tkgoodstuff/doc/biff.html

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<H1>TkGoodStuff Biff</H1>
<H2>Description </H2>
<P>The Biff client is a new-mail notifier. It provides a button on your
tkgoodstuff panel that can display an icon indicating the presence of new
mail, a text message indicating &quot;No Mail&quot;/&quot;New Mail&quot;,
or both (optionally, &quot;New Mail&quot; is replaced by a counter of new
messages). A more detailed display is available in multiple-mailbox mode
(below).</P>
<P>Biff watches one or more &quot;mailboxes&quot;: mail files, MH folders,
or mailboxes on remote IMAP servers. For each mailbox, at a set interval
Biff looks for unread messages in the mailbox and flags the presence of
new mail by beeping and changing the icon and/or label of the Biff button.
Each mailbox is assigned an &quot;alert level&quot;, and the new-mail icon
indicates the maximum alert-level of all mailboxes with new mail. </P>
<P>If you configure Biff to watch just one mailbox, it will display on
the Biff button the number of new messages in it, if any, and mouse button
3 fetches a list of the messages. If you use multiple mailboxes, then mouse
button 3 produces a menu that indicates how many new messages are in each
mailbox, and which allows you to fetch a list of the messages in any of
them. You can click on a message in the message list to view the message
in full. If you like, Biff can also post a list of new messages in a mailbox
when they arrive. Also, if you use multiple mailboxes, you can replace
the normal Biff button in the tkgoodstuff panel with the menu of mailboxes,
allowing you to see at a glance how much new mail you have in all of your
mailboxes. You can also &quot;tear off&quot; the mailboxes menu to position
elsewhere on the screen.</P>
<P>Clicking mouse button 1 on the Biff button launches your mailer program
(the button stays depressed and inoperative until you exit the mailer program).
Button 2 instructs Biff to regard as old mail any current new mail (displaying
a no-mail icon and/or the label &quot;No Mail&quot;), and to wait until
you get yet more mail before notifying you. </P>
<P>For each mailbox, you can choose (in the preferences manager) between
several &quot;methods&quot; of testing for new mail: there are special
methods for mailboxes on IMAP servers and for MH mailboxes (you don't know
if your mailbox is MH-style? then it's almost certainly not), and three
methods for detecting new mail in standard mail files (including spool
files, such as the default mailbox /usr/spool/mail/<B>username</B>): &quot;atime&quot;,
&quot;filesize&quot;, and &quot;internal&quot;. With the method &quot;atime&quot;
(the default), Biff decides that there's new mail when the file has been
modified when or after it has last been accessed (its mtime is no less
than its atime). With the method &quot;filesize&quot;, Biff decides that
there's new mail when the file is nonempty. The &quot;internal&quot; method
scans the message headers for &quot;Status:&quot; lines, and treats messages
with a status of &quot;N&quot; or with no &quot;Status:&quot; line as new.
The &quot;atime&quot; or &quot;internal&quot; method is probably best for
those who keep old mail in their spool file. The &quot;filesize&quot; method
is better for those who normally regard all mail in the spool file as new
mail. </P>
<P>The MH method is only for those using MH mailboxes AND automatic incorporation
of new mail (e.g., by slocal or procmail), and is automatically used if
the folder to be checked starts with a &quot;+&quot;. With the mh method,
we assume a message is new if it is in the &quot;u&quot; sequence in the
.mh_sequences file in the folder or if its atime isn't after its mtime.
NOTE: for automatic incorporation of new mail into MH folders, you must
pipe messages (using slocal or procmail or deliver) into the MH program
rcvstore, so that the MH unseen sequence is correctly updated. An example
from my .procmailrc: </P>
<PRE>MHLIB=/usr/lib/mh
:0
* ^(To|Cc|Subject):.*tkgoodstuff.*
|$MHLIB/rcvstore +tkg</PRE>
<P>The IMAP method is for mailboxes on remote IMAP servers. You need to
supply the mailbox name and your user name (at the server). Note: if you
are unsure about the mailbox name, very likely your mailbox at the server
is called &quot;INBOX&quot;. You can supply your password (at the server)
in the preferences manager, <B>in which case it will be stored in your
.tkgrc file (which it's up to you to protect!!)</B>, or you can leave your
password blank in the preferences manager, in which case tkgoodstuff will
ask you for it when the mailbox is first accessed. </P>
<P>All parameters are adjustable in the preferences manager. </P>
<ADDRESS>Thanks to G. Dezern. </ADDRESS>
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