[Alpine-info] copying lengthy embedded url's possible?

James Miller via Alpine-info alpine-info at u.washington.edu
Sat Jul 20 13:15:54 PDT 2024


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.


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