Subject: Apples and Oranges

From: "Ed Greshko" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1998 08:48:41 +0800

Hi,

I've just been made aware that QuarkExpress is actually destop publishing
software.  So, it would appear, that its comparison with pine was irrelevant
to the discussion.

Regards,
Ed

--
Edward M. Greshko                  Technical Manager, Electronic Commerce
GSM: +65-9751-0860                 Control Data Asia/Pacific Region
PGPKeyID:4B5EDDBF Print:E082 E2FC 2D14 C10D 8E06  3B60 2BCF C959 4B5E DDBF

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From: Tawfik Daoud <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1998 00:53:11 +0000 (WET)

Dear All,
Latetly our mail boxes were filled with long stream of characters 
regarding Pine and alternatives. I guess this is not the place to
put such comments. Most of the people here do use pine on daily basis and
they are here to get help or help the others. Such comments are out of 
this Discussion list scope. 
Regards,
_______________________________________
Tawfik H. Daoud
Cyber Mania - Internet Service Provider
68, Avenue Mohamed V,
93000 Tetouan, Morocco
Telephone: +212.9.704987
Fax: +212.9.965883
E-mail: [email-masked]
http://www.cybermania.net.ma

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From: Jan Kalin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1998 10:43:53 +0200

Hi!

> software.  So, it would appear, that its comparison with pine was irrelevant

I'm not sure about that. The number of bugs in a new release *is*
relevant. But the problem lies in comparing two completely different
models of development.

QE is commercial software (http://www.quark.com/), priced at around $700 ,
i.e., someone is making money out of your copy, Pine is freeware,
supported and developed by enthusiasts who are doing it for free! It is
*this* difference that makes the comparison irrelevant, like comparing
Microsoft Windows (incidentally, do you really trust a company named after
its' owner's private parts? sorry, couldn't resist }:-) and Linux.

What I'm trying to say is that for your e-mail user agent you can use
commercial software (not QE, obviously, but Eudora and other similar
products), where you pay for the product, expect it to be bug-free (VERY
wishful thinking), and have little or no influence on the features in the
next release.

On the other hand you can use something like Pine, which is free, in which
you do expect an occasional bug to crop up, but where YOU can fix the bug
and add new features, if you wish and have the know-how to do so. And even
if you cannot do it, there is always someone else in the crowd of many
thousands of users and the number of "official" developpers who can and
*will* listen to your complaints.

Incidentally, has anyone heard of any commercial software that has had 5
bug-fix releases and one patch in just over two months? Now that's rapid
response to bug reports! One of the complaints in this thread was about
too many releases in too short a time. I just wish I could say the same
for the M$ Windows. The solution to the too-many-releases is simple: Just
say no!

Nobody's forcing anyone to use newer versions. Pine 3.96 was around for
about a year and a half and it worked fine. When 4.00 came out I
downloaded and compiled it right away because of new features, *expecting*
to maybe have some problems (which I didn't have) but also *knowing* that
whatever they would be, they would get fixed quickly.

Cheers,
Jan

-- 
 Jan Kalin (male, preferred languages: Slovene, English)
 <A HREF="http://www.zag.si/~jank/"> contact information </A>

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From: Jeff A Kinsey <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1998 07:55:12 -0400 (EDT)

thank you jan for expressing what many of us feel... open source is
the wave of the future. i still use pine v3.95 and have made pine my
choice since 1992 because it simply works! of course, the cost is
nice; but that is not the major factor. knowing that i can jump
on the internet and get answers is the biggest factor for me.

and it is nice that i can keep my 'mouse' hand free for drinking
coffee and not HAVE to point and click endlessly to write a note.

-jeff

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From: Jan Kalin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1998 15:22:53 +0200

> coffee and not HAVE to point and click endlessly to write a note.

Not to mention the fact that Pine is the only mail client I know of which
works exactly the same on all the platforms I use (PC, SGI Indy and Sun
Sparcstation) or am likely to use. Add to this the ability to store
addressbooks on the server without having to install directory server
programs (e.g., LDAP) and the availability of vim (Vi IMproved editor) on
both PC and Unix systems, and I now have a single mail program which
behaves exactly the same from wherever I choose to access my mail and
which enables me to have exactly the same state of my mail folders
whenever I use it. And even when I occasionally want to access mail from
somewhere else, I can always telnet to one of the machines and I'm in
business. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I can't think of any other setup
which would come near this.

