Format
- ADDRESS
-
This is similar to the "FROM" token, only it is always the
email address, never the personal name.
For example, "mailbox@domain".
- MAILBOX
-
This is the same as the "ADDRESS" except that the
domain part of the address is left off.
For example, "mailbox".
- DAYDATE
-
This token represents the date on which the message was sent, according
to the "Date" header field.
It looks like "Sat, 24 Oct 1998" unless the day of
the week is not available, in which case it looks like
"24 Oct 1998".
- DAY
-
This token represents the day of the month on which the message was sent,
according to the "Date" header field.
For example, "24" or "9".
- DAY2DIGIT
-
This token represents the day of the month on which the message was sent,
according to the "Date" header field.
For example, "24" or "09".
- MONTHLONG
-
This token represents the month in which the message was sent, according
to the "Date" header field.
For example, "October".
- MONTH
-
This token represents the month in which the message was sent, according
to the "Date" header field.
For example, "10" or "9".
- MONTH2DIGIT
-
This token represents the month in which the message was sent, according
to the "Date" header field.
For example, "10" or "09".
- YEAR
-
This token represents the year the message was sent, according
to the "Date" header field.
For example, "1999" or "2001".
- YEAR2DIGIT
-
This token represents the year the message was sent, according
to the "Date" header field.
For example, "99" or "01".
- MSGID
-
This token represents the message ID of the message.
- CURDATE
-
This token represents the current date.
It has the format MMM DD. For example, "Oct 23".
- CURDATEISO
-
This token represents the current date.
It has the format YYYY-MM-DD. For example, "1998-10-23".
- CURDATEISOS
-
This token represents the current date.
It has the format YY-MM-DD. For example, "98-10-23".
- CURTIME24
-
This token represents the current time.
It has the format HH:MM. For example, "17:28".
- CURTIME12
-
This token represents the current time.
This time is for a 12 hour clock.
It has the format HH:MMpm.
For example, "5:28pm" or "11:13am".
Token Available Only for Templates and Signatures
- CURSORPOS
-
This token is different from the others.
When it is replaced it is replaced with nothing, but it sets a Pine
internal variable which tells the composer to start with the cursor
positioned at the position where this token was.
If both the template file and the signature file contain
a "CURSORPOS" token, then the position in the template file
is used.
If there is a template file and neither it nor the signature file contains
a "CURSORPOS" token, then the cursor is positioned
after the end of the contents of the
template file when the composer starts up.
Conditional Inclusion of Text for Reply-Leadin, Signatures, and Templates
Conditional text inclusion may be used with
the Reply-Leadin option,
in signature files, and in template files used in
roles.
It may not be used with the
Index-Format option.
There is a limited if-else capability for including text.
The if-else condition is based
on whether or not a given token would result in replacement text you
specify.
The syntax of this conditional inclusion is
_token_(match_this, if_matched [ , if_not_matched ] )
The left parenthesis must follow the underscore immediately, with no
intervening space.
It means the token is expanded and the results of that expansion are
compared against the "match_this" argument.
If there is an exact match, then the "if_matched" text is used
as the replacement text.
Otherwise, the "if_not_matched" text is used.
One of the most useful values for the "match_this" argument is
the empty string, "".
In that case the expansion is compared against the empty string.
Here's an example to make it clearer.
This text could be included in one of your template files:
_NEWS_("", "I'm replying to email","I'm replying to news")
If that is included in a template file which you are using while replying
to a message (because you chose to use the role it was part of),
and that message has a newsgroup header and a newsgroup in that header,
then the text
I'm replying to news
will be included in the message you are about to compose.
On the other hand, if the message you are replying to does not have
a newsgroup, then the text
I'm replying to email
would be included instead.
This would also work in signature files and in
the "Reply-Leadin" option.
If the "match_this", "if_matched",
or "if_not_matched" arguments contain
spaces, parentheses, or commas;
they have to be quoted with double quotation marks (like in the example
above).
If you want to include a literal quote in the text you must escape the
quote by preceding it with a backslash character.
If you want to include a literal backslash character you must escape it
by preceding it with another backslash.
The comma followed by "if_not_matched" is optional.
If there is no "if_not_matched"
present then no text is included if the not_matched case is true.
Here's another example:
_NEWS_("", "", "This msg was seen in group: _NEWS_.")
Here you can see that tokens may appear inside
the "if_matched" or "if_not_matched" arguments.
The same is true for tokens with the conditional parentheses.
They may appear inside the "if_matched" or "if_not_matched",
though you do have to be careful to get the quoting and escaping of
nested double quotes correct.
If this was in the signature file being used and you were replying to a message
sent to comp.mail.pine the resulting text would be:
This msg was seen in group: comp.mail.pine.
If you were replying to a message which wasn't sent to any newsgroup the
resulting text would be a single blank line.
The reason you'd get a blank line is because the end of the line is
outside of the conditional, so is always included.
If you wanted to get rid of that blank line you could do so by moving
the end of line inside the conditional.
In other words, it's ok to have multi-line
"if_matched" or "if_not_matched" arguments.
The text just continues until the next double quotation, even if it's not
on the same line.
Here's one more (contrived) example illustrating a matching argument
which is not the empty string.
_SMARTDATE_("Today", _SMARTDATE_, "On _DATE_") _FROM_ wrote:
If this was the value of your "Reply-Leadin" option and you
were replying to
a message which was sent today, then the value of the "Reply-Leadin"
would be
Today Fred Flintstone wrote:
But if you were replying to a message sent on Oct. 27 (and that wasn't
today) you would get
On Oct 27 Fred Flintstone wrote:
Per Server Directory Configuration
This is only available if Pine was linked with an LDAP library
when it was compiled.
