Pine 4.10 introduced the concept of Roles. The basic idea was that if one received mail from various addresses and needed to treat them differently, a role could be used for each one. For example, if I man the helpdesk and respond to all questions sent to help@example.com, then when I reply, I may want my From: address to be the help address and not my personal address. I may use a different .signature etc. Each role would be activated by matching certain patterns in messages.
This idea was expanded in Pine 4.20 to include generalized Rules that could be applied to various features. As of version 4.40, this list of features includes Roles, Filters, and message-index colors. In addition, scores can be set based on various patterns, and the score can be used in the above rules.
Per-folder rules that control the sort order, message-index tokens, and the initial startup rule for the folder are also available.
For each kind of rule, a set of patterns are matched per message, and an action is applied to the message based on the rule. These actions vary. For filters, the filter action may be to move the message to a different folder, to delete it, or merely to change its status. For index-colors, the message will be displayed in a different color in the message-index. For Roles, a newly composed message, reply or forwarded message will be affected - the headers can be set, the signature can be set, and a message template can be used.
My roles work fine when replying. How do I use one when composing a new message?
In Pine 4.10, press # from the (M)ain screen. In higher versions, pressing # from any screen that (C)ompose would work, works as well.
Not any more. In the past, that was necessary. At the time (and now), Pine made it easy to copy settings from one role to another, by using the Initialize settings using role setting to "inherit" settings from another role.
It is no longer necessary to use that method because now Pine can match on a Recipient pattern. It will match on To: and Cc: with the same role. You may also want to look at the Participant setting as well which include the From: header in the match as well.
Nothing is wrong. Pine doesn't yet know that your new From: address is yours. Add the address to the alt-addresses option from (M)ain (S)etup (C)onfig and everything should be back to normal.
Can I change my role after I've started composing?
No. You can manually change the headers that the role defines for you, and the signature it places on the bottom by typing them in, but you can do that even if you weren't using a role.
I used to use procmail to filter my messages into various folders. Can Pine do that?
As of 4.20, Pine supports some filtering. You can setup filters under (M)ain (S)etup (R)ules (F)ilters. Filters match patterns the same way as roles. You can choose to apply the filter action in specific email folders or newsgroups, in any email folder, or in any newsgroup.
Filter actions are either Move to a specific folder, delete, or set message status flags.
Sort of. See the previous question. Use the Delete filter action on the address and context (Email or news) of the person you want to killfile. That will do a rudimentary emulation of what you want. You can also assign scores and delete anything with a score in a certain range.
Can I setup a rule to be used when something is NOT matched?
As of Pine 4.50, you can use the (!)ToggleNot key to reverse the logic of a pattern match.
In earlier versions, you can't. You should use scores instead.
How can I make Pine show me the score for a message?
As of version 4.40, you can use the SCORE token in the index-format to view the score for each message.
You need to load the ansi.sys driver in your config.sys file. Add this line to your config.sys file:
DEVICEHIGH=C:\WINDOWS\ansi.sys
You may have to replace DEVICEHIGH= with DEVICE=. If ansi.sys is not in C:\WINDOWS then you should put in the correct path in your config.sys file.
Can I use time-based filters to, say, move all messages older than a month to an archive mailbox?
As of Pine 4.50, you can filter based on an Age range.
In earlier versions, you can't filter. But you can manually select the messages by using (;)Select (D)ate (^W)hen [Before] and type in a date in the format specified, and then (A)pply whatever actions you want.