Question about offline reading/sending.

[D]

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

[Carlos E.R.]

Post by D
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.

Post by D
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.

[D]

Post by D
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.

Post by D
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.