If that's the case, there will be a Directory option underneath the Setup
command on the Main Menu.
Each server that is defined there has several configuration variables
which control the behavior when using it.
- ldap-server
- This is the name of the host where an LDAP server is running.
To find out whether your organization has its own LDAP server,
contact its computing support staff.
- search-base
- This is the search base to be used on this server.
It functions as a filter
by restricting your searches in the LDAP server database
to the specified contents of the specified fields.
Without it, searches submitted to this directory server may fail.
It might be something like:
O = <Your Organization Name>, C = US
or it might be blank.
(Some LDAP servers actually ignore anything specified here.)
If in doubt what parameters you should specify here,
contact the maintainers of the LDAP server.
- port
- This is the TCP port number to be used with this LDAP server.
If you leave this blank port
389
will be used.
- nickname
- This is a nickname to be used in displays.
If you don't supply a nickname the server name from
"ldap-server" will be used instead.
This option is strictly for your convenience.
- use-implicitly-from-composer
- Set this feature to have lookups done to this server implicitly from
the composer.
If an address doesn't look like a fully-qualified address, it will be looked
up in your address books, and if it doesn't match a nickname there, then it
will be looked up on the LDAP servers which have this feature set.
Also see the LDAP feature
lookup-addrbook-contents
and the Setup/Config feature
ldap-result-to-addrbook-add.
- lookup-addrbook-contents
- Normally implicit LDAP lookups from the composer are done only for the
strings you type in from the composer screen. In other words, you type in
something in the To or CC field and press return, then the string is looked up.
First that string is looked up in your address books. If a match is found
there, then the results of that match are looked up again. If you place
a string in your address book that you want to have looked up on the LDAP
directory server, you need to turn on this feature. If you set this feature
for a server, you almost always will also want to set the
use-implicitly-from-composer
feature.
An example might serve to best illustrate this feature.
If an LDAP lookup of "William Clinton" normally returns an
entry with an
address of [email protected], then you might put an entry in your address
book that looks like:
Nickname Address
bill "William Clinton"
Now, when you type "bill" into an
address field in the composer Pine will
find the "bill" entry in your address book.
It will replace "bill" with
"William Clinton".
It will then search for an entry with that nickname
in your address book and not find one. If this feature
is set, Pine will then attempt to lookup
"William Clinton" on the LDAP server and find the entry with address
[email protected].
A better way to accomplish the same thing is probably to use the feature
save-search-criteria-not-result.
- save-search-criteria-not-result
- Normally when you save the results of an LDAP directory lookup to your
address book the results of the lookup are saved.
If this feature is set
and the entry being saved was found on this directory server, then the
search criteria is saved instead of the results of the search.
When this address book entry is used in the future, instead of copying
the results from the address book the directory lookup will be done again.
This could be useful if the copied result might become stale because the data on
the directory server changes (for example, the entry's email address changes).
You probably don't want to set this feature if the server is at all slow or
unreliable.
The way this actually works is that instead of saving the email address
in your address book, Pine saves enough
information to look up the same directory entry again.
In particular, it saves the server name and the
distinguished name of the entry.
It's possible that the server administrators
might change the format of distinguished names on the server, or that the
entry might be removed from the server. If Pine notices this, you will be warned
and a backup copy of the email address will be used. You may want to create
a new entry in this case, since you will get the annoying warning every
time you use the old entry. You may do that by Saving the entry to a new
nickname in the same address book. You will be asked whether or not you
want to use the backup email address.
A related feature in the Setup/Config screen is
ldap-result-to-addrbook-add.
- disable-ad-hoc-space-substitution
- Spaces in your input are normally handled specially.
Each space character is replaced
by
* <SPACE>
in the search query (but not by "* <SPACE> *").
The reason this is done is so the input string
Greg Donald
(which is converted to "Greg* Donald") will match
the names "Greg Donald",
"Gregory Donald", "Greg F. Donald", and
"Gregory F Donald"; but it won't match "Greg McDonald".
If the "Search-Rule" you were using was "begins-with",
then it would also match the name "Greg Donaldson".
Turning on this feature will disable this substitution.
- search-type
- This affects the way that LDAP searches are done.
In particular, this tells the server where to look for the string to be matched.
If set to "name" then the string that is being searched for will
be compared with the string in the
"Name" field on the server
(technically, it is the "commonname" field on the server).
"Surname" means we're looking for a
match in the "Surname" field on the
server (actually the "sn" field).
"Givenname" really is "givenname"
and "email" is the electronic mail address (this is actually the field
called "mail" or "electronicmail" on the server).
The other three types are combinations of
the types listed so far. "Name-or-email"
means the string should appear
in either the "name" field OR the "email" field.
Likewise, "surname-or-givenname"
means "surname" OR "givenname"
and "sur-or-given-or-name-or-email" means the obvious thing.
This search type is combined with the
search rule
to form the actual search query.
The usual default value for this
option is "sur-or-given-or-name-or-email".
This type of search may be slow on some servers.
Try "name-or-email", which is often
faster, or just "name" if the performance seems to be a problem.
Some servers have been configured with different attribute names for
these four fields.
In other words, instead of using the attribute name "mail"
for the email address field, the server might be configured to use something
else, for example, "rfc822mail" or "internetemailaddress".
