Go Back to
Go Back to
Starting the Software in the CIRCA Lab
PINE is available on many of the UNIX based systems on campus. In particular, it is available on GROVE (grove.circa.ufl.edu) which is the system most students can get an account with. We will discuss using it on that system. However, the procedure to start PINE on a different system should be very similar. Ask your System Administrator if you need help using it on one of the other systems.
From a PC in the CIRCA labs you can log in to GROVE from either DOS or Windows. Since doing this from DOS is easier and definitely faster, we'll just describe that method. From the Public Menu choose Applications, then choose Network Services. You will now have the Network Services menu on your screen. Choose CIRCA Hosts, and then choose Grove. This will open a Telnet session with the GROVE system. You will be prompted for your username and password. After entering them properly you will be presented with a command prompt.
At the command prompt, simply enter "
pine" and press [Enter].Starting the Software From a Remote Site (home PC)
Using PINE from a home PC should be exactly like running it in the CIRCA labs except that you will have to start it differently. You will need to have terminal emulation software capable of VT100 terminal emulation. There are many different freeware and shareware packages available. If you're not sure if you have this software, and/or you want to get a different package, just ask one of the CIRCA lab assistants for advice.
Once you have your terminal emulation software you need to use it to log in to GROVE. The Host Name for GROVE is "grove.circa.ufl.edu". You should specify a "Telnet" login if that is an option. When you give the command to establish the connection, you will be presented with the same prompt for your username and password as you would see in the CIRCA labs.
From this point on it should appear and behave the same as a PC in the CIRCA labs.
The PINE Interface
PINE's interface is very different from Netscape's Navigator or Eudora. Rather than being an application running in the Microsoft Windows environment, having a graphical user interface (GUI), it is entirely text based without mouse support. It runs on the host machine and the PC you sit at is simply a terminal.
What this means to you is that you will need to learn how to do everything from the keyboard. Sometimes the keyboard options seem cryptic. Even though this may seem to be a drawback, keyboard commands can frequently be faster and more efficient than using a GUI. Once you have learned all the most frequently used commands it's very easy to use the software.
The Main Menu (figure P-1) is the first thing you will see. Each different screen in PINE has some common features which make it easy to work with. At the very top of the screen is a line in "reverse type" (white on black) which indicates the version level of PINE that you're using, the current screen name, and the status of your Inbox.
At the bottom of the screen are three very important lines. The first of these is in reverse type and is used to let you know important information about the current activity. It is also used to prompt you for answers to questions. For example, if you issue the command to cancel a message you've been writing, PINE will prompt you on this line to confirm that cancel operation. This line is where PINE communicates with you.
The last two lines on the screen display the valid command options for the current screen, option, or activity. The key which is assigned to each command is in reverse type. For example, the Help command can be issued by pressing the [?] (question mark) key. In PINE you do not have to press [Enter] after the key for a command. Since there are so many options in PINE and only a limited number of keys, key combinations are sometimes used. This is done by pressing the [Control] key and holding it down while pressing another key. You will see these key combinations denoted with a caret (^) before the letter. For example, the Cancel command which is available in some screens is denoted as "
^G".When there are more command options for a screen than can fit in the bottom two lines, you will see the option "O
The middle of the Main Menu screen has some options listed which are the most common options. By default the "L
On other screens you can move the cursor from field to field by using the cursor keys. Typically the field label will be highlighted in reverse type and a blinking cursor will be placed at the beginning of the field. You can type in data at that cursor.
Setting and Changing Your Userid and/or Password
Since PINE is running on the host to which you have logged in, it can directly use your username from the system. This means that you do not have to configure PINE with your account and host information like you have to when using e-mail software that runs on the PC itself.
If you want to change your password for e-mail, you simply change your password for your account as you normally would. You can ask your System Administrator or one of the lab assistants for help. PINE does allow you to change your password from within the program by pressing [S] to change the setup, and then [N]. PINE will use the same process to change your password as if you went directly to the command prompt to change it.
Writing and Sending a Message
You can start writing a message by choosing "C
When you use the Address Book to select an address by pressing [Ctrl - T] you will be presented with the Composer: Select Address screen. Press [Enter] to see an expanded listing of your Personal Address Book (figure P-3). You can select and choose an address by moving the cursor to highlight the one you want and then press [Enter], or press [S]. The Address Book will close and the address will be entered in the To: field. If you want to exit the Address Book without marking a selection press [E].
After entering the receiver's address, press [Tab] or use the cursor keys to move to the next field. When entering data in the fields you can use [Ctrl - D] to delete a character and [Ctrl - K] to delete an entire field.
When you move the cursor to the Message Text field, the options at the bottom of the screen change somewhat as shown in figure P-2. You can still use [Ctrl - D] to delete a character and [Ctrl - K] will delete an entire line. The cursor keys will allow you to move freely around to edit the text. Pine will also automatically wrap your text. You should only include standard ASCII text characters in your message. If you have something special to send, you will need to send it as an attachment which we'll cover later.
If you change your mind and decide not to complete and send the message, just press [Ctrl - C]. You will be prompted to confirm that you really want to abandon your mail message. Just answer with [Y] to cancel this message.
