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Pine 4.30 for OS/2
(C) 1989-2000 The University of Washington.
OS/2 Port by Nicholas Sheppard (nps@zeta.org.au)
INTRODUCTION
============
This is my OS/2 port of Pine 4.30, based on David Nugent's 3.9x port. David
is no longer maintaining Pine for OS/2, so please send all correspondence
to me, as I have taken over the OS/2 port as of version 4.10 (versions 4.00-
4.05 of Pine have no OS/2 port).
I have fixed all the bugs discovered in the 4.10 and 4.21 releases, so I am
hoping that this version is at least as stable as the old 3.9x port, and as
any other port of Pine. Nonetheless, the usual you-get-what-you-pay-for
warranty applies.
The latest information about Pine for OS/2 can be found on my web site at:
http://www.zeta.org.au/~nps/software/pine/en/index.html
General information about Pine can be found at the University of Washington's
web site at:
http://www.washington.edu/pine
General discussion about Pine, and help for configuration problems, can be
found by reading comp.mail.pine on Usenet. There is also a general group for
OS/2 news and e-mail applications, comp.os.os2.mail-news. I follow both of
these newsgroups.
INSTALLATION
============
Pine requires the EMX run-time libraries to run. You can find these on Hobbes
as emxrt.zip in the directory /os2/dev/emx/v0.9d (or whatever version is
current). I compiled Pine with EMX version 0.9d, with fix 03. Install these
before doing anything else.
Before running Pine, you need to set up some environment variables, either by
adding lines to your CONFIG.SYS or by setting them in a script that runs Pine.
You need to set the environment variable "HOME" to point to the "home directory"
of a user (think Unix). If "HOME" does not exist, the outcome is unpredictable.
If you use Unix-format mailboxes, you may also want to set the "USER" variable
to a "user name"; this is used when writing Unix-format mailboxes. If "USER" is
not set, it defaults to a value of "os2user". One of "TMP" or "TEMP" must be
set the name of a directory to which Pine can write temporary files.
For example,
SET HOME=d:\home\sally
SET USER=sally
SET TMP=d:\tmp
If you aren't using Unix-format mailboxes, the "USER" variable is not used, and
there's a fair chance you can get away without it even if you do (but I am not
promising anything). The other two must be set, however, for Pine to work
properly.
You will need to set some of Pine's configuration options before using Pine.
You can do this either by editing the "pinerc" file in the HOME directory
(Pine will create a new one when you run it, if it doesn't exist), or by going
Setup ("S") then Config ("C") from the main menu.
The "personal-name" field should be set to the name you want to have attached
to your out-going e-mails. The "user-id" and "user-domain" fields should be
set, respectively, to the first (i.e. before the "@") and second parts of your
e-mail address. The "smtp-server" field should be set to the name of your SMTP
server -- note that OS/2 Pine cannot use sendmail to send e-mail (except, I
suppose, by specifying your own machine as an SMTP server).
It appears to be a well-kept secret that Pine can read e-mail over a TCP/IP
link using the POP3 protocol, which is the ubiquitous method for obtaining
mail. Let it be a secret no longer! If you want to get e-mail from your POP3
server, set the "inbox-path" field to something of the form
inbox-path={mail.yourisp.net/pop3}inbox
where "mail.yourisp.net" is your POP3 server. Note the "/pop3" at the end -- if
you get a message saying "Cannot connect to mail.yourisp.net,143: Connection
refused" when you try to connect, you have left this off.
Alternatively, you can get your mail via the IMAP protocal over a TCP/IP link,
in which case you should set the "inbox-path" field to something of the form
inbox-path={mail.yourisp.net}inbox
that is, the same as for POP3 but without the "/pop3" on the end. Finally, you
can also get your mail from a file by specifying the name of the file in the
"inbox-path" field. The file can be in any mailbox format recognised by OS/2
Pine (see below).
Putting that all together, for example, we might have
personal-name=Sally J. Pineuser
user-id=sally
user-domain=theisp.net.au
smtp-server=smtp.theisp.net.au
Of course, you may want to set any number of other options while you're at it.
Pine has extensive on-line help for all of the options (press "?" on the
configuration screen when the cursor is on the appropriate field) which should
get you through this process.
USING PINE TO READ USENET
=========================
Pine can read Usenet groups by setting the "nntp-server" field to the name of
your NNTP (news) server, for example,
nntp-server=news.theisp.net.au
You can then access your newsgroups through the Folders ("L") screen on the
main menu in much the same way mail folders are accessed.
