Is it possible to setup a hot standby based ONLY on WAL shipping and NOT use streaming replication?
If I am not wrong then what you are looking for is Archive Shipping.
Any specific reason why you want to do that?
Anyways, you can use pg_receivexlog as well for setting up archives or for setting up a replica. But if you are trying to avoid some other issue w.r.t. streaming mechanism in PostgreSQL (which I assume will be very specific to your environment), then this may not be very helpful as pg_receivexlog too works on same streaming protocol and needs wal-sender processes.
Best Regards,
Sameer Kumar | Database Consultant
ASHNIK PTE. LTD.
101 Cecil Street, #11-11 Tong Eng Building, Singapore 069533