September 16, 1994 University of Washington, Computing & Communications
Pine(TM) is an electronic mail system created and maintained by the Computing & Communications group at the University of Washington. To help support Pine, a starter version of this document was created by C&C in 1994 for Pine 3.9. To meet local needs and conditions, modifications may have been made to either Pine or this document or both by local computer consultants. The local version of this document is maintained by IT Services, University of Reading.
Pine is a trademark of the University of Washington. Permission to use this document for non-commercial purposes, in original or modified form, is granted, provided that the original source of the document is acknowledged as University of Washington Computing & Communications and that this paragraph, as well as the notice above, are retained on the title page of any documentation based on this text.
See Document Conventions for information on the meaning of the text formatting used below.
For more information on Pine, see Pine Information Center at the University of Washington. (URL - http://www.cac.washington.edu/pine) This includes a Frequently Asked Questions section but can take a long time to access.
Electronic mail (email) allows you to communicate quickly and easily with colleagues on campus and around the world. The use of email is rapidly increasing, changing teaching, learning, research, health care, business, and administration.
See http://www.leeds.ac.uk/ucs/docs/ove2/ove2.html which is an overview of Electronic Mail written by Leeds University Computing Services. N.B. It contains much useful general information but also details that are relevant only to the Leeds service.
Pine is a sophisticated yet easy-to-use email program that was created at the University of Washington with the specific goal of being responsive to new email users.
Pine offers:
The text that follows does not tell you everything about Pine. It only introduces Pine's main options and summarizes basic email guidelines. The best way to learn to use Pine is to explore it on your own. Pine was designed to make it easy for you to learn to use email: there is information on each screen and in the online help that shows you what to do or answers your questions. Try the different options and have fun experimenting with Pine.
Electronic Mail using Pine: Contents
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Before you can use Pine to correspond by email, you need to have a username (an account) on the University Distributed System. If you don't have one already, User Registration Forms are available from IT Services Reception. After completing the form and handing it in at IT Services Reception, you will receive a username and e-mail address. For Undergraduates, these will be the same with the latter suffixed with @reading.ac.uk. For Postgraduates and Staff, the e-mail address is based on your name and initials. Eg John Jeremiah Smith's e-mail address would be j.j.smith@reading.ac.uk.
There are 2 different versions of Pine available on IT Services facilities. The way you use the 2 versions is essentially the same but they are accessed in different ways. On Windows 95 machines, the pine icon opens up PC-Pine and the Accessing 'main' icon gives access to unix pine running on our central main computer. On other machines the telnet icon gives access to unix pine. PC-Pine is the recommended version to use where possible.
To use Unix pine, you need to login to the university system. For details of how to login,
see
http://www.rdg.
ac.uk/ITS/Topic/LocalNet/LoGLogin01.
PC-Pine is available on IT Services PC Software Archive for downloading to networked campus PCs - see Installing PC Pine for details.
Electronic Mail using Pine: Contents
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To start PC-Pine double-click the Pine desktop icon.
To start unix pine login and type pine at the command prompt (normally main%) and then press <Return>.
After starting Pine, the Main Menu window is displayed with your username at the bottom. Press <Return> and then enter your password when requested. Each Pine screen has a similar layout: the top line tells you the screen name and additional useful information, below that is the work area (on the Main Menu screen, the work area is a menu of options), then the message/prompt line, and finally the menu of commands.
To quit: When you want to leave Pine, type Q (Quit). For details, see Leaving Pine.
The Main Menu
The Main Menu lists Pine's main options. The letter you must type to enter your choice is to the left of each option or command name. You can usually type either uppercase or lowercase letters, and you should not press <Return> to enter commands.
From the Main Menu, you can read online help, write and send a message, look at an index of your mail messages, open or maintain your mail folders, update your address book, configure or update Pine, and quit Pine.
PINE 3.95 MAIN MENU Folder:INBOX 2 Messages
? HELP - Get help using Pine
C COMPOSE MESSAGE - Compose and send a message
I FOLDER INDEX - View messages in current folder
L FOLDER LIST - Select a folder OR newsgroup to view
A ADDRESS BOOK - Update address book
S SETUP - Configure or update Pine
Q QUIT - Exit the Pine program
Copyright 1989-1996. PINE is a trademark of the University of Washington.
[Folder "INBOX" opened with 2 messages]
? Help P PrevCmd R RelNotes
O OTHER CMDS L [ListFldrs] N NextCmd
Now that you know how to start Pine, you can explore on your own, or you can choose from the Contents list for summaries of Pine's main features.
Getting Help in Pine
To read the online help, use the Help command at the bottom of each screen. For example, at the Main Menu screen, type ? (Help). Because the help text is context sensitive, you never see all of it at once--only the part that relates to the Pine feature you are using. To exit the online help, type E (Exit Help).
Electronic Mail using Pine: Contents or Next Section
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To: The University of Reading main page or IT Services main page.