When writing a mail message you must have a valid Internet e-mail address in the To: field and it's a good idea to have something descriptive in the Subject: field. When you have your message ready to send, press [Ctrl - X]. You will be asked to confirm the send command. Just press [Y] to send it.
Receiving a Message
To receive mail you don't have to do anything. Since PINE is running on the host, your mail is placed directly in the Inbox. When you open PINE you will see the number of messages in your Inbox at the upper right of the screen. If you are using PINE when a message comes in, you will see a message in the status line at the bottom of the screen indicating that a message has been received and you may hear a beep or bell sound.
All received messages are first placed in the Inbox. From the Main Menu screen (figure P-1) choose "L
The Folder Index will give you a lot of information about each message. To the left of each message are special characters that indicate the status. Each one will have an 'N' next to them when they're new and unread. Once read, they will not have the 'N' anymore. If you've answered the message it will have an 'A' next to it. A 'D' indicates that the message is marked for deletion. Each message is assigned a number. There are 4 other columns of information containing the message date, the sender, the file size, and the subject field.
You can read a message by highlighting it and pressing [Enter] or [V] to open it. You will see the message in the Message Text screen (figure P-5). Each mail message will have the header information displayed at the beginning of the message. There may be any number of different of header fields displayed depending on whether the sender included the information and/or whether their e-mail software writes all the fields to the header. Typical fields include the Date, From, To, and Subject fields.
You can scroll the message up and down using the cursor keys or by using [-] to move up one page and [Space] to move down one page. When you have finished reading the message, you have a couple options to read another message. You can press [N] to open the next message and you can press [P] to open the previous message. You can also press [I] to return to the Folder Index screen (figure P-4) where you can select another message to read.
You can also open the next message by pressing [D] to delete the current message. To find out more about deleting messages see the section entitled "Reviewing and Deleting E-mail Messages".
When you're done reading all your new messages in the Inbox, you can return to the Main Menu by pressing [M].
Replying to a Message
Sometimes you may want to reply to a question or comment in a message someone has sent to you. You could do this by writing a new message and entering the person's address, the subject, and maybe even some of their original message for reference. Rather than do all this manually, it can be done automatically just by pressing [R] when the message is highlighted in the Folder Index screen (figure P-4) or when you are reading the message in the Message Text screen (figure P-5). You will be prompted to include the original message in the body of your reply for reference. Answer with [Y] or [N] as you desire.
The screen will change to the Compose Message Reply screen which is actually the same thing as the Compose Message screen (figure P-2). The receiver's address will already be filled in along with the Subject: field. If you chose to include the original message in your reply, the first line in the body of your message will indicate that the receiver wrote the following text. The text of the original message will have each line preceded by a ">" (greater than) character.
You may edit the body of the original message just as if you typed it in yourself. Otherwise, replying is exactly the same process as writing your own original message. You send it the same way.
Reviewing and Deleting E-mail Messages
As you may have noticed, messages you have received do not automatically get deleted after you read them. They stay in your Inbox until you want to take them out. Also, the message you send will have a copy in the sent-mail folder. This may seem like a waste of disk space, but it is very convenient to be able to review old messages. Sometimes you may find that you want to reply to or forward one of them.
You can select and read any of the messages in your folders. If you have any message that you want to delete, just press [D] when the message is highlighted in the Folder Index screen (figure P-4) or when you are reading the message in the Message Text screen (figure P-5). A 'D' will be placed next to the message in the Folder Index screen to indicate that the message is marked for deletion. When you exit PINE you will be prompted, "Expunge the # deleted messages from 'INBOX'?" Press [Y] to go ahead and delete the messages.
You will be prompted monthly by PINE to move the contents of the sent-mail folder to a new folder. You don't have to do this and you can even delete messages from that folder just the same as you can from the Inbox.
Beyond the Basics:
Sending Copies to Multiple Receivers
Sometimes you want to send a message to someone and also send copies to others for reference. To do this, place the valid e-mail addresses in the Cc: field separated by commas. You can either type in a valid address or alias, or you can use the Address Book (figure P-3) by pressing [Ctrl - T] when the cursor is in the Cc: field. If you want to enter multiple addresses using the Address Book, just use it repeatedly.
Working with nicknames and address books is discussed in the section entitled "Using Nicknames and an Address Book" below.
Sending Blind copies
When you send a copy to multiple receivers, each receiver can see who other copies have been sent to. A blind copy does not include a list of all receivers. This allows you to keep the list of receivers private from each other.
In order to send a blind copy you will need to toggle on the extra header fields by pressing [Ctrl - R]. You will now have extra fields available at the top of the Compose Message screen (figure P-2), but the only one we are concerned with is the Bcc: field. You may enter valid e-mail addresses in this field just as you can for the Cc: field.
You may send blind copies to some people and regular copies to others.
Forwarding Messages
Sometimes you may receive a message that you know a friend would like to read. If the sender didn't already send a copy to your friend, you can forward a copy. To do this, just press [F] when the message you want to forward is highlighted in the Folder Index screen (figure P-4), or when you are reading the message in the Message Text screen (figure P-5).