This is also the only mailer I've seen which *really* is simple enough for
a complete beginner to use and has enough features to satisfy probably the
most demanding power users (hooks for filters, external editor...) . To
illustrate, my girlfriend barely sat down in front of computer before I
left Slovenia for a temporary job in Belgium (she's almost has a
computerphobia), but is now happily using Pine (and solitaire :) She's
even happier with the v4.00 which can fire up Netscape to look at URLs I
send her through the mail (before this she wasn't quite sure what to do
with the URLs in spite of instructions).

But then the readers of this forum are probably aware of the advantages of
Pine so I'm probably just gathering points with the developers in case I
have something I'd like to see in Pine ;)

Cheers,
Jan

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From: Chris Wood <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1998 09:15:04 -0600 (MDT)

> programs (e.g., LDAP) and the availability of vim (Vi IMproved editor) on

I have been in search of how to let a pc-pine 4.x see the addressbook on
my unix machine that all of my unix pine 4.x people use.  How do I go
about this without using LDAP?

-=-=-=-=-=-
Chris Wood                         Kitco, Inc.
[[email-masked]]                 Durham Aircraft Services
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

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From: Jan Kalin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1998 18:14:34 +0200

> about this without using LDAP?

This is an excerpt from "HELP ON CONFIGURING ADDRESS BOOKS" from Pine
4.05:

========================================================================
Please note: Remote address books stored on an IMAP server are of an
entirely different format (namely, a special-purpose "mail folder") than
that of the local addressbook familiar to Pine users. Therefore, you
cannot use "add a remote address book" to make an existing Pine
.addressbook file you may have on a remote IMAP server accessible to Pine
running on a different host.
========================================================================

So you cannot direcly access a Unix local address book. What you can do is
install an IMAP server on the Unix box (if it isn't already running), move
Unix local address books to 'remote' address books actually residing on
the Unix machine and have PCPine access the same remote address books.

Here's how I did it:

My setup:
- login account on "mail.zag.si" (also the mail server, so no need for
  extra IMAP installation)
- username "jkalin"
- personal mail directory "~/mail"
- personal address book "~/mail/.addressbook"

In both Unix Pine and PCPine I have added the personal address book (with
<M>ain / <S>etup / <A>ddressBooks / <A>dd Pers Abook):

Server Name : mail.zag.si/user=jkalin
Folder Name : mail/.addressbook
Nickname    :

I have then copied with Unix Pine all of the entries in the (former) Unix
address book to the new remote address book by (thanks to someone on the
forum - I don't remember who - for this tip)

- going to <M>ain / <A>ddress Book
- opening the local address book
- selecting all with <;> / select <A>ll
- and saving them with <A>pply / <S>ave / <S>ave to the remote address
  book 

If the login account is on a different machine than the mail server, you
will presumably be prompted for the login password when you first access
the address book in a Pine session.

I hope this answers your question.

Cheers,
Jan

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From: Chris Wood <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1998 13:07:35 -0600 (MDT)

> the Unix machine and have PCPine access the same remote address books.

Is this assuming that the unix pine is accessing things via IMAP just as
pc-pine is?  or... is this assuming unix pine is accessing things locally
and pc-pine is accessing things via IMAP?

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From: Elad Eyal <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1998 23:13:21 +0200 (IST)

Good morning,

> cannot use "add a remote address book"to make an existing Pine

Alas, you can't, can you. Which means - if you're anything like me - you'd
have to key in your password, /even though/ the addressbook is a local
file. I wonder if there's a collosally good reason why Pine can't read and
write a remote addressbook locally.

 _
(_  /  _    /           ( E-mail pigeons nest in binary trees )
(__/__(/\_(/         http://www.cs.bgu.ac.il/~elad

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From: Jan Kalin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1998 10:23:47 +0200

> and pc-pine is accessing things via IMAP?

Both Pines have to access address books via IMAP. That's because the local
and remote address books have different formats. So you cannot access the
same information both locally and via IMAP.

It might help you to think of mail folders (after all, Pine's remote
address books are just that: special-format folders). You can access local
folders locally and remote folders from wherever in the Internet you are.
To see the same folder (or address book) you *have* to make it remote,
even though it might physically reside on the same machine as one of the
Pines you're using.

Cheers,
Jan