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[dockapps.git] / wmail / README

Name            : wmail
Description     : a enhanced Window Maker email flagging docklet
Current version : 2.0
Last updated    : SEP 30 2002
Licence         : see file COPYING for licencing details
Web/Home        : www.informatik.uni-jena.de/~topical/sveng/wmail.html
Author          : (c) 2000~2002 Sven Geisenhainer
Contact         : sveng@informatik.uni-jena.de

Change Log:

 v 2.0
    - Autoconf based package configuration support added.
    - Support for real X11 fonts when drawing the ticker.
      Use the new option "-fn X11_FONT_NAME" or ~/.wmailrc-file statement
      "Ticker.X11Font = X11_FONT_NAME" to enable it. If you wish to see latin1
      characters not covered by the buildin font you MUST make use of this.
        - Removed support of two buildin fonts (one seems enough when native
      X11 font rendering is supported...) -> cmdline option "-bf" and
      rcfile statement "Ticker.BoldFont" are no longer available
    - added a window name when called with the -w option (libdockapp windowing
      mode), this workarounds a dockapp library bug and makes wmail work docked
      in Gnomes panel bar
    - Fixed some reconfiguration memleaks
    - Fixed button-keeps-up-when-pressed-and-empty-inbox bug
    - Fixed Maildir file-parsing bug
    - Fixed wmail-crash on dual-headed displays (Thanx to Michael Hocke!)
    - Changed upper M@il symbol a bit ;-)

 v 1.9
    - Comment support added (by Juergen A. Erhard - thank you!)
    - Status field content recognition enhanced: now you can supply the
      content of the status field that markes you email as read. This is due
      to different behaviour of different mbox readers - pine seems using "ro"
      to mark a mail as read. The given value is substring-matched.

 v 1.8
    - Support for qmails Maildir format added: if you specify a directory
      as your inbox then wmail assumes 'Maildir' functionality,
      searches for the subdirectories "new" and "cur" and interprets all
      files found directly under these directories as text-files containing
      one single email message. When in Maildir-mode, checksums and the
      file ~/.wmail-cksums are not used.
    - Combining of equal sender-names before tickering them is not done
      anymore - this hasn't worked if for example wmail shows only unread
      emails and there are two emails from the same sender and one of them
      is read, the other isn't.

 v 1.72
    - Now redrawing is done only if there are some changes to be drawn
      (previous versions had redrawn the screen fps-times per sec. even if
       the inbox was empty...)

 v 1.71
    - File parsing bug fixed: searching for "From"-directive is now
      case-sensitive.

 v 1.7
    - Support for mail-header-field "Status" added: if this field
      is set to "RO" the mail is assumed to be read. Turn this feature on
      either by adding "Mail.UseStatusField = Yes" to your ~/.wmailrc-file
      or using the new cmd-line option "-sf"

 v 1.61
    - Minor changes: signal-handling stuff reimplemented
    - Included another set of xpms (thanx to delt!); to use it,
      change the #includes in wmail.c to point to the xpm_delt dir

 v 1.6
    - Sender-skipping added: use this by adding some
      "Mail.SkipSender = XYZ" to your ~/.wmailrc file. Note that you can
      use the known wildcards here (i.e. "Mail.SkipSender = *Foo*" matches
      all names containing "Foo")
    - Support for execution of a custom command when receiving a new mail
      added: either use the new option "-e" or a
      "Mail.OnNew.Command = some-cmd" in the rc-file (for example this
      makes it possible to play some sound file using the command
      "/usr/bin/play some-sound.wav")

 v 1.5
    - Config-file support (~/.wmailrc), re-configuration of most options
      during run-time is possible - a click on the docklets main-area
      forces wmail to read its config-file. Note that this can also be
      used to do a mailbox update...
    - Bolder tickerfont added -> new option "-bf"
    - Polling bug fixed (wmail has queried for new mail fps-times per
      second...)
    - Mailbox made configurable via cmdline -> new cmd-option "-mb"
    - Color of inactive (off-switched) symbols made customizable -> new
      cmd-option "-oc"

 v 1.41
    - Minor fixes, debugging-aid macro TRACE made more portable

 v 1.4
    - Made mails identifiable by a checksum to (hopefully) fix some
      wrong behaviour of the recent-mails-only feature introduced with
      v1.3 - this is also used to make wmail able to keep the current state
      in mind, even after a restart. These checksums are written to the
      file ".wmail-cksums" in the users home directory

