I was vying for a text-based email client ever since I came back to IITK this semester. I knew that there was something called Pine that had been in use for quite sometime now. But then I came to know that now its developers, the team at the University of Washington have stopped developing Pine in favour of a new one Alpine. Ubuntu users can install alpine using Synaptic package manager. For others you may install it after downloading from here. For the rest of this post, I assume that it has been successfully installed on your system. I describe here how to configure Alpine so as to make it working for you. I do it specially for people connecting to internet through some institution’s internet and that too perhaps using proxy’s. Moreover, this post is specially for the benefit of IITK junta, since I had to spend quite a bit of time to configure it, specially for some subtle things.
As soon as the installation is done, you will find a .pinerc file in your parent directory (where your .bashrc is 
) Open the .pinerc file and make the following changes at the relevant places:
# Over-rides your full name from Unix password file. Required for PC-Alpine.
personal-name=Your name here
#as you would like it to appear in your outgoing emails.
# Sets domain part of From: and local addresses in outgoing mail.
user-domain=iitk.ac.in
# I think it is pretty clear as to what does it mean, you have to put the part after #the '@' of your email address.
# List of SMTP servers for sending mail. If blank: Unix Alpine uses sendmail.
smtp-server=smtp.cc.iitk.ac.in/user=yourloginID@iitk.ac.in/novalidate-cert
# The SMTP sever is the one which manages your outgoing mails. For IITK people its #smtp.cc.iitk.ac.in, but in addition to that you have to tell alpine what if your #login IDÂ on that sever, so put your institute-email address in full over there. The #novalidate-cert tells alpine not to enquire about the security certificates of the #server, as far as I know.
# Path of (local or remote) INBOX, e.g. ={mail.somewhere.edu}inbox
# Normal Unix default is the local INBOX (usually /usr/spool/mail/$USER).
inbox-path={newmailhost.cc.iitk.ac.in/user=yourloginID/ssl/novalidate-cert}INBOX
#newmailhost.cc.iitk.ac.in is the IMAP server of IITK. you should put your #institution's IMAP server or the server which receives your incoming messages. And #as similar to SMTP server's case above, you have to write down your username, this #time only your login ID without the '@domainname' suffixed to it. ssl is for secure #shell encryption while communicating the message between the IMAP server
#and your system and novalidate-cert is the same as above. INBOX is the name of the #folder you would like your messages to be saved to. Its a good idea to keep the name #of the folder same as #that on the IMAP server.
# Over-rides default path for sent-mail folder
default-fcc={newmailhost.cc.iitk.ac.in/user=yourloginID/ssl/novalidate-cert}INBOX.Sent
# This is specially for IITK junta. If you would like the messages you send using #alpine to be accessible from locations other than your own PC, then this is the way. #It saves your outgoing messages to the corresponding Sent folder on the IMAP server. #For others, you can also figure out the folder which stores your outgoing messages #on the mail server and mention its pathname here for alpine to locate it. If you #don't exercise this option, all your outgoing messages are saved in the default #'sent-mail' folder on your local system. Also, for the messages that you wish to be #saved somewhere else,you #can override the default folder by giving the path to the #new folder in 'Fcc' column while composing the message.
# Over-rides default path for postponed messages folder
postponed-folder={newmailhost.cc.iitk.ac.in/user=yourloginID/ssl/novalidate-cert}INBOX.Drafts
#As similar to above, this is to save your drafts, unsent messages, postponed messages #in the corresponding folder on the mail server so as to be accessible from any #location other than your PC too. If you don't exercise this option at all, the #default is a folder named 'postponed-msgs' on your local system.
# Add these customized headers (and possible default values) when composing
customized-hdrs=From: Your name here <yourloginID@iitk.ac.in>,Reply-To: <yourloginID@iitk.ac.in>
#If you don't exercise this option and the username on your local account is different #from your login ID, then by default Alpine uses yourlocalusername@domainname in the #headers of your outgoing messages, which you might not want it to do.
# List of directories where saved-message folders may be. First one is
# the default for Saves.
folder-collections=mail/[],
"IMAP folders" {newmailhost.cc.iitk.ac.in/user=yourloginID/ssl/novalidate-cert}INBOX.[]
#This is again an optional one. It is to fetch your directories that might have your #messages on the mail server.
I think that pretty much sums up all the necessary modifications required by the .pinerc file, for Alpine to start working. Some further comments are in order:
1) You can customize Alpine much more than this and even use some other facilities like access to newsgroups, but as of now, I haven’t figured out how to do so. You may try doing such things at your own risk.
2) As you will slowly figure out for yourselves and from however small stint that I have had with it, all I can say is that Alpine rocks!!! You can even read in text from the files (yeah only text files as far as I know) on your local systems into your messages, not merely attach them. You are able to sort out mails faster and search for them faster and doesn’t require much use of the mouse. Overall, for people like me who are quite lazy to write and reply to mails otherwise, its a much faster and better way out.
3) I acquired all the above knowledge after applying my own brain along with help from the various sources over the net which I forgot 
. My primary purpose behind writing this post is for my own future reference along with some possible help for IITK junta.
Sayonara
