melon - configurable email notifier, xbiff replacement

melon [command] [options]

Melon is a simple utility that notifies user for newly received emails, through a nice couple of configurable icons. In short, it is an xbiff replacement.

When a mailbox has received new emails, the icon changes and an acoustic warning is played. It supports multiple mailboxes handling, acoustic warnings or execution of external application on request. Since Melon's check is based on the change time of a file, you can monitor every kind of files with it, not just mailboxes.

Melon is also able to check normal mailboxes. Then, the status flag of each message is check.

The following commands are supported.

open

Melon executes the program defined as mailer command in the Melon configuration

reset

Currently running process rereads configuration file and all mailboxes are reset to inactive.

stop

Stops Melon.

The following command line options are supported.

-v

Shows version and paths.

-h

Prints a short help.

-p

Normally, melon saves its pid on the file ~/.melon/melon.pid at start time. In this way, you are able to perform some action using a preexistent melon instance (see "Control Commands" for more information). The -p switch allows multiple instances of melon to be executed simultaneously, loosing however the use of control commands.

-g, -geometry

Give the coordinates of the melon icon in the standard X way:

melon -g -0-0

to get Melon at the bottom right corner of the screen or

melon -g -0+0

to get it at the top right corner of the screen.

~/.melon/melon.pid Contains the process ID of the currently running Melon. ~/.melon/melon.cfg Configuration file of Melon. /usr/share/melon/au Audio root. /usr/share/melon/voc Audio root. /usr/share/melon/pix Pixmap root.

Be aware that the current release of Melon only supports one running task at the time. The PID of a running task is usually stored in .melon/melon.pid in the users home directory. Melon cannot be started if this file exists. If Melon is shutdown cleanly, it removes this file. The switch -p overrides this behaviour but has the drawback that the commands do no longer work.

This manual page was written by Philipp Frauenfelder <pfrauenf@debian.org>, for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others) because the original program does not have a manual page.