POP3 - long mails

POP3 - long mails

[David Hedbor]

Hello!

I recently started using Gnus for mail and news reading (a big step up
from Netscape!), and I have a small suggestion. As I tend to get mails
with large binary attachments (> 2MB) and only have a modem
connection, I want the option not to get these mails (which I don't
need on my side of the modem anyway). To accomplish this, I hacked a
small movemail-replacement, which asks me whether or not I want to
download a large message (I also have the option to download the first
X lines). Until a few minutes ago, I didn't know that pop3.el existed.

I think a couple of vars in pop3.el - one with max length and one with
the default action (nil - ignore, t or ask - ask the user whether to
download or not, or # - only download the first # lines). My elisp
knowledge is unfortunately limited to editing my .emacs and .gnus
files, so I couldn't do it myself.

What do you think? Is this something that might be useful for the
general public?

-- 
David Hedbor     david@hedbor.org      http://david.hedbor.org/
The Ultimate Animanga Archive  -> http://the.animearchive.org/    
Forbidden Subjects  -> http://forbidden.animearchive.org:666/     

Re: POP3 - long mails

[William M. Perry]

David Hedbor <david@hedbor.org> writes:

> Hello!
> 
> I recently started using Gnus for mail and news reading (a big step up
> from Netscape!), and I have a small suggestion. As I tend to get mails
> with large binary attachments (> 2MB) and only have a modem connection, I
> want the option not to get these mails (which I don't need on my side of
> the modem anyway). To accomplish this, I hacked a small
> movemail-replacement, which asks me whether or not I want to download a
> large message (I also have the option to download the first X
> lines). Until a few minutes ago, I didn't know that pop3.el existed.
> 
> I think a couple of vars in pop3.el - one with max length and one with
> the default action (nil - ignore, t or ask - ask the user whether to
> download or not, or # - only download the first # lines). My elisp
> knowledge is unfortunately limited to editing my .emacs and .gnus files,
> so I couldn't do it myself.
> 
> What do you think? Is this something that might be useful for the general
> public?

  Yes, this would be very nice.  VM's pop support allows you to do this.  I 
suggest meditating upon it for a while to get ideas for features if you go
hacking upon pop3.el

  Since I have plenty of memory on all my machines, I just load VM and use
its pop retrieval stuff, like so:

(setq vm-pop-max-message-size 21000
      nnmail-movemail-program 'my-movemail)

(defun my-movemail (inbox crashbox)
  (require 'vm)
  (vm-pop-move-mail "aventail.com:110:pass:wmperry:*" crashbox)
  (vm-pop-move-mail "oz.net:110:pass:wmperry:*" crashbox))

-Bill P.

Re: POP3 - long mails

[Stainless Steel Rat]

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>>>>> "DH" == David Hedbor <david@hedbor.org> writes:

DH> What do you think? Is this something that might be useful for the
DH> general public?

I think if you want to write your own movemail function, be my guest.  That
is beyond the scope of pop3, which is nothing more than a POP3 interface.

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-- 
Rat <ratinox@peorth.gweep.net>    \ Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.
PGP Key: at a key server near you! \ 
                                    \ 

Re: POP3 - long mails

[David Hedbor]

Stainless Steel Rat <ratinox@peorth.gweep.net> writes:

> 
> I think if you want to write your own movemail function, be my guest.  That
> is beyond the scope of pop3, which is nothing more than a POP3 interface.

No offense here, but since when isn't LIST and TOP part of POP3? Seems
like the VM-people know better. And just because you might not have
any use for it doesn't mean that the rest of the world won't.

I would hope that if I managed to make a working patch for it, it
would be included in the dist. 

-- 
David Hedbor     david@hedbor.org      http://david.hedbor.org/
The Ultimate Animanga Archive  -> http://the.animearchive.org/    
Forbidden Subjects  -> http://forbidden.animearchive.org:666/     

VM pop, XEmacs, and Gnus (Was: POP3 - ...)

[Steinar Bang]

>>>>> wmperry@aventail.com (William M. Perry):

> Since I have plenty of memory on all my machines, I just load VM and
> use its pop retrieval stuff, like so:

> (setq vm-pop-max-message-size 21000
>       nnmail-movemail-program 'my-movemail)

> (defun my-movemail (inbox crashbox)
>   (require 'vm)
>   (vm-pop-move-mail "aventail.com:110:pass:wmperry:*" crashbox)
>   (vm-pop-move-mail "oz.net:110:pass:wmperry:*" crashbox))

Hm... is this all that's required?  I tried compiling this on both GNU
emacs, and XEmacs, and both places, I've gotten the message:
  ** the function vm-pop-move-mail is not known to be defined.
both places, when byte compiling the .gnus.el file.

The VM directory, is in load-path.  I've also tried using
   (require 'vm-pop)
with the same response when byte compiling.

The reason I'm doing this, is that I haven't been able to run movemail
with POP, on XEmacs, and since I run demonical mail fetch, I can't use
pop3.el, because it asks for the password each time it fetches the
mail (or can I...? How does this apop stuff work?  Does it negotiate a
session key? I think not, if I remember correctly, from the POP3 RFC.
Will I have to maintain a list of clear text "secrets" on the POP3
server, to use APOP?

(But for the time being, I'm back to Gnus in GNU Emacs 19.34, which
works fine, with movemail/POP, and demonical mail fetch.  I just want
better support for richer mail content (inline images, and the like))


- Steinar