Baslinux mailing list

[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

On Fri, 15 Oct 2004 cce.zizkov AT volny.cz wrote:

> Hi Sindi,
>
> thank you for your feedback on the mutt add-ons. I think you
> discovered a couple of bugs which I will try to repair as soon
> as possible. At this moment I have no time to test sending
> arbitrary binary attachments myself. You are probably right, that
> this feature does not work. Before I have a look at it here,
> I will not comment on this. You may find hints in the mutt
> manual.

The reason .wav and .ppm files are not considered binary is probably 
because they are not listed in .mailcp and I will try adding them.

> Here are a few preliminary remarks on your problems:
>
> On 14 Oct 04 at 19:13, keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org wrote:
>
> > I have mutt working in BL3 and BL2 now.  The manual says you need
> > mime.types in one of three locations.  I notice it is in ~/Mail which is not
> > on the list. I mention this because when I try to send a binary attachment
> > things sometimes go wrong.
>
> This file will actually be needed. I did not check, whether mutt
> reads it or not. Paths of configuration files can be passed to mutt
> either at compile time (I suppose the three locations mentioned
> above), or by command line parameters or in .muttrc. The script
> mu starts mutt with the ~/Mail/.muttrc. You may check whether in
> ~/Mail/.muttrc there is a line that gives the correct path to an
> existing mime.types file.

.mime.types is also in ~/Mail/.muttrc.  Did your installation script put 
it there?  (I did installpkg).  If so, you could rewrite the script to put 
it where Mutt expects to find it.  Mutt seems to work okay as it is 
though.  I don't have Mutt on this computer so cannot check right now what 
is in .muttrc.  I don't think this file is the problem with binary 
attachments, it is .mailcap not having .wav and .ppm in it.

> > Text is properly detected and sent as 7-bit ascii.
> > gif jpg pdf get sent as base64
> >
> > But wav and ppm files were detected and attached as quoted iso-8859-2
<snip>
> I have to play with this myself, first.
>
> > So I poked
> > around in /root/Mail and found some pertinent files.
> >
> > I found charset set to iso-8859-2 in /root/Mail/.lang.
> > I don't recall instructions to change this in README.  Might it be safer to
> > set it to 8859-1 as default for the lucky majority of BL users who don't
> > need to modify programs to use their charset and are not expecting to need
> > to change it?
>
> You should read and try to understand the .macro file that defines the
> function keys F1...F10. F3 and F4 make it possible to change
> keyboard, screen and encoding with one keystroke. If you want to
> edit the encoding manually press F2. This key first edits .lang and
> then reads the changed configuration data for the ongoing session.
> .lang-cz and .lang-ru are only replacements of .lang, F3 and F4
> copy them over the existing .lang in order to change the encoding.
> You might do something similar with a western encoding .lang-en or
> .lang-it.

Okay.  It was just as easy for me to edit .lang with an editor.
But if I want to read mails in other charsets I think I only need to load 
the right font for that, not switch between .lang files.  I don't write 
mail in other charsets (yet).

The F key setup seems easy, but I was asking why you set the default to be 
8859-2 not -1. I have not had time to read all the instructions, just 
enough to get this going on a basic level.  I am new to mutt.

> > If I change to iso-8859-1 my .wav file is attached as 'quoted ISO-8859-1'
> > instead of -2.  It still won't come out as music, will it?  What do I need
> > to do to make mutt encode .wav and .ppm files as base64 in attachments?
>
> RTFM

> > In .muttrc you have editor set to e3pi for BL2.  I happen to have e3 on my
> > computer but pico might be safer for the BL2 package.
>
> I personally prefer the internal editor of mc (you can start it
> mc -e). Midnight commander also is my main tool to view files of
> all kinds. I probably will not waste energy to define every
> extension again in mutt's mailcap file, but rather hand the files over
> to mc (you can start directly into the viewer with mc -v, I think).
>
> Of course mc should not be required in order to run the mutt
> add-on. So we have to put some default settings to mailcap that
> will run on _any_ BL1, BL2 or BL3 system. I had pico there, but than
> realized that BL3 did not include pico any longer. But the e3 file
> is so tiny that I included it into the mutt-bl2 add-on. So there is
> compatibility, now.

I did not realize that you included e3pi.  So there was no problem.
I had compiled it for BL2.


> > In both BL2 and BL3 .mailcap you have zgv as default image viewer and xv as
> > an alternate.  BL3 does not have either of these but it does have xli. Could
> > you puy xli and seejpeg instead in the BL3 .mailcap?  Seejpeg is in SW3.5.
> > I suppose xli should be the default since it comes with BL3 tho it is not
> > cli.
>
> I will put only the defaults from BL there, probably the same
> defaults Steven put into the links.cfg. I will fix this, soon.
> May be mailcap could be more self-documenting.

