Some notes on setting up Alpine
(which is sometimes more efficient than Mutt for handling
IMAP over a slow Internet connection)

Address book
------------

To convert Mutt aliases to Alpine address book, use this
command (WARNING: overwrites existing Alpine address book)

grep ^alias .muttrc | sed -e 's/^alias \([^ ][^ ]*\) \([^<][^<]*\)<\([^>]*\)>$/\1'$'\t''\2'$'\t''\3/' -e 's/^alias \([^ ][^ ]*\) \([^ ]*@[^ ]*\)$/\1'$'\t\t''\2/' | tr -d '"' | grep -v ^alias > .addressbook

Folders
-------

In .pinerc, as well as setting inbox-path, smtp-server etc
you might want to set this to use remote folders without
having to qualify them:

    folder-collections={imap.example.net}[]

but note that default-fcc is then a remote folder; if you
want to omit attachments when writing to it, change any
"no-fcc-without-attachments" to "fcc-without-attachments"
in feature-list (that saves having to use ImapFix to do it).
You might also want to set "mark-fcc-seen" in feature-list.

Also if you don't want Alpine to take over organising
your old messages, make sure to use the setting:

    pruning-rule=no-no

Postponing messages locally
---------------------------

If your Internet connection fails while you are writing a
message, Alpine can be awkward.  To work around this, set

postponed-folder=/path/to/.alpine-postponed

to have Alpine write postponed messages to a file in your
local home directory (rather than trying to store them on
the server); it is then possible to postpone the current
message locally, and resume it once the connection is
re-established and Alpine is restarted.

Colours
-------

Below are some light-on-dark colours for the "color"
section of .pinerc.  (You might also want to set the
composer-wrap-column option to 1 less than the
window width you usually use.)

normal-foreground-color=yellow
normal-background-color=black
reverse-foreground-color=
reverse-background-color=
title-foreground-color=white
title-background-color=blue
title-closed-foreground-color=
title-closed-background-color=
status-foreground-color=white
status-background-color=blue
keylabel-foreground-color=
keylabel-background-color=
keyname-foreground-color=yellow
keyname-background-color=blue
selectable-item-foreground-color=
selectable-item-background-color=
meta-message-foreground-color=yellow
meta-message-background-color=black
quote1-foreground-color=cyan
quote1-background-color=black
quote2-foreground-color=magenta
quote2-background-color=black
quote3-foreground-color=green
quote3-background-color=black
incoming-unseen-foreground-color=
incoming-unseen-background-color=
signature-foreground-color=white
signature-background-color=blue
prompt-foreground-color=
prompt-background-color=
header-general-foreground-color=cyan
header-general-background-color=black
index-to-me-foreground-color=cyan
index-to-me-background-color=black
index-important-foreground-color=red
index-important-background-color=black
index-deleted-foreground-color=magenta
index-deleted-background-color=black
index-answered-foreground-color=green
index-answered-background-color=black
index-new-foreground-color=white
index-new-background-color=black
index-recent-foreground-color=yellow
index-recent-background-color=black
index-forward-foreground-color=
index-forward-background-color=
index-unseen-foreground-color=white
index-unseen-background-color=black
index-highpriority-foreground-color=
index-highpriority-background-color=
index-lowpriority-foreground-color=
index-lowpriority-background-color=
index-arrow-foreground-color=
index-arrow-background-color=
index-subject-foreground-color=
index-subject-background-color=
index-from-foreground-color=
index-from-background-color=
index-opening-foreground-color=
index-opening-background-color=
viewer-hdr-colors=
keyword-colors=

Where to find history of this file
----------------------------------
on GitHub at https://github.com/ssb22/config
and on GitLab at https://gitlab.com/ssb22/config
and on BitBucket https://bitbucket.org/ssb22/config
and at https://gitlab.developers.cam.ac.uk/ssb22/config
and in China: https://gitee.com/ssb22/config