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 speci‐
fied 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 inter‐
ested 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 pre‐
fix 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 mes‐
sages 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
USENET Community Trust Elm Version 2.5 NEWMAIL(1L)
