Subject: Why no uudecode in Pine?

From: Robert Perlberg <perl@dwrsun5>
Date: 15 Dec 94 11:55:40 GMT

I've read in this group that Pine cannot do uuencode/decode for "good
reasons".  What are those reasons?  (If this question is answered by some
existing document, please point me to it.) I have no problem with doing
uuencode/decode by hand, but most of the other users at my site avoid Unix
commands like the plague and are very dependent on user friendly programs
like Pine.  However, they communicate with users at other sites who don't
have the ability to send or receive MIME attachments, so they have to send
and receive binary files via uuencode.  It would make life much easier for
them if they could decode the messages without having to use shell
commands (which they are forever asking me to repeat). 

Robert Perlberg
Dean Witter Reynolds Inc., New York
[email-masked] -or- [email-masked]
	-- "I am not a language ... I am a human being!"

---

From: [email-masked] (J. Kelly Cunningham)
Date: 18 Dec 94 09:19:11 CST

In article <Pine.SUN.3.91.941215164912.24016C-100000@dwrsun5>,
>reasons".  What are those reasons?  (If this question is answered by some

I'd like to know these reasons also...

>commands (which they are forever asking me to repeat). 

I sent Robert Perlberg a couple of scripts that do the trick. If anyone 
else wants them, e-mail me.

An aside: Why doesn't MIME retain file permissions like tar, 
compress, uuencode?

---

From: Terry Gray <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 18 Dec 1994 11:45:08 -0800 (PST)

Pine does not have integral uuencode/uudecode support because:

 o In Pine it is already possible to *decode* uuencoded messages in 4
   keystrokes, using pipe.  (Hint: make "ud" a link to uudecode.)
 o The alt-editor feature may be used in combination with scripts
   to obviate the need for suspending Pine to *encode* a message.
   (I presume that's what your script does.)
 o With the advent of CMU's mpack/munpack software, which functions just
   like uuencode but handles MIME as well, there is no excuse for not
   having MIME capability at a site, even if it isn't yet builtin to
   the available mailers.
 o There are apparently several slightly incompatible variants of uuencode.
 o MIME supersedes and obsoletes uuencode.  
 o In view of the above, for the people who pay the bills for Pine 
   development, adding integral uuencode support is an extraordinarily 
   low priority.

-teg

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From: [email-masked] (Bruce Welch)
Date: 20 Dec 1994 18:36:25 -0600

In article <[email-masked]>,
>Pine does not have integral uuencode/uudecode support because:

It's all irrelevant.  Earlier, on this very group, I found out how todo 
it!  Merely set your custom printer to be "uudecode" and print your 
letter - no editing - uudecode is "smart" enough to strip the extraneous 
stuff.  Therefore, why bother with extra coding????  Ain't unix 
wunnerful?  

-- 
 this signature being renovated ... excuse the mess

---

From: Nancy McGough <[email-masked]>
Date: 23 Dec 1994 03:18:47 GMT

>stuff.  Therefore, why bother with extra coding????  Ain't unix 

What about just piping like this:

  | uudecode > filename

I just tried this with a uuencoded gzipped file that someone
mailed me and it didn't work.  BUT, note that this *did* work:

  | wc > wc.test

Does anyone know how to use a pipe in Pine to uudecode?

Thanks,
Nancy

--
 /\_/\    Nancy McGough
( o.o )   Infinite Ink
 > ~ <    http://www.jazzie.com/ii/  -OR-  http://www.best.com/~ii/

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From: Ed Greshko <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Dec 1994 14:37:12 -0800 (GMT)

> Does anyone know how to use a pipe in Pine to uudecode?

	Simply use:

	| uudecode

	The file name to be created in in the first line of the uuencoded
data.  i.e. begin file.gz 666

					Ed

Edward M. Greshko                       Technical Manager, Electronic Commerce
                                        Control Data Asia/Pacific Region
Voice: +886-2-715-2222 x287             6/F, 131 Nanking East Road, Section 3
FAX  : +886-2-712-9197                  Taipei, Taiwan R.O.C

---

From: Pierre Thibaudeau <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Dec 1994 09:23:39 -0500 (EST)

> Does anyone know how to use a pipe in Pine to uudecode?

Remember that uudecode does not write on standard output but in a file 
whose name has been specified at uuencode time and stored on the begin line.
So to pipe to uudecode you simply
     | uudecode
But you have to be sure you wont overwrite (in your $HOME directory) 
something that should not.

Here is another possible area of difficulty: In a multipart message, you
only pipe *the appropriate attachement* that you select from the "View
attachments" screen.  If you pipe the whole message, uudecode could
complain with "No begin line", if it gets confused by the MIME format. 

