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  • Question about offline reading/sending.

    From D@21:1/5 to All on Mon Jun 17 23:51:14 2024
    Dear alpiners,

    I've brutally smashed the round peg into the square hole, to enable me to
    read and send emails and newsgroup posts off line.

    However, this is done with some friction. What I do is I download emails
    with mbsync, and I download them into Maildir folders, and with the
    Maildir patch, all is good in the reading department.

    When I'm on a plane and want to send a message, today I write it, and
    postpone it.

    The friction here is when I land and connect to the internet again. Then I
    need to go into each postponed message and manually send it.

    Does anyone here know of a nice way to get alpine to automatically send
    those postponed messages when internet is restored, or perhaps even just
    send all postponed messages with one keypress?

    In terms of news I've brutally hacked leafnode to download news to a local folder. Then I have a python script that sorts them into Maildir folders
    named after the newsgroups. That way I can enjoy reading and responding to
    news while on a plane or off line.

    When sending, for some strange reason, alpine picks up on the fact that it
    is a news message as long as the Newsgroup header is filled in, so it
    works just like email above, with postpone and then manually go into each newsgroup post and send them.

    I imagine that the solution for email might work for that as well.

    Only thing I miss with this off line news reading solution is the ability
    to "Tab" from one Maildir folder (newsgroup) to the next one with an
    unread message. I do have to go through each folder, but it's close
    enough.

    Best regards,
    Daniel

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Carlos E.R.@21:1/5 to All on Tue Jul 30 12:12:41 2024
    On 2024-06-17 23:51, D wrote:
    Dear alpiners,

    I've brutally smashed the round peg into the square hole, to enable me
    to read and send emails and newsgroup posts off line.

    However, this is done with some friction. What I do is I download emails
    with mbsync, and I download them into Maildir folders, and with the
    Maildir patch, all is good in the reading department.

    When I'm on a plane and want to send a message, today I write it, and postpone it.

    The friction here is when I land and connect to the internet again. Then
    I need to go into each postponed message and manually send it.

    Does anyone here know of a nice way to get alpine to automatically send
    those postponed messages when internet is restored, or perhaps even just
    send all postponed messages with one keypress?

    Assuming you are using Linux, it is possible to coax an MTA, like
    perhaps postfix, into accepting mail while offline, and then
    automatically send them when there is internet. It is not delayed for
    ever, just 5 days I think. And it will mail you about delayed mail after
    some hours of delay.



    In terms of news I've brutally hacked leafnode to download news to a
    local folder. Then I have a python script that sorts them into Maildir folders named after the newsgroups. That way I can enjoy reading and responding to news while on a plane or off line.

    When sending, for some strange reason, alpine picks up on the fact that
    it is a news message as long as the Newsgroup header is filled in, so it works just like email above, with postpone and then manually go into
    each newsgroup post and send them.

    You could instead use a news proxy such as leafnode, which is designed
    for this usage.

    You have to manually (or periodically with a cron job) fetch news into a
    local structure, and send posts manually but with a single command when
    there is a connection. Alpine is then configured to use this local
    "fake" news server. This leafnode was created for use with intermitent
    and expensive internet via a modem. The operation could be automated
    with the modem going up.

    --
    Cheers, Carlos.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From D@21:1/5 to Carlos E.R. on Tue Jul 30 16:54:12 2024
    On Tue, 30 Jul 2024, Carlos E.R. wrote:

    Does anyone here know of a nice way to get alpine to automatically send
    those postponed messages when internet is restored, or perhaps even just
    send all postponed messages with one keypress?

    Assuming you are using Linux, it is possible to coax an MTA, like perhaps postfix, into accepting mail while offline, and then automatically send them when there is internet. It is not delayed for ever, just 5 days I think. And it will mail you about delayed mail after some hours of delay.

    Hello Carlos and thank you very much for your thoughts and feedback.
    Indeed, I did think along these lines, but ideally, I'd like to have a
    "self contained" alpine and not need so much tooling around it.

    But I have not (yet) managed to come up with an "alpine contained"
    solution for sending several postponed messages at once, so what you say
    makes a lot of sense.




    In terms of news I've brutally hacked leafnode to download news to a local >> folder. Then I have a python script that sorts them into Maildir folders
    named after the newsgroups. That way I can enjoy reading and responding to >> news while on a plane or off line.

    When sending, for some strange reason, alpine picks up on the fact that it >> is a news message as long as the Newsgroup header is filled in, so it works >> just like email above, with postpone and then manually go into each
    newsgroup post and send them.

    You could instead use a news proxy such as leafnode, which is designed for this usage.

    I do use leafnode, but specifically, I only use the fetchnews component
    to fetch my news and sort them into Maildir folders. Then I use alpine
    to browse those folders and it works great!

    What I did miss was the tab functionality to take me to the next unread message, even across groups, but then I found a way to replicate this
    with a simple search for unread messages, and then by zooming in on that selection.

    The end result is pretty close to "tabbing" my way to victory.

    When it comes to using leafnode "as is" there was something that didn't
    quite work, but I don't quite remember what it was that caused me to
    abandon that way of doing it. _Perhaps_ it was something about how
    alpine in news mode handled unread messages vs new messages that didn't
    quite fit with how alpine handled unread vs new messages in maildir
    folders.

    But I might have a second look.

    You have to manually (or periodically with a cron job) fetch news into a local structure, and send posts manually but with a single command when there is a connection. Alpine is then configured to use this local "fake" news server. This leafnode was created for use with intermitent and expensive internet via a modem. The operation could be automated with the modem going up.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)