Subject: Several Pine feature requests

From: Pierre-Philipp Braun <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 6 Jun 2004 10:23:40 +0200 (CEST)

Hi,

	I'm a Pine user for 4-5 years now and I'm more and more
astonished how the Pine suite powerful is, making email efficient, fast
and easy. I'm especially impressed by the rich features it provides,
which aren't available on any other email client. Even Pico doesn't
share specific justify and paragraph behaviors with pico-like attempts
like jpico.

Nevertheless, you will find below some feature requests, which i sorted
by importance (reverse, thus most important at the top),

	. Update Pine license to permit users and developers to feel
free and trust the project completely. Considering that Pine may be
stopped one day or switched to even more closed source software by
University of Washington is a part of the horizon i don't appreciate.
Even if this scenario is unlikely to happen, it's nevertheless
considered by experienced Open Source users, administrator, engineers,
and this makes especially sense in the digital world. Please update
anything you want give the feeling to your users you're not the only
owner of the Pine suite. Notice non endorsement and even advertisement
closes are considered as relevant options.

Notice : GNU nano may yet get the UNDO functionality working in the next
release. GNU nano developers don't *mainly* focus on pico compatibility
anymore (since succeeded), they are now looking forward to enhance their
editor.
	. Pico -- UNDO functionality, not just ^U, real recursive UNDO.

	. Pico -- automatic indentation option when carriage return on
an indented line.

	. Pine -- Please pull up Eduardo Chappa's fancy thread patch.
thread-sort-key is really great. You can sort w/ reverse arrival but
keep the threads going down as usual. Especially relevant for unsorted
MBOX-es like sent-mail or SPAM_BMF, which should be sorted by reverse/*.

	. Pico -- configuration *file*, not 2 digits long columns
aliases.

	. Pine -- Activate a bit more features in the default
configuration. New users may also like to use lots of user friendly
and/or power features without taking the time and pain to
scrolling/reading/cross_activating them.

Arriving users always implicitly complain about Pines ubiquitous
configuration procedure. Beside Pine's incredible power user features,
it obviously began to lack major features considering that most people
fetch their email-s from remote POP servers, don't have local SMTP
servers running and that NAT become a de-facto standard on home networks
connected to the Internet/IPv4,

	. Pine -- Fresh users recurrent questions are also justified by
the user-domain option which only sets the domain part of the
return-path. Making a role or a customized-hdr to set up the most
important thing behind the smtp-server, i mean the From header, seems
obviously irrelevant.

	. Pine -- Please permit the user to customize the user-name sent
to the SMTP server (MAIL FROM).

	. Pilot -- Make a feature rich file manager with the midnight
commander style cross copying/moving/+*linking* using TAB, recursive
removing and prompt for overwriting.

Thanks in advance for thinking about my requests and/or sharing your
answers/opinions with me. Special thanks, by the way, for being members
of the Pine team and developing such powerful software. At last, i
would like to say... Pine r0ks!

PINE-INFO Mailing-list in Cc.

Pierre-Philipp

---

From: Matt Ackeret <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 8 Jun 2004 11:45:26 -0700 (PDT)

>closes are considered as relevant options.

Seems to me the best response to this is "if you don't like it, don't use
it".

>	. Pico -- automatic indentation option when carriage return on

What is GNU nano?  Some kind of an editor, obviously.. but is it 
a pico clone or something?  (I don't use pico.)

indentation -- you mean like for editing source code?  Pico is intended
as a VERY VERY VERY VERY basic editor.  If you want more sophisticated
functionality, use the external editor support built in.

Personally, pine is the best example of a "friendly text-based program", that's
in almost all ways just as easy to use as any GUI program..  But if I 
couldn't use an external editor, I probably wouldn't use pine.

>MBOX-es like sent-mail or SPAM_BMF, which should be sorted by reverse/*.

This is the one that I was most intrigued by that made me respond.

Does this 'fancy threads' support have a way so that you can have it sorted
so that threads with new messages (even if the first message in the thread
is years old) are near the bottom?  If so, I'm all for it.  I "lose" messages
every once in a while because I have everything sorted by thread.  So every
once in a while I'll view by arrival just to make sure I haven't missed
anything.

>configuration. 

Specific examples would probably be useful here.  I suspect that they want
it as simple as possible for a beginner.

