Using Linux and 'pine' through Anzio

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Pine is a popular, widely used UNIX text mail system. It is limited in many respects (just because it is text-based), but it is also feature-rich for an UNIX e-mail system. And its FREE from the University of Washington.

Mouse support for Pine

Pine supports the ability to use a mouse when working under X-Windows. Anzio supports the X-Windows mouse calls. In reality all Pine is looking for is a DISPLAY environment variable, and hence we can use Anzio to emulate the X-Term mouse support within Pine. This is done by setting the environment variable DISPLAY prior to going in to Pine,

DISPLAY=anzio; export DISPLAY

(actually DISPLAY can be set to anything, Pine simply looks for its existence). You can then use the left-mouse button to click around the menu system and through messages.

Within Pine's configuration (Setup : Config), you also need to select the option for mouse support:

[X] enable-mouse-in-xterm

Viewing attachments

Pine has the ability to start a separate viewer when you are wanting to view non-standard attachments. It is possible to set up a script for use with Pine on UNIX that will send the file through Anzio to the PC and "start" it there. This script needs to do the following:

• get the file name from Pine (a temporary file name)
• transfer the file to the PC
• start the file on the PC
• return control to Pine

Make sure that no Pine Image Viewer is defined (see Pine Setup):

image-viewer = <No Value Set>

You will also need a .mailcap file located in your current home directory. The .mailcap file defines to Pine that certain MIME types should use certain viewers (the downstart script in this case).

# mailcap by Bob Rasmussen for use with Pine and Anzio
# image/*; ~/temp/pipedown %s; needsterminal
image/JPEG; ~/downstart %s app/JPG; needsterminal
image/*; ~/downstart %s %t %{name}; needsterminal
Application/PDF; ~/downstart %s %t %{name}; needsterminal
Application/MSWORD; ~/downstart %s app/doc %{name}; needsterminal
Application/OCTET-STREAM; ~/downstart %s %t %{name}; needsterminal
# Text/HTML; ~/downstart %s %t %{name}; needsterminal
Text/HTML; lynx %s -force_html; needsterminal
# Text/PLAIN; cat %s | tr '[\222]' '[\47]' | less; needsterminal

The downstart script is as follows:

# format is:
# parameter 1 is temporary file name
# parameter 2 is MIME type
# optional parameter 3 is name
#
# figure out extension based on MIME type
echo "Data type is " $2
ext=`echo $2 | cut -d"/" -f2`
echo "extension is " $ext
echo "filename should be " $1.$ext
ONAME=$1.$ext;export ONAME
# if we have a name, use it
if [ "$3" != "" ]; then
ONAME=$3; export ONAME
echo "filename should NOW be " $3
fi
echo "file name on UNIX is " $1
cat $1 | sz -y -
printf "\n\n\034winstart \${anz_last_recd}\035"

URL handling in Pine to PC browser

In new releases of Pine, you can set Pine to view a URL by simply selecting the URL and pressing enter. With Windows 95, 98 or NT, and Anzio, you can set UNIX Pine to use your PC web browser rather than the UNIX Lynx browser, which leaves a lot to be desired. By sending the URL name to Anzio through a batch file, you can start the PC's default browser. Save the following one line script for UNIX as /usr/local/bin/browser.ksh and all should work fine:

printf "\034winstart $1\035"

You then set the following options in the Pine configuration file:

[X] enable-msg-view-urls
[X] enable-msg-view-web-hostnames

url-viewers = /usr/local/bin/browser.ksh

Pine keyboard mappings

Pine uses the standard mappings for vt220/vt320 with a couple of exceptions. The Home and End key, by default, do not necessarily match what Anzio is sending. With AnzioWin you can remap these two keys to be what Pine expects. The keys should be mapped as follows (see our support documents and knowledgebase articles for more information on remapping keys with Anzio):

Home     ESC[1~

End        ESC[4~

There are also several run-time, as well as compiled in options for controlling Pine's keyboard behavior. Check out the source code and Pine documentation for further information.

Passthrough printing with Pine

Pine is one of the products for UNIX that has taken in to consideration the need for local printing. Within Pine you simply do a "%" or "Y" (depending on Pine release and print options set) to print a current mail message on your local printer. From the main menu, go to S (Setup), select P (Printer) and set your current printer to "attached-to-ansi". In newer releases of pine, if you wish to use a "y" to perform a passthrough print, you need to see the Setup: Config screen and select the options:

[X] enable-print-via-y-command