Making effective use of Pine - II =================================

The last time we learnt how to use different mail headers in pine, and I hope you've built up a sizeable address book. Today we'll learn how to use this address book effectively. We'll also learn how to create our own mail headers to maybe be a little naughty.

To start with, let's compose a mail to someone in our address book. Enter your address book, and scroll down to the person you want to compose a mail to. If your list is too long, you could always use the Where Is command (W or Ctrl+W) to find it. Press C to compose a mail to this person, and voila, you're in compose mode with the person's email address in the To: field.

At this point, it is probably important to understand when one uses Ctrl+access key and when just a plain access key will do. A little thought provides the answer. The only places where Ctrl is required, are where the access key on its own would be valid input. For example, in the mail header, pressing R would just give us the letter R, which is why we needed to use Ctrl+R for the Rich Header. In the main menu, the only keys we press must be access keys, so the Ctrl isn't required. In general, Ctrl will work everywhere, while plain access keys only work where they wouldn't be valid data input.

Ctrl+W has some special searches too. If you search for Ctrl+Y, you will end up at the first line of the current section. Similarly, Ctrl+V takes you to the last line. Ctrl+W a second time takes you to the start of the paragraph, while Ctrl+O takes you to the end of the paragraph. Ctrl+T takes you to any line that you specify.

We now know one way of composing a mail to a person. What happens if we are already in compose mode, and don't remember the address of the recipient? We could always use his nickname, but what if we don't remember that either? What if we want to send mail to multiple recipients?

Well, the only way to figure it out is to actually try it. Get into compose mode, and move to the To: field. Have a look at the menu down below. You'll notice Ctrl+T takes you to the Address Book. This is similar to the attachment case where it took you to the file list.

Press Ctrl+T, and you get to the address book where you can select the recipient's address. But we still aren't able to mail multiple recipients. It's too much of a pain to have to type Ctrl+T and scroll through the list for every recipient. There must be an easier way, and in fact, there is. Well, press L in the address book, and voila, checkboxes beside every entry. Use X to select or de-select any entry. When you're done, use S to make the selection, or use E to exit the list without making any selections. A special select all can be done using A. This is a toggle key, so it also undoes what it just did.

Keep these commands in mind, because they are the same for all lists, including newsgroups.

Now, let's look at creating distribution lists in our address book.

Get into your address book, and add a new entry. Enter the nickname, and full name fields. Since we're creating a distribution list, we'll use the convention of appending -list to the nick. We'll make a list of close friends and call it friends-list. In the name field, enter `My Friends'.

Now, come down to the Addresses field, and type in the nicknames of all your close friends as you have them in your address book. Save the entry.

You might have noticed that the Fcc field showed up here as well. This is where you can specify a default fcc for a specific person or list. All mails sent to this person will be fcc'ed in that folder. If left blank, the default is used. The comment entry is just an internal comment meant for your use. Pine does nothing except store this comment.

Now, get back to the compose screen, and enter friends-list in the To: field. Notice what happens when you move to the next field. Delete all the entries in the To: field.

To delete a line in pine, use Ctrl+K anywhere. The current line is deleted. Use Ctrl+U to `Uncut' or paste the cut line to the current cursor position. Many versions of pine allow you to cut and uncut multiple consecutive lines simultaneously. Pine does not provide a copy to clipboard function, but a single cut may be uncut multiple times to simulate this.

Now, move down to the Lcc: field and type friends-list. See what shows up in the Lcc and To fields. Your To field would have to have been empty first for this to have shown up correctly.

Type your mail as you like. To postpone your mail and continue with it later, use Ctrl+O. When you choose compose the next time, you will be prompted to continue your postponed message. Saying no here will not cancel that message.

To cancel any message, you must be in compose mode for that message, and type Ctrl+C. Be careful though, because Ctrl+C is right next to Ctrl+X, which is used to send the mail. A careless person could cancel a long mail by accident. Pine always prompts you for confirmation before sending or cancelling a mail, so you have time to check what you are about to do.

Finally, let's look at creating our own mail headers. Go to the main screen, and enter set up. We want to set up certain pine configuration features, so select Config from the list. You'll see a lot of configurable options, and you may want to experiment with a few of them. For now though, we want to look for an option called customized-hdrs. Search for this using the search access key. You do remember what that was don't you?

Press enter on this option to begin editing it. You can type in your own headers here. Be careful though, because there are many headers that have special meaning to mail servers and clients. We'll use what are known as eXtension headers. They start with an X-, and have no special meaning. Anyone can make up their own and use it anywhere.

Type X-Joke: and press enter. You can enter a list of headers using commas to separate them. Now, when you are in compose mode, and you use Ctrl+R, you'll also find X-Joke: showing up there. You can type in the joke for the day and send the mail. Smart recipients will figure out how to read this and commend you on your brilliance (you wish).

Wouldn't it be great though, if we could specify the default value of our X-headers? Well, turns out we can. Go back to the customized-hdrs, press enter, and after the X-Joke: enter `X-Men: there's more of them'. Without the quotes of course. Then, this header will go out on all mails you send. Even if you don't use Ctrl+R.

That's it for today. Before next time, you should probably read through the help on whatever you can. Experiment with options. Ctrl+G or ? gets you help in most places. Check help on options we've already tried.

Next time we'll look at setting configuration options for best performance.