After Pine Update, New Mail Just Won’t Go Away

Some students who use Pine to check their e-mail have recently felt a bit more popular than usual.

Since a new version of Pine was installed on Sept. 30, students have needed to log out of their e-mail accounts completely in order for their old e-mails to be labeled accurately as such.

If users do not quit the program, all e-mails will maintain their “new” status and a person’s Inbox may appear to contain more new messages than it actually does.

Users may exit the program by scrolling to the “quit” command on the main menu or by typing “Q.”

The old version of Pine automatically updated e-mail lists.

Kevin S. Davis ’98, director of residential computing for Harvard Arts and Sciences Computer Services (HASCS), said the new version of Pine acts on the assumption that users always log out.

“The truth is logging out has always been the expected behavior,” Davis said. “Now you just have to hit ‘quit’ first.”

Davis said that although this change has annoyed some students, it has not affected e-mail service.

“We got no more than a dozen complaints from students about this,” he said. “No e-mail is being lost, so it’s just a little more inconvenience if you didn’t hit ‘Q.’ It’s strictly a cosmetic change.”

Davis said HASCS upgraded Pine—a program developed by the University of Washington—in order to fill security holes within the old program.

Whenever a new version of Pine is available, Davis said that HASCS adopts it. He said this occurs nearly every year.