Subject: LONG: Some other documentation on Pine 3.92 (and Pico 2.6)

From: Barry Cornelius <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 1996 17:20:59 +0000 (GMT)

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1.   Introduction

Last Tuesday, new versions of Pine (3.92) and Pico (2.6) were released by
the Pine Development Team at the University of Washington.  Since it has
been 17 months since the Pine Development Team have released a new version
of Pine, numerous changes have appeared.  However, there are few changes
that affect the "novice user".  Most of the changes are additional
bells-and-whistles for so-called "power users".

Full details of these changes are given in Pine 3.92's Release Notes
(which are available by pressing R from the main menu of Pine 3.92).
You can also get a lot of useful information by pressing the ? key whilst
browsing through Pine's Configuration Screen.

The remainder of this message contains part of a document that I originally
prepared for internal consumption at the University of Durham.  I have sent
it to this mailing list just in case it is of interest to others.
It essentially contains my personal view of the most useful changes, and
how they may be used.  The message is subdivided as follows:
      2.   Controlling the way in which Pine displays information
      3.   Additional facilities whilst composing messages
      4.   Improvements in printing messages
      5.   Changes to Usenet News
      6.   Additional facilities for aggregate commands
      7.   Facilities that can be used in the X Window System
      8.   Some other new facilities
I hope that it does not contain any errors.  Let me know if you find
some.

2.   Controlling the way in which Pine displays information

2.1  Displaying MIME attachments

Given an attachment containing some file, Pine uses mime-types files to
map from the file's extension to a content-type and mailcap files to map
from the content-type to a viewer.  You can therefore use these two
facilities to start a viewer (e.g., xv) automatically if the attachment
has a certain file extension (e.g., jpeg).  Pine has standard locations
for the mime-types and mailcap files: for example, any user can use
configure their own viewers using the files ~/.mime.types and ~/.mailcap.

2.2  Displaying information in an addressbook

In Pine 3.92, you can control the layout of the addressbook by the
changing the value of the addressbook-formats variable.  Its default
setting is:
   NICKNAME FULLNAME ADDRESS
An addressbook also has a COMMENT and an FCC field.  If you add
additional information in the COMMENT field of each addressbook entry,
then you could get this information displayed by setting this variable to:
   NICKNAME FULLNAME(25) ADDRESS COMMENT

2.3  Displaying the index of a folder

In Pine 3.92, you can control the layout of the index of a folder by the
changing the value of the index-format variable.  Its default setting is:
   STATUS MSGNO DATE FROMORTO(33%) SIZE SUBJECT(67%)

3.   Additional facilities whilst composing messages

3.1  Controlling the column at which Pine's composer wraps lines

In Pine 3.92, you can set the column at which Pine's composer wraps long
lines.  This is done by setting the composer-wrap-column variable.

3.2  Giving ^K the same meaning as in emacs (and elsewhere)

In Pine 3.91, pressing ^K means delete the contents of the current line
(unless a "mark" has been set).  In 3.92, you can configure Pine to delete
from the cursor position to the end of the current line (as is done in
emacs and elsewhere).  You do this by adding:
   compose-cut-from-cursor
to the feature-list variable.  The emacs-effect only seems to work in the
body of the message: it has its old effect in the headers of a message and
when using the new version of Pico (Pico 2.6) in stand-alone mode.

3.3  Composing a message with 8-bit characters

In Pine 3.92, when composing a message you can type in an 8-bit character
by typing the 5 characters ESC ESC d d d, where ESC is the escape key and
the "d d d" are three decimal digits for the character.  For example, if
the resulting message is viewed on an ISO-8859-1 device, then the meaning
of the three decimal digit values 231 to 235 are c-cedilla, e-grave,
e-acute, e-circumflex and e-umlaut.  This facility is also available in
the new version of Pico (Pico 2.6).

3.4  Editing your .signature file from within Pine

In Pine 3.92, you can edit the file containing your signature by pressing
S followed by S from the main menu.

4.   Improvements in printing messages

4.1  Setting up your own print commands

In Pine, the Select Printer screen is obtained by pressing S followed by P
from the main menu.  In 3.91, there were three printing methods:
attached-to-ansi, the standard Unix print command (lp) or a personal print
command.  And you used either 1, 2 or 3 to select the default printing
method.  With 3.92, there is an attached-to-ansi-no-formfeed as well as
attached-to-ansi, and you can add as many personal printing commands as
you wish.

If you want to add a new personal printing method, move the cursor so that
"Personally selected print command" is highlighted and then press A.
Pine then asks you for the printer name.  This need not be a "printer name":
it is really a name to identify this printing method.  So, it can be any
name: it can indeed be the name of a printer, some nickname for the
printing method (e.g., "twoup" or "upstairs"), or it can be left empty.
Terminate the "printer name" with the Enter key.  It will then ask you to
enter the command to be used for this printing method (followed by Enter).
This may be any Unix command or the special commands attached-to-ansi or
attached-to-ansi-no-formfeed.  You can repeat this A command as often as
you wish, and in this way you build up a list of personal printing
methods.

In order to select the default printing method, you don't use 1, 2 or 3 as
in Pine 3.91: instead you use the cursor-moving keys to highlight the
method and then press the S key.