Pine can be configured to use these different attribute names by using
the four per-server configuration options:
- search-rule
- This affects the way that LDAP searches are done.
If set to "equals" then
only exact matches count.
"Contains" means that the string you type in
is a substring of what you are matching against.
"Begins-with" and "ends-with"
mean that the string starts or ends with the string you type in.
Spaces in your input are normally handled specially, but you can turn that
special handling off with the
disable-ad-hoc-space-substitution
feature.
The usual default value for this option is begins-with.
- email-attribute
- This is the name of the attribute which is searched for when looking for
an email address. The default value for this option is "mail" or
"electronicmail".
If the server you are using uses a different attribute name for the email
address, put that attribute name here.
This will affect the search filter used if your Search-Type is one that
contains a search for "email".
It will also cause the attribute value matching this attribute name to be used
as the email address when you look up an entry from the composer.
- name-attribute
- This is the name of the attribute which is searched for when looking for
the name of the entry. The default value for this option is "cn", which
stands for common name.
If the server you are using uses a different attribute name for the name,
put that attribute name here.
This will affect the search filter used if your Search-Type is one that
contains a search for "name".
- surname-attribute
- This is the name of the attribute which is searched for when looking for
the surname of the entry. The default value for this option is "sn".
If the server you are using uses a different attribute name for the surname,
put that attribute name here.
This will affect the search filter used if your Search-Type is one that
contains a search for "surname".
- givenname-attribute
- This is the name of the attribute which is searched for when looking for
the given name of the entry. The default value for this option is "givenname".
If the server you are using uses a different attribute name for the given name,
put that attribute name here.
This will affect the search filter used if your Search-Type is one that
contains a search for "givenname".
- timelimit
- This places a limit on the number of seconds the LDAP search will continue.
The default is 30 seconds. A value of 0 means no limit. Note that some servers
may place limits of their own on searches.
- sizelimit
- This places a limit on the number of entries returned by the LDAP server.
A value of 0 means no limit. The default is 0. Note that some servers
may place limits of their own on searches.
- custom-search-filter
- This one is for advanced users only! If you define this, then the
search-type
and
search-rule
defined are both ignored.
However, the feature
disable-ad-hoc-space-substitution
is still in effect.
That is, the space substitution will take place even in a custom filter unless
you disable it.
If your LDAP service stops working and you suspect it might be because
of your custom filter, just delete this filter and try using the
search-type and search-rule instead.
Another option that sometimes causes trouble is the
search-base option.
This variable may be set to the string representation of an LDAP search
filter (see RFC1960). In the places where you want the address string to be
substituted in, put a '%s' in this filter string. Here are some examples:
A "Search-Type" of "name" with "Search-Rule" of "begins-with"
is equivalent to the "custom-search-filter"
(cn=%s*)
When you try to match against the string "string" the program replaces
the "%s" with "string" (without the quotes). You may have multiple "%s"'s and
they will all be replaced with the string. There is a limit of 10 "%s"'s.
A "Search-Type" of "name-or-email" with "Search-Rule"
of "contains" is equivalent to
(|(cn=*%s*)(mail=*%s*))
If your server uses a different attribute name than
Pine uses by default,
(for example, it uses "rfc822mail" instead of "mail"),
then you may be able to use one or more of the four attribute configuration
options instead of defining a custom filter:
Color Configuration
If the terminal or terminal emulator you are using is capable of using
color (see color-style option),
or if you are using PC-Pine, then it is possible to
set up Pine so that various parts of the display will be
shown in colors you configure.
This is done using the Setup Color screen.
The Setup Color screen is divided into three broad sections, General Colors,
Index Colors, and Header Colors.
In addition to these three categories you may also color lines in the
MESSAGE INDEX screen by configuring the
Index Line Color.
Each color is defined as a foreground color (the color of the actual text)
and a background color (the color of the area behind the text).
General Colors
- Normal Color
- This is the color which most of the screen is painted in.
- Reverse Color
- The color Pine uses for reverse video characters.
Actually, the name is misleading. This used to be reverse video and so
the name remains. It is still used to highlight certain parts of the
screen but the color may be set to whatever you'd like.
- Title Color
- The color Pine uses for the titlebar (the top line on the
screen).
By default, the Title Color is the same as the Reverse Color.
- Status Color
- The color Pine uses for messages written to the status
message line near the bottom of the screen.
By default, the Status Color is the same as the Reverse Color.
- KeyLabel Color
- The color Pine uses for the labels of the commands in the
two-line menu at the bottom of the screen.
The label is the long name, for example, "PrevMsg".
By default, the KeyLabel Color is the same as the Normal Color.
- KeyName Color
- The color Pine uses for the names of the commands in the
two-line menu at the bottom of the screen.
The KeyName is the shorter name in the menu. For example, the "W"
before the "WhereIs".
By default, the KeyName Color is the same as the Normal Color.
- Selectable-item Color
- The color Pine uses for displaying selectable items, such
as URLs.
By default, the Selectable-item Color is the same as the Normal Color, except
it is also Bold.
- Quote Colors
- The colors Pine uses for coloring quoted text in the
MESSAGE TEXT screen.
If a line begins with a > character (or space followed by >) it
is considered a quote. That line will be given the Quote1 Color (first
level quote). If there is a second level of quoting then the Quote2 Color
will be used. Pine considers there to be a second level of quoting if
that first > is followed by another > (or space followed by >).
