The Pine view is that messages are stored in folders, and
folders are stored in folder collections. Folder collections
can be physically located on the local system, or on any remote
system with an IMAP server. Regardless of what system a folder
collection is physically located on, a Pine user sees it as just
another folder collection: a Pine user can read messages in any
of their folder collections and can save (move) messages between
different folder collections.
1 – Folders
Each mail message is stored in a folder. A Pine folder is
equivalent to a VMS MAIL folder in a VMS MAIL mail file.
While both Pine and VMS MAIL folder names are case sensitive,
Pine users must be much more mindful of this fact. (VMS MAIL
automatically converts folder names to upper case unless you
surround the folder name with quotes.)
For VMS MAIL files, a new folder is automatically created the
first time a message is saved to it; a folder is automatically
deleted when all messages in the folder are deleted. So when you
use the Create folder command in Pine to create a new folder, the
folder will be created with a placeholder message in it.
2 – Collections
A folder collection is a folder specification for a collection
of folders on one system. For example, it can be all of your
VMS MAIL folders which have the name prefix INFO-, or it can be
all of your UNIX mail folders on a system called foo.bar.com, or
it can be all of your VMS MAIL folders in a different mail file
than you normally use. You can access multiple different folder
collections from within Pine.
By default, PMDF Pine knows only about the local folder
collection, corresponding to your VMS MAIL mailbox. The use
of additional folder collections is controlled by the FOLDER-
COLLECTIONS option in your Pine resource file. Normally, this
option is set from within Pine by using the SETUP menu and then
selecting the L (collectionList) menu. However, the option can
also be set by manually editing your Pine resource file.
2.1 – Syntax
The setting of the FOLDER-COLLECTIONS option can be a list of
values, where each value specifies a folder or folders on the
local system or accessible via an IMAP server, or specifies the
new mail folder accessible via a POP3 server. Folders on the
local system or accessible via an IMAP server are specified using
the format:
optional-label {imaphost}optional-file[view]
or
optional-label {imaphost:port/user=username}optional-file[view]
OPTIONAL-LABEL is a label which will be displayed by Pine in
place of the full name of the folder collection.
The optional field IMAPHOST is the name of a host where the
mail file resides. IMAPHOST can be any system which has an IMAP4
server, and need not necessarily be an OpenVMS system.
The optional PORT specification can be included if you want to
connect to a port other than the default (for IMAP) of 143.
The optional USERNAME can be included if you want to log in to
the IMAPHOST under a different account name.
The optional field OPTIONAL-FILE is the file specification
of a mail file. If OPTIONAL-FILE is omitted but IMAP-HOST is
specified, then the default mail file on the remote IMAPHOST
system will be used. If neither OPTIONAL-FILE nor IMAP-HOST is
specified, then your local default mail file will be used.
When OPTIONAL-FILE is specified for an OpenVMS host locally or
remotely running PMDF's legacy IMAP server, it must have the
format
#disk:<directory>mailfile.mai#
where DISK, DIRECTORY, and MAILFILE.MAI specify the full path,
disk, directory, and file name, to the mail file. For instance,
to select the mail file MEMOS.MAI of DISK$USER1:[BOB], you would
specify
#DISK\$USER1:<BOB>MEMOS.MAI#
Finally, the VIEW field controls which folders from the mail file
are part of the collection. If specified as being empty, [],
then all folders from the mail file are treated as part of the
collection. Wild cards can be used to select folders matching a
pattern. For example, [INFO-*] would select all folders beginning
with the string INFO- from the mail file. Again, note that folder
names are considered to be case sensitive.
For POP3 access to a new mail folder on a remote system, the
format is:
"foldername" {pop3host/POP3}INBOX
or
"foldername" {pop3host/POP3/USER=username}INBOX
where FOLDERNAME is the name by which Pine will refer to the
folder, POP3HOST is the name of the system running the POP3
server, and USERNAME is the name under which to log in to the
remote POP3 server.
2.1.1 – Example
An example of setting the FOLDER-COLLECTIONS option in your
Pine resource file, PINE.PINERC, to a list of several folder
collections is:
folder-collections=local [],
archive #DRA0:<JONES.ARCHIVE>OLDMAIL.MAI#[],
remoteVMS {vax.example.com}#DUA2:<JONES.MAIL>MAIL.MAI#[INFO*]
remoteUNIX {sun.example.com}mail/[]
In the above example, four collections with the names local,
archive, remoteVMS, and remoteUNIX are created. local consists
of all folders in the local default mail file; archive consists
of all folders in the mail file DRA0:[JONES.ARCHIVE]OLDMAIL.MAI;
remoteVMS consists of all folders whose name begin with INFO
in the mail file DUA2:[JONES.MAIL]MAIL.MAI on the remote host
vax.example.com; and remoteUNIX consists of all folders from the
mail directory MAIL/ on the remote system sun.example.com.
2.2 – Saving Messages
When saving a message to a different folder collection, you can
select PREV COLLECTION or NEXT COLLECTION to get to the folder
collection you want to save to. Here, "Prev" is an abbreviation
for "Previous". By default, the first folder collection is the
one to save to.
For local or remote OpenVMS servers, you can also specify the
file name where the folder resides directly as
#disk:[directory]mailfilename#foldername
when prompted with the folder name. If you are saving to the same
file in the folder collection, then only the folder name itself
is needed.