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-
- PINE ELECTRONIC MAIL
-
- BACKGROUND
-
- Pine is a mailer designed specifically for ease-of-use with the novice
- computer user in mind. It is based on Internet mail protocols (e.g.
- RFC-822, SMTP, IMAP, and MIME) and currently runs on a variety of UNIX
- platforms.
-
- The guiding principles for achieving ease-of-use in Pine were: careful
- limitation of features, one-character mnemonic commands, always-present
- command menus, immediate user feedback, and high tolerance for user
- mistakes. It is intended that Pine can be learned by exploration rather
- than reading manuals. Feedback from the University of Washington
- community and a growing number of Internet sites has been encouraging.
-
- A stand-alone version of Pico, Pine's message composition editor, is also
- available. It is a very simple and easy to use text editor with text
- justification and a spelling checker.
-
-
- FEATURES
-
- - Mail index showing a message summary which includes the status,
- sender, size, date and subject of messages.
-
- - View and process mail with the following commands: forward, reply,
- save, export, print, delete, capture address and search.
-
- - Address book for saving long complex addresses and personal
- distribution lists under a nickname.
-
- - Multiple folders and folder management screen for filing messages.
-
- - Message composer with easy-to-use editor and spelling checker.
- The message composer also assists entering and formatting
- addresses and provides direct access to the address book.
-
- - Online help specific to each screen and context.
-
- - Supports access to remote mail repositories via the IMAP2 protocol
- defined in RFC-1176.
-
- - Support for multipart mail conforming to proposed MIME (RFC-1341)
- Internet standard. This allows attachments to mail messages such
- as graphices (GIF, TIFF...), sounds, and other files such as spread
- sheets and binary files.
-
- - Work is well underway to port Pine to MS-DOS. (Stanford's Mailstrom is
- recommended for Macs).
-
-
- AVAILABILITY
-
- Pine and Pico, including source code, are freely available via anonymous
- FTP from ftp.cac.washington.edu on the Internet. Other provisions for
- distribution have not been made. From the Internet, you may try out Pine
- and leave comments by telneting to "demo.cac.washington.edu" and logging
- in as "pinedemo". To join the Pine mailing list for announcements send a
- request to "pine-announce-request@cac.washington.edu". To join the list
- which includes discussion as well as announcements send a request to
- "pine-info-request@cac.washington.edu".
-
- Pine is very portable and runs on a variety of UNIX machines including
- DECstations, NeXT's, Sequents, and Suns. Pine was originally based on Elm,
- but it has evolved much since, ("Pine Is No-longer Elm").
-
- For further information send e-mail to pine@cac.washington.edu. Pine is
- the work of Mike Seibel, Mark Crispin, and Laurence Lundblade at the
- University of Washington Office of Computing and Communications.
-
- 92.7.13
-
-