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Pine prints a message to the screen instead of the Printer

If when trying to print a message from Pine the message scrolls by, then you have several choices, depending on the capability of your communications program (check its manual and menus). In all cases, the first step you will take is:

Issue the pine % command when the message is selected (or displayed).

Then, before you press return to confirm this, take whatever of the following three actions are called for by your program's capabilities:

  1. If your program supports printing of characters as they arrive:
    1. Turn on (or "toggle" on) the printing feature
    2. Press return to confirm the printing (you typed the % command earlier)
    3. When the scrolling stops, turn/toggle off the printing feature.
    4. Type control-L to tell pine to neaten up the screen again
  2. If your program has a "scrollback buffer" that allows you to look at -- and select text from -- previous screens:
    1. Press return to confirm the printing (you just typed the % command)
    2. When scrolling stops, select (highlight) the complete text of the message.
    3. Depending on whether your program can print highlighted selections:
      1. If it can, print the selection
      2. If it can't
        1. Choose COPY (usually from the EDIT menu)
        2. Open a NEW word processor document
        3. Choose PASTE (usually from the EDIT menu)
        4. Print the document/message, using the word processor
    4. Type control-L to tell pine to neaten up the screen again
  3. If your program supports "Text-Capture" or "Logging" of characters as they arrive:
    1. Turn on text capture
    2. Give a suitable filename, if asked
    3. Press return to confirm the printing (you typed the % command earlier)
    4. When the scrolling stops
      1. If you want the message in its own file, turn off the text capture now and close the file
      2. If you want to collect all the messages in one big file, just toggle off (suspend) the text capture and go to process another message, closing the capture file for good only when you've captured all the messages you want to print.
    5. Type control-L to tell pine to neaten up the screen again
    6. Print the captured text file (you may be able to do this using commands available in your communications program, or using a word processor, or just using a system print command).

Note: Some communications programs seem to be designed so that they include in printed or captured text the material that was already on the screen at the time printing or capture is turned on, not just that material that arrives after the print/capture feature is turned on.

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