On 21/7/24 04:41, Bret Busby wrote:
On 21/7/24 04:15, James Miller via Alpine-info wrote:
Here's my scenario. I'm almost always doing my Alpine e-mail tasks
while logged in via an ssh session. That is by design since e-mail,
for me, is preferably a textual rather than graphical affair. So,
think text-mode, keyboard driven. Let's call the computer where Alpine
is running the ssh host and the one I've initiated the ssh login from
the ssh client.
A problem I've encountered but have so far been unable to resolve is
that I am sometimes, in order to pass a security check, sent by e-mail
some extremely lengthy embedded URL that is supposed to allow me to
sign in to some account or other of mine. When this happens, what I'd
like to do is open the link in a graphical environment and browser
running on the ssh client computer. Were I able to get the whole URL
to somehow display in Alpine, I'd just use my mouse to copy it, then
paste the URL into a graphical browser: this is what I used to do
before such URL's began to exceed all reasonable URL length
conventions (I assume for security reasons).
I've tried using Alpine's edit URL option but so far that has failed
because I can only view/copy, at one time, maybe 50 characters of the
hundreds of characters that comprise the URL. Given the complexity of
the URL and the fact that numerous segments need to be separately
displayed, then copied/pasted, the chance are high that some
mistake(s) will be made, thus resulting in an invalid URL. And in
addition, the time it can take to copy/paste in this fashion can
exceed the validity interval of the URL.
So, am I missing some way to display, for copy/pasting purposes, these
mile-long URL's in Alpine? If not, can anyone suggest a workaround?
Thanks
PS I do have on the ssh host a text-mode browser and Alpine is
configured to open URL's using that browser, but the lengthy embedded
URL's usually fail to open using that means since the page being
requested requires a java-enabled browser.
Since you have not specified your operating system platform, the
response below, assumes that you are running alpine on Linux.
In alpine, I suggest that you use the 'h' to display the full headers,
which also displays HTML code, such as hypertext links, then, use 'e' to
export the message to (for example) your home directory, as
"email<hh-mm>.txt"
then open the text file with a text editor, such as gedit, then mark and
copy the URL.
That would put the URL in your clipboard, from whence, you should be
able to paste the URL into another application.
Works for me.
Just be careful of characters (hidden or visible), at the end of text
lines, where the URL wraps over multiple lines.
Sometimes, that requires a bit of playing around with it, for example,
copying and appending parts of the URL, one line at a time.
Also, an aspect to remember, is that many excessively long URL's include
tracking components and other malicious components, so, you might want
to edit the URL's, depending on the nature of the URL's, by truncating
at the point where the remainder of the URL, is superfluous to reaching
the target.
..
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
(UTC+0800)
..............
Also something else for you to try; when you see a URL that includes a
question mark, try copying and pasting the URL up to, but excluding, the
question mark, so that you copy and paste the sequence of characters
before the question mark, and, find whether that takes you to the web
page that you want to visit.
..
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
(UTC+0800)
..............
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