If your default is one of the personal printing methods, then when you issue
the Y command (to print), it will ask you whether you want to print using
this method.  However, in the menu at the bottom of the screen, as well as
"Y Yes" and "N No" you will also see ^P and ^N.  If you decline by
pressing ^P or ^N instead of Y, it will display the previous/next printing
method in your list of personal printing methods, and you will now be given
an opportunity to print using this printing method.  Normally, it will
prompt you with the "printer name":  however, if, when configuring your
list of personal printing methods, you entered an empty "printer name",
then it will prompt you with the actual Unix command that will be used.
For this reason, you may find it helpful to have empty "printer names".

4.2  Choosing the Unix command line when you come to print

In Pine 3.92, you can add:
   print-offers-custom-cmd-prompt
to the feature-list variable, and when you issue the Y command (to print)
the menu at the bottom of the screen will have an additional choice
"C CustomPrint" besides "Y Yes" and "N No".  If you press C, you can type
in any Unix command (to print the message).

5.   Changes to Usenet News

5.1  Replying to an article of a newsgroup

In Pine 3.92, using R to reply to an article of a newsgroup asks you to
press F to follow-up to the newsgroup, R to reply to the author of the
article, or B to do both.  This is clearer than the method used in
Pine 3.91.

5.2  Finding out which articles are new

If you would like Pine 3.92 to mark more-or-less recent new articles of a
Usenet News newsgroups, then add:
   news-approximates-new-status
to the feature-list variable.  Note that this is an approximation, and not
an exact record of which messages you have not seen.

6.   Additional facilities for aggregate commands

6.1  A short-cut for tagging the current message and moving to the next

In Pine 3.91, when in the index of a folder, a ; followed by C followed by
cursor-down done repeatedly will "tag" consecutive messages.  In 3.92,
this three character sequence can be done by just pressing the : key.
Note: both ; and : are illegal unless you have added
enable-aggregate-command-set to the feature-list variable.

6.2  Printing messages that have been tagged

In Pine 3.91, after using the ; command to tag some messages, you can use
the apply command to do a command to each of the tagged messages.  One of
the possibilities is to print the set of messages.  If you do this, the
messages will be printed without any formfeed between the messages.
In 3.92, if you want a formfeed between messages, then add:
   print-formfeed-between-messages
to the feature-list variable.

7.   Facilities that can be used in the X Window System

7.1  Using the mouse to select

In Pine 3.92, you can add:
   enable-mouse-in-xterm
to the feature-list variable.  You will then be able to use the mouse for
some purposes if you are using Pine in an xterm window (but not in CDE's
dtterm window).  In particular, when you have a folder-index displayed
you can select a message using the mouse, and when composing a message you
can use the mouse to say where on the screen you want to type.

7.2  Finding out what new mail has arrived

In Pine 3.92, you can add:
   enable-newmail-in-xterm-icon
to the feature-list variable and, if you iconise an xterm window
containing a Pine session, then the icon will be altered if new mail
arrives.

8.   Some other new facilities

8.1  Finding out what commands you have executed

In Pine 3.92, the main menu has a J command (meaning "journal")  that
enables you to see what commands you have executed.  This may prove useful
when trying to solve a user's problem.

8.2  Controlling where Pine saves messages

In Pine 3.92, there is a saved-msg-name-rule that determines the default
folder name for Pine's S ("save") command.  You can choose between
default-folder, last-folder-used, by-from, by-sender, by-recipient,
by-nick-of-from, by-nick-of-sender, by-nick-of-recip, by-fcc-of-from,
by-fcc-of-sender, or by-fcc-of-recip.  The default is default-folder which
means using the saved-messages folder.  By-from falls back to by-sender if
there is no from, and vice versa for by-sender.  By-recipient will use the
newsgroup name if it was posted to a newsgroup.  The by-nick... forms are
like the same forms without the by-nick except that the resulting address
is looked up in the user's address books and if it is found, the nickname
for that entry is used.  The by-fcc... forms act in a similar way except
that the fcc from the address books is used instead.

8.3  Using PGP with Pine

In Pine 3.92, in order to add a digital signature to outgoing messages,
you can set sending-filters to be:
   /usr/local/bin/pgp -fats

You can also add:
   compose-send-offers-first-filter
to the feature-list variable if you wish.

In order to run pgp on messages that you are viewing (i.e., other people's
messages), you can set display-filters variable to be:
   _LEADING("-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----")_ /usr/local/bin/pgp

Although I am happy with the outgoing bit, I would like more control over
the display-filters: (a) it's difficult to see what pgp is telling me ---
it leaves the screen too quickly, (b) it would be nice to be able to
toggle display-filtering on and off.  Having said that, these hooks in
3.92 that enable digital signatures to be done a lot easier are very
useful.

8.4  Determining whether a message has been sent by you

Pine 3.92 has an alt-addresses variable.  This variable can be set to
other e-mail addresses which identify the current user in addition to
something like [email-masked].  At Durham, this will be
something like [email-masked] and [email-masked].
- From Pine 3.05 to Pine 3.91, we made local modifications to the source of
Pine that involved the use of a file called ~/.pinerc_extra to store
these additional e-mail addresses.  So, in Pine 3.92, all this code can be
removed and the alt-addresses variable used instead.  So Durham's startup
script for Pine now sets up an environment variable that is used by Pine's
pine.conf file to set up the alt-addresses variable.

- --
Barry Cornelius                      Telephone: (0191 or +44 191) 374 4717
Applications Division, IT Service,             IT Service Office: 374 2892
Science Site, University of Durham,                          Fax: 374 3741
Durham, DH1 3LE, UK                   E-mail: [email-masked]