---

From: Rick Lewis <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 8 Jun 2004 14:55:42 -0700 (MST)

I'd love to see a Pine feature which would quell display of quoted text in 
messages.
This might be unrealistic, but if I never saw quoted text again, that 
would be fine with me.
Thus, at least lines beginning in > could be quelled, which hopefully 
could be overridden in the (rare) case when a quote needs to be read.
Using Braille and speech, but especially with speech, this could literally 
save at least an hour or two a week.
I know mutt has a weed feature which apparently does this, but since I use 
Pine, I'd love to see something like that implemented in my favorite email 
program.
Don't know how workable it would be, though.
--Rick

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---

From: Matt Ackeret <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 8 Jun 2004 17:38:58 -0700 (PDT)

On Tue, 8 Jun 2004, Rick Lewis wrote:
> This might be unrealistic, but if I never saw quoted text again, that would be
> fine with me.
> Thus, at least lines beginning in > could be quelled, which hopefully could be
> overridden in the (rare) case when a quote needs to be read.

How would you know when a section of the text was written by someone else
in the discussion history?

> save at least an hour or two a week.

Don't any of the screenreaders have a notion of "quoted text"?  I had
thought they would have had something like this long ago.  That is, I'm not
sure exactly what it would do, but maybe say "quote begins" at the end of
the quoted section.

---

From: Rick Lewis <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 02:50:56 -0700 (MST)

> in the discussion history?

Matt,
Generally I don't want to know.
I've read it before. My memory is good. Most people quote liberally, (or 
is that lazily?)
If this feature could use a keystroke to display quoted text when needed, 
instead of always, I could find out in the maybe five percent of cases 
when I really need to know.
> sure exactly what it would do, but maybe say "quote begins" at the end of

There are two major Windows screen readers. The one I have is the one 
which has the feature, but overall, I don't prefer it.
Since "set files" are used, which adjust a screen reader's parameters for 
particular applications, I don't even know if users of that program can 
easily get the same functionality with Pine, using Tera Term on a shell, 
or PC-Pine.
It may have taken extensive scripting tailored for Outlook Express, or 
extensive knowledge of the scripting language to tailor it for another 
program. I don't know for sure.
The problem, though, is that there isn't just one screen reading 
environment. (I'm really glad of that, actually. Choices are good.)
There are two major Windows screen readers and many others. And of course, 
there are DOS screen readers as well.
But cost is prohibitive, because, for example, since I already use a 
screen reader, paying over $500 for a screen reader I like less, so I can 
use one feature, is cost-prohibitive.
So personally, if quotes could just be 
stripped out of the message display, 
and only shown on demand, the same solution would be available to all.
It'd be much easier than teaching people to quote sparingly, which is a 
lost cause anyway.
Ryan, your idea is close, but some people quote at the top, (I'll stay off 
of that soapbox.)
It's not unusual on some lists to find the meat of the message in the 
third or fourth paragraph.
At least when quotes are at the bottom, one can just ignore text beyond a 
certain point, or as you have worked on, get rid of it entirely.
And that's certainly better than the status quo.
--Rick

---

From: Gopi Sundaram <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 11:25:07 -0500 (CDT)

On Tue, 8 Jun 2004, Rick Lewis wrote:

> I'd love to see a Pine feature which would quell display of quoted
> text in messages.

Use a display-filter. If you only care about > as a quote-prefix, the
filter is trivial. Even if not, you could take a look at Eduardo's patch
that lets you handle any quote-prefix, and steal some of his code (if
his license allows) to recognize the quote-prefix and not print any
lines that have it.

Pity, 'cause Pine now actually does the coloring for quoted text in
filtered output.

-- 
Gopi Sundaram
http://www.zrox.net/Mail/Pine/

---

From: Scott Swanson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 10:54:24 -0600 (MDT)

> Pity, 'cause Pine now actually does the coloring for quoted text in

Forgive me if I am ignorant, as I have never read the source for pine, but
if pine is already coloring the quoted text, wouldn't it be a simple
matter to allow the ansi begin-color sequence to become instead "start
copying to /dev/null", and ditto for the end-color? I suppose it's not
that easy; nothing ever is...

Scott Swanson

---

From: Scott Swanson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 11:06:02 -0600 (MDT)

A while ago, a couple of us were whining about the lack of a
directory-level facility for attaching/saving attachments. This would be
SO nice. For instance, this morning I had to send 24 pictures to one of my
wife's real estate clients. I just used a simple bash command line to have
djpeg scale them by half, then cjpeg degrade the quality to 60% so that
they didn't consume too much bandwidth. However, when it came to using
pine, I had to:

 a. quit pine
 b. restart pine in the directory where they were saved.
 c. type in EVERY STINKING FILE NAME on the attachment line.

Why wouldn't it be reasonable to SELECT THE DIRECTORY and have every file
there converted to an attachment!!!?

Ditto, of course, when somebody sends me an email with 24 pictures
attached! Why can't I just say "Save ALL of these in the directory I have
chosen"? In fact, pine doesn't even remember the last directory I saved
to, so I either have to type in the path for EACH ONE of the 24 pictures,
or else:

 a. quit pine
 b. restart pine in the desired directory

This is one of the most annoying features of this otherwise fine program!