--
Pierre Thibaudeau                     |   e-mail: <[email-masked]>
TELEGLOBE CANADA                      |
1000, rue de La Gauchetiere ouest     |      Tel: +1-514-868-7538
Montreal, Qc   H3B 4X5                |
Canada                                |      fax: +1-514-868-7257

---

From: [email-masked] (R. Stewart Ellis)
Date: 23 Dec 94 14:03:38 GMT

>mailed me and it didn't work.  BUT, note that this *did* work:

Are you sure it didn't work.  If there is a filename at the top of a
uuencoded message, then it writes to that filename.

Just guessing, I have never received a uuencoded message in pine.

-- 
  R.Stewart(Stew) Ellis, Assoc.Prof., (Off)313-762-9765   ___________________
  Humanities & Social Science,  GMI Eng.& Mgmt. Inst.    /   _____  ______ 
  Flint, MI 48504      [email-masked]               /        / /  /  / /
  Gopher,chimera,nn,tin,jove,modems, free code is best!/________/ /  /  / /

---

From: [email-masked] (Bruce Welch)
Date: 24 Dec 1994 16:36:49 -0600

In article <Pine.SOL.3.91.941223143542.28750J-100000@hobbes>,
>data.  i.e. begin file.gz 666

Excuse me for my ignorance - I only use this "trick" every other day or 
so, but why is everybody assuming that you have to use the " | " 
command?  

On the main screen choose setup.  Choose printer.  Choose 3.  Type in 

uudecode

Nothing else, no " | ", no file name.

Read the uuencoded message (or view the mime attached uuencoded 
message).  Type "Y" to print.  Uudecode does the rest.  file.gz appears 
in your mail directory.  mv it where you want it.  With this kind of 
simple solution, it's no wonder that pine has no "built-in" uudecode.  
Try it, you'll like it :-)

---

From: Chip Old <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Dec 1994 11:02:01 -0500 (EST)

> Try it, you'll like it :-)
 
That works, but then you've got to go back into Setup and reset the
printer before you can print anything.  It's a lot quicker to leave the
printer setting alone, enable the Pipe command in pine's config, then 
just issue "| uudecode" when ever you need to.

-------------------------------------
Chip Old   <[email-masked]>

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From: "Ben T. Feese" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Dec 1994 11:38:00 -0500 (EST)

On 12/25/94  I received nearly 400 pieces of mail from the pine 
maillist.  Most of them were repeated 3 to 6 times, very few of them had 
anthing at all to do with pine, and some of them were obscene.

Did anyone else on the list have this experience?  Is the mail server for 
the list functioning properly, or did someone some how gain improper 
access to it?

Since that time the flow of messages (from all the maillists to which I 
subscribed) has almost dried up altogether.  I am mystified...and a 
little apprehensive.  Can anyone shed any light on what may have happened?

Ben Feese

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From: Paul Mitchell <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Dec 1994 12:03:56 -0500 (EST)

Yep,
  It's my guess that everyone on the list received the material which Ben 
mentioned.  I alerted the postmaster at cac.washington.edu of the occurance.
Most probably there is someone on the list who is a member of some very 
unusual newsgroups and is unaware that they are cross-posting.

	Paul

==============================================================================
   Paul Mitchell				email: [email-masked]
   Office of Information Technology		phone: (919) 962-2571
   University of North Carolina		        ............................
==============================================================================

---

From: Terry Gray <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Dec 1994 20:27:28 -0800 (PST)

Paul,
Just fyi: U.W. does not operate the comp.mail.pine <-> pine-info gateway,
therefore mail to [email-masked] probably won't help
solve the problem (but apparently the crisis is over...)

-teg

---

From: Allan Bjorklund <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 Dec 1994 13:27:11 -0500 (EST)

> little apprehensive.  Can anyone shed any light on what may have happened?

 From examining the headers of the messages, someone passing
 themselves off as "m0rLoad"[1] used rain.psg.com to dump all of these
 messages here.  They appear to have began just after midnight on
 December 25th.  I didn't bother to find out how long they kept it
 going or to find the exact starting time, since I wanted to
 delete messages and get back under my mail quota.

 Maybe someone at rain.psg.com was logging connections and can trace it
 further back.

--Allan

[1] I'm guessing on this, since I saw variants of "m0rLoad" in
    received lines added by rain.psg.com.

=============================================================================
Allan Bjorklund                      |                        [email-masked]
=============================================================================

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From: [email-masked] (Randy Bush)
Date: Tue, 27 Dec 94 14:01 PST

Indeed, there was a large unwanted holiday present delivered to the pine
mailing list.  It is my belief that the fault was here at the news/mail
gate, not a malicious or otherwise intentional act.

At about 04:30, I found the news to mail gateway spewing massive garbage.
The necessity to stop it seemed to exceed the need to find the cause of the
problem.  But then, I had not had my first cup of coffee, and my judgement
may have been clouded.  This leaves me with only conjecture.  My guess is
that the in-core image which INN had of the newsfeeds file was somehow
corrupted, so it was gating stuff from the wrong newsgroups into the mailing
lists.  But that's just a guess.

Apologies, of course.

