Subject: How to set up pine read news only?

From: Paul H Kramer <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 1993 15:37:14 -0500 (CDT)

At our university, a person sees a full-screen menu after s/he logs in.  
Two of the items on the menu are worded M)ail and N)etwork News.  If the 
person presses M then pine is launched and if N is pressed then nn is 
launched.  If I substitute pine for nn, how can I keep pine from going 
into the INBOX.  I want pine when launched as a news reader to only look 
at USENET newsgroups.  I don't want the person to be able to switch into 
their personal mailboxes when they originally started pine as a news reader.

Second unrelated question, does anybody have a written document that they 
would be willing to share with me that explains why pine would be a 
better mail agent than elm for general users.  I need something that I 
can present that would make people see the light and switch to pine.

Paul
--
Paul H Kramer					Computing Resource Center
(402) 472-5427     				Room 120, 501 Building
[email-masked]					University of Nebraska-Lincoln

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From: Joel Ness <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 93 16:41:46 -0600

>   At our university, a person sees a full-screen menu
>   after s/he logs in.   Two of the items on the menu are
>   worded M)ail and N)etwork News.  If the  person presses
>   M then pine is launched and if N is pressed then nn is
>   launched.  If I substitute pine for nn, how can I keep
>   pine from going  into the INBOX.  I want pine when
>   launched as a news reader to only look  at USENET
>   newsgroups.  I don't want the person to be able to
>   switch into  their personal mailboxes when they
>   originally started pine as a news reader.
>   
>   Second unrelated question, does anybody have a written
>   document that they  would be willing to share with me
>   that explains why pine would be a  better mail agent
>   than elm for general users.  I need something that I

This is mostly a "me too" kind of reply in that we are also very interested in
other folk's experiences with using Pine as an interface to news.

Our interest is because we want to make it easier to electronically distribute
general announcements and information on campus. We don't want to distribute the
same email message to many hundreds of mail boxes (inefficient and, to some
folk, annoying). News groups are the ideal vehicle, but the learning curve for
most Unix mail interfaces would prevent most folks from reading news the
conventional way. Eventually, people can use Mac and PC based news readers (and
mail programs) with nicer interfaces. But for now most use some type of vt100
access to our central systems.

If most of our folk are already logging in and running Pine to read mail, they'd
have no problems using the same Pine interface to read announcements. We've
started playing around with 3.85 and have found that we can have .pinerc file
point to specific newsgroups and, using the initial keystroke options, start
Pine right into an index screen of that mail group.

What we'd like to know is what options/problems other folks have discovered for
similar types of services. Ideally, we'd like to present people with a front end
menu of commonly used Unix applications such as mail, announcements, scheduling,
and file management. Choosing mail gives you Pine, choosing announcements gives
you Pine pointed at a newsgroup (we assume we'd have to have this use a
different .pinerc for this). 

Anyone else trying similar things yet?
_________________________
Joel Ness
UMD Information Services
[email-masked]
(218) 726-8841

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From: David L Miller <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 1993 14:48:16 -0700 (PDT)

Are you sure you want to do this with the current version of Pine?  The 
current version of Pine can only read news.  It cannot subscribe, 
unsubscribe or post messages.  You still need another newsreader, like 
nn, to manage your subscriptions.

|\ |  |\/|  David L. Miller    [email-masked]  (206) 685-6240
|/ |_ |  |  Software Engineer, Pine Development Team   (206) 685-4045 (FAX)
University of Washington, Networks & Distributed Computing
4545 15th Ave NE, Seattle WA 98105, USA

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From: David L Miller <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 1993 15:15:32 -0700 (PDT)

> >   originally started pine as a news reader.

You could launch pine with the '-nr' option.  This puts it into a special
anonymous mode specifically for newsreading.  You could also use the '-p'
or '-P' option to use an alternative to .pinerc or
/usr/local/lib/pine.conf, respectively.  

> >   can present that would make people see the light and

Hmmm...  About the best sales pitch we have found is a demo.  There is a 
special demo account, [email-masked], that anyone can 
use to get a feel for Pine.

> other folk's experiences with using Pine as an interface to news.
Pine's news interface is at a very early stage of development right now.  
This is a very high priority topic for future releases though...

> different .pinerc for this). 
Calendar and scheduling functions are on the list of requested features 
for Pine.  I don't know when/if we will get to them, but they are on there.

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From: Peter Scott U Sask Library Systems Dept <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 1993 17:50:12 -0600 (CST)

> nn, to manage your subscriptions.

I've just made my subscribed newsgroups available via Pine. If I want to 
reply to a message I hit R for reply, delete the To:, and address it to:
"newsgroup"@cs.utexas.edu, which then forwards my reply to all sites 
getting Usenet. The only thing to remember is to add dashes instead of 
periods to a newsgroup's name:
i.e. [email-masked]

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From: Steve Hubert <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 1993 17:03:54 -0700 (PDT)

> /usr/local/lib/pine.conf, respectively.  

Careful with this.  This is mostly intended as a UW flag and is in a 
state of flux.

Steve