Duke University
Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development

Computing & Statistics Lab

Chapter 7 E-mail - And you think overnight delivery is quick

pine - a Program for Internet News & Email

     pine (lower case p) is the friendliest of the UNIX email programs.
Though originally designed for inexperienced email users, Pine has evolved
to support many advanced features, and an ever-growing number of
configuration and personal-preference options, some of which are discussed
below.

Advantages:
1. It comes with and uses the pico text editor for composing your
   messages.
2. It allows you to create folders for organizing your messages. 
3. You can print directly from it to any of the geri system printers.
4. A personal address book for both individual addresses and lists of
   addresses.
5. Will query the Duke on-line telephone book for the email addresses of
   other Duke employees.
6. Is easily accessible from any computer in the world that has any of
   the commonly available telnet or ssh programs; looks and acts the same
   as when you are in your office.
7. Your email is backed up every day.
8. Has auto-reply for when you are out of the office.
9. Can be easily forwarded to another email address.

Disadvantages:
1. Dealing with attachements involves more steps than with a pc based
   email client. (See below.)

POP3 and IMAP -

     POP3 (Post Office Protocol 3) and IMAP (Internet Message Access
Protocol) are protocols implemented by such pc email programs as Eudora,
Microsoft Outlook and Netscape Messenger. These programs use one or the
other of these protocols to send and receive email through a fully
functioning email server that acts as a relay. In our case that server is
geri.duke.edu. Some email clients implement both protocols, and it is up
to the user to configure the client to actually use one or the other.

     The most significant difference in the way the protocols work is
that when a POP client checks the server for new mail, the new mail is
downloaded to the pc and deleted from the server. IMAP leaves the original
message on the server.

     What does that mean to you? If you use a POP client to check your
email in your office in the afternoon and then want to re-read a message
from home, you cannot do it. The message has been removed from the server
and exists only on the pc in your office.

     IMAP clients do not have that problem. They leave messages on the
sever and must be configured to delete those messages from the server when
you delete them from your pc. Sometimes even that does not work, and you
need to log on interactively to the geri system, run 'pine', then quit
from it. At that time you will be prompted for confirmation to delete all
the messages that were marked for deletion by the IMAP client. Say yes to
that prompt.

Dealing with attachements in pine -

     There are a few extra steps involved when you receive an email
attachement using the pine email program. First you must save it as a file
in your unix directory. pine will prompt you with a message similar to
this:

    [ Part 2, Application/MSEXCEL  24KB. ]
    [ Cannot display this part. Press "V" then "S" to save in a file. ]

     Press "V" as prompted, then, when you press "S", you may or may not 
be prompted with a name for the file. You can accept what the system gives
you or give it a name yourself. (Whichever you do, be sure to remember the
name.)

     Now that you have the attached file unattached, you have two choices:
open it with the StarOffice program on the UNIX system or download it to
your pc to be opened with the appropriate pc program.

Is your email slow??

     Do you feel like it is taking an awfully long time for your inbox to
open? It's probably too full. Try to get it down to under 100 messages by
either deleting some or moving them to folders. It's especially important
to clean out those messages with attachements larger than 100K.