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Alpine FAQs

1. Getting Help With Alpine
2. What is....?
3. General Usage Questions
4. Sending and Receiving Mail
5. Attachments
6. Customization and Configuration

• 1.1 What documentation is available for Alpine?
• 1.2 Whom should I ask for help with Alpine?

• 2.1 What is ALPINE?
  • 2.1.1 What ALPINE Does...
  • 2.1.2 What ALPINE Does Not Do...
• 2.2 What is PICO?
• 2.3 What is PILOT?
• 2.4 What is MIME?
• 2.5 What is IMAP?
• 2.6 What is SMTP?
• 2.7 What is POP3?

• 3.1 Alpine seems to ignore some of my command keystrokes - why?
• 3.2 What are these .pine-debug files for?
  • 3.2.1 Can I delete the .pine-debug files?
  • 3.2.2 How do I change the number of .pine-debug files kept or prevent the .pine-debug files from being created?
• 3.3 Why does Alpine repeatedly ask for my password after my intitial login?
• 3.4 Why is it that I have to exit and reopen Alpine in order to receive new mail?
• 3.5 How do I do operations on multiple messages? (or, How do I use Alpine's aggregate commands?)
• 3.6 Does Alpine block messages?
• 3.7 Can I create directories to store Alpine folders?

• 4.1 How do I send a message to multiple recipients without showing all their names?
• 4.2 Can I get a "return-receipt" when sending a message with Alpine?
• 4.3 Can I eliminate the @host.domain from local addresses?
• 4.4 How can I tell immediately whether I have received new mail?

• 5.1 How do I attach a file in Alpine?
• 5.2 Why does Alpine encode text attachments?
  • 5.2.1 How can I send a text file without it being encoded?
  • 5.2.2 Why does Alpine use Base64 instead of UUencode?
• 5.3 How do I convert a Sun Mailtool attachment to MIME format?
• 5.4 How do I decode an attachment in a message I received that is in BinHex or UUencoded format?
• 5.5 How can someone without Alpine decipher an attachment to a message I send?
• 5.6 How can I delete attachments?

   General

• 6.1 Where does Alpine look for configuration information?
  • 6.1.1 How can I get a fresh copy of my Alpine configuration file?

• 6.2 Can I customize Alpine on a per folder basis?
• 6.3 Can Alpine be used with a POP server?

• 6.4 Why does my message index show From: instead of To:?
• 6.5 How do I change my 'From:' line?
• 6.6 How do I define my own headers like Reply-To and Organization?
• 6.7 How can I have a signature automatically appended to my mail messages?

   Program Behavior

• 6.8 Can I reduce the frequent prompting to confirm an operation?
• 6.9 How can I filter messages into different incoming folders?
• 6.10 How do I control what is displayed in the FOLDER INDEX screen?
• 6.11 How can I control association of MIME-attachments with applications and filenames?
• 6.12 How can I read a ROT13 encoded message?
• 6.13 Does Alpine offer color support?

   PC-Alpine Specific

• 6.14 How can I perform spell checking with PC-Alpine for Windows?

Alpine Messaging System
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Modified: April 15, 2009