questions about text-based e-mail

questions about text-based e-mail

[aerospace1028]

Hello,
I have been running archlinux for a few months now and enjoy the availability of speakup.  Although I primarily run in the gnome desktop, I like being able to quickly get access to the text consoles without having to go through the hassle of pulling out my braillenote and juggling between the keyboard and the braille-display.

Thank you very much to the developers, maintainers and contributors to speakup.

One area I am interested in exploring, is shifting from thunderbird to the text-console (either with alpine, or mutt I presume).

I'm not sure which is easier to learn as a beginner, alpine or mutt?  I don't actually use thunderbird for e-mail as much as a news reader (through port 119: nntp).  I subscribe to a newsgroup with several sub-forums; I like to connect and download the new unread messages to my computer then read the messages off-line and compose my replies and send them to a queue to be sent out next time I connect to the newsgroup again.  Is this easily accomplishable with either alpine or mutt?

Also, are there any special settings in speakup I should be aware of when operating either alpine or mutt?  I think I read on www.stormdragon.us that it's recommended to have speakup in highlight tracking mode (toggled with the caps-lock + CTRL + 8 keystroke on a laptop).  Are there any other environment variables or speakup switches that enhance the ability to interact with text-based e-mail/news-readers?

I consider myself a comfortable beginner with the text-consoles and speakup, so please be patient as I try to expand my skill-set here.  This is more complex then anything I've tried on the command-line before.  I realize there'll be a bit of a learning curve as I transition from the graphical environment I'm more familiar with to the console.  I figure I'll have some more questions as I get my feet wet.

Thank you:-) 		 	   		  

Re: questions about text-based e-mail

[Steve Holmes]

Hi, 

You were asking about text mail readers but wanna use them for news as
well.  Mutt is great for e-mail but I can't see how one could read
news with it.  I'm not saying it's impossible, but I've never seen it
done.  When I used to use pine, I recall it could double up as a news
reader.  So I would imagine that you could do the same with alpine
since it forked of from pine as I remember.

With mutt, the cursor tracks right along with the current selection in
the message and alias lists without any special settings.  While
inside a message body, I use the review functions to read the message
text.  I generally love mutt for efficient digesting of my e-mails.
It is so powerful just from a stand point of usage with its ability to
tag messages for later processing, IMAP support and easy integration
with externals editors and pgp.  I use thunderbird while in gnome to
more easily work with some web content but I just find mutt to be so
much faster to use.

Re: questions about text-based e-mail

[Hart Larry]

Well, yes, pine--and-now alpine work well for reading news, or even grabbing 
yenc encoded binaries--and-I can certainly tell you about that if you like.
While pine or alpine can thread messages, I like to read an index of a news 
group in trn, however, we were hardly able to install in FC9.
Pine, well, sure you want to make changes, first disable menu at the bottom. 
Then 1 thing you cannot do in trn, but in pine you can change settings for how 
much quoting you will see.  I find that `extremely useful to have my quoting 
set a minus 10, so I hear none.  Hope that helps
Hart

Re: questions about text-based e-mail

[Gaijin]

On Sun, Sep 05, 2010 at 09:39:12PM -0700, Steve Holmes wrote:
> You were asking about text mail readers but wanna use them for news as
> well.  Mutt is great for e-mail but I can't see how one could read
> news with it.

	I used to use slrn for news, as it seemed to have the most 
features back when I had a newsfeed...back in 02.  Havent looked at 
either tin or slrn since losing my sight, so couldn't make a 
recommendation, but I second the mutt recommendation.  Love it I keep 
learning new things about it all the time, and it works fantastically 
with SpeakUP.  Once you get rid of the on-screen menubars, mutt is a 
pretty quiet, massively functional email client.

				Michael

Re: questions about text-based e-mail

[Alex Snow]

If you want to try and get access to news again, try looking on 
www.newzbot.com for a public nntp server...even though a lot of them 
don't allow posting, I've always been able to find ones that do.  I'm 
lucky enough to have an ISP that still offers news access, but their 
server is a little flaky, so I've used some public news servers I found 
on newzbot from time to time.

On Mon, Sep 06, 2010 at 11:33:17PM -0700, Gaijin wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 05, 2010 at 09:39:12PM -0700, Steve Holmes wrote:
> > You were asking about text mail readers but wanna use them for news as
> > well.  Mutt is great for e-mail but I can't see how one could read
> > news with it.
> 
> 	I used to use slrn for news, as it seemed to have the most 
> features back when I had a newsfeed...back in 02.  Havent looked at 
> either tin or slrn since losing my sight, so couldn't make a 
> recommendation, but I second the mutt recommendation.  Love it I keep 
> learning new things about it all the time, and it works fantastically 
> with SpeakUP.  Once you get rid of the on-screen menubars, mutt is a 
> pretty quiet, massively functional email client.
> 
> 				Michael
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 
Always borrow money from a pessimist; he doesn't expect to be paid
back.