 v 1.3
    - wmail is now able to show only recent mails in ticker and counter
      (such ones you don't have read/opened yet since startup of wmail)
      this is quite nice if you use your mail-file as an inbox storing
      loads of mails there -> new cmd-option "-n"
    - Solaris port got working (signal-handler bug fixed)
    - Image of run-client-button changed

 v 1.2
    - Message counter now displays up to 3 digits
    - Made ticker scroll-refresh customizable (30 fps by default)
      -> new cmd-option "-fps"

 v 1.1
    - Parsing of from-header fixed/improved
    - Added windowed mode support (only works with libdockapp v >0.4.0) and
      support for a non-shaped window -> new cmd-options "-w" and "-ns"
    - Made background color customizable (useful in windowed mode)
      -> new cmd-option "-bg"
    - Ticker either fullname, short-address-name or total-address
      -> new cmd-option "-s"
    - Changed pixmaps a bit

 v 1.0
    - Initial release

Description:

 This is wmail - a nifty Window Maker docklet watching your inbox, which is
 either a ordinary mbox or a directory conforming to qmails Maildir format.
 It provides a nice little GUI displaying some useful pieces of information
 about your inbox (as many other nice wm-apps doing nearly the same thing...).
 Per default it uses the $MAIL environment-variable to locate the inbox you
 are using, other mailing mechanisms like POP or IMAP are not supported - use
 a tool like fetchmail to retrieve POP- or IMAP-based mail.

 It displays the following:

 - a mail-icon in the upper-left if your inbox contains some mails
 - a frequently flashing "M@iL" in the upper-right if there are unread mails
 - a ticker displaying either complete mail-address, it's name-part or the
   full sender's name (without the "-n" option each sender found in the inbox
   is tickered, else only the unread ones)
 - the number of new and read emails found (or the number of unread messages
   if invoked with the "-n" option)

 In addition, the lower-right button allowes you to quickly launch your
 preferred email user agent (xterm -e mail, mutt, pine, etc.)

 wmail is highly customizable, both command-line and configuration-file support
 is provided. The following list describes all customizable items,
 their associated cmd-line options, config-file statements and default values:

 item             : X11 display
 cmd-line option  : -display <string>
 rc-file statement: Window.Display = "<string>"
 default value    : <unset>

 item             : toggle nonshaped mode
 cmd-line option  : -ns
 rc-file statement: Window.NonShaped = Yes|No
 default value    : No

 item             : button command to execute
 cmd-line option  : -c <string>
 rc-file statement: Window.Button.Command = "<string>"
 default value    : "xterm -e mail"

 item             : your mailbox (file => mbox, directory => Maildir)
 cmd-line option  : -mb <string>
 rc-file statement: Mail.MailBox = "<string>"
 default value    : <unset, $MAIL is used>

 item             : file to store the checksums used to identify mbox mails
 cmd-line option  : <no option>
 rc-file statement: Mail.ChecksumFile = "<string>"
 default value    : "~/.wmail-cksums"

 item             : ticker (and count) only unread mails
 cmd-line option  : -n
 rc-file statement: Mail.ShowOnlyNew = Yes|No
 default value    : No

 item             : mail check intervall (sec)
 cmd-line option  : -i <num>
 rc-file statement: Mail.CheckIntervall = <num>
 default value    : 1

 item             : consider status-field (not used when in maildir mode)
 cmd-line option  : -sf
 rc-file statement: Mail.UseStatusField = Yes|No
 default value    : No

 item             : custom status field content used for read mails
 cmd-line option  : -rs
 rc-file statement: Mail.ReadStatus = "<string>"
 default value    : "O"

 item             : show nick names in the ticker (all before the @)
 cmd-line option  : -s
 rc-file statement: Ticker.Mode = NickName
 default value    : Address

 item             : show family names in the ticker (if available)
 cmd-line option  : -f
 rc-file statement: Ticker.Mode = FamilyName
 default value    : Address

 item             : how many ticker frames per sec
 cmd-line option  : -fps <num>
 rc-file statement: Ticker.Frames = <num>
 default value    : 30

 item             : use a real X11 font when drawing the ticker
 cmd-line option  : -fn <string>
 rc-file statement: Ticker.X11Font = "<string>"
 default value    : <unset, a buildin font is used>

 item             : command to execute when new mail has arrived
 cmd-line option  : -e <string>
 rc-file statement: Mail.OnNew.Command = "<string>"
 default value    : <unset>

 item             : sender-names to skip (don't ticker and count them)
 cmd-line option  : <no option>
 rc-file statement: Mail.SkipSender = "<string>"
 default value    : <unset>

 item             : color for upper symbols (envelope and MAiL)
 cmd-line option  : -sc <string>
 rc-file statement: Colors.Symbols = "<string>"
 default value    : "#20B2AA"