Be warned that news access can be extremely slow over a modem link (or any
oher low-bandwidth link), especially when subscribing to new groups. It is
almost certainly worth enabling the "news-post-without-validation" option.
FOLDER FORMATS
==============
The code for reading local folders is copied directly from the NT port. I have
tested the MTX and Unix formats, and Pine, by default, uses the MTX format.
The MBX and Tenex formats, while (theoretically) supported by OS/2 Pine, have
only been tested under Windows NT and I cannot guarantee that they work properly
under OS/2.
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN OS/2 AND OTHER PORTS OF PINE
================================================
* Colour
To use colour with OS/2, set the colour option to "use-termdefs". OS/2 Pine
does not really "use termdefs" (i.e. the termcap or ncurses library); this
option actually uses the OS/2 VIO API. The result of using the force-ansi
options is unpredictable.
* Sendmail
OS/2 Pine cannot send mail using a local version of sendmail (or suchlike),
except, possibly, by using the local machine as SMTP server.
* FAT drives
Alas, these things are still haunting us. While FAT-compliant file names
are used in the OS/2 port whenever Pine generates a file name, there is at
least one place (Unix-format folders) where using long file names is
unavoidable. I have created compile-time options (FATKLUDGE) which, if
used, will cause OS/2 Pine to force 8.3 file names at the expense of
compatability with Unix and NT versions of Pine. By default, this option is
turned off.
* Password file
The PASSFILE compile-time option is turned on by default for OS/2 Pine.
* Mail servers
The imapd and ipopd daemons distributed with Unix Pine have not been ported
to OS/2.
I may sometimes find time to port features from the Unix versions of Pine if
said features are requested, but I probably won't bother unless there's demand
or someone else wants to send me the patches. I don't have the time or interest
to add special OS/2 features, and I can't do much with Windows features since
the Windows version is closed-source.
USEFUL HINTS
============
Some people are irritated by being constantly asked for passwords. You can save
passwords by creating a file "PINE.PWD" (use "touch", if you have it; otherwise
open it in an editor and save it without typing anything in) in the same
directory as "pinerc". If this file exists, Pine will ask you if you want to
save your password in this file. If you do, Pine will get the password from the
file forevermore. Though the password is encrypted (albeit not very strongly,
according to the documentation), USE OF THIS FEATURE HAS SERIOUS SECURITY
IMPLICATIONS. At best, it gives anyone with access to your machine free access
to your e-mail. At worst, it allows them to gain your password. USE IT WITH
EXTREME CAUTION.
When specifying application names, e.g. in the "url-viewers" field, you need to
specify the full path name of the application, for example,
url-viewers=d:\tcpip\bin\explore.exe
and not
url-viewers=explore
as Pine does not search the path when looking for them.
OS/2-SPECIFIC CHANGES FROM PINE 4.21
====================================
* The "folder-extension" option has been made obsolete by the Pine
Development Team; the OS/2 version used to set this to ".mtx" by default.
You will probably want to rename all of your 4.21 folders to be without
extensions.
* Pico's default colours are now white-on-black.
* Pico's -c command-line option has been abolished.
* Folder names are no longer case-sensitive, fixing some problems
especially effecting FAT drives (and also HPFS in rare instances).
* HTML text did not undergo character-set-to-codepage translation before
display. This caused (among other things) some help sceens to display
a-acutes instead of (non-breakable) spaces.
* Displays of dimensions other than 80x25 are now supported.
* The alternate editor command can now call any type of executable.
* Pine sometimes tries to create temporary file names with a leading
'.', which causes problems on FAT drives. The OS/2 version now strips
any leading '.' from temporary file names.
* Pine used to periodically report `Command "B" undefined for this screen'
when idling.
* Inserting a file (^R) from the home directory was inserting files
from the current directory.
* Some additions and minor changes to the installation instructions.
Changes from older versions of Pine not specific to OS/2 can be found at
http://www.washington.edu/pine/changes
BUGS
====
If you find any bugs specific to the OS/2 version, please send them to me
(nps@zeta.org.au) so that I can correct them. Please check my web site
first for known bugs (and, where known, work-arounds). Bugs not specific to
the OS/2 version can be reported to the Pine Development Team at
pine-bugs@washington.edu.
I had a collection of e-mails describing various apparent peculiarities in
Pine for OS/2. Some of these were passed on to the Pine Development Team,
some I tried to fix "blind" because I didn't have access to a configuration
that allowed me to reproduce the error, some referred to the 4.10 betas and
the problem seemed to made irrelevent by changes for 4.21. I may have also
overlooked a few I couldn't pin down. If any of these problems re-occur in
4.30, please re-report them so that I know they're still around.