:date: 2016-05-14

======================
Saturday, May 14, 2016
======================

Sending emails from my VPS
==========================

More research about :ticket:`916`.  Yesterday I had submitted my
problem to OVH support. They did not yet answer my question. I don't
know whether they offer an SMTP server which I can use as relay.

Here is another thing I tried: I used a Google account and Google's
SMTP server, as explained e.g. in `How to send email via Django?
<https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6367014/how-to-send-email-via-django>`_. My settings::

    EMAIL_HOST : smtp.gmail.com
    EMAIL_HOST_USER : my.name@gmail.com
    EMAIL_PORT : 587
    EMAIL_USE_TLS : True
    
Now my :file:`sendmail.py` script gets a new error message::

  smtplib.SMTPAuthenticationError: (534, '5.7.14 <https://accounts.google.com/signin/continue? ...> Please log in via your web browser and\n5.7.14 then try again.\n5.7.14  Learn more at\n5.7.14  https://support.google.com/mail/answer/78754 o4sm21416424wjx.45 - gsmtp')

The indicated Google Help page (`Can’t sign in to my email app
<https://support.google.com/mail/answer/78754>`__) explained that "To
help keep Google Apps users' accounts secure, we may block less
secure apps from accessing Google Apps accounts." and that "Your app
might not support the latest security standards."  In a first step
they explain me that my app is not "secure", and that I should
"upgrade" my app to a "more secure" app like Gmail. Tss, tss...  But
finally: It suggests, if I really insist, to "Try changing a few
settings to `allow less secure apps access
<https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/6010255>`_ to your
account."

So I did that. It was probably necessary, but it wasn't enough. There
was another thing to do:

- Visit http://www.google.com/accounts/DisplayUnlockCaptcha and sign
  in with your Gmail username and password. If asked, enter the
  letters in the distorted picture.

Where it said:

    Bei der Anmeldung in einem neuen Gerät oder in einer neuen
    Anwendung fordert Google Sie unter Umständen als
    Sicherheitsmaßnahme auf, diesen zusätzlichen Schritt
    durchzuführen.

    Klicken Sie unten auf "Weiter", um Zugriff zu gewähren.

And after clicking "Weiter", it finally said:    

    Kontozugriff aktiviert

    Melden Sie sich von Ihrem neuen Gerät oder Ihrer neuen Anwendung
    aus erneut in Ihrem Google-Konto an.


After this, my :file:`sendmail.py` script passed, and the test mail
arrived to my inbox.


Documentation changes
=====================

While thinking about how to prepare a talk for `FOSDEM
<https://fosdem.org>`_, I started to realize that the docs tree of the
Lino repository is not the right place for writing an overview about
Lino.  A complete overview must *also* talk about :ref:`xl`,
:ref:`welfare`, :ref:`cosi`, :ref:`voga` etc.  It is somehow nonsense
to try to explain Lino without talking about these.

But I want to avoid circular references in my doctrees. Yes, circular
intersphinx references *are* feasable with Sphinx, but it requires
some hacking, and actually I prefer to open another GitHub project
called `book`, technically similar to my `blog
<https://github.com/lsaffre/blog>`_ (i.e. just a doctree with
intersphinx links to all these projects). And big parts of what is
currently in Lino's `docs
<https://gitlab.com/lino-framework/lino/tree/master/docs>`_ directory will
move into this "Lino Book". The advantage will be that I can refer to
these other projects. Actually there will also a :mod:`lino_book`
package containing tutorial projects.

And the list of persons and organizations who helped me to write Lino
by contributing ideas, this list should rather be part of my blog. I
moved it to :doc:`/about/friends`.


Write invoices for courses in draft state?
==========================================

The latest Lino Voga version generates invoices also for courses which
are in draft state. This was just an idea of mine.  Alexa asked me to
undo this "feature".  Invoices should come only for enrolments to
courses which are in an "invoiceable" state, as before.