The screen will change to the Forward Message screen which is actually the same thing as the Compose Message screen (figure P-2). The Subject: field will already be filled in. The Message Text section will have the original message including its header information preceded by a line indicating that a forwarded message follows.
You may edit the body of the original message just as if you typed it in yourself. Otherwise, forwarding is exactly the same process as writing your own original message. You send it the same way.
Using Nicknames and an Address Book
Before you can use nicknames or the Address Book, you will need to put some names and addresses in it. From the Main Menu screen choose "A
[ Empty ]" highlighted.Add a new entry by pressing [A] and answering the prompts. You will be prompted only for the 3 required fields: the person's real name, a nickname, and their e-mail address. You can simply press [Enter] after each to move to the next. When you have entered all 3 fields you will see the entry listed in place of "
[ Empty ]". The nickname will be in the left column followed by the real name and the e-mail address will be in the right column.You probably won't need to add any more information to an entry, but if you made a mistake entering data or you want to add additional comments to an entry, you can simply press [Enter] or [E] when it is highlighted. You will be prompted for a field to edit and the options at the bottom of the screen will change to show you the available fields for an entry. You can just press [Enter] to edit the address field, or press the appropriate key for one of the other fields. You will be prompted to edit the field and when you press [Enter] to accept it you will see the normal Address Book screen and options (figure P-6).
Once you have your addresses and nicknames in the Address Book, you can press [M] to return to the Main Menu screen (figure P-1). Your addresses are available for use.
Sending Attachments
Sometimes you may want to send something besides a simple message, like a graphics file or spreadsheet file. Rather than try to convert it to ASCII text in the body of your message, you can simply attach it as a separate file. Normally, since e-mail must be only ASCII text, a graphics file could not be sent to someone by e-mail. It would arrive in a corrupted and unusable form. PINE will automatically encode any binary files (like a graphic file) in an ASCII format which can be decoded by the receiving e-mail software. The encoding method used by PINE is a base64 MIME format. This is one of the most common and useful encoding formats, and most e-mail packages can read and decode it.
Since PINE runs on the host system and your PC is only an terminal, you cannot directly send or receive attachments from the PC's disk. You will need to transfer your files to your account directory on the host system first. Ask your System Administrator for help if you don't already know how to do this.
To attach a file you will need to specify the filename(s) in the Attchmnt: field of the Compose Message screen (figure P-2) separated by commas. You can either type in the filename directly, or more easily, select them using the Browser screen (figure P-7) by pressing [Ctrl - T]. The Browser screen allows you to select a file by using the cursor keys to highlight any files and/or sub-directories within the directory shown in the line at the top of the screen. You can press either [S] or [Enter] when a file or directory is highlighted to select it. When you select a file in this way it will be listed in the Attchmnt: field of the Compose Message screen (figure P-2). If you select a directory, you will be prompted to confirm that you want to change to the selected directory. The same options will be available in the sub-directory. If you want to exit the Browser screen (figure P-7), just press [E].
It would probably be a good idea to include in the body of your message a listing of each attachment with a description. Someone who does not use PINE to read e-mail may not find the message organized as PINE intended.
Before sending an attachment to someone else, you might want to try sending a message with attachments to yourself.
Receiving Attachments
PINE deals with attachments by creating a multi-part message with references to the attachment parts. You can then choose to view the attachments individually. An example of a message with attachments is shown as figure P-8.
There is an extra header field called Parts/attachments: which lists each of the attachments in order with an index number, the size, and file type. The body of your message will be shown as you typed it and a more detailed description of each attachment will be appended to it. Notice that the first part (number 1) is listed as shown. Part 1 is the message itself. All parts after that are the attachments.
If you want to see a particular part, just press [V] to view the attachments. You will be presented with the Attachments Index screen (figure P-9) which displays all the attachments (even part 1 which is the message body itself), and lets you select one to view or save to disk.
Text attachments can be viewed directly by PINE, but binary files cannot. If you try to view a binary file, you will see a message indicating that PINE doesn't know how to view it. So your only option for binary files is to save them to disk.
To view a text attachment just press [V] when it is highlighted. You will see it in the Attached Text screen. You can press [E] to exit this viewing screen. To save a binary (or text) file to disk just press [S] when it is highlighted. You will be prompted to save the file to your directory with the filename already specified. You may edit the filename and press [Enter] to save the file. Remember, since PINE runs on the host, your file is saved to your account directory there, not to your PC terminal.
After working with the attachments in a message, press [E] to exit back to the Message Text screen (figure P-8). You can then read other messages, etc.
Getting Help On-line
PINE has fairly comprehensive help built in to it. When performing many operations you will be able to choose a special key combination, [Ctrl - G], to get specific help in the bottom two lines of the screen. Otherwise you can always press [?] to get context sensitive help. When you're done reading the help on a topic, press [E] to exit the help screen.
If you are used to using Microsoft Windows, you may find PINE's help screens to be confusing and difficult. They aren't point and click and they don't have nice indices to help you find something. However, the creators of PINE have done a very good job of writing descriptions of PINE's functions clearly and concisely.
If you use the help screens regularly, you will find PINE much easier to understand.
Continue to