---

From: "J. Kelly Cunningham" <deviate@lipschitz>
Date: Fri, 30 Dec 1994 18:46:07 -0600

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

On 30 Dec 1994, Robert Perlberg wrote:

> Date: 30 DEC 94 06:30:47 GMT
> From: Robert Perlberg <perl@dwrsun5>
> Newgroups: comp.mail.pine
> Subject: Re: Why no uudecode in Pine?
>
> On 25 Dec 1994, Bruce Welch wrote:
> > ... It
> > seems that we're all agreeing that pine doesn't need a "uudecode"
> > function. ...
>
> No we're not!  :-)  The problem with all of this uudecode discussion is
> that you're assuming that the user knows a uuencoded file when he sees
> one and knows what to pipe it into.  Nowhere in the Pine documentation
> does it tell you to type "|uudecode".  I'm not complaining on my own
> behalf.  I've been uudecoding files since before there was a Pine.  But
> my users are constantly asking me how to extract these funny binary
> messages that start with "begin".  If the designers of Pine decided
> that people should not see the innards of a MIME attachment and have
> special commands for extracting it, why do they assume that these same
> people will immediately recognize a uuencoded file and know what
> command to use to decode it?
>
> One of the arguments against uudecode in Pine is that uudecode is
> becoming obsolete.  I have seen no indication of this.  I have yet to
> see a single article on Usenet with a MIME attachment.  Go look in
> comp.binaries.anything and see how many files are posted with MIME.
> Zip.  Zilch.  Nada.  Gunisht.  It's all still uuencode.  And these are
> the files my users want.
>
> Robert Perlberg

Heah! Heah! The designers of any "new standard" should have enough respect
for their elders to make the "new standard" backward compatible.  No one
ever said uuencode was the end all of asciification, but anyone who thinks
it will be swiftly supplanted is a fool. 

e-mail [email-masked] with
			Subject: pineuucode
if you want a uuencode/decode interface for Pine.

e-mail [email-masked] with
			Subject: mkpgp
if you want a pgp interface for Pine.

-- kc      prudence dictates a low profile -- Sandy Sandfort
         finger [email-masked] | pgp -fka +force
 finger [email-masked] | pgp -f | tee mkpgp.txt.uu | more

---

From: helen ruth etters <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Dec 1994 22:13:35 -0500

> >   The problem with all of this uudecode discussion is
> > one and knows what to pipe it into.  

This is a good point.  I've been following this thread trying to figure out
*How do I know when it's time to uudecode something?*   Anytime I get a
message I can't read because it just lots of pretty symbols?

So I did what one poster suggested, changing my printer setup to
uudecode.  And then I assumed all the pretty symbols at the bottom
of this message must be something that needs to be uudecoded.  So
for this message I typed Y to print, and got the "No Begin Line"
error message.

So what is the following?  Should I have been able to read it
by typing Y, after setting printer to uudecode?  

> 
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: 2.6.2
> 
> iQCVAwUBLwRVVeBu0383Om6dAQHlQwP/b2NC3oRBEgcQnjDstm4m8vdR5jZ0Xov6
> Xc2bhfht4Mulu+LAsCsRV0m2o13DfFdpu92iI6blsyHFFgVFpnSg6McDQJcux9e0
> XDDuGu8w1Rl+g/5nDCAE8nv6WtYA++0prl0t6IP8TgQBvlCqCkzYup1u0WZniP+a
> bYQVKo8tqYk=
> =Hody
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Thanks all

---

From: [email-masked] (Bruce Welch)
Date: 31 Dec 1994 01:20:11 -0600

In article <Pine.SUN.3.91.941230111616.10966C-100000@dwrsun5>,
Robert Perlberg <perl@dwrsun5> wrote:
>No we're not!  :-)
<snip>
>messages that start with "begin".

So, how much are you willing to pay for a pine unlimited user license?  
How much are you willing to pay for the user support that other programs 
seem to need?  Pine gets people up and running in a real hurry.  And most 
people need very little support.  At least at my site, and I'm turning 
into the default pine support person 'cause every other member of 
computer operations uses Quickmail.  I have no problem with this 'cause 
1. Its nice to be needed (and paid :-) )
2. If a problem like uudecode starts to get big - then its time to 
produce training notes and a training guide.  

We can't expect someone else to solve all of our problems for us.  I 
thought it was great when I found that I had missed the "pipe" command 
and no longer had to reset my custom printer.  If the pine developement 
team can find the time to make things easier, great.  If they can't, or 
won't (don't care which) then I will muddle along with what they've given 
me.  The price is definitely the best.  The product makes my life really 
easy.  The biggest boon is pico, heck, I threw away vi just as quickly as 
I could when pico showed up.  I'm using it right now with trn to answer 
this.  Showed my wife how to use it for her newsgroups - and guess what? 
 Pico doesn't need support.  Hurrah!  For that, I'll answer questions
about "begin - a whole lotta garbage" until the cows come home!!!  Or
until I get that training guide written :-)))