[aklug] Re: Switched to Alpine

On Sat, 8 Nov 2008, Christopher Howard wrote:

> Following the advice of another Alpine user, I decided to use multiple
> .pinerc files instead of roles. Once I setup some convenient bash
> aliases, it is really easy to switch back and forth between accounts (or
> better, keep two instances open in separate virtual consoles).

Ugh. If you get the hang of roles I think you'll find it'll make your life
a lot easier.

> I'm finding that Alpine provides a very fast interface, and I feel a lot
> more efficient responding to mail and moving it around, than when I was
> using a GUI client. Alpine integrates with Pico, which feels somewhat
> similiar to Emacs, my preferred editor.

Pico & pilot are also in Pine, but I've always reconfigured Pine to use vim
instead. All other editors make my skin crawl.

> The only real issue I've had so far: for some reason, Alpine has trouble
> with IMAP authenication on one of my accounts. Sometimes it works just
> fine, but other times the SSL authentication fails, and it has to switch
> to plain authentication. (Which makes me a little nervous.)

That seems a bit odd. What error are you seeing?

> I thought it was pretty cool when I found out Alpine can easily pipe your
> commands to an external program.

Very useful for adding GPG signatures, etc. You'll find a lot of uses for
that.

> Alpine seems to have about 300 hundred configuration options, which
> (thankfully) can all be set within the program interface. I'm looking
> forward to exploring some of those, as well as setting up my own filters.
>
> I also really like the 'headers switch' command that allows you to
> instantly switch back and forth between full and brief headers.

I know that Alpine's the successor to Pine, but so far everything you've
mentioned feature-wise was already in Pine. I'll have to read up to find
out what the impetus for Alpine was in the first place.

         --Arthur Corliss
           Live Free or Die
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Received on Mon Nov 10 07:46:57 2008