[PLUG-TALK] Big companies, incompetent web sites

[Paul Heinlein]

On Thu, 15 Nov 2018, Rich Shepard wrote:

> The fellow at their end also had problems getting that web page to 
> load, but finally did so. I asked him to print the page send me the 
> .pdf. Instead, he sent an e-mail with a 532-character URL. They, 
> like other companies, assume everyone uses a GUI mail user agent and 
> can click on the URL and have that page load. Doesn't work that way 
> with alpine or mutt. So, I removed the spaces and entered that huge 
> URL in the firefox address line. The result?

Rich,

I open URLs from Alpine all the time. On my Macs, I include this line 
in ~/.pinerc:

url-viewers="/usr/bin/open _URL_"

Just change /usr/bin/open to the path to your favorite browser. 
Restart Alpine. Then use the down arrow on your keyboard to move to 
the URL you want to open and press Enter/Return. Alpine will confirm 
you want to view the URL in an external application.

I guess this will only work if you can open your browser to a specific 
URL from the command line, e.g.,

/usr/bin/myBrower www.interesting-site.com

Anyway give it a try. Nothing will happen unless you specifically ask. 
If you need a test case, here's a simple URL that Alpine should 
highlight:

   http://www.slackware.com

And here's a more complex one:

   https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=912937

-- 
Paul Heinlein
heinlein at madboa.com
45°38' N, 122°6' W