Subject: Recovering A Pine Session After Disconnect

From: [email-masked] (Zach Cox)
Date: 2 Dec 1995 16:32:52 GMT

My internet service provider gives each subscriber a UNIX shell 
account...  That shell account has access to PINE as the mail program... 
 I find this a very good way to handle e-mail since I can logon from 
various computers and all my mail is in one place rather than scattered 
all over the place...

Every now and then I get disconnected in the middle of composing an 
e-mail...  After getting successfully re-connected to and upon starting 
up PINE and choosing compose the message I was working on comes back 
just like I had used the ^O (postpone) option...  I do not know what to 
do to assure that this event will take place...

Sometimes it seems that the e-mail I was working on goes into the 
"bit-bucket"...

I wonder if any "pine-grurus" (or perhaps UNIX grurus) out there know 
what to do to reattach to a session that was terminated by a 
disconnect...  Murphy's Law states that this event will only occur while 
composing the longest messages...

Thanks in advance...

Zach...

========================================================================
Name:       Zach Cox                           Senior Software Engineer.
Internet:   [email-masked]                        Nexus Software Inc.
CompuServe: 76543,2003                   I teach computers how to dream.
========================================================================

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From: "James M. Cobb" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 8 Dec 1995 19:04:08 -0500

Zach, 

Press ^Z.  This gets you to the UNIX prompt without closing 
pine.  At that prompt, type pico.  Press Enter.  That puts 
you in the pico editor.  Begin composing.  Periodically, save 
or write out to the SAME filename.  (Choose a single-letter 
filename for convenience.)  After each save or write-out, at 
the prompt type pico. Press Enter. In pico, press ^R, then 
enter filename.  Press Enter.  Continue composing.  Choose a 
period for the cycle that you feel comfortable with.  Upon 
completion of the composition, save it or write it out.  Exit 
pico. 
 
Again at the UNIX prompt, type fg (=foreground) to get back 
into pine.  Enter compose-message screen.  Bring the cursor 
down into the message BODY.  Press ^R.  Enter filename of 
composition.  Press Enter.  To then get to top of the message 
body, press ^W followed by ^Y.  Move cursor into header and 
make the appropriate entries.  Send message. 
 
If you have a sent-message folder, you then can press ^Z and 
at the UNIX prompt type rm <filename>.  Again type fg to get 
back in pine. 
 
Of course you can start in the compose-message screen, make 
the appropriate header-entries, put cursor in BODY of message, 
press ^Z, type pico, etc. 
 
Yes, it's inconvenient.  But if the composition is important 
and long, it's much more inconvenient to lose it. 
 
If the system goes down while you're composing, the FILE con- 
taining almost all of your composition will almost always be 
restored when service resumes; and sometimes you'll even get 
a message that you can retrieve what pico itself dumped when 
the system went down.    

Cordially, 
 
Jim