Epiphany about pine. The "tab"!

[D]

Hello alpiners,

I just had an epiphany about the tab-button, that I wanted to share.
Strange thing is... I've used alpine for at least a year, and I've seen
the message at the bottom of the screen, but why did it never click?

Anyway...

I've experimentet with alpine as a news reader, and even though it is a
bit slow compared with tin, and even though I cannot get a counter of new
messages after the newsgroup name, and even though the "N" indicator is a
bit clunky, I discovered that pressing tab not only navigates to the next
group, but it also skips a group if no new messages are there.

Brilliant!

That makes up for some of the slowness, since I can just read, delete one
message to make the messages above being marked as read, then skip the
empty groups and land in the next group with new messages.

This has radically speeded up my newsbrowsing since I no longer need to
enter a group, read, exit the group, select the next one.

So shame on my for not discovering it earlier, but now at least I did, and
I hope some other aspiring and beginning alpine fan might be saved the
trouble. ;)

Best regards,
Daniel

[Daniel]

Post by D
Hello alpiners,
I just had an epiphany about the tab-button, that I wanted to
share. Strange thing is... I've used alpine for at least a year, and
I've seen the message at the bottom of the screen, but why did it
never click?
Anyway...
I've experimentet with alpine as a news reader, and even though it is
a bit slow compared with tin, and even though I cannot get a counter
of new messages after the newsgroup name, and even though the "N"
indicator is a bit clunky, I discovered that pressing tab not only
navigates to the next group, but it also skips a group if no new
messages are there.
Brilliant!
That makes up for some of the slowness, since I can just read, delete
one message to make the messages above being marked as read, then skip
the empty groups and land in the next group with new messages.
This has radically speeded up my newsbrowsing since I no longer need
to enter a group, read, exit the group, select the next one.
So shame on my for not discovering it earlier, but now at least I did,
and I hope some other aspiring and beginning alpine fan might be saved
the trouble. ;)
Best regards,
Daniel

Hi Daniel,

It never occured to me to use alpine for newsgroups. I use emacs for
that, and have for about ten years.

Laziness prevented me from setting up email on emacs too. And only
recently got alpine to work the way i like it.

I'm just lazy.

Is the newsgroup part of alpine integrated with email? Like, is it
interchangable and all that?

Daniel

[D]

Post by Daniel

Post by D
Hello alpiners,
I just had an epiphany about the tab-button, that I wanted to
share. Strange thing is... I've used alpine for at least a year, and
I've seen the message at the bottom of the screen, but why did it
never click?
Anyway...
I've experimentet with alpine as a news reader, and even though it is
a bit slow compared with tin, and even though I cannot get a counter
of new messages after the newsgroup name, and even though the "N"
indicator is a bit clunky, I discovered that pressing tab not only
navigates to the next group, but it also skips a group if no new
messages are there.
Brilliant!
That makes up for some of the slowness, since I can just read, delete
one message to make the messages above being marked as read, then skip
the empty groups and land in the next group with new messages.
This has radically speeded up my newsbrowsing since I no longer need
to enter a group, read, exit the group, select the next one.
So shame on my for not discovering it earlier, but now at least I did,
and I hope some other aspiring and beginning alpine fan might be saved
the trouble. ;)
Best regards,
Daniel

Hi Daniel,
It never occured to me to use alpine for newsgroups. I use emacs for
that, and have for about ten years.
Laziness prevented me from setting up email on emacs too. And only
recently got alpine to work the way i like it.
I'm just lazy.
Is the newsgroup part of alpine integrated with email? Like, is it
interchangable and all that?
Daniel

Hello Daniel,

Yes, it works pretty much like email. Same shorts cuts and way to
navigate. Only drawback with the default news functionality is that it is
online only, so you have to be connected. You can get around that, but it
is a little bit complicated.

I have heard rumours from the more experienced usenet crowd that it lacks
x and y, but since I'm an email guy at heart, it never bothered me that
much.

Try it out, maybe you'll like it! =) And if you want to explore the
offline news mode, write me back and I'll guide you through it.

Best regards,
Daniel

[J.O. Aho]

Post by D

Post by Daniel
Is the newsgroup part of alpine integrated with email? Like, is it
interchangable and all that?

Yes, it works pretty much like email. Same shorts cuts and way to
navigate. Only drawback with the default news functionality is that it
is online only, so you have to be connected. You can get around that,
but it is a little bit complicated.
I have heard rumours from the more experienced usenet crowd that it
lacks x and y, but since I'm an email guy at heart, it never bothered me
that much.

I did use it for some emergency usage, one of the issues I had was that
the posts weren't sorted by thread, but I didn't bother to check if it
was possible or not.

Post by D
Try it out, maybe you'll like it! =) And if you want to explore the
offline news mode, write me back and I'll guide you through it.

I know some people setup their own nntp server locally, let it fetch the
posts and then use pine as the client to read and reply, but never gone
that path myself.

[D]

I have heard rumours from the more experienced usenet crowd that it lacks x
and y, but since I'm an email guy at heart, it never bothered me that much.

I did use it for some emergency usage, one of the issues I had was that the
posts weren't sorted by thread, but I didn't bother to check if it was
possible or not.

Yes, thread sorting is possible.

Try it out, maybe you'll like it! =) And if you want to explore the offline
news mode, write me back and I'll guide you through it.

I know some people setup their own nntp server locally, let it fetch the
posts and then use pine as the client to read and reply, but never gone that
path myself.

Yep, that's the trick. I use a lightly modified leafnode to fetch news,
and then a python script which copies the messages into Maildir folders.
That way I can read everything offline, and reply, without any problems.

[D]

Post by D

Post by D
I have heard rumours from the more experienced usenet crowd that it lacks
x and y, but since I'm an email guy at heart, it never bothered me that
much.

I did use it for some emergency usage, one of the issues I had was that the
posts weren't sorted by thread, but I didn't bother to check if it was
possible or not.

Yes, thread sorting is possible.

Post by D
Try it out, maybe you'll like it! =) And if you want to explore the
offline news mode, write me back and I'll guide you through it.

I know some people setup their own nntp server locally, let it fetch the
posts and then use pine as the client to read and reply, but never gone
that path myself.

Yep, that's the trick. I use a lightly modified leafnode to fetch news,
and then a python script which copies the messages into Maildir folders.
That way I can read everything offline, and reply, without any problems.

And to leave my findings here for others to enjoy, I kind of found an
alternative to "Tab":ing through my news folders (Tab won't work like in
Incoming folders, so I can only tab new messages within the same folder
when I read news off line, and not across folders, thus enabling me to
skip empty folders).

The solution!

Select, then choose property New, and once selected, zoom, and then I can
just read messages in folders which contain something new. =)

Best regards,
Daniel

[Adam H. Kerman]

Post by Daniel
. . .
Is the newsgroup part of alpine integrated with email? Like, is it
interchangable and all that?

In the composer, the presense or absense of a Newsgroups header will
determine if a Usenet proto article is being prepared for injection. You
have to have set up NNTP first, of course.

alpine has a naming convention for the newsrc file so it may be used
with multiple servers. While I don't care for alpine as a newsreader, I
follow the naming convention so that I have the option of using alpine
for News if I choose to. My other newsreader doesn't care how the newsrc
files are named.

I've always archived Usenet articles as Mail messages (by prepending the
"From " line even though ENVELOPE FROM isn't a Usenet concept) and read
them with alpine.