 Alpine 1.10 message thread view |
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| Developer(s) | University of Washington |
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| Initial release | December 20, 2007 |
| Stable release | 2.00 (2008-08-26) |
| Operating system | Cross-platform |
| Development status | Active |
| Type | E-mail client |
| License | Apache License |
| Website | http://www.washington.edu/alpine/ |
Alpine is a free software e-mail client developed at the University of Washington.
Alpine 1.0 was publicly released on December 20, 2007.
Alpine is a rewrite of the Pine Message System that adds support for Unicode and other features. Alpine is meant to be suitable for both inexperienced email users and the most demanding of power users. Alpine is developed at the University of Washington, as was Pine before it. Alpine can be learned by exploration and the use of context-sensitive help. The user interface can be customized.
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Licensing
Alpine is licensed under the Apache License, version 2. November 29, 2006 saw the first public alpha release,[1][2] which forms a new approach since the alpha test of Pine was always non-public.
Features
Alpine shares a lot of common feature of console applications, like rich set of shortcut keys, using keyboard instead of mouse to do all navigation and operation. In fact all operations in alpine have corresponding shortcut keys.
Unlike other console applications targeting developers and experienced users, which often require users to edit a configuration file, Alpine allows the user to change most configuration options within the software. This makes alpine one of the most easy to learn console-based email clients.
Alpine supports IMAP, POP, SMTP and LDAP protocol natively. Although it does not support composing HTML email, it can display emails that only have HTML content as text.
Users
Linus Torvalds, the primary force behind the development of Linux, has stated in an interview published by the Lifehacker weblog on 31 January 2008 that he uses Alpine as his email client.[3] E-mail headers confirm this.[4]
Future
On 4 August 2008 the University of Washington Alpine team announced[5] that after one more release, incorporating Web Alpine 2.0, they would "shift our effort from direct development into more of a consultation and coordination role to help integrate contributions from the community." This is likely to be interpreted that the UW team no longer maintains Alpine[6], and is leaving development to others. Current alternatives are re-alpine.
See also
References
- ^ "Announce of Alpine 0.8". http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.mail.pine.general/3602. Retrieved 2006-12-14.
- ^ "Alpine FTP download directory". ftp://ftp.cac.washington.edu/alpine/. Retrieved 2006-12-19.
- ^ "Interview with Linus Torvalds at linux.conf.au 2008". Lifehacker. 2008-01-31. http://www.lifehacker.com.au/tips/2008/01/31/lifehacker_australia_interview.html. Retrieved 2008-01-31. "He uses a text-based email application called Alpine (the new version of longtime University of Washington mail app Pine)"
- ^ Headers from the release of Linux 2.6.30 on 10 June 2009
- ^ "Alpine status". http://mailman2.u.washington.edu/pipermail/alpine-info/2008-August/001071.html. Retrieved 2008-08-04.
- ^ http://mailman2.u.washington.edu/pipermail/alpine-info/2009-August/002439.html
External links
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