[NTLUG:Discuss] What's wrong with Pine (was Beginner!)

[Richard Cobbe]

Lo, on Sunday, December 16, sysmail at glade.net did write:

> On another topic, I notice that Linux purists generally don't like Pine.
> I know it's less free than mutt or nmh, but I am curious about the debate.

This was discussed at some length on the Debian mailing lists a while
back.  (You can search through the archives at
<http://lists.debian.org/search.html>.)

Apparently, Pine as obtained from its primary vendor (I want to say
WUStL, but I could be wrong) doesn't work terribly well with Debian's
xterms and a couple of other things---not sure about the details.  Some
code changes are necessary to fix these problems.  However, Pine is
distributed under a license that does not allow the redistribution of
modified binaries.  Therefore, Debian does not include binary packages
for Pine (even in non-free); instead, it provides two binary packages
for pine, pine4-src and pine4-diffs, which actually contain the original
source code and diffs requred for Debian, packaged for easy download.
After you install these, you have to apply the patch and build the
program yourself.

Licensing issues aside, this dislike may have a bit to do with Pine's
UI, which is geared more towards the novice user.  (IIRC, Pine was
originally written in the late '80s or early '90s as an easier-to-use
alternative to Elm, the dominant MUA at the time.  In fact, `PINE'
expands to `Pine Is Not Elm'.)  That said, it's a decent little mailer;
I used it from '93 (when I first started working with Unix) up until
'96 when I switched to VM.  (As I mentioned on this list a couple of
days ago, I got tired of keybindings that were almost but not quite the
same as in Emacs.)

Richard