[Pan-users] Re: How do I attach an image?

[Duncan]

Mark Healey <address@hidden> posted
address@hidden, excerpted below, on  Thu, 26 Jun 2008
16:11:40 -0700:

> I need to ask a question in a group that would be easier to do with an
> image.  How do I attach the image to my post.
> 
> I'm using version 0.132.

Because the network news protocol was only designed for text, binaries 
have to be encoded into text in ordered to send.  Unfortunately, pan has 
a decoder, but no built-in encoder, so it's not possible to directly 
attach binary files including images.

However, it's still possible to do it the way it has always been 
possible, the way people did it years ago before news clients had built-
in encoders.  There are separate encoding applications you can install.  
These take a file, encode it to text (increasing the size in the process) 
and output the larger encoded file, which can then be cut-and-pasted 
directly into pan as text.

Actually, it's even possible to automate that process to some extent 
using a script, which is exactly what I've done.  The idea uses pan's 
external editor feature to hook into the message and attach the encoded 
file.  Actually, there are two scripts I have made available, pan-attach 
and pan-attach-kd.  pan-attach was my first attempt.  It's extremely 
rough, to the point of being very difficult to use because it was meant 
as a proof of concept -- I hoped someone with coding skills would take 
the concept and create a better solution.  Unfortunately, that never 
happened, so eventually I created a second script, pan-attach-kd, which 
is somewhat easier to use.

pan-attach still has one advantage, however, in that it only requires 
bash, which most Linux distributions will already be using as their 
command line shell, and the encoding app, uuenview, part of the uudeview 
package.  Because pan-attack-kd also requires kdialog, part of kdebase, 
users who don't have KDE installed may still wish to use pan-attach, even 
if it is extremely rough, as it still makes the process easier than doing 
it manually.  

pan-attach-kd is much easier to use in that unlike pan-attach, it 
actually has a GUI (provided by kdialog) for picking the encoding type 
and selecting the file.  However, you'll need kdialog, which is as I said 
part of kdebase.  Some folks don't have KDE installed and don't want to 
install it due to the dependencies, so I keep pan-attach available for 
them, even tho I've never read of anyone actually using it.

You can download either script from my (very simple) web site, linked 
below.  If you put them in your path and make them executable, running 
them with no parameters from a terminal window should give you a help 
screen with instructions for setting up pan to use it and etc.

http://members.cox.net/pu61ic.1inux.dunc4n/

Unfortunately, due to the way pan works, the only encode types that work 
with current pan are uuencode (old and not as space efficient as yEnc) 
and identity/text, which is for text files only, and is the functional 
equivalent of opening the file in a text editor and select/pasting or 
copy/pasting into pan's editor directly as text.  MIME/base64 won't work 
because pan doesn't expose to the external editor the message headers 
MIME uses, only the message body, and yEnc, which would be preferred if 
it would work, won't work due to limitations in pan's internal editor.

Other than doing it manually or semi-automating the process using my 
scripts, the suggestion has always been to use a separate binary posting 
application such as newspost.  Unfortunately, newspost is a CLI (command-
line-interface) program, and while years ago there were GUI frontends for 
it for both GNOME (gnewspost) and KDE (knewspost), they are long outdated 
now, being for KDE 2 and GNOME 1.

Yet another option is to use something like knode for posting 
attachments, while still using pan if desired for downloading.  That 
works, but it's a lot of bother and extra dependencies (knode is again 
KDE, and unfortunately, crap as a binary downloader, but it does take 
attachments) for the occasional attachment.

Some years ago, Charles actually instituted the GUI for attachments in a 
beta release, but removed it a version or two later, and the actual 
encoding was never done, only the file selector UI part.  Apparently the 
perfect was the enemy of the good, and he decided that solution wasn't 
good enough for pan, as it would have only handled single part 
attachments.  Too bad, really, as single-part attachment functionality 
would have been better than none, and good enough for most of us, who 
only do the occasional trivial attachment in any case.  Users who really 
wanted to go to town with attachments would have still been able to use 
newspost or whatever, but it would have been a great solution for the 
rest of us.  Oh well.  At least pan-attach-kd works, providing trivial 
single-part posting functionality for me at least, and a few others who 
have found it helpful.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman