PINE 4.64 config issues

[gareth]

I'm trying to use Pine 4.64 with IMAP, without success.

I don't seem to be able to save my remote config file - does anyone have any experience with PINE, or can anyone recommend sources of support?

Thanks.
Gareth.

[zapata]

You want to store the configuration file at the imap server?
I think this is not supported by runbox' imap server, but i might be wrong.

[gareth]

I don't want to store the config file remotely, but PINE seems to - I can't change any config settings once they've been set on startup ... this is what happens:

Log in (successful)
> Error: "Trouble reading remote configuration! Continue anyway?"

Prompts and responses follow.

> Error: "Can't read remote configuration"
> Error: "Can't modify configuration file "[{imap.runbox.com/user=my_username}remote_pinerc": ReadOnl]"

Press "return" to be counted by University of Washington user poll.

> Enter User-id for From address: my_username@runbox.com
> Preserve my_username@runbox.com as "user-id" in PINERC?
> Y
> Personal name for From address: my_real_name
> Preserve my_real_name as "personal-name" in PINERC?
> Y
> Host/domain for From address: runbox.com
> Preserve runbox.com as "user-domain" in PINERC?
> Y
> SMTP server to forward message: smtp.runbox.com
> Sending mail [ ... ]
> Incomplete mail domain my_windows_machine_name.<
> Email address in mail you send may be incorrect.
> No inbox! Folder to open as inbox: INBOX
> Preserve folder as "inbox-path" in PINERC?
> Error: "Can't modify configuration file "[{imap.runbox.com/user=my_username}remote_pinerc": ReadOnl]"

... then can send e-mail, but not list folder contents/read.

Any suggestions much appreciated.

Thanks.
Gareth.

[zapata]

which os are you running? is this win32 version of pine?

[gareth]

Yes, Win2K. Editing <PINEDIR>\pinerc.adv doesn't seem to help - produces slightly different catalogue of error messages but values still don't stick, still can't read/list.

Thanks.
Gareth.

[David]

I use pine with my imap accounts (not at runbox) You need to create a file called .pinerc and place it in your home directory.

You will likely find a file with a similar name (with your distribution) and can copy it to .pinerc (don't forget the dot)

Here you will find some decent help.

Search for .pinerc for more info.

Are you using PC Pine or pine on Unix (or OS X) ?

There is info on all three at the above link.

[BKB]

I'd be interested to get a Pine user's comparison of Pine to ThunderBird. I've used Pine quite a bit, but not by choice.

Thanks.

[gareth]

David,

PC Pine 4.64 on Windows 2000 SP4.

By "home directory" do you mean
'c:\program files\pine\.pinerc' ?

Thanks.
Gareth.

[David]

I am using Pine on Unix Gareth and some stuff is different.

Info on generating a new pinerc file here I think when you set up Pine you also set up a program called 'Pico' (this is a text editor) Use it to edit (or create) your pinerc file.

Check out the Startup Option for Pine. Try tunning pine -help (if you can do that)

You have a bit of a learning curve ahead, and I cannot help much with PC Pine (although the functionality is mostly the same) if you have never used Pine before. Take your time and read the info and tutorials.

Pine is worth it... You will be able to process your mail faster and smarter, if you stay with it.

[gareth]

That's what I was hoping!! Many thanks.
Gareth.

[zapata]

I tried pine on FreeBSD, but I ditched it immediately.
It's ugly and not user-friendly.
Mutt is available for win32 (cygwin) ... maybe you want to give it a try, before you start with pine.

[gareth]

Got Pine working - running
> pine -install
and setting local config file location helped!

Will try Mutt too - thanks to all.
Gareth.

[David]

Good job Gareth.

I think I led you astray with the .pinerc naming convention. PC-Pine likely does not include the dot before the name.

Try Mutt and Pine both - they are both pretty powerful, and see which you like best.

What I like about Pine, is that everything is configurable (in the pinerc file)

After you have it set up the way you want (which might take you a long time) it is very easy and simple to use. With Mutt you have to remember a lot of commands - my brain is full of too many details, to retain all of Mutt's command options in my head

[gareth]

.pinerc is fine as a filename, I just used the local copy of pinerc.adv instead, which seems to contain many configuration options.

[xii]

Originally posted by BKB
I'd be interested to get a Pine user's comparison of Pine to ThunderBird. I've used Pine quite a bit, but not by choice.

Thanks.

Well, I use pine on Linux, FreeBSD and OpenBSD. I have thunderbird installed, but I don't really use it.

I'm not sure what you mean with comparison though, since the former is a (very old) console application and the other one a brand new graphical mail client...

Pine and mutt have the benefit of being rather customisable (mutt more than pine). Pine has excellent imap support, and since a few years decent filtering code. Still, if you want to read *vomit* html email in anything else but gray and white, you have to specify a program to hand the mime part to. It has no native PGP/GPG support, but you can get something very rudimentary to work with third party plugins. In my opinion, it's not worth it. In pine, you can change the 'From:' line on the fly (if support compiled in). To me, this is the one feature that makes or breaks a MUA -- it enables you to use subdomains, plus/minus addressing and one-time addresses, and enables you to switch to postmaster@ or whatever you need. It is not multi-threaded, which means the interface hangs when it checks for new mails. It can be terribly annoying when typing. It has support for a lot of mailbox formats (except maildir because "the main developer doesn't like it" IIRC) -- which is one of the reasons I use it: you can just browse over your hard drive and it will read pretty much anything that looks like a mailbox, including mailboxes from most other mail clients (unix mailbox - Mozilla, Thunderbird, Kmail, Balsa, The Bat (if you have windows); mh - Sylpheed(-claws); and so on). Oh yeah, and because it's a console application, you can easily run it from a remote location through a ssh shell.

Mozilla Thunderbird is not too bad a client, my girlfriend uses it daily. It's very stable and nice looking, but to me, it has a bit of that XUL Mozilla heaviness feel to it -- keep in mind that I like console apps -- but it's not slow per se. You can have excellent PGP/GPG support with one of those downloadable plugins... enigmail, I believe. It has pretty much all necessary features, it can also read and write html (and therefore sign your deathwarrant)... But it is an end-user MUA, though. No geeky features (except for those provided by plugins, ofcourse), no editing From: line, no sharing mail folders -- the mailboxes are unix ones, though, but the index files start rebuilding each time you modify them with another client. I don't think it supports any other mailbox formats. Flexible filtering, too, although I've only tried it for a few days.

Basically, if you use imap, you can use whatever mailer you like. I use Sylpheed-claws more and more, keeping pine as backup because it's so flexible with folders and to run remotely ofcourse.

Many people would take mutt over pine any day, especially for flexibility, but although I am a relatively long time unix user (and admin) and I keep it installed and configured, I really can't get the hang of it. It's like vim or emacs: all unix geeks swear by it, but I still use pico/nano... there go my guru points, I guess.