If there are characters other than whitespace and > signs, then it isn't
considered another level of quoting. Similarly, if there is a third level
of quoting the Quote3 Color will be used. If there are more levels after
that the Quote Colors are reused. If you define all three colors then it
would repeat like Color1, Color2, Color3, Color1, Color2, Color3, ...
If you only define the first two it would be Color1, Color2,
Color1, Color2, ...
If you define only the Quote1 Color, then the entire quote would be
that color regardless of the quoting levels. If you define a Quote Color
to be the same as the Normal Color, that's treated the same as if you
didn't define it at all. By default, the Quote Colors are the same as the
Normal Color.
- Prompt Color
- The color Pine uses for confirmation prompts and questions
which appear in the status message line near the bottom of the screen.
By default, the Prompt Color is the same as the Reverse Color.
Index Colors
You may add color to the single character symbols which give the status
of each message in the MESSAGE INDEX.
By default the characters "+", "*", "D",
"A", and "N" show up near the left hand side of the
screen, depending on whether the message is addressed to you, and whether
the message is marked Important, is Deleted, is Answered, or is New.
You may set the color of those symbols.
By default, all of these symbols are drawn with the same color as the rest
of the index line they are a part of.
Besides coloring the message status symbols, you may also color the
entire index line.
This is done by using the
Index Line Color configuration screen.
- Index-to-me Symbol Color
- The color used for drawing the "+" symbol which signifies a
message is addressed directly to you.
- Index-important Symbol Color
- The color used for drawing the "*" symbol which signifies a
message has been flagged Important.
- Index-deleted Symbol Color
- The color used for drawing the "D" symbol which signifies a
message has been marked Deleted.
- Index-answered Symbol Color
- The color used for drawing the "A" symbol which signifies a
message has been answered.
- Index-new Symbol Color
- The color used for drawing the "N" symbol which signifies a
message is New.
- Index-recent Symbol Color
- The color used for drawing the "R" symbol which signifies a
message is Recent (only visible if the "IMAPSTATUS" token is
part of the
index-format option).
- Index-unseen Symbol Color
- The color used for drawing the "U" symbol which signifies a
message is Unseen (only visible if the "IMAPSTATUS" token is
part of the
index-format option).
Header Colors
You may add color to the header fields in the MESSAGE TEXT screen.
For example, you may set the color of the contents of the Subject field
or the From field.
For Header Colors,
there is an additional line on the configuration
screen labeled "Pattern to match".
If you leave that blank, then the whole field for that header will
always be colored.
However, if you give a pattern to match, the coloring will only take place
if there is a match for that pattern in the value of the field.
For example, if you are working on a color for the Subject header and
you fill in a pattern of "important", then only Subjects which
contain the word "important" will be colored.
For address fields like From or To, a pattern match will cause only the
addresses which match the pattern to be colored.
If the pattern you enter is a comma-separated list of patterns, then coloring
happens if any of those patterns matches.
Index Line Colors
You may color whole index lines by using roles.
This isn't configured in the Setup Colors screen, but is configured in
the Setup Rules IndexColor screen.
Index Line Color Configuration
Index Line Color causes lines in the MESSAGE INDEX screen to be colored.
This action is only available if your terminal is capable of displaying
color and color display has been enabled with the
Color-Style option.
(In PC-Pine, color is always enabled so there is no option to turn on.)
Each rule has a "Pattern",
which is used to decide which of the rules is used; and the color which
is used if the Pattern matches a particular message.
Rule Patterns
In order to determine whether or not a message matches a rule the message is
compared with the rule's Pattern.
These Patterns are the same for use with Roles, Filtering, Index Coloring,
and Scoring, so are described in only one place,
"here".
Index Line Color
This is the color that index lines are colored when there is a matching
Pattern.
This colors the whole index line, except possibly the status letters
which may be colored separately using
the Setup Kolor screen.
Role Configuration
You may play different roles depending on who you are replying to.
For example, if you are replying to a message addressed to help-desk you
may be acting as a Help Desk Worker.
That role may require that you use a different return address and/or
a different signature.
Roles are optional.
If you set up roles they work like this: Each role has a set of
"Uses", which indicate whether or not a role is eligible to be
considered for a particular use; a "Pattern",
which is used to decide which of the eligible roles is used; and a set
of "Actions", which are taken when that role is used.
When you reply to a message, the message you are replying to is compared
with the Patterns of the roles marked as eligible for use when replying.
The comparisons start with the first eligible role and keep going until there
is a match.
If a match is found, the matching role's Actions are taken.
Role Uses
There are three types of use to be configured;
one for Replying, one for Forwarding, and one for Composing.
These indicate whether or not you want a role to be considered when you
type the Reply, Forward, or Compose commands.
(The Role command is an alternate form of the Compose command, and it is
not affected by these settings.)
Each of these Use types has three possible values.
The value "Never"
means that the role will never be considered as a candidate for use with
the corresponding command.
For example, if you set a role's Reply Use to Never, then when you Reply to
a message, the role won't even be considered.
(That isn't quite true. If the message you are replying to matches some other
role which requires confirmation,
then there will be a ^T command available which allows you to select a role
from all of your roles, not just the reply-eligible roles.)
The options "With confirmation" and "Without confirmation"
both mean that you do want to consider this role when using the corresponding
command.
For either of these settings the role's Pattern will
be checked to see if it matches the message.
For Reply Use, the message used to compare the Patterns with is the message
being replied to.
For Forward Use, the message used to compare the Pattern with is the message
being forwarded.
