Subject: Re: No-op dead stream when using alternate editor

From: [email-masked] (Barry Bouwsma)
Date: 5 Apr 1995 09:33:10 GMT

In a previous article, [email-masked] (Trey Harris) says:

>because apparently Pine simply suspends and waits for the alternate 
>editor to exit, and it isn't sending NOOP instructions down the line to 
>keep the IMAP connection active.

    I've experienced something similar during the time when the IMAP
timeout should not occur.  I'm not sure how I can definitively repeat
the dead stream condition, and perhaps my setup is a bt unusual.

    I've hacked Pine to recognize the {imap.host/user=name} specification
for pre-authenticated login, and to verify that would co-exist with the
normal IMAP opening, I set both my local INBOX and a remote folder six
timezones away to be accessed with IMAP.

    What appears to happen is that when I am in the remote folder, doing
something like answering mail with an alternate editor or something, when
I return to the local INBOX or leave the alternate editor, that local INBOX
has become closed.  I'm pretty sure I haven't left Pine suspended for the
30 minute IMAP inactivity timeout, but it doesn't always close when I think
it might, and it's the *local* folder that's being closed with frequency.

    I'll have to do more checking to see how I can get this to happen with
certainty, for I'm pretty sure the inactivity timer from a suspended Pine
should *not* occur, but I'll have to check, and verify the hacks I've made
do not interfere with Pine's normal operation.

-- 
 Barry Bouwsma, will crash computers for chocolate and dental care
    Please direct mail to  <[email-masked]> (MIME-aware)
LOAD "SENDMAIL",8,1
                            driving a 300 baud Trabant on the Datenautobahn

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From: [email-masked] (Trey Harris)
Date: 4 Apr 1995 20:58:21 GMT

If you spawn an alternate editor (vi, emacs, ispell, whatever) by ^_ in 
the editing window and you obtain INBOX via IMAP, you can only keep your 
alternate editor open for as long as timeout takes on the IMAP server, 
because apparently Pine simply suspends and waits for the alternate 
editor to exit, and it isn't sending NOOP instructions down the line to 
keep the IMAP connection active.

Any chance the code can be modified so that, when an alternate editor is 
spawned, the IMAP client will go into the background and continue to 
send NOOPs at the appropriate times?

Since I use Pico for short compositions, but emacs when I need to write 
something long and involved, this gets me every time!
-- 
Trey Harris                              http://sunsite.unc.edu/harris
  System Administrator, Project Isis, Office of Information Technology
                       The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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From: [email-masked] (Brian Tao)
Date: 7 Apr 1995 13:57:26 GMT

>send NOOPs at the appropriate times?

    Failing this, a simple "Re-Open Mailbox" (control-R) command would
do in a pinch.  Right now I have to close the current one, open
another one (assuming I have another mailbox to open), then re-open
the first one.
-- 
Brian ("Though this be madness, yet there is method in't") Tao
[email-masked] <-- work ........ play --> [email-masked]