The Unofficial Pine FAQ

• Getting Help with Pine
  • 1.1 What documentation is available for Pine?
  • 1.2 Whom should I ask for help withhttp: Pine?
  • 1.3 Is there a Usenet Newsgroup devoted to Pine?
• What is ...?
  • 2.1 What is PINE?
    • 2.1.1 What PINE Does...
    • 2.1.2 What PINE Does Not Do...
  • 2.2 What is PICO?
  • 2.3 What is PILOT?
  • 2.4 What is MIME?
  • 2.5 What is IMAP?
  • 2.6 What is SMTP?
  • 2.7 What is POP3?
• Pine Bugs
  • 3.1 Policy on Bugs
  • 3.2 Latest Reported Bugs
• Error Messages
  • 4.1 What does "Folder Format Invalidated..." mean?
  • 4.2 What happens when two Pine sessions access the same mailbox at the same time?
  • 4.3 What does the message "locked, override in _XXX_ sec" mean?
  • 4.4 What are the messages with the subject DON'T DELETE THIS MESSAGE--FOLDER INTERNAL DATA about?
    • 4.4.1 What does the quell-folder-internal-msg feature do?
• Usage Problems
  • 5.1 Pine seems to ignore some of my command keystrokes - why?
  • 5.2 Why are certain commands not available?
  • 5.3 What are these .pine-debug files for?
    • 5.3.1 Can I delete the .pine-debug files?
    • 5.3.2 How do I change the number of .pine-debug files kept or prevent the .pine-debug files from being created?
  • 5.4 How come Pine keeps asking for my password every time I open a folder?
  • 5.5 Why is it that I have to exit and reopen Pine in order to receive new mail?
  • 5.6 How do I type special characters such as accents, symbols, and international characters?
  • 5.7 My backspace/delete doesn't beheave properly?
  • 5.8 Why is opening the inbox so slow?
• Sending Mail
  • 6.1 How do I send a message to multiple recipients without showing all their names?
  • 6.2 Can I get a "return-receipt" when sending a message with Pine?
  • 6.3 Can I eliminate the @host.domain from local addresses?
  • 6.4 How do I insert a text file while composing a message? (see 8.1.1.1)
• Receiving Mail
  • 7.1 How can I tell immediately whether I have received new mail?
  • 7.2 How do I carry out the same operation on multiple messages?
• Attachments
  • Sending
    • 8.1.1 Why does Pine encode text attachments?
      • 8.1.1.1 How can I send a text file without it being encoded?
    • 8.1.2 Why does Pine use Base64 instead of UUencode?
  • Receiving
    • 8.2.1 How can I control association of MIME-attachments with applications and filenames?
    • 8.2.2 How do I convert a Sun Mailtool attachment to MIME format?
    • 8.2.3 How do I decode an attachment in a message I received that is in BinHex or UUencoded format?
    • 8.2.4 How can someone without Pine decipher an attachment to a message I send?
    • 8.2.5 How can I delete attachments?
  • Printing
    • 8.3.1 Why doesn't "attached-to-ansi" printing work?
• Addressbooks
  • 9.1 How do I "paste" from the addressbook into the text of a message?
• Usenet Newsreading
  • 10.1 How can I use Pine for reading and posting Internet News?
  • 10.2 How can I sort newsgroups by thread?
  • 10.3 How do I mark all messages in a newsgroup as "read" or "deleted"?
  • 10.4 How do I bring back (undelete) news messages I have deleted?
  • 10.5 Does Pine have a command to cancel a post?
    • 10.5.1 How do I compose a cancel post?
  • 10.6 Why do new posts in a newsgroup only appear after I close and reopen the newsgroup?
• Customization and Configuration
  • General
    • 11.1.1 Where does Pine look for configuration information?
      • 11.1.1.1 How can I get a fresh copy of my Pine configuration file?
  • Server Config
    • 11.2.1 Can I customize Pine on a per folder basis?
    • 11.2.1 Can Pine be used with a POP server?
  • User Settings
    • 11.3.1 Why does my message index show From: instead of To:?
    • 11.3.2 How do I change my 'From:' line?
    • 11.3.3 How do I define my own headers like Reply-To and Organization?
