Subject: PC/PINE will not open my mailbox, help!

From: Timothy Luoma <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2001 07:48:02 -0400 (EDT)

Issue #1) PC-PINE is confused by something in my read message box and will
not open it!  First it says something about

[Invalid UID 00000153 in message 336, rebuilding UIDs]

(it says this for 3-4 messages)

then it says something about "unable to parse internal header" (I can't
read the rest because it doesn't stay around long enough)

So I now cannot read any of the messages in my 'read' mailbox!

How can I solve this?  I have several hundred messages in there that I
need to be able to get at!!!

Larger Issue #2) I have now discovered, much to my horror and dismay, that
PC-PINE (unlike Unix pine) does not store my email messages in plain text,
but in some proprietary format that does not allow me to open my 'read'
mailbox in a text editor and see the text.  WHY IS THAT?!?!??!  Can I make
PC-PINE use regular flat files?

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From: Timothy Luoma <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2001 17:03:10 -0400 (EDT)

Well I split the mailbox using sed, formail and procmail, and now have
access to my messages again....

Is there NO way to force PC-PINE to use regular flat files?  (Performance
is not as critical to me as not being locked out of my mailbox ever
again!)

> PC-PINE use regular flat files?

Thanks
Tim

---

From: Nancy McGough <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2001 14:12:19 +0100

--On Saturday, 28 April, 2001 Timothy Luoma wrote:
> Well I split the mailbox using sed, formail and procmail, and now
> have access to my messages again....
>
> Is there NO way to force PC-PINE to use regular flat files?
> (Performance is not as critical to me as not being locked out of my
> mailbox ever again!)
>
>> Larger Issue #2) I have now discovered, much to my horror and
>> dismay, that PC-PINE (unlike Unix pine) does not store my email
>> messages in plain text, but in some proprietary format that does
>> not allow me to open my 'read' mailbox in a text editor and see
>> the text.  WHY IS THAT?!?!??!  Can I make PC-PINE use regular flat
>> files?

I've had the same frustrations you've had Tim and I refuse to use MBX 
mailboxes until there are tools (for both Unix and Windows) to 
*easily* fix a corrupted MBX mailbox. Another problem with MBX 
mailboxes is that you cannot use any of the tools that assume your 
local mailboxes are in Unix mbox format, for example grepmail (which 
is amazingly cool BTW) and Mulberry [+]. Mulberry -- like all IMAP 
clients -- can access MBX mailboxes using IMAP though. The way that I 
ensure my mailboxes are in Unix mbox format is to:

1) Mainly store my mailboxes on a UW IMAP server that defaults to use 
Unix mbox format.

2) If I need a mailbox on my PC for some reason (e.g. I want to 
access it when I'm offline), I ftp the mailbox from the Unix system 
to my PC.

3) Use Cygwin Pine which defaults to creating local mailboxes in Unix 
mbox format. [+]

4) If I need to create a local mailbox with PC-Pine, I specify the 
mailbox name like this:

     #driver.unix\relative\path\to\mailbox

where the path is relative to %HOME%. Or like this

     #driver.unix\\full\path\to\mailbox

where the full path is on the current drive (usually C:). Or like this

     #driver.unix\D:\full\path\to\mailbox

where the full path is on D drive.

As you can imagine, this is a pain when you want to create a mailbox 
in a /really/long/directory/path/that/is/not/relative/to/HOME. 
Unfortunately, #driver.unix is not aware of the current folder 
collection and gives a message like this

 [Folder "#driver.unix\mailbox" created outside current collection]

if you try to add a mailbox to the current collection.

REQUEST TO PINE DEVELOPERS
==========================
* Have "#driver.unix\relative\path\to\mailbox" be relative to the 
current  collection rather than %HOME%.

* Add a variable to Pine that lets a PC-Pine user specify the default 
mailbox format. I tried doing this:

   disable-these-drivers=mbx

but that didn't work.

* Add information to the Pine web site about #driver.unix. If it's 
already there, change the search engine so that when you do a search 
for "driver.unix", the relevant pages show up. Maybe this is just a 
matter of telling users how to escape a period in the PIC search 
engine???

QUESTION
========
Does anyone know where I can find a precompiled version of UW IMAP 
for Cygwin? This way I could use mbxcopy and mbxcvt to convert MBX 
mailboxes on my PC to Unix mbox format. Also I could access and 
create all my local PC mailboxes using UW IMAP and thus they would 
default to being in Unix mbox format.

Thanks,
Nancy
posted & cc'd

[+] For info about grepmail, Cygwin Pine, a comparison of Pine & 
Mulberry, and lots more Pine info, see

     http://www.ii.com/internet/messaging/pine/

-- 
Nancy McGough          http://www.ii.com          Infinite Ink
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