alpine(1)

🎀 alpine(1) · General Commands Manual 🎀

Manual: alpine(1) 💌 (General Commands Manual, bestie!)

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💖 NAME 💖

alpine is an Alternatively Licensed Program for Internet News and Email 📨✨ It's giving news AND email, no cap.

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🌸 SYNTAX 🌸

alpine [ options ] [ address , address ]

alpinef [ options ] [ address , address ]

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💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

Okay so alpine is a screen-oriented message-handling tool 🖥️🦋 By default it keeps things intentionally simple and geared toward novice users 🌱 but it also has a huge list of optional "power-user" and personal-preference features 👑 Literally something for everyone.

alpinef is a variant of Alpine that uses function keys instead of mnemonic single-letter commands ⌨️🔥 Same queen, different vibe.

Alpine's basic feature set is giving:

• View, Save, Export, Delete, Print, Reply and Forward messages 💌
• Compose messages in a simple editor (Pico) with word-wrap and a spelling checker ✍️ Messages can be postponed for later completion, so you don't have to finish everything in one go 🫶
• Full-screen selection and management of message folders 📂✨
• An address book to keep track of long or frequently-used addresses 📒 Personal distribution lists can be defined 🌈 and addresses can be taken into the address book from incoming mail without retyping them 🙈 the efficiency is unmatched
• New mail checking and notification happens automatically every 2.5 minutes and after certain commands, e.g. refresh-screen (Ctrl-L) 🔔💜
• On-line, context-sensitive help screens 🧚 whenever you're lost, it's got you

Alpine supports MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions), an Internet Standard for representing multipart and multimedia data in email 🌸 Alpine lets you save MIME objects to files, and in some cases it can even start the correct program to view the object 🎬 It uses the system's mailcap configuration file to figure out which program can process a particular MIME object type 🧠

Alpine's message composer doesn't have built-in multimedia capability, BUT any type of data file --including multimedia-- can be attached to a text message and sent using MIME's encoding rules 📎🍓 This means any group of people with MIME-capable mail software (e.g. Alpine, PC-Alpine, or many other programs) can swap formatted documents, spread-sheets, image files, etc, via Internet email 🥹💖 Friendship goals, honestly.

Alpine uses the c-client messaging API to access local and remote mail folders ⭐ This library gives you a bunch of low-level message-handling functions 🛠️ including drivers for a variety of different mail file formats, plus routines to access remote mail and news servers using IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) and NNTP (Network News Transport Protocol) 🌐 Outgoing mail is usually posted directly via SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) 📤✨

✨ OPTIONS ✨

okay so here's the command line stuff, and bestie there are a LOT of options 💅 Everything is listed below. Some of them are only for PC-Alpine, and I'll flag those 🫶

• address — Pop an address in and Alpine skips the menus and drops you straight into the message composer 💌 Mail goes to that address.
• -attach file — Send mail with that file attached 📎
• -attachlist file-list — Same vibe, but you hand it a whole list of files in file-list and they all get attached as attachments 🗂️
• -attach_and_delete file — Attaches the file like -attach, but then it removes the file after the message is sent 🗑️

⚠️ Heads up bestie: -attach_and_delete deletes the file once the message goes out. It's a whole-ass delete, not a suggestion 💀