    • 11.3.4 How can I have a signature automatically appended to my mail messages?
  • Program Behavior
    • 11.4.1 Can I reduce the frequent prompting to confirm an operation?
    • 11.4.2 How can I filter messages into different incoming folders?
    • 11.4.3 How do I control what is displayed in the FOLDER INDEX screen?
    • 11.4.4 How can I control association of MIME-attachments with applications and filenames?
    • 11.4.5 How can I read a ROT13 encoded message?
    • 11.4.6 How do I change spell checking in Pine (pre-3.92) and Pico?
    • 11.4.7 How can I make Pine work with a Wyse 60 terminal?
  • PC-Pine Specific
    • 11.5.1 How can I perform spell checking with PC-Pine for Windows?
    • 11.5.2 How can PC-Pine use different character sets?
• Info for systems administrators, developers, etc.
  • 12.1 Can we use Pine/Pico/Pilot source code in commercial products?
  • 12.2 What are the advantages of the various mailbox formats Pine supports?
  • 12.3 Can Kerberos authentication be used with Pine?
  • 12.4 How does folder locking work?
  • 12.5 Where does Pine create lockfiles, and what should that directory's permissions be?
  • 12.6 Why does Pine have problems with my filter's locking?
  • 12.7 Why doesn't Pine recognize Content-Length header field?
  • 12.8 How do I configure Pine to not leave mail in /usr/spool/mail?
  • 12.9 Why do I get the message "Unparsable Date" when I read messages?
  • 12.10 Why can't I compile Pine under SCO unix?
  • 12.11 How can I set up Pine for rimap under Solaris 2.4 and NIS+?
  • 12.12 What do I need to do when compiling PINE to let users change their ``From:'' line?
  • 12.13 Where is the .pine-debug setting set at compile-time?
  • 12.14 What do I need to do to configure specific servers for use with Pine?
  • 12.15 What do I need to know about Pine file locking and what does the "mailbox vulnerable" error mean?
  • 12.16 How do I configure Pine and my system so that I never have to enter my password?
    • 12.16.1 Is there a securer way of having passwordless-access to my Remote IMAP folders from my Unix Machine?
  • 12.17 How do I convert mh to mbx folders?
• Account Conversion and Transfer
  • 13.1 How do I transfer messages from Pine on a Unix host to my PC?
  • 13.2 How can I have all future messages sent to me automatically forwarded to another account?
  • 13.3 "How can I forward messages I have already saved in Pine to another account?
    • 13.3.1 While I'm transferring my messages ... how do I transfer my email addressbook?
  • 13.4 How do I convert Berkeley Mail aliases to Pine Addressbook?
  • 13.5 How do I convert Elm aliases to Pine Addressbook?
  • 13.6 How do I convert a CMS "names" list to Pine Address Book?
  • 13.7 How do I convert from Pine Address Book to/from the equivalents in Eudora, Netscape, Pegasus, ... ?
  • 13.8 How do I convert my Pine addressbook file to Mutt alias format?
• Security
  • 14.1 General Pine Security
  • 14.2 Is there a "remote exploit" bug in Pine's handling of mailcap entries?
  • 14.3 Can I get a virus through email?
  • 14.4 What should I do if I receive email about a computer virus?
  • 14.5 Is Pine ready for the year 2000?
  • 14.6 Can Pine be configured to send and read PGP encrypted mail?
• Pine Development
  • 15.1 What is the latest version of Pine, and what's new in it?
  • 15.2 What new features will future releases of Pine include?
  • 15.3 When is the next release of Pine scheduled?
  • 15.4 What is the result of the anonymous e-mail that pine sends when the very first session begins?
• Can I contribute to this FAQ?

The Pine FAQ can be found:

As multiple HTML (Web) documents at http://www.washington.edu/pine/faq/.

As a single text file at ftp://ftp.cac.washington.edu/pine/docs/QandA.txt.