NEWMAIL(1L)NEWMAIL(1L)NAME
newmail,wnewmail - programs to asynchronously notify of
new mail
SYNOPSISnewmail [-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 mail
boxes, indicating the sender name, and the subject of the
message.
Each entry displayed can be in a number of different for
mats 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 send
ing 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
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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 direc
tory (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'',
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prefixing all messages with the string ``Mary'', and the
folder in the users maildir directory called ``postmas
ter'', prefixing all of those messages with ``POBOX''.
You can also have more complex monitoring too, for exam
ple:
$ newmail-i 30 $LOGNAME=me ${LOGNAME}su=myroot /tmp/mbox
will check every 30 seconds for the users mailbox, a mail
box 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
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