[Alpine-info] Seeking someone who..?

[damion.yates at gmail.com]

On Thu, 30 Nov 2023, D.J.J. Ring, Jr. wrote:


> I am also concerned with loosing Google html search page but one for 

> duckduckgo.com exists. I include everyone in my message who could 

> benefit by any changes that increase accessability to all.


Is there some risk this will happen?  I use `lynx google.com` with some 
frequency and it still works.  I've not heard about them trying to 
remove html search.

Full disclosure, I've worked at Google for almost 17 years.  You may be 
pleased to hear that it's full of command line loving UNIX nerds, some of 
whom use alpine though more who use mutt (there are dozens of us!).

We also have blind googlers.


> Most of the people that I am working with that are having the most 

> problem are those using console line interface (CLI) and who often 

> never have a graphical interface (GUI) installed.


I envy you :)


> Most have changed their email program to mutt but they very much miss 

> the features available in alpine like its address book and ability to 

> access newsgroups.


Wait what?  Alpine has better xoauth2 and IMAP support, if this is 
misunderstood that should be corrected.  If it's the new master password 
option, can't they live with just a single letter password like "f" ? 
(on a home key so even useful for the blind).  Or can't they blank the 
password using `openssl` as suggested in this thread?


> Some would like to use emacs and gnunews (spelling?). That's beyond my 

> knowledge.


Emacspeak used to be well known for cmdline blind users and gnus tied 
into that giving blind users a good option.  I believe the kludge that 
mutt uses of a helper process for xoauth2 is compatible, but this is 
technically complex.


> One of the problems they are having is with Gmail, they've managed to get 

> an application specific password, and can use alpine by using an old 

> version which does not have the master password, but Google has changed the 

> way email is displayed, what used to be the default was the INBOX of their 

> email, but now they have to change folders to one labeled Gmail and inside 

> there they have to select the folder with the new email.


Enabling xoauth2 is not that complicated, future proof and works 
passwordless with the tokens stored by alpine.  Alpine is better at this 
than mutt.

Enabling ASPs might work now but Google may want to deprecate them in 
future as they have old-style access everything passwords.

The internal mutt and alpine mailing lists at work (I run alpine-users@) 
discussed this when they moved to xoauth2 and we scrambled to solve 
this.

The UI changes in GMail often can be undone in settings, I'm not 
familiar with what you're describing with a change in INBOX.  But I do 
know that the IMAP settings are quite advanced in the various styles you 
can configure for how it works, like only serving the last 1,000 
messages per folder, or how delete/expunge works.

I didn't know about the demise of the plain html version, but sadly 
services which are free have to have some compromises as the world moves 
on.  Email is barely used by younger generations as it was a decade ago, 
screen readers can cope with complicated graphical sites and no longer 
rely on needing older plain html versions.

I suspect 100s of people still using html were costing a lot in SWE 
hours to maintain, vs billions of users using the latest versions they 
keep releasing.

When they broke flowed format text in the last update, I raised a bug 
and it's been mostly ignored for 5 years :(


> It seems that it would be possible when configuring alpine to have a 

> switch much like the one that creates the ability to use the pinepass 

> file.

>

> The default would continue to be as it is now but the user could 

> decide to use the less secure method of accessing alpine if they 

> wished.


TBH I kinda agree that it's sensible to have some master password, pick 
something easy, or learn/hack openssl to resolve this.

  - Damion