For Compose Use, there is no message, so the parts of the Pattern which depend
on a message (everything other than Current Folder Type) are ignored.
In all cases, the Current Folder is checked if defined, and the
Score Interval is checked if defined.
If there is a match then this role will either be used without confirmation
or will be the default when confirmation is asked for, depending on
which of the two options is selected.
If confirmation is requested, you will have a chance to
choose No Role instead of the offered role, or to
change the role to any one of your other roles (with the ^T command).
Role Patterns
In order to determine whether or not a message matches a role the message is
compared with the Role Pattern.
These Patterns are the same for use with Roles, Filtering, Index Coloring,
and Scoring, so are described in only one place,
"here".
Since header patterns and AllText patterns which are unset are ignored,
a role which has all header patterns unset, the AllText pattern unset,
the Score Interval unset, and the Current Folder Type set to
"Any" may be used as a default role.
It should be put last in the list of roles since the matching
starts at the beginning and proceeds until one of the roles is a match.
If no roles at all match, then Pine will
use its regular methods of defining the role.
If you wanted to, you could define a different "default" role
for Replying, Forwarding, Composing, and Index Line Color by setting the
"Use" fields appropriately.
Role Actions
Once a role match is found, the role's Actions are taken.
For each role there are several possible actions that may be defined.
They are actions to set the From address, the Reply-To address,
the Fcc, the Signature file, and the Template file.
Initialize Setttings Using Role
This is a power user feature.
You will usually want to leave this field empty.
The value of this field is the nickname of another one of your roles.
The action values from that other role
are used as the initial values of the action items for this role.
If you put something in any of the action fields for this role, that will
override whatever was in the corresponding field of the initializer role.
The fields affected by this field are the fields labeled
"Set From",
"Set Reply-To",
"Set Fcc",
"Set Signature", and
"Set Template".
You might use this field if the "action" part of one of your roles
is something you want to use in more than one role.
Instead of filling in those action values again for each role, you
may give the nickname of the role where the values are filled in.
It's just a shortcut way to define role actions.
Here's an example to help explain how this works.
Suppose you have a role with nickname "role1" and role1 has
(among other things)
Set Signature = sig_file1
set.
If in "role2" you set "Initialize settings using role" to
"role1", then role2 will inherit the Set Signature value
from role1 by default (and any of the three other action values that are set).
So if role2 had
Set Signature =
defined, the signature file used with role2 would be "sig-file1".
However, if role2 had
Set Signature = sig_file2
defined, then the signature file used with role2 would be "sig-file2".
If you wish,
you may choose a nickname from your list of roles by using the
"T" command.
Set From
This field consists of a single address which will be used as the From
address on the message you are sending.
This should be a fully-qualified address like
Full Name <user@domain>
or just
user@domain
If this is left blank, then the normal From address will be used.
Set Reply-To
The Reply-To address is the address used on the Reply-To line of the message
you are sending.
You don't need a Reply-To address unless it is different from the From address.
This should be a fully-qualified address like
Full Name <user@domain>
or just
user@domain
If this is left blank, then there won't be a Reply-To address unless
you have configured one specially with the
customized-hdrs
configuration option.
Set Fcc
This field consists of a single folder name which will be used in
the Fcc field of the message you are sending.
You may put anything here that you would normally type into the Fcc
field from the composer.
In addition, an fcc of "" (two double quotation marks) means
no Fcc.
A blank field here means that Pine will use its normal rules for deciding
the default value of the Fcc field.
For many roles, perhaps most, it may make more sense for you to use the
other Pine facilities for setting the Fcc.
In particular, if you want the Fcc to depend on who you are sending the
message to then the fcc-name-rule
is probably more useful.
In that case, you would want to leave the Fcc field here blank.
However, if you have a role that depends on who the message you are replying
to was From, or what address that message was sent to;
then it might make sense to set the Fcc for that role here.
Set Signature
The Signature is the name of a file to be used as the signature file when
this role is being used.
If the filename is followed by a vertical bar (|) then instead
of reading the contents of the file the file is assumed to be a
program which will produce the text to be used on its standard output.
The program can't have any arguments and doesn't receive any input from Pine,
but the rest of the processing works as if the contents came from a file.
Besides containing regular text, a signature file may also
contain (or a signature program may produce) tokens which are replaced with text
which depends on the message you are replying to or forwarding.
The tokens all look like _word_ (a word surrounded by underscores).
For example, if the token
_DATE_
is included in the text of the signature file, then when you reply to
or forward a message, the token will be replaced with the actual date
the message you are replying to or forwarding was sent.
If you use a role which has a signature file for a plain composition
(that is, not a reply or forward) then there is no original message, so
any tokens which depend on the message will be replaced with nothing.
So if you want a signature file to be useful for new compositions it
shouldn't include any of the tokens which depend on the message being
replied to or forwarded.
The list of available tokens is
here.
Actually, 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
a signature file, you must precede it with a backslash character.
For example, to include the literal text _DATE_ you must actually use
\_DATE_.
It is not possible to have a literal backslash followed by an expanded token.
A blank field here means that Pine will use its normal rules for deciding
which file (if any) to use for the signature file.
Set Template
A Template is the name of a file to be included in the message when this
role is being used.
The template file is a file which is included at the top of the message you
are composing.
If the filename is followed by a vertical bar (|) then instead
of reading the contents of the file the file is assumed to be a
program which will produce the text to be used on its standard output.
The program can't have any arguments and doesn't receive any input from Pine,
but the rest of the processing works as if the contents came from a file.
