Brief Introduction to Pine

To use Pine on the math machine, just type the word pine (all lower case letters) at your math prompt. Once you do this, a window will appear on your screen that looks something like this:

From this figure, you can see that pine is all menu driven. This first screen is called the main menu. To return to it at any time during your pine session, just type the letter 'm.' All of the commands that pine offers will be displayed at the bottom of each screen. For example, when you type the letter 'c' to compose a message, you will see various commands available for composing a message at the bottom of the screen. Some may be prefixed by the carret symbol. This means to hold down the control key while pressing the next letter that appears after the carret.

Your new messages will be stored in the index folder. To view them just type the letter 'i.' A new window will be displayed listing the messages. To read one of them, just use the arrow keys to highlight the message and press the return key. To delete a message, just highlight the message you want to delete, and press the 'd' key. To save a message into one of your folders, highlight the message and type an 's.'

To send a message, type the letter 'c' from the main menu. You will need to fill out the header information at the top which includes who you want to send the message to, if you want to cc anyone, and the subject. If you want to send a message to more than one person, you must separate their email addresses by commas, not spaces as in Elm. When you have finished composing your message, you will want to send it by holding down the control key and pressing the letter 'x.'

Note that Pine is discouraged on the ACS machines because of a severe bug. On the ACS machines, you have a mail quota which means that you can only receive a certain amount of mail. If that quota is met, Pine will not let you delete any of your messages. You will need to use another mail reader to delete some of your messages so you can receive new mail again. The Math Department does not have mail quotas so you do not need to worry about it. However, be aware if you use Pine on the ACS machines.