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Using PINE to Send/Receive Your BCPL.NET Email

PINE (Program for Internet News & Email) is a tool for reading, sending, and managing e-mail. PINE was developed by Computing & Communications at the University of Washington. Though originally designed for inexperienced email users, PINE has evolved to support many advanced features, and an ever-growing number of configuration and personal-preference options.

In order to use PINE, you must have access to your UNIX shell account. For more information about how to do this, please see our instructions on how to connect to your BCPL UNIX shell account on the following website http://www.bcpl.net/help/unix/access.html

At the prompt, type in pine (all lowercase) and hit Enter.

A brief welcome and introduction screen will appear. Hit e to exit this screen.

You will now see a menu of options you can choose from. Either use the up and down arrow keys on your keyboard to highlight an option or hit the letter listed next to each option to select it.

At the bottom of the screen are all of the keyboard commands you will need to use PINE. If you do not know how to do something, look at the bottom of the screen and look for the corresponding keystroke command. Because PINE runs in a UNIX environment, everything is done with the keyboard. The ^ character before each letter at the bottom of the screen stands for the Ctrl key on your keyboard. This means you must hold down the Ctrl key while you hit the corresponding letter for the command you want.

Let's take a more in-depth look into each of these options in the list.

Help

If you are having difficulty working with PINE in general, the help menu is a useful guide to read through to answer any questions you may have. There is a Table of Contents at the beginning which makes it easy to browse for what you are looking for.

Compose Message

Here is where you can type an e-mail message to send to other people. If you have ever sent e-mail through another program, this screen should look similar to those other programs.

The To: line is where you type in the recipient's e-mail address.
Cc: stands for "Carbon copy". If you want to send an e-mail to more than one person, this line is where you will put everyone else's e-mail addresses, with each address separated by a comma.
The Attchmt: line is used if you have any files within your UNIX home directory you would like to send along with the e-mail as an attachment. If not, simply leave this line blank.
The Subject: is where you will type the subject for your e-mail. To shift between each line, use the up and down arrow keys on your keyboard.

Message Index

This is similar to the Inbox of other e-mail programs. From this screen, you can see the date, sender, size, and subject of your e-mail. Use the up and down arrow keys to highlight the message you want to view, then hit the Enter key on your keyboard to view it.

The screen in which you view your e-mail looks very similar to the Compose Message screen.

Folder List

This screen will list all of the folders your currently have in your Mail directory. By default, there are three pre-made folders in this section: Inbox, sent-mail, and saved-messages. Inbox leads to the Message Index section described above. Sent-mail stores copies of any e-mails you send out. Saved-messages is the default directory where any messages you save are stored. When you save an e-mail, it is deleted from the inbox, and is copied to the saved-messages folder.

Address Book

The address book is where you store the names and e-mail addresses of people you keep regular contact with. To add a new address, type @ (Shift+2).

Setup

This screen is where you can customize PINE to your preferences. Type the letter that corresponds with each heading to view configurable settings within each heading.

Quit

This option will exit PINE and place you back at the UNIX shell prompt.

For more detailed information on pine, visit http://www.washington.edu/pine/