From: RAParker (RAParker_at_Quadzilla.NET)
Date: Wed Dec 03 2003 - 23:27:03 PST
One of the tricks that I've wanted to do with my Newton 120 (besides email)
is to be able request web pages and have the text information downloaded
for reading later, preferable before I wake up in the a.m.
But the question is:
How to you make this seamless and automatic, without having to manually
cut, paste and import/etc.?
Here's the answer:
Email the URL to a server and in return the server sends you the text of
the web page you requested. Evidently, this is done all the time...the web
never ceases to amaze me.
Check out the information here:
Then simply send an email...
--
TO: www4mail_at_wm.ictp.trieste.it
SUBJECT: (... whatever you like)
GETSIZE 40000
GET http://www.macsurfer.com/index.html
(or)
GET http://anyurl.com/that/happens/to/be/too/long/split/with\
/the/backslash.html
--
The options I've used in the above example were "GETSIZE" which breaks the
email into 40K chunks and "GET" command which tells the server you want
text only, no mime attachments, no html. By sending (just) a URL to the
server, the default request and size is used, and the server returns MIME.
There are plenty of other options including getting html source, sites that
require passwords, or requesting a pdf attachment. In theory (as far as I'm
reading it), you can even use it to submit form data to web pages...could
that open the possibility of syncing with my.yahoo?
I'm still experimenting with GETSIZE and my Newton 120. I think I'll lower
it to 30K to allow room for the headers. The www4mail server itself adds
stats and a couple ads, the macsurfer message 1 of 3 swelled to 58K by the
time I downloaded it to my Newton. I currently prefer to have GoFetch set
to skip messages >50K.
Another note about server I used, the server DOES restrict you to 300
requests and 10MB per week. If you do the math, it's a pretty incredible
limit for free! Here are the quota figures (sent with each email) after
requesting www.macsurfer.com with GETSIZE set to 40000.
--
Dear User,
Statistics of your (per week) usage of this service
===================================================
Remaining Quota : 297 request(s) or 10000000 bytes (per week)
Used Quota : 3 requests(s) or 53332 bytes (per week)
Last access : text on Thu Dec 4 01:46:28 2003
Details for Current Page
------------------------
URL : http://www.macsurfer.com/index.html
Mail Received : Thu Dec 4 01:44:48 2003
Request Queued : Thu Dec 4 01:44:48 2003
Request Process : Thu Dec 4 01:45:14 2003
Delivery Time : Thu Dec 4 01:46:31 2003
User Option(s) : getsize=40000
--
There are several servers to choose from, but the home server (mentioned
above) seemed to work as described and fairly fast. In fact, the only slow
link was my own catch-all mail forwarding for my domain. Note the times
above, 1 minute and 53 seconds...whoa, almost as fast as Internet Explorer!
Ron
--
Sent using Cyberdog OpenDoc Transport for Mac OS
--
RAParker
|\/|\
|/-|/
|\ | @ Quadzilla.NET
--
My name is R A Parker. I own a Newton and a Mac.
--
--
This is the NewtonTalk list - http://www.newtontalk.net/ for all inquiries
List FAQ/Etiquette/Terms: http://www.newtontalk.net/faq.html
Official Newton FAQ: http://www.chuma.org/newton/faq/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Thu Dec 04 2003 - 03:30:00 PST