Re: questions about text-based e-mail

[Gaijin]

On Tue, Sep 07, 2010 at 12:00:32PM -0400, Alex Snow wrote:
> If you want to try and get access to news again, try looking on 
> www.newzbot.com for a public nntp server.

	Ah, thanks for that useful bit of info.  I do like chatting on 
the comp.os.* and soc.* newsgroups and miss the hell out of it.  Thank 
you.

				Michael

Re: questions about text-based e-mail

[Jason White]

Gaijin <gaijin@clearwire.net> writes:

> On Sun, Sep 05, 2010 at 09:39:12PM -0700, Steve Holmes wrote:
>
> 	I used to use slrn for news, as it seemed to have the most 
> features back when I had a newsfeed...back in 02.  Havent looked at 
> either tin or slrn since losing my sight, so couldn't make a 
> recommendation, but I second the mutt recommendation.  Love it I keep 
> learning new things about it all the time, and it works fantastically 
> with SpeakUP

For anybody who is using Mutt but isn't aware of this option, you can
add the following line to your ~/.muttrc file:
set braille_friendly=yes
Then whenever a message is displayed, the cursor is placed on the first
line of the body text. This is great for braille displays, but it should
be helpful to Speakup users as well.

For news, my current favourite is Gnus under Emacs, especially with
Emacspeak (although I might be flamed for saying that on the Speakup
list). Needless to say, emacs works very well with the braille display
too.

Re: questions about text-based e-mail

[Gaijin]

On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 11:48:01AM +1000, Jason White wrote:
> For anybody who is using Mutt but isn't aware of this option, you can
> add the following line to your ~/.muttrc file:
> set braille_friendly=yes

	I like the "unset help" for getting rid of the help menu.  I 
also like the ignore, unignore, folder_format, and hdr_order settings 
for cutting down the column noise when working with mail folders, and 
restricting the header fields to what you want, where you want them, 
respectively.  Once you know that the question mark is for help and q is 
for quit, the menu is just a pain to listen to all the time, and you can 
cut down on all the timestamp info when navigating mail folders.  
Myself, I only like to hear who wrote what and in which mailing list, so 
weeding out header fields like date and user agent is also nice on the 
ears.  Now if speakupconf could just save and load a filename, we could 
set up specific, program-wise speakup configurations that could be 
scripted to load when a particular program is in use...turn on the 
greater-than sign for reading messages with quoted text in mutt, and 
turn it off again when exitting without trying to guess what's in 
/sys/accessibility/speakup/punct_some and modifying that.

				Michael

Re: questions about text-based e-mail

[Kerry Hoath]

Call me simplistic but why can't you have an alias to load a specific 
set of configuration data when you launch mutt?
It won't help you on other virtual consoles however having speakup track 
which console you are on and pull settings whilst highly useful would be 
an incredible increase in code complexity.

Having speakup in the kernel is useful however it makes reading files 
and applying settings tricky, as this stuff is often better done in 
userspace.

Orca can probably do better at this as it is a framework built into 
gnome and can do stuff based on ap events, which is the way 
Windows-based screen readers usually function.

If we hook the keyboard driver and trap when vc switching occurs 
something might be possible but it does put overhead on the system. Just 
my thoughts.
People with more knowledge on kernel and Linux internals feel free to 
debunk my theories.
Regards, Kerry.

On 22/09/2010 2:16 PM, Gaijin wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 11:48:01AM +1000, Jason White wrote:
>    
>> For anybody who is using Mutt but isn't aware of this option, you can
>> add the following line to your ~/.muttrc file:
>> set braille_friendly=yes
>>      
> 	I like the "unset help" for getting rid of the help menu.  I
> also like the ignore, unignore, folder_format, and hdr_order settings
> for cutting down the column noise when working with mail folders, and
> restricting the header fields to what you want, where you want them,
> respectively.  Once you know that the question mark is for help and q is
> for quit, the menu is just a pain to listen to all the time, and you can
> cut down on all the timestamp info when navigating mail folders.
> Myself, I only like to hear who wrote what and in which mailing list, so
> weeding out header fields like date and user agent is also nice on the
> ears.  Now if speakupconf could just save and load a filename, we could
> set up specific, program-wise speakup configurations that could be
> scripted to load when a particular program is in use...turn on the
> greater-than sign for reading messages with quoted text in mutt, and
> turn it off again when exitting without trying to guess what's in
> /sys/accessibility/speakup/punct_some and modifying that.
>
> 				Michael
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>    

Re: questions about text-based e-mail

[Gaijin]

On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 02:26:44PM +0800, Kerry Hoath wrote:
> Call me simplistic but why can't you have an alias to load a
> specific set of configuration data when you launch mutt?