Besides containing regular text, a template file may also
contain (or a template file program may produce) tokens which are replaced with text
which depends on the message you are replying to or forwarding.
The tokens all look like _word_ (a word surrounded by underscores).
For example, if the token
_DATE_
is included in the text of the template file, then when you reply to
or forward a message, the token will be replaced with the actual date
the message you are replying to or forwarding was sent.
If you use a role which has a template file for a plain composition
(that is, not a reply or forward) then there is no original message, so
any tokens which depend on the message will be replaced with nothing.
So if you want a template file to be useful for new compositions it
shouldn't include any of the tokens which depend on the message being
replied to or forwarded.
The list of available tokens is
here.
Actually, 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
a template file, you must precede it with a backslash character.
For example, to include the literal text _DATE_ you must actually use
\_DATE_.
It is not possible to have a literal backslash followed by an expanded token.
A blank field here means that Pine will not use a template file when
this role is being used.
If any of the actions are left unset, then the action depends on what
is present in the "Initialize settings using role" field.
If you've listed the nickname of another one of your roles there, then the
corresponding action from that role will be used here.
If that action is also blank, or if there is no nickname specified,
then Pine will do whatever it normally does to set these actions.
This depends on other configuration options and features you've set.
Filtering Configuration
The software which actually delivers mail (the stuff that happens
before Pine is involved) for you is in a better position to do mail filtering
than Pine itself.
If possible, you may want to look into using that sort of mail filtering to
deliver mail to different folders, delete it, or forward it.
However, if you'd like Pine to help with this, Pine's filtering is for you.
Filtering is a way to automatically move certain messages from one folder
to another or to delete messages.
Pine doesn't have the ability to forward mail to another address.
Each filtering rule has a "Pattern" and possibly a "Folder".
When a folder is opened, or when new mail arrives in an open folder, each
message is compared with the Patterns of your filtering rules.
The comparisons start with the first rule and keep going until there
is a match.
If a match is found, the message is copied to the folders you've listed
in the "Folder" field and then it is deleted.
If the Folder field is not set, then the matching message is simply
deleted.
NOTE:
When setting up a pattern used to only delete messages,
it is recommended that you test the pattern first with a folder specified in
case unintended matches occur. Messages that are deleted will be removed
from the folder and unrecoverable from within Pine after the
next Expunge command or once the folder being filtered has been closed.
Filter Patterns
In order to determine whether or not a message matches a filter the message is
compared with the Filter's Pattern.
These Patterns are the same for use with Roles, Filtering, Index Coloring,
and Scoring, so are described in only one place,
"here".
Since filtering is a potentially destructive action, if you have a filtering
Pattern with nothing other than Current Folder Type set, that filtering
rule is ignored.
Folder
Once a filter match is found for a particular message, that message is
moved into these folders.
Folder may be left unset.
In that case, the message is simply deleted if it matches.
Folder may be set to more than one folder name by listing the folders
separated with commas.
The message will be saved to each of the folders listed and then deleted
from the current folder.
Scoring Configuration
Most people will not use scores at all, but if you do use them, here's how
they work in Pine.
Using this screen, you may define Scoring rules.
The score for a message is calculated by looking at every Score rule defined
and adding up the Score Values for the ones which match the message.
If there are no matches for a message, it has a score of zero.
Message scores may be used a couple of ways in Pine.
Sorting by Score
One of the methods you may use to sort message indexes is to sort by
score.
The scores of all the messages in a folder will be calculated and then
the index will be ordered by placing the messages in order of ascending or
descending score.
Scores for use in Patterns
The Patterns used for Roles, Index Line Coloring, and Filtering have a
category labeled "Score Interval".
When a message is being compared with a Pattern to check for a match, if
the Score Interval is set only messages which have a score somewhere in
the interval are a match.
Scoring Rule Patterns
In order to determine whether or not a message matches a scoring rule
the message is compared with the rule's Pattern.
These Patterns are the same for use with Roles, Filtering, Index Coloring,
and Scoring, so are described in only one place,
"here".
Actually, Scoring rule Patterns are slightly different from the other types of
Patterns because Scoring rule Patterns don't contain a Score Interval.
In other words, when calculating the score for a message, which is done
by looking at the Scoring rule Patterns, scores aren't used.
Score Value
This is the value that will be added to the score for a message if the
rule's Pattern is a match.
Each individual Score Value is an integer between -100 and 100, and the
values from matching rules are added together to get a message's score.
Patterns
Patterns are used with Roles, Filtering, Index Coloring,
and Scoring.
Patterns are compared with a message to see if there is a match.
For Filtering, the messages being checked are all the messages in the
folder, one at a time.
For Index Line Coloring, each message which is visible on the screen is
checked for matches with the Index Coloring Patterns.
Roles are used with the Reply, Forward, and Compose commands.
For Reply, the message used to compare the Pattern with is the message
being replied to;
for Forward, the message used to compare the Pattern with is the message
being forwarded;
and for Compose, there is no message, so the parts of the Pattern which depend
on a message (everything other than Current Folder Type)
are not used.
Only the Current Folder Type matters for Compose.
For Scoring, the message being scored is compared with all of the Score
Patterns, and the Score Values from the ones that match are added together to
get the message's score.
Each Pattern has several possible pieces, all of which are optional.
There are six predefined header patterns called the To, From, Sender, Cc, News,
and Subject patterns.
Besides those six predefined header patterns, you may add
additional header patterns with header fieldnames of your choosing.
