Using the Alpine email reader
Modern Reader
The newest incarnation of the Pine email reader is fast, easy to use, and offers a thoroughly modern feature set.
Alpine [1] is the latest incarnation of Pine [2], an email reader developed by the University of Washington. If you first got on the Internet in the mid-1990s at a university or college, chances are good that you used Pine to connect. However, despite its age, Alpine is a thoroughly modern email reader, with support for UTF-8 characters and most of the other features found in desktop readers like KMail or Evolution.
In fact, a case could made for making Alpine your default email reader on the desktop. It's fast and easy to navigate, reduces repetitive stress injuries by keeping your hands on the keyboard (although mouse support can be added), and remains functional when your X server fails, which makes it a useful part of your recovery toolkit.
The only sign of Alpine's age is a few terms that are non-standard today: "Commit changes" for "Save," "Form letter" for "Template," and "WhereIs" for "Search," for example. However, these usages are easy to figure out and create only minor learning problems.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia