[arachne] mail muddles

Arachne at FreeLists---The Arachne Fan Club!

Is there a simple way of quickly and easily changing Arachne's
mail setup for different providers without reloading the whole
configuration?

I am a registered user of two different ISP services; let's call
them ABC and XYZ.

For various reasons I wish to use one of them most of the time,
but on occasions I may wish to use the other. So I have two
configuration files, ABC.ACF and XYZ.ACF.

On startup, I run a batch file that allows me to choose which one
of these to copy over ARACHNE.CFG before calling ARACHNE.BAT.

Both of these files have mail download commands of the form
   POP3://name1:password1$mail.ABC.com.au
and
   POP3://name2:password2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
for shift-F3 and shift-F4 user defined hotkeys. This allows me
to download mail from both ISP's mailboxes.

But writing and sending mail is not so easy. The outgoing
messages will have the From: and ReplyTo: fields set according to
whichever configuration is loaded.

Suppose for a start I am logged into provider ABC.

I download the mail from ABC and XYZ and I find a message in the
XYZ lot from one of the lists that I am subscribed to under that
address.

I want to reply to the message ***WHILE I AM STILL ON LINE***!
And because it is from a list where I am subscribed only with the
XYZ address, I need to be sure the From: and ReplyTo: fields show
the XYZ email address, not the ABC one.

Neither of these fields is editable in the Message Compose
screen. The Modify screen on the reply allows editing of the
ReplyTo: field, but _NOT_ the From: field.

I believe it is the From: field that is checked by the list
server against its index of subscribers before mail is accepted.

POSSIBLE WAYS AROUND THIS:

1. Load an alternate profile: Press hotkey "D" to get the dialler
   page, click on profiles and load the XYZ profile. This will
   load the email parameters for the XYZ address, but it will
   also load the XYZ's NameServers and a whole lot of other
   things that could affect my connection to the ABC provider.

   I can't see any easy solution to this except to use four profiles:
      a. ABC internet setup with ABC email setup
      b. ABC internet setup with XYZ email setup
      c. XYZ internet setup with ABC email setup
      d. XYZ internet setup with XYZ email setup

   If I had subscribed to three ISPs, this would expand to NINE
   profiles, and so on. Very messy, especially if I happen to
   forget which profile is loaded.

2. Make a new connection: The only practical alternative to the
   above that I can see is to disconnect from the ABC provider,
   load the XYZ profile, and dial out to the XYZ provider. This
   is not always convenient, although it is foolproof.

But there must be an easier way....

Greg

Arachne at FreeLists
-- Arachne, The Web Browser/Suite for DOS and Linux --

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