NAME
newmail,wnewmail - programs to asynchronously notify
of new mail
SYNOPSIS
newmail [-d] [-i
interval] [-w] file-spec
{file-spec...}
wnewmail [-d] [-i interval]
[-w] file-spec {file-spec...}
DESCRIPTION
Newmail is a program to allow monitoring
of mailboxes in an intelligent fashion. It is based loosely on
biff(1) and
the version of newmail that was distributed with Elm
1.7. The basic operation is that the program will check the
list of specified mailboxes each interval seconds and will
list any new mail that has arrived in any of the mailboxes,
indicating the sender name, and the subject of the message. Each
entry displayed can be in a number of different formats depending
on the mode of the program, the number of folders being monitored,
and the status of the message. If you're running it as a
window (e.g. ``-w'' or invoked as wnewmail) then the
output will be similar to:
sender name - subject of message
Priority: sender name - subject of message
where <sender name> is either the name of the person sending
it, if available (the ARPA 'From:' line) or some other brief
indication of origin. If you are the sender, <sender name>
will be replaced by "to <recipient name>". If there is no
subject, the message "<no subject>" will appear on the
screen. Folders are indicated by having the folder name appear
first on the output line, as in:
folder: sender name - subject of message
If you're running newmail without the windows option, then
the output is more suitable for popping up on an otherwise active
screen, and will be formatted:
>> New mail from sender name - subject of message
>> Priority mail from sender name - subject of message
Again, with folder names indicated as a prefix. The flags available
are:
- -d
- This will turn on the debugging, verbose output mode. It is not
recommended that you use this option unless you're interested in
actually debugging the program.
- -i interval
- This will change the frequency that the program checks the
folders to the interval specified, in seconds. The default interval
for the program is 60 seconds. Note: if you change the interval
to less than 10 seconds, the program will warn you that it isn't
recommended.
- -w
- Use of the ``-w'' flag will simulate having the program run
from within a window (e.g. the more succinct output format, and so
on). Most likely, rather than using this option you should be
simply invoking wnewmail instead. File specs are made
up of two components, the folder name and the prefix
string, the latter of which can always be omitted. The format
is foldername=prefixstring, and you can specify folders by
full name, by simply the name of the user whose mailbox should be
monitored, or by the standard Elm metacharacters to specify
your folder directory (e.g. ``+'', ``='', or ``%''). Folders that
cannot be opened due to permission mismatches will cause the
program to immediately abort. On the other hand, files that do not
exist will continue to be checked every interval seconds, so
some care should be exercised when invoking the program. The
program will run until you log out or explicitly kill it, and can
internally reset itself if any of the folders shrink in size and
then grow again. The default folder to monitor is always your
incoming mailbox.
EXAMPLES
Some example invocations:
$ newmail
will check your incoming mailbox every 60 seconds.
$ newmail -i 15 joe root
will monitor the incoming mailboxes for ``joe'' and ``root'',
checking every 15 seconds for new mail.
$ newmail "mary=Mary" +postmaster=POBOX
will monitor the incoming mailbox for user ``mary'', prefixing all
messages with the string ``Mary'', and the folder in the users
maildir directory called ``postmaster'', prefixing all of
those messages with ``POBOX''. You can also have more complex
monitoring too, for example:
$ newmail -i 30 $LOGNAME=me ${LOGNAME}su=myroot /tmp/mbox
will check every 30 seconds for the users mailbox, a mailbox that
is the users login-name with ``su'' appended (e.g. ``joe'' would
become ``joesu'') and the file /tmp/mbox, prefixing new mail for
each with ``me'', ``myroot'' and ``mbox'' respectively.
AUTHOR
Elm Development Group
SEE ALSO
notify in sh(1) or csh(1)
BUG REPORTS TO
Bill Pemberton flash@virginia.edu
COPYRIGHTS
Copyright 1988-1995 by The USENET Community
Trust
Derived from Elm 2.0, Copyright 1986, 1987 by Dave Taylor