• -aux local_directory — PC-Alpine only 🪟 When you're using a remote config (-p <remote_config>), this tells PC-Alpine which local directory to stash its auxiliary files in, like debug files, address books, and signature files 🧚
• -bail — Exit if the pinerc file doesn't exist 🚪 This can be super handy if the config file is reached through some remote filesystem protocol. If the remote mount is missing, Alpine just quits instead of making itself a brand new pinerc 🙅‍♀️
• -c context-number — context-number is the number of the folder-collection that the -f argument should apply to 📂 If you don't pick one, -f goes to the first defined folder-collection
• -conf — Prints a sample/fresh copy of the system-wide config file, pine.conf, to standard output ✨ This is different from your personal .pinerc file, so don't mix them up 🫠
• -convert_sigs -p pinerc — Converts your signature files into literal signatures 🖋️
• -copy_abook <local_abook> <remote_abook> — Copies your local address book file into a remote address book folder 📒
• -copy_pinerc <local_pinerc> <remote_pinerc> — Copies your local pinerc file into a remote pinerc folder 📋
• -d debug-level — Dumps diagnostic info at debug-level (anywhere from 0-9) into the current .pine-debug[1-4] file 🔍 Set it to 0 and debugging turns off, and the .pine-debug file doesn't get made at all 🙈
• -d key[=val] — The fine-tuned version of debugging, bestie 🎀 Here's what you can pick:
  • flush makes the debug file write without buffering 💧
  • timestamp slaps a timestamp on every message 🕰️
  • imap=n, where n is 0-4, goes from no IMAP telemetry (0) all the way to verbose (4) 📡
  • numfiles=n, where n is 0-31, is how many debug files get kept around 🗃️
  • verbose=n, where n is 0-9, is an inverse threshold for message output 🔢
• -f folder — Opens folder instead of INBOX 📥 It goes in the first defined folder collection, but you can use -c n to pick a different collection
• -F file — Opens the named text file and lets you read it with Alpine's browser 📖
• -h — Help! 🆘 Lists all the valid command-line options
• -i — Starts you up on the FOLDER INDEX screen 📑
• -I keystrokes — An initial (comma separated) list of keystrokes that Alpine runs the second it starts up ⌨️
• -install — PC-Alpine only 🪟 Asks you for some basic setup info, then exits 💫
• -k — Uses function keys for commands. It's the exact same as running alpinef 🔑
• -n number — Starts up with the current message-number set to number 🔢
• -nowrite_password_cache — Reads from a password cache if there's one, but never offers to write a password into the cache 🙅‍♀️
• -o — Opens the first folder read-only 👀
• -p config-file — Uses config-file as your personal configuration file instead of the default .pinerc 🎀
• -P config-file — Uses config-file as the configuration file instead of the default system-wide pine.conf 🌐
• -passfile <fully-qualified-path> — If password file support is compiled in, this uses the file at fully-qualified-path instead of the default 🔐
• -pinerc file — Outputs a fresh pinerc configuration to file, but keeps any settings the user already changed 💅 Set file to - and the output goes to standard out instead
• -pwdcertdir <fully-qualified-path> — If SMIME and password file support are both compiled in, this sets the directory where your personal key and certificate go. Those are what encrypt and decrypt your password file 🗝️
• -r — Restricted/demo mode 🎭 Alpine will only send mail to itself, and functions like save and export are restricted 🚫
• -registry cmd — PC-Alpine only 🪟 This one messes with Alpine's registry entries. The possible values for cmd are set, clear, and dump:
  • set always resets Alpine's registry entries to match its current settings 🔄
  • clear clears the registry values 🧹
  • clearsilent clears the registry values silently 🤫
  • dump shows you the values of your current registry settings 👀

💀 The dump command is currently disabled, so that one's a no-go for now.

Without the -registry option, PC-Alpine only writes values into the registry if there aren't any values set yet 🌸

• -smimedir <fully-qualified-path> — If SMIME is compiled in, this sets the directory where the public, private, and certificate authorities' certificates and keys live 🔏 If you don't set it on the command line, the default is ~/.alpine-smime 🏠
• -sort order — Sorts the FOLDER INDEX display in one of these orders: arrival, date, subject, orderedsubj, thread, from, size, score, to, cc, or reverse 📊 arrival is the default. OrderedSubj pretends to be a threaded sort 🧵 Any sort can be flipped by adding /reverse to the end. Just reverse on its own is the same as arrival/reverse 🔁
• -supported — Some options are supported or not depending on how Alpine was compiled 🛠️ This one tells you which options your copy of Alpine actually supports ✅
• -uninstall — PC-Alpine only 🪟 Removes the references to Alpine in your Windows settings 🧼
• -url url — Opens the given url 🔗 Can't be used with -f or -F
• -v — Version! Prints the version info 🦋
• -version — Also version! Prints the version info too 🦋
• -x config — Uses the configuration exceptions in config 🎯 Exceptions override your default pinerc settings for one particular platform. The config can be a local file or a remote folder 🌍
• -xoauth2-server ServerName — The name of the service that XOAUTH2 authentication will be tried with 🔑 As of writing, Gmail is the only service supported. Example: -xoauth2-server Gmail

⚠️ -xoauth2-server, -xoauth2-client-id, and -xoauth2-client-secret all have to be used at the same time, no exceptions 🫶

