Alpine is a revised version of Pine, a well-known and well-loved text-based e-mail client developed by the University of Washington, USA. It can access mail from POP3 and IMAP mail servers, as well as act as a client for NNTP news servers. The package also includes the simple text editor Pico and file browser Pilot, along with some small utilities for managing mail stored on IMAP servers.
The latest version of Alpine for OS/2 is 1.10. The University of Washington released this version on 17 March 2008, and the OS/2 port was subsequently released on 4 April 2008. Details about the release can be found in the README.OS2 file packaged with the distribution.
Pine itself is no longer maintained, but you can find an archive of OS/2 Pine releases on OS/2 Site. The last version of Pine was 4.64, released on 5 October 2005.
The following is a list of packages available for download. The download points given for the executables are far from exhaustive. If you are an experienced user of OS/2 freeware you will probably know where your nearest Hobbes mirror is. Otherwise, you can go to Hobbes and find out.
I have not (yet) attempted to port the Web-based version of Alpine.
Note that the standard versions of Alpine and the IMAP toolkit contain a binary version of the OpenSSL library, which implements strong cryptography. Some jurisdictions impose controls on the import and export of strong cryptography. It is possible to compile versions without SSL support for these uses; please contact me if you need this version and aren't able to compile it yourself.
The University of Washington provides a wealth of information about Alpine at its Alpine Messaging System Site, including e-mail lists, documentation and a feedback form. Queries or comments about Alpine that aren't specifically related to OS/2 should be directed to the University of Washington.
Queries, comments and bugs specific to the OS/2 version of Alpine can be sent to me at nps@zeta.org.au. I maintain a list of known bugs on the download pages for Alpine and the IMAP toolkit.
I announce new versions of Alpine on the ecomstation.apps newsgroup on the news.ecomstation.com server. Unfortunately I'm no longer able to access the traditional comp.os.os2.mail-news or comp.mail.pine groups as my ISP has shut down its Usenet server, but other people might still be there.
Pine was created in 1989 by the University of Washington, USA. The University of Washington has a history in its Pine Information Center.
Pine 3.95 was ported to OS/2 by David Nugent. The OS/2 port wasn't maintained for the 4.0x releases of Pine, but I updated David's port for 4.10 and continued maintaining it up until version 4.58 was released.
I made a major revision of the port for the 4.6x releases. The revised port still uses some of David's code, but my main goal was to bring the port closer to the Unix and Windows versions, reducing the amount of OS/2-specific code and enabling some newer features that the old OS/2 port didn't support. I released beta versions of the mail servers with Pine 4.61 and maintained these until the final version of Pine.
The University of Washington released Alpine in 2007. The OS/2 port of Alpine and the IMAP toolkit is based on the 4.6x port of Pine.
Last edited: 3 April 2008