You add an extra header pattern by placing the cursor on one of the
patterns while in the role editor and using the "eXtraHdr" command.
The Recip pattern is a header pattern which stands for Recipient (To OR Cc)
and the Partic pattern is a header pattern which stands for
Participant (To OR Cc OR From).
(Defining the Recip pattern does not have the same effect as defining both
the To and Cc patterns. Recip is To OR Cc, not To AND Cc.)
Similar to the header patterns is the AllText pattern.
Instead of comparing this pattern's text against only the contents of
a particular header field, the text for the AllText pattern is compared
with text anywhere in the message's header or body.
The "Current Folder Type" and the "Score Interval" are
also part of the Pattern, though the "Score Interval" is not used
for Scoring.
In order for there to be a match, all of the defined parts of the Pattern
must match the message.
Parts of a Pattern
Header patterns
A header pattern is simply text which is searched for in the corresponding
header field.
For example, if a Pattern has a From header pattern with the value
"@company.com", then only messages which have a From header
which contains the text "@company.com" will be possible
matches.
Matches don't have to be exact.
For example, if the relevant field of a message contains the text
"mailbox@domain" somewhere
in it, then header patterns of "box", or "x@d", or
"mailbox@domain" are all matches.
All parts of the Pattern must match so, for example,
if a message matches a defined
From pattern, it still must be checked against the other parts of the
Pattern which have been defined.
The To header pattern is a slightly special case.
If the message being checked has a Resent-To header, the addresses
there are used in place of the addresses in the To header.
This is only true for the To header.
Resent-cc and Resent-From headers are never used unless you add them
with the eXtraHdrs command.
If you want to check for the presence of a header field but don't care
about its value, then
the empty pattern which you get by entering a pair of
double quotes ("") should match any message which
has the corresponding header field.
AllText patterns are just like header patterns except that the text is
searched for anywhere in the message's headers or body, not just in the
contents of a particular header field.
If there is more than one header pattern or AllText pattern
for which you want to take the
same action there is a shorthand notation which may be used.
Any of these patterns may be a comma-separated list of patterns instead of
just a single pattern.
If any one of the patterns in the list matches the message
then it is considered a match.
For example, if "company1" and "company2" both required
you to use the same role when replying to messages, you might have
a To pattern which looks like
company1.com,company2.com
This means that if the mail you are replying to was addressed to
either "[email protected]" or "[email protected]",
then this Pattern is a match and the same actions will be taken.
A technicality: Since comma is the character used to separate multiple values
in a header or AllText pattern field, you have to escape comma with a
backslash (\) if you want to include a literal comma in one of those fields.
The same is true for the backslash character itself, which must be escaped
with another backslash to make it literal.
It's unlikely you'll ever need to enter a literal comma or backslash in
any of the patterns.
Current Folder Type
The "Current Folder Type" may be set to one of four different
values: "Any", "News", "Email", or
"Specific".
If the value is set to "News", then the
Pattern will only match if the currently open folder is a newsgroup.
The value "Email" only matches if the current folder is not news and
the value "Any" causes any folder to match.
If the value of "Current Folder Type" is set to "Specific",
then you must fill in a value for "Folder", which is on the line
below the "Specific" line.
In this case you will only get a match if the currently open folder is
the specific folder you list.
You may give a comma-separated list of folders instead of just a single
folder name, in which case the Pattern will match if the open folder is
any one of the folders in the list.
The name of each folder in the list may be either "INBOX",
the technical specification
of the folder (like what appears in your configuration file) or, if the
folder is one of your incoming folders, it may be the nickname you've given
the folder.
Here are a couple samples of specific folder names:
{monet.art.nowhere.edu}mail/art-class
{news.myisp.com/nntp}#news.comp.mail.pine
The easiest way to fill in the "Folder" field is to use
the "T" command which is available when the "Folder" line is
hilighted, or to use the "Take" command with the configuration
feature
"enable-rules-under-take"
turned on.
When reading a newsgroup, there may be a performance penalty
incurred when collecting the information necessary to check whether
or not a Pattern matches a message.
For this reason, the default Current Folder Type is set to "Email".
If you have Patterns with a Current Folder Type of either
"Any" or "News" and those Patterns are used for
Index Line Coloring or Scoring, you may experience
slower screen redrawing in the MESSAGE INDEX screen when in a newsgroup.
Score Interval
The "Score Interval" may be set to an interval of message
scores which should be considered a match.
Like the other parts of the Pattern, if it is unset it will be ignored.
The Score Interval looks like
(min_score,max_score)
where "min_score" and "max_score" are integers between
-32000 and 32000.
The special values "-INF" and "INF" may be used for
the min and max values to represent negative and positive infinity.
When there is a Score Interval defined, it is a match if the score for
the message is contained in the interval.
The interval includes both endpoints.
The score for a message is calculated by looking at every Score rule defined and
adding up the Score Values for the ones which match the message.
When deciding whether or not a Pattern matches a message for purposes of
calculating the score, the Score Interval is ignored.
Help Configuring Pattern Fields
- nickname
- This is a nickname to help you.
You should have a different nickname for each role you define.
The nickname will be used in the SETUP ROLE RULES screen to allow you to
pick a role to edit.
It will also be used when you send a message to let you know you are
sending with a different role than you use by default, and
it will be useful for choosing a role when composing with the Role command
or when composing with one of the Role Uses set to With Confirmation.
This field is not used in the outgoing message.
