Rob's Useful Stuff

Linux and LaTeX Tips and Tricks

I have a plain text unix tip of the day file, which you may find useful. I've also written a few LaTeX packages.

Pine Configuration Settings

If you use Pine to read your email, there are many settings you can play with to enable advanced features, and change the behaviour of the client. Here is a list of some of the things that I've changed from my default setup (on hermes.cam.ac.uk).

user-domain

For Hermes users, this can be altered from hermes.cam.ac.uk to just cam.ac.uk to user the latter domain with your user identifier.

literal-signature

Enter a string ('\n' for a newline) to be used as a signature at the bottom of your emails.

signature-at-bottom

When replying puts your signature below the quoted text.

enable-aggregate-command-set

Allows better searching for messages in folder indexes, and allows commands to be applied to more than one message at once.

enable-bounce-cmd

Allows the use of 'B' to bounce a message to another email address. This is similar to forwarding, but (apart form some extra header lines) the message will look to the new recipient as it did when you received it - i.e. from the original sender.

enable-full-header-cmd

When selected, 'H' will toggle between the normal message view, and displaying the full text (including headers) of messages.

enable-tab-completion

Enables (Unix-like) tab completion for folder names when saving messages or changing folders using 'G'. Just type the first few characters, then press 'tab' and the rest will be completed for you!

pruning-rule=

This setting controls those annoying messages asking you if you want to move old messages into another folder each month. To turn this function off completely, set the pruning rule to 'don't rename, don't delete'.

alt-addresses

Enter a list of all the email addresses you have forwarding to this account. Then messages with one of these addresses in the 'to' field, will be marked with a '+' in the index view, and more importantly, Pine will recognise that if you're replying to all recipients, these addresses should not be included. In particular for a message sent just to one of these addresses, you will no longer be asked if you want to 'reply to all recipients'.

To make any of these changes, choose 'setup' from the Pine main menu, then hit 'C' for config. To jump to a particular setting, press 'W', then type a suitable search string and hit enter. For more information about these and other settings, Pine has an excellent online help facility. Just press '?' when you've got one of the options highlighted.

© Robert Whittaker, 2007.