Pine
| Pine
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 Screenshot of Alpine via SSH on a NetBSD server |
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| Basic data
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| developer | University of Washington |
| Publishing year | 1989 |
| Current version | 4.64 (September 2005) |
| operating system | various |
| category | E-mail program |
| License | ISC license up to 3.9.1, now semi-free |
| German speaking | No |
| washington.edu/pine | |
Pine ( " p rogram for i nternet n ews and e -mail" originally "Pine is not Elm") is a text-based ( terminal , text console) email client and news reader for many Unix -compatible operating systems, DOS and Windows . It was developed together with the mail server software "UW IMAP " at the University of Washington (UW). Pine was not developed any further after 2005. Alpine is an upwardly compatible successor program .
The name is intended to express that Pine is a further development of the Elm mail program .
Depending on the operating system , Pine uses either termcap or terminfo to find out basic information about the terminal.
Under Linux , Pine is linked against the ncurses library because it provides the terminfo API there , but the curses terminal administration functions of the libncurses are not used for the screen display. Instead, Pine contains its own, specialized routines for screen display.
To be precise, Pine is not just a single program, because it also uses Pico , a small text editor for editing e-mails, and “Pilot”, a file manager .
License
Up to version 3.9.1 the license was based on the BSD license , and the University of Washington registered Pine as a trademark .
With version 3.9.2, the University of Washington changed the license to the extent that the source code was still available, but the distribution of modified copies was no longer permitted.
Replicas and alternatives
Cone is a replica of pine, but does not match its range of functions. Mutt is a free alternative, but its user interface is not so configurable, so that a certain amount of change is required when changing.
mbx file format
Pine can leave emails on the mail server or store them locally. Pine developer Mark Crispin developed the "mbx" file format for local storage . It is said to be a more powerful alternative to the popular mbox format. Files in mbx format consist of a binary header, which can be followed by one or more emails in ASCII text format. Pine | Alpine can write and read local mailboxes in both mbx and mbox format. The undocumented options "# driver.mbx / foo" and "# driver.unix / foo" can be used to control the format in which a new mailbox "foo" is created. The format of existing mailboxes is not changed.
Alpine
In 2006 the University of Washington announced that it was working on a new family of email tools based on Pine but licensed under the Apache license . On November 29, 2006, a public beta test of the Alpine program was started. A short time later it was announced that the further development of Pine would be discontinued. Alpine 1.0 was finally released on December 21, 2007 . The current version is 2.22 from January 19, 2020.
re-alpine
After the University of Washington dismissed some of its technology employees in the course of a fundamental change in its IT strategy in May 2008, including long-time Pine developer Mark Crispin, UW announced in August 2008 that the direct further development of Alpine would be discontinued. As a result, the "re-alpine" project was created with initial support from Crispin.
Web links
- Pine Official website (English)
- All About PINE (English)
swell
- ↑ www.washington.edu . (accessed October 4, 2016).
- ↑ Mark Crispin: Re: MBX file format specification , article on the mailing list "Imap-uw", March 16, 2006 ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Alpine 2.22 Released , announced on the Alpine website, January 19, 2020
- ↑ Mark Crispin: so long, and thanks for all the fish! , Post on the "Imap-protocol" mailing list, May 20, 2008 ( Memento of the original from February 16, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ The Seattle Times: UW lays off technology workers , May 21, 2008
- ↑ alpine status , contribution by the University of Washington Alpine team on the “Alpine-info” mailing list, August 2008 ( memento of the original from September 21, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ re-alpine on SourceForge
- ↑ Re-Alpine 2.01 released , article by Mark Crispin on the “Alpine-info” mailing list, August 2009 ( memento of the original from January 9, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
