Greetings All,

There has been much discussion about ways to improve the
functionality of the Pine e-mail program on this list.  I thought
I'd share my method for handling messages that have a .zip file
attached to them.  One note of caution: this method does not
handle .zip files that are password protected.  As far as I can
determine, the Unix version of unzip does not handle password
protected files.  If anyone knows how to add this functionality
I'd certainly like to know about it.

One of the things I really like about Unix is the ability to
share (techies call it pipe) information between programs.  You
are going to take advantage of that feature to accomplish this
task.

Preparing Pine

First you have to go to Pine's configuration menu and enable the
ability to handle piping between programs.  From the Main Menu
press "s" for Setup and then "c" for Configuration.  Press "w"
for Where is followed by "pipe" and Enter to start searching for
the word.  You should land on a line that says something about
enable pipe command.  If there's not an x on the line press "x"
to turn the feature on.  If there is you are good to go.  In
either case press "e" to exit the configuration menu.

Preparing Your Account

Next you need to put the following command into a file so Pine
can execute it on request.  This command should go in your home
directory in a file of your choosing, although the shorter the
name the better since you will have to type it in response to a
Pine prompt.  I use the name "vz" for view zip.  The line that
needs to be in the file is:

unzip -p *.zip | more

This command instructs unzip to unzip whatever zip files it finds
in a message and pass the contents to the Unix More program which
will display the results a page at a time.  The nice thing is
that there are no files to clean up afterward and you still have
the option of saving the extracted text to a file if you so
choose.

You also need to instruct Unix that the file you've just created
is a program that it can execute and not just a file containing
an odd assortment of characters and words.  To do this you need
to be at the Unix prompt when you type:

chmod u+x vz

This line is a command to the Unix Change Mode program.  It tells
Unix to give you (the "u" and plus parts of the command) the
ability to run or execute (the "x") the file vz.

Using It All

After getting everything ready it is time to actually put things
to use. When you encounter a message that has a .zip attachment
simply do the following:

Press the vertical bar character on your keyboard.  That's a
shifted back slash character which is typically located in one of
three locations: just above the return key, as the second key in
from the right on the top row of your keyboard or just to the
right of the right shift key.

Pine will respond with a question asking about the command to
redirect text to.  This is where you enter the filename you
created before.  In my case I simply press "vz" and Enter and up
pops the contents of the .zip file.  When done reading press "e"
to exit the text viewer.  If you want to save the contents to a
file press "s" for save and enter a filename. You can press the
vertical bar from either the message index or message viewing
screen in Pine.  If you want to view more than one .zip file
within a given session (you haven't exited) of Pine, the program
remembers the command you typed the previous time you wanted to
pipe a message.  In that case you simply press the vertical bar
and enter.

-----
Kelly Ford
[log in to unmask]
See my home page at http://www.teleport.com/~kford/index.html