	Mostly because speakupconf doesn't appear to load specified 
configuration files, as far as I can tell from the man page.



> It won't help you on other virtual consoles however having speakup
> track which console you are on and pull settings

	I don't worry, and can certainly live with that.  When I'm doing 
mail, I'm usually not doing anything else, except maybe coppying a URL 
or two to another console for later visiting.  I still have no 
particular need to use Orca as yet.  It's still clunky, even on a 24G 
quad-core system with 3Gs/sec SATA hard drives. <shrugs> Told those guys 
months ago that you don't chase the dog with a pooper-scooper when 
creating an accessibility standard in Linux and got drummed out of the 
list.  I'll stay with NVDA and windows when I need a GUI.

Michael

Re: questions about text-based e-mail

[Steve Holmes]

Yeah, because speakupconf isn't run every time you switch consoles; I
suppose if you ran it each time and could hack it to detect what was
running at the time, just run it but then again, if you are in an
application, there would be no way you could run speakupconf while
that app is runnning.

On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 12:06:30AM -0700, Gaijin wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 02:26:44PM +0800, Kerry Hoath wrote:
> > Call me simplistic but why can't you have an alias to load a
> > specific set of configuration data when you launch mutt?
> 
> 	Mostly because speakupconf doesn't appear to load specified 
> configuration files, as far as I can tell from the man page.
> 
> 
> 
> > It won't help you on other virtual consoles however having speakup
> > track which console you are on and pull settings
> 
> 	I don't worry, and can certainly live with that.  When I'm doing 
> mail, I'm usually not doing anything else, except maybe coppying a URL 
> or two to another console for later visiting.  I still have no 
> particular need to use Orca as yet.  It's still clunky, even on a 24G 
> quad-core system with 3Gs/sec SATA hard drives. <shrugs> Told those guys 
> months ago that you don't chase the dog with a pooper-scooper when 
> creating an accessibility standard in Linux and got drummed out of the 
> list.  I'll stay with NVDA and windows when I need a GUI.
> 
> Michael
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: questions about text-based e-mail

[Gaijin]

On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 07:50:58AM -0700, Steve Holmes wrote:
> Yeah, because speakupconf isn't run every time you switch consoles; I
> suppose if you ran it each time and could hack it to detect what was
> running at the time, just run it 

> but then again, if you are in an application, there would be no way 
> you could run speakupconf while that app is runnning.

Well, I use a script to load mutt anyway.  "m" for default mail 
operations, and "gm" for gmail, which takes special handling and another 
configuration file.  It wouldn't be much to write:

#!/bin/sh

# Load speakup's mutt configuration
/usr/bin/speakupconf load --config ~/.speakup/mutt

# Execute mutt for gmail
/usr/bin/mutt -F ~/.mutt/muttrc.gmail

# Reload speakup's default configuration
/usr/bin/speakupconf load --config ~/.speakup/speakup


	Like I said, I tend to do one thing at a time, so being able to 
load up a special speakup configuration for a particular piece of 
software would save on keypresses, but speakupconf lacks the 
functionality for it.  Man pages are another example of where I like to 
crank up the punctuation reading levels, or would want the option to 
have them cranked up for me automatically.

				Michael

Re: questions about text-based e-mail

[Steve Holmes]

On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 12:06:30AM -0700, Gaijin wrote:
> > Call me simplistic but why can't you have an alias to load a
> > specific set of configuration data when you launch mutt?
> 
> 	Mostly because speakupconf doesn't appear to load specified 
> configuration files, as far as I can tell from the man page.

Actually, I think you could tell speakupconf to pull its values from a
specific source upon each invocation so that way you could implement
different speech parms on demand like when you launch a given
application.  This sounds like an interesting idea; might have to look
into this idea myself.

Re: questions about text-based e-mail

[William Hubbs]

On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 07:54:28AM -0700, Steve Holmes wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 12:06:30AM -0700, Gaijin wrote:
> > > Call me simplistic but why can't you have an alias to load a
> > > specific set of configuration data when you launch mutt?
> > 
> > 	Mostly because speakupconf doesn't appear to load specified 
> > configuration files, as far as I can tell from the man page.
> 
> Actually, I think you could tell speakupconf to pull its values from a
> specific source upon each invocation so that way you could implement
> different speech parms on demand like when you launch a given
> application.  This sounds like an interesting idea; might have to look
> into this idea myself.