 item             : ticker font color
 cmd-line option  : -fc <string>
 rc-file statement: Colors.Font = "<string>"
 default value    : "#D3D3D3"

 item             : backlight color (dockapp background)
 cmd-line option  : -bc <string>
 rc-file statement: Colors.Backlight = "<string>"
 default value    : "#282828"

 item             : color of inactive symbols
 cmd-line option  : -oc <string>
 rc-file statement: Colors.OffLight = "<string>"
 default value    : "#282828"

 item             : outer frame color (used in nonshaped window mode)
 cmd-line option  : -bg <color>
 rc-file statement: Colors.NonShapedFrame = "<string>"
 default value    : <unset, this color is translucent>

 libdockapp provides the following additional cmd-line options:

 windowed-mode        : -w

 show help and exit   : -h

 show version and exit: -v

Known bugs:

 - Solaris: sometimes wmail gets terminated by Xlib displaying the message:
   XIO:  fatal IO error 0 (Error 0) on X server ":0.0"
         after XXX requests (YYY known processed) with 0 events remaining.
   I do not have any ideas on how to fix this ... :-( --> PLEASE HELP!!!
 - "From" header field folding (see RFC822) is not supported
 - Reconfiguration during run-time results in a complete state-lost -> all
   email in your mbox is assumed to be unread again

 Please keep in mind this code is free and comes with absolutly no warranty
 (see file COPYING included in the package) - but if you think something goes
 wrong, please let me know!

What is still missing (and when it will be done :)

 - Pop3/Imap support (never - use fetchmail)
 - Character encoding in ticker - at least latin1 (currently in progress)
 - Multiple mailslots (never)
 - Displaying/tickering of other email header fields (hmm, i don't know...)
 - Your needs/ideas...?

Requirements:

 This application needs a running X window system and libdockapp v0.2 or newer
 (0.4.0 required for windowed-mode), that for itself has some requirements
 (Xpm support for example). libdockapp comes with Window Maker - if not sure,
 see what the configure-script says when running it.

Compile:

 Simply follow these steps:
 1. Call "./configure", try "./configure --help" for a list of options.
 2. Call "make" to build the binary (or gmake if make is't GNU make compliant)

 If compiling does not succeed due to missed header files or libraries
 you have to make use of configures `--includedir=DIR' and/or `--libdir=DIR'
 cmdline options in order to specify paths to those files.

Porting:

 This code (without using the new Maildir code and autoconf package setup)
 is known to work under:
 - Linux >=2.4.10 on x86
 - Osf 3.2 on Dec/Alpha
 - Sun Solaris 4.0 on Sparc Station 4 and 10
 - Sun Solaris 6, 7 and 8 (thanx to Kristian Borum!)
 - SunOs 5.7 on Ultra Sparc 5 (thanx to Alessandro!)

 ...together with Window Maker v0.60.0 or better (or standalone of course) and
 libdockapp v0.4.0.

 Please let me know if you have ported this to a platform not listed
 above to mention it (and your name of cource ;). Some users had
 trouble porting wmail to Solaris because the original timer signal handling
 has not worked properly. This was caused by different semantics of libc's
 signal function and should got fixed since releases >= v1.3.

Install:

 Call "make install" or copy the binary found in the src subdirectory by hand.
 Make based installation also copies the provided sample rc-file to ~/.wmailrc
 but wmail even runs without it.

 Keep in mind, libdockapp must be installed properly (i.e. let reside it in
 your X11 base library directory or let $LD_LIBRARY_PATH point to the lib).
 If you would like to use rc-based configuration, look into the provided
 sample-file "wmailrc-sample" and use it as a base for your particular needs
 by copying it to ~/.wmailrc (make install has done this automatically).
 Note: the name of this rc-file is hard-wired and cannot be customized.

Run:

 Try wmail -h to see a list of all available options.

Web/Home:

 www.informatik.uni-jena.de/~topical/sveng/wmail.html

Author and maintainer:

 Sven Geisenhainer <sveng@informatik.uni-jena.de>

 There is also a Debian package available under "http://jerhard.org/files/"
 maintained by Juergen A. Erhard <juergen.erhard@gmx.net> - Thank you, Juergen!

Final words:

 Thanx to Thomas Kurschel for his suggestions and coding assistance.
 Thanx to Juergen A. Erhard for his codings and Debian packaging efforts.
 Thanx to many users on the web for their ideas, test- and bug reports.

 And many great thanx to all the GNUstep and Window Maker people who've
 provided us with such a great user environment!

 Hope you will ENJOY!