• -xoauth2-client-id Client-Id — The string that tells the XOAUTH2 service provider who Alpine is 🪪 Same rule: -xoauth2-server, -xoauth2-client-id, and -xoauth2-client-secret must all be used simultaneously
• -xoauth2-client-secret Client-Secret — The secret string that identifies Alpine to the XOAUTH2 service provider 🤐 Same rule: -xoauth2-server, -xoauth2-client-id, and -xoauth2-client-secret must all be used simultaneously
• -z — Turns on ^Z and SIGTSTP so you can suspend alpine ⏸️
• -option=value — Assigns value to the config option option 🎀 For example, -signature-file=sig1 or -feature-list=signature-at-bottom. (Note: feature-list values are additive 💜)

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✨ CONFIGURATION ✨

okay so Alpine has like, a few different levels of config, and the higher one always wins over the lower one 👑 Here's the order from lowest priority to highest, so you know who's boss:

1. built-in defaults 🧱
2. system-wide pine.conf file 🏢
3. personal .pinerc file (you can set this one through the built-in Setup/Config menu 🛠️)
4. command-line options 💻
5. system-wide pine.conf.fixed file 🔒

There's one exception to the "higher level replaces lower level" rule, and it's the feature-list variable 🌈 Its values are additive instead, so they stack up. You can also negate a single feature by putting no- in front of its name, like no-feature.

Unix Alpine also reads these environment variables 🌸

• TERM
• DISPLAY — decides if Alpine can display IMAGE attachments 🖼️
• SHELL — if it isn't set, the default is /bin/sh 🐚
• MAILCAPS — a semicolon-delimited list of path names to mailcap files 📜

📁 FILES 📁

okay so this section is basically a map of every file alpine cares about, bestie 🗺️✨

• /var/spool/mail/xxxx — where incoming mail lands by default 📬
• ~/mail — the default home base for your mail folders 📂
• ~/.addressbook — default address book file 📒
• ~/.signature — the file that gets appended to every message ✍️
• ~/.pine-debug[1-4] — diagnostic log for debugging 🐛
• ~/.pinerc — your personal alpine config file ⚙️
• ~/.pine-crash — debug info that's useful when alpine crashes 💥
• ~/.newsrc — news subscription and state file 📰
• ~/.mailcap — your personal mail capabilities file 🎀
• ~/.mime.types — your personal file extension to MIME type mapping 🗂️
• /etc/mailcap — the system-wide mail capabilities file 🌐
• /etc/mime.types — the system-wide file extension to MIME type mapping 🌍
• /etc/pine.info — local pointer to your system administrator 🧑‍💻
• /etc/pine.conf — the system-wide configuration file 🏛️
• /etc/pine.conf.fixed — non-overridable configuration file, so nobody can change it, not even you 🚫
• ~/.alpine-smime/ca — directory that holds the Certificate Authority files 🏅
• ~/.alpine-smime/private — directory that holds private key(s) 🔐
• ~/.alpine-smime/public — directory that holds public key(s) 🔓
• /tmp/.\usr\spool\mail\xxxx — per-folder mailbox lock files 🔒
• ~/.pine-interrupted-mail — a message that got interrupted mid-send 🙈
• ~/mail/postponed-msgs — for postponed messages (drafts) 📝
• ~/mail/sent-mail — outgoing message archive, aka the FCC 📤
• ~/mail/saved-messages — default destination when you save messages 💾

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🔗 SEE ALSO 🔗

ngl, these are the vibes you'll want to check out next 🫶

• pico(1)
• binmail(1)
• aliases(5)
• mailaddr(7)
• sendmail(8)
• spell(1)
• imapd(8)

Newsgroup: comp.mail.pine 💬

Mailing List: Alpine-info, at https://www.washington.edu/alpine/alpine-info/ 📮

Main Alpine distribution site: http://repo.or.cz/alpine.git 🌸

• Alpine Technical Notes, included in the source distribution 📚
• C-Client messaging API library, included in the source distribution 🧚

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🙏 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 🙏

this part is so sweet 🥹 Alpine is the result of so many people who gave their time to support it, improve it, and suggest ways to make it better over the years 💖 None of it would've happened without the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington 🌈 The whole Alpine community sends its most sincere thanks to every contributor, and they invite everyone to jump in and contribute too ✨

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That's the whole page, bestie! 🎀 Alpine Version 2.26, manual page, fully served 💅👑🦋