[Alpine-info] Re: How to select an entire e-mail in pico?

[Joe(theWordy)Philbrook]

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It would appear that on Feb 10, Seth Williamson did say:


> Every now and then I need to select (for later copying and cutting and

> pasting) the entire text of an e-mail in Alpine.

> 

> If the entire text is visible on the screen, I can do it with the mouse.

> 

> If the entire text is NOT visible, I can't figure out any way to select

> the rest of it.  I wind up having to copy chunks of it and reassemble them

> later.

> 

> Is there some way around this?


Of course there is. I think the easiest as some have suggested would be to:

	1) Use 'E' to export the message to a file.
	   You can of course reuse the same filename again and again
	   because if the file exists you can choose to overwrite
	   or append (useful if you want to copy the text from several
	   messages at the same time...) Ideally something short and
	   sweet. I use "~/clip.txt" ( ~/ means your home directory)

	2) Open the export file with your favorite editor that
	   supports copying large blocks of text. For this I'd
	   actually recommend a gui editor as they will usually
	   automatically scroll the screen during the marking
	   operation.

	3) Edit if necessary to eliminate any unwanted text that may
	   be between two or more sections of "interesting" text.
	   Then mark the big block of text...

	4) Switch to wherever you wanted to paste it and paste away.
 

> Also, is there some way to select text solely with the keyboard?  (I run

> Alpine in Konsole, by the way.)


Sure is. Though I've found that using keyboard methods to copy/paste
across applications is slightly less reliable than just using the
durned rodent to mark and paste... But using the method I just described
that shouldn't be too much of a problem...

Since you mention "konsole" I suspect your using kde (So am I)...
If so I can improve on the above... IF you exported to '~/clip.txt'
you can do this for step 2 above:

	2a) pop open the run prompt. ( <alt>+<F2> ) Enter something like
	    'kwrite ~/clip.txt' which would open that file with kde's
	    equivalent to the windows' application: "notepad"

	3a) Assuming your editing with kwrite you can most likely 
	    mark the text by placing the cursor at the beginning of the
	    "interesting" stuff. Then if your still using the default key
	    bindings, hold the shift key while you use:
	    	A) the cursor keys.
	    	B) page_up / page_down. 
	    	C) end, <crtl>+<end> ] to move the cursor to the end
		   of the interesting text.
	    Then  <ctrl>+<C> Should copy the marked text to the
	    clipboard... 
	    
	    (if you need to look up or fix those keybindings try
	    running kcontrol, "Regional & Accessibility"
	    "Keyboard Shortcuts" And click on the application
	    shortcuts tab.)

	4a) Switch to the application you want to paste to and if it
	    supports pasting from the clipboard try <ctrl>+<V>.

If you actually want to paste the text into an alpine message or some
other TEXT based application that doesn't use the desktop clipboard
And you don't want to use the mouse to copy/paste then you could
simply edit that '~/clip.txt' file (step 2) with whatever editor you
like, until it ONLY contains the stuff you want to paste. Then
go directly to (step 4) and "read in" the file... In alpine using the
internal editor (pico) to compose with, you can put the cursor where
you want to paste and use <ctrl>+<R> to "read" the file, (presumably
'~/clip.txt')


Which gets us to the simplest sequence of all if what you want is to
copy the entire message into the body of a new one without using the
forward or reply options to automatically quote it.

Step 1) Open the message you want to copy, use 'E' to export it
        to a file.

Step 2) Begin or resume composing the message you want to past to
	and use '<ctrl>+<R>' to "read" in the files text.


Hope this helps ;)

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