> From which BL?  I was pointing out that BL3 uses xli and BL2 can use zgv 
but I don't think it is available for BL3.  (Delilinux has it for BL2).
So the .mailcap needs to be different for the two mutt packages.

> > I see you have catdoc set up to view .doc files and links-0.90 for .html
> > files.  I will have to remember to change that if I install links2 and
> > delete links-0.90 (along with the line in alias for links).  Would it work
> > to specify just 'links' since there is an alias for that already?


> This is a problem with BL. The aliases are very useful on command
> line, but they do not work in scripts. As I use different versions of
> links in different BL systems I deleted the alias and use a
> small script with the name links, instead, that calls the
> correct version.

I did not know about aliases in scripts.  In DOS I think you can write 
something like 'call file.bat' in another batch file.  Is there some way 
to use an alias in a linux script like that?

I have not checked mutt-bl2 for whether you used links-0.93 there (instead 
of 90).  In the mutt-bl3 package that I downloaded recently you refer 
specifically to links-0.90 (in .muttrc, I think it was).  So I don't think 
you are using that small 'links' script in your packages.

> links2 would be the best viewer for html attachment if you run mutt
> in X window (sorry, no colours, yet). In console the text links
> is the better viewer. mailcap can be written in a way that
> checks for the existence of X environment and calls links2 instead
> of links.


I just checked and links2 for BL3 works just fine in text mode so you 
could use it without X.  Why do you say 'text links' (0.90?) is better?
I have not found anything that 0.90 does better than 2.  I notice that 
Steven's package rewrites the 'links' alias to point to links2 -g.

You could include links2 and links2 -g as options (with #) in .muttrc.

I hope Steven will some day have time to compile a version of links2 that 
also works with SVGAlib for those users whose laptop computers don't do 
more than 8-bit color because it requires more than 4-bit color to run 
links2 for X, Xvesa won't do 8-bit color, but SVGAlib is happy with even 
2-bit (1-bit?) so that would make links2 usable on older laptops.  I don't 
know why so many X programs won't work in 4-bit color (Abiword, Flwriter, 
Opera, Links2).  Given enough help, I could try to compile it myself after 
ghostscript.

> > It is nice to see that catdoc will also read rtf and xls files.  I thought
> > you needed a separate program for each of those.
>
> catdoc does come with the separate program xls2cvs. The package
> includes catdoc, xls2cvs, html2text. You should keep in mind, that
> catdoc also converts rtf. You do not need a separate program fro rtf.

Thanks.

> > Why do you have two ways specified for reading html?  Should one of them
> > have an # in front of it so as not to confuse mutt, or does it just choose
> > the first?
>
> This is mutt's best feature: one line defines the XXX to
> text converter for the pager. Another line defines an alternative
> viewer that will be called after pressing v. There are even more
> options. RTFM.

This is fancier than lynx.cfg downloader, where you just get a menu of 
choices about how to view files.

I might try setting up with both links and lynx as viewers.

Can anyone tell me how to use sdf pop mail?
But I guess I can use my  newfound knowledge to read my html mail here 
online with mutt and an html viewer.

> > My apologies if I somehow confused the two mail programs for BL2 and BL3 - I
> > have mounted the BL3 partition to refer to it from BL2.
>
> Known problem ;-)
>
> > I have not tried Sylpheed as I prefer CLI if available.  Has that worked
> > well for other users?
>
> Sylpheed is a great program, but I have the impression that it
> requires even more resources than Firebird. Steven's stripped-down
> version is a wonder, but unfortunately will not work with any
> internationalization.
I do get Russian and Czech mail sometimes so will pass on Sylpheed.

> > We are apparently not a gaming crowd.
>
> I am not so sure. Already three years I am playing with BL. And still
> do always all my work with DOS...

There are shooting games, and there are those of us who consider linux to 
be a big game :=).  I have switched to linux for most of my online work, 
and for reading pdf files, but I still use WP51/DOS, and I usually use DOS 
kermit  because it has a screen buffer and the linux kermit does not and 
the mda linux screen program (mdacon) also has no buffer.  It is very nice 
to have both DOS and linux.  I also like DOS pictview, which tells me the 
color depth and pixel size of files.  Does zgv do that?  I like this 
information so that I can tell people NOT to scan at 150x150 dpi next 
time.  (I really should read the zgv manual.)

 > >> I will try to test out these games
> > some day but I really don't understand how to set up a network other than to
> > just send/receive files and at least one is network based.  It will be
> > educational.
>
> Yes, that is the right word.
>
> Christof
>
> _______________________________________________
>
> Christof Lange <cce.zizkov AT volny.cz>
> Prokopova 4, 130 00 Praha 3, Czech Republic
> phone: (+420) 222 78 06 73 / 222 78 20 02 / 603 18 87 53
> http://www.volny.cz/cce.zizkov
>
> _______________________________________________
> BasLinux mailing list
> BasLinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/baslinux

keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org