Scott Swanson

---

From: Henrik Edlund <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 19:16:14 +0200 (CEST)

> there converted to an attachment!!!?

Talking about attachments. I would like to be able to mark several files 
using X in a directory, like you can do elsewhere in Pine for other stuff. 
Then I could so S(elect) on these and get them all attached.

Also it would be nice if one could enter a save directory for attachments 
and Pine would remember this during session. And in the Config be able to 
set a default directory (instead of just current or home directory) for 
attachments saves.

---

From: Barry Landy <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 18:48:13 +0100 (BST)

Pine has a standard feature operated by control-T which gives a search
of the appropriate things instead of typing. So control-T after save
lets you browse the folders.

In this case control-T after control-J (or equivalent clicks in the
windows version) allows you to browse all the files on the hard disk(s);
it also remembers where you are so that if attaching a second file you
look in the same place. Moreover clicking on the name (or typing return)
fills it in automatically.

That is not the same as selecting a number of files and going
"attach-all" but it goes a long way towards solving your problem.

:>A while ago, a couple of us were whining about the lack of a
:>directory-level facility for attaching/saving attachments. This would be
:>SO nice. For instance, this morning I had to send 24 pictures to one of my
:>wife's real estate clients. I just used a simple bash command line to have
:>djpeg scale them by half, then cjpeg degrade the quality to 60% so that
:>they didn't consume too much bandwidth. However, when it came to using
:>pine, I had to:
:>
:> a. quit pine
:> b. restart pine in the directory where they were saved.
:> c. type in EVERY STINKING FILE NAME on the attachment line.
:>
:>Why wouldn't it be reasonable to SELECT THE DIRECTORY and have every file
:>there converted to an attachment!!!?
:>
:>Ditto, of course, when somebody sends me an email with 24 pictures
:>attached! Why can't I just say "Save ALL of these in the directory I have
:>chosen"? In fact, pine doesn't even remember the last directory I saved
:>to, so I either have to type in the path for EACH ONE of the 24 pictures,
:>or else:
:>
:> a. quit pine
:> b. restart pine in the desired directory
:>
:>This is one of the most annoying features of this otherwise fine program!
:>
:>Scott Swanson
:>
:>
:>
:>
:>

-- 
Barry Landy                     Home:           +44-1223-570417
192, Gilbert Road               College:        +44-1223-332058
Cambridge CB4 3PB               Efax:		+44-870-458-0205
Email:[email-masked]

---

From: Matt Ackeret <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 11:01:22 -0700 (PDT)

On Wed, 9 Jun 2004, Rick Lewis wrote:
> It'd be much easier than teaching people to quote sparingly, which is a lost
> cause anyway.

I'm with you up to here..

> Ryan, your idea is close, but some people quote at the top, (I'll stay off of
> that soapbox.)

Here is where I disagree with you.. (I don't know if your screen reader
can read signatures at the end, but my signature argues completely the other
side.)

However, you have provided the first compelling argument I've ever
heard for top-posting.   (But taking both of your statements together, we
actually agree -- I'd say that if everyone who top-posts simply removed
the original message, the problem would be solved.  We disagree in that 
when someone does quote text, I say it should be above, you say it should
be below..  Though I think this is probably something the screen reader
should take care of on the viewing end.)

-- 
top-posting: It's just a bad idea.

---

From: Scott Swanson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 12:13:46 -0600 (MDT)

> lets you browse the folders.

I'm well familiar with the control-T. Consider my 24-file case, though. To
select the 1st file, I must type ^T and enter. For the second, ^T,
down-arrow, enter. for the 8th: ^T down-arrow, down-arrow, down-arrow,
down-arrow, down-arrow, down-arrow, down-arrow, enter. For the 24th -
well, I think you see my point. It is fewer keystrokes to do it as I
indicated, particularly if the files are named 01.jpg, 02.jpg, etc. But
how difficult can it be to just let me type ~/pix/2004/06/smith/*.jpg as I
would do in any other application??!

Scott Swanson

---

From: Matt Ackeret <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 11:21:10 -0700 (PDT)

> c. type in EVERY STINKING FILE NAME on the attachment line.

This is only a very very small Band-Aid, but you can use tab-completion to
fill in the rest of the name/path.

e.g. if there are no conflicts with other similarly named files you could
do:

File to attach: th<tab>th<tab>fi<tab>
ends up turning into:

File to attach: thisfile/thatfile/file.jpg

I agree with the other person's request for being able to set a default save
directory.. or at the very least, remembering it when I've saved something
else there once.