Speakupconf only saves or loads from /etc/speakup if it is run
as root, or ~/.speakup if it is run as a user.  enhancing it to allow a
location to be specified might be possible.

William

Re: questions about text-based e-mail

[Steve Holmes]

On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 10:44:13AM -0500, William Hubbs wrote:
> Speakupconf only saves or loads from /etc/speakup if it is run
> as root, or ~/.speakup if it is run as a user.  enhancing it to allow a
> location to be specified might be possible.

OK, I didn't remember for sure if it was hard coded or if one could
pass a command line parm.  That change should be easy enough.  What I
would do is if no parameters are specified, then do the current
behavior but if a directory is specified, verify its presence and then
use the parms from there.  I would be glad to make the change if
people would like. Should I use the standard speakup git archive to
pull and patch against?

Re: questions about text-based e-mail

[Steve Holmes]

On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 10:44:13AM -0500, William Hubbs wrote:
> Speakupconf only saves or loads from /etc/speakup if it is run
> as root, or ~/.speakup if it is run as a user.  enhancing it to allow a
> location to be specified might be possible.

This enhancement has indeed taken place! I just changed speakupconf to
allow for a second argument to be passed to the script, telling it to
use this argument as an alternate directory to save or load speakup
and speech parameters.  The patch was recently committed to git
master (thanks William) so a 'git pull' should get you this new
version of the script and the spkguide.txt (speakup users guide) has
also been updated with the additional speakupconf information.

Hopefully this will help folks who want to come up with custom speech
settings for different applications at different times and have them
switch automatically.  I think a bit of clever shell scripting and
aliaseing can go a long ways here.

Re: questions about text-based e-mail

[Gaijin]

On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 09:41:06AM -0700, Steve Holmes wrote:
U> On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 10:44:13AM -0500, William Hubbs wrote:
> This enhancement has indeed taken place! I just changed speakupconf to
> allow for a second argument to be passed to the script,

	Thank you, Steve.  Love task automation.

				Michael

Re: questions about text-based e-mail

[Willem van der Walt]

Hi,
I am using pine/alpine.
The key thing for alpine, is that you should look for the switch that show 
the cursor.
>From memory it is show-cursor but you will find it in the config file.
I also changed the way messages are presented to show me a little less 
info andI set a few things regarding where read mail need to go.
For the off-line reading/writing, what i do is the following:
1.  install exim4, a mail transfer agent that then runs on your local box.
Alpine will by default talk to the local mta which could be sendmail or 
any other, but I use exim4.
For retrieving mail, I use a package called fetchmail.
HTH, Willem


On Sun, 5 Sep 2010, aerospace1028@hotmail.com wrote:

> 
> Hello,
> I have been running archlinux for a few months now and enjoy the availability of speakup.  Although I primarily run in the gnome desktop, I like being able to quickly get access to the text consoles without having to go through the hassle of pulling out my braillenote and juggling between the keyboard and the braille-display.
> 
> Thank you very much to the developers, maintainers and contributors to speakup.
> 
> One area I am interested in exploring, is shifting from thunderbird to the text-console (either with alpine, or mutt I presume).
> 
> I'm not sure which is easier to learn as a beginner, alpine or mutt?  I don't actually use thunderbird for e-mail as much as a news reader (through port 119: nntp).  I subscribe to a newsgroup with several sub-forums; I like to connect and download the new unread messages to my computer then read the messages off-line and compose my replies and send them to a queue to be sent out next time I connect to the newsgroup again.  Is this easily accomplishable with either alpine or mutt?
> 
> Also, are there any special settings in speakup I should be aware of when operating either alpine or mutt?  I think I read on www.stormdragon.us that it's recommended to have speakup in highlight tracking mode (toggled with the caps-lock + CTRL + 8 keystroke on a laptop).  Are there any other environment variables or speakup switches that enhance the ability to interact with text-based e-mail/news-readers?
> 
> I consider myself a comfortable beginner with the text-consoles and speakup, so please be patient as I try to expand my skill-set here.  This is more complex then anything I've tried on the command-line before.  I realize there'll be a bit of a learning curve as I transition from the graphical environment I'm more familiar with to the console.  I figure I'll have some more questions as I get my feet wet.
> 
> Thank you:-) 		 	   		  
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 

-- 
This message is subject to the CSIR's copyright terms and conditions, e-mail legal notice, and implemented Open Document Format (ODF) standard. 
The full disclaimer details can be found at http://www.csir.co.za/disclaimer.html.

This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, 
and is believed to be clean.  MailScanner thanks Transtec Computers for their support.