- To pattern
- If this pattern is non-blank, then for this role to be considered a
match, at least one of the recipients from
the To line of the message being replied to or forwarded
must match this pattern.
In the case of the Compose command, this pattern and the other header
patterns are ignored.
If this pattern is a comma-separated list of patterns, then at least one of the
recipients must match at least one of the patterns.
(Any other non-blank parts of the Pattern must match, too.)
If the message being replied to or forwarded has a Resent-To header line,
then that is used in place of the To line.
- From pattern
- This is just like the
To pattern
except that it is compared with
the address from the From header of the message being replied to or forwarded instead
of the addresses from the To header.
- Sender pattern
- This is just like the
To pattern
except that it is compared with
the address from the Sender header of the message being replied to or forwarded instead
of the addresses from the To header.
If there is no Sender header, then the From header is used instead.
- Cc pattern
- This is just like the
To pattern
except that it is compared with
the address from the CC header of the message being replied to or forwarded instead
of the addresses from the To header.
- News pattern
- If this pattern is non-blank, then for this role to be considered a
match, at least one of the newsgroups from
the Newsgroups line of the message must match this pattern.
If this pattern is a comma-separated list of patterns, then at least one of the
newsgroups must match at least one of the patterns.
(Any other non-blank parts of the Pattern must match, too.)
- Subject pattern
- This is similar to the other header patterns.
It is compared with
the contents from the Subject of the message being replied to or forwarded.
If you enter non-ascii characters in this field then the search will be
done using the character set you have defined with the
"character-set" configuration variable.
(The truly sophisticated may use an alternate character set for a search
by entering the MIME encoding of the header string here.)
- Extra header patterns
- There isn't actually a field called Extra header patterns, but you
may add extra header patterns by moving the cursor to one of the header
patterns and using the "eXtraHdr" command to add a new header
pattern.
You would do this if the six predefined header patterns don't cover the
header you want to use for pattern matching.
Once you've added an extra header pattern, you use it just like the
Subject pattern.
Of course, it is compared with
the contents from the particular header field of the message being replied
to or forwarded rather than the contents from the subject field.
To remove an extra header pattern from a role, use the "RemoveHdr"
command on the highlighted extra header.
If you enter non-ascii characters in this field then the search will be
done using the character set you have defined with the
"character-set" configuration variable.
(The truly sophisticated may use an alternate character set for a search
by entering the MIME encoding of the header string here.)
- Recipient pattern
- This is just like the
To pattern
except that it is compared with
the addresses from both the To header and the Cc header
instead of just the addresses from the To header.
It's equivalent to having two different rules;
one with a To pattern and the other with the same Cc pattern.
- Participant pattern
- This is just like the
To pattern
except that it is compared with
the addresses from the To header, the Cc header, and the From header
instead of just the addresses from the To header.
It's equivalent to having three different rules;
one with a To pattern, another with the same Cc pattern, and another
with the same From pattern.
- AllText pattern
- This is similar to the header patterns.
Instead of comparing with text in a particular header field it is compared with
all of the text in the message header and body.
If you enter non-ascii characters in this field then the search will be
done using the character set you have defined with the
"character-set" configuration variable.
(The truly sophisticated may use an alternate character set for a search
by entering the MIME encoding of the header string here.)
- Score Interval
- The Score Interval, if defined, is part of the Pattern.
If you use this, it should be set to something like:
(min_score,max_score)
where "min_score" and "max_score" are integers between
-32000 and 32000.
The special values "-INF" and "INF" can be used for
the min and max values.
These represent negative and positive infinity.
When there is a Score Interval defined, it is a match if the score for
the message is contained in the interval.
The interval includes both endpoints.
The score for a message is calculated by looking at every scoring rule
defined and adding up the Score Values for the rules which match the message.
- Current Folder Type
- The Current Folder Type is part of the Pattern.
It refers to the type of the currently open folder, which is the folder
you were last looking at from the MESSAGE INDEX or MESSAGE TEXT screen.
In order for a pattern to be considered a match, the current folder must
be of the type you set here.
The three types "Any", "News", and "Email" are
all what you might think.
If the Current Folder Type for a Pattern is set to "News", for
example, then
that will only be a match if the current folder is a newsgroup and
the rest of the Pattern matches.
The value "Specific" may be used when you want to limit the match
to a specific folder (not just a specific type of folder), or to a list of
specific folders.
In order to match a specific folder you must Select the "Specific"
button AND you must fill in
the name (or comma-separated list of names) of
the folder in the "Folder" field.
If the current folder is any of the folders in the list, that is considered
a match.
The name of each folder in the list may be either "INBOX", the technical specification
of the folder (like what appears in your configuration file) or, if the
folder is one of your incoming folders, it may be the nickname you've given
the folder.
Here are a couple samples of specific folder names:
{monet.art.nowhere.edu}mail/art-class
{news.myisp.com/nntp}#news.comp.mail.pine
The easiest way to fill in the "Folder" field is to use
the T command which is available when the "Folder" line is
hilighted.
Note that you won't be able to edit the "Folder" line unless the
Current Folder Type is set to "Specific", and any value that
"Folder" has is ignored unless the type
is set to "Specific".
When reading a newsgroup, there may be a performance penalty
incurred when collecting the information necessary to check a Pattern.
For this reason, the default Current Folder Type is set to "Email".
For example, a role with a non-Normal Index Line Color
and a Current Folder Type of
"Any" or "News" may cause the MESSAGE INDEX
screen to draw more slowly when in a newsgroup.