asmailrc - the asmail resource file

$HOME/.asmailrc

The asmailrc is a resource file that describes the configuration of the asmail(1) program.

The syntax is based on grouping relevant options with {} (curly braces). The keyword before the opening brace tells asmail what this section is related to. The keywords in one section may be invalid or have different semantics in another section.

All keywords are case-insensitive, so there is no difference between "mailbox" and "Mailbox". However, the values you give to the file names, user names and so on are case-sensitive as is usual on Unix systems. Comments start with the # (hash sign) and run until the end of the line. Comments and blank lines are ignored.

There are two main sections within the resource file. Each of them may be completely omitted, as well as other sections and settings may be omitted. asmail will try to use default values for everything you do not specify.

The later values overwrite earlier values. It is perfectly acceptable to specify any option twice and the last value will be used. One exception from this is the animate{} section where pixmap files are added to the list by multiple occurences of the keywords.

Section name must be followed by { (opening brace) on the same line. The end of a section is signalled by } (closing brace) alone on a line.

x11

The top-level section describing the GUI settings.

mailbox

The top-level section describing the mailboxes to be monitored

stat

The section may appear within the x11{} section. This section describes what statistics should be shown on the screen.

animate

The section may appear within the x11{} section. This section describes the pixmaps that will be used instead of the default ones and the settings for the animation.

The x11 section specifies how the application looks on the screen. There may be multiple x11{} sections, the settings from all of them are merged and later settings overwrite earlier settings.

beep [yes|no]

When beep is on, the tool will signal arrival of new e-mail by the system beep via the system speaker.

Default is yes.

shape [yes|no]

Specifies whether the Shape extensions of X11 will be used for drawing the pixmaps that are specified by frame, nomail, old and new keywords in the settings file.

When the Shape extensions are used, the tool will use the transparency settings of the pixmaps. That is, when a pixmap contains transparent pixels, those pixels will become actually transparent on the screen. With the Shape extensions disabled, the transparent pixels will show up filled with the background color.

The Shape extension is rather expensive on the CPU power and may slow down things a lot on a slow machine.

Default is no.

on_mouse_left comand &

The command will be executed when the application window is clicked with the left mouse button.

Default is none.

on_mouse_middle comand &

Same as on_mouse_left for the middle mouse button.

on_mouse_right comand &

Same as on_mouse_left for the right mouse button.

on_new_mail command &

The command will be executed once for each mailbox when the e-mail arrives to that mailbox.

Default is none.

The resource file should contain as many mailbox{} sections as the number of mailboxes you want to monitor. Each section will create a separate monitor for the given mailbox.

type [ mbox | maildir | mh | pop3 | imap ]

The type of the mailbox. mbox is the standard UNIX mailbox file. maildir is the newer Maildir format. mh is the mH mail directory format. pop3 is for the mailboxes on POP3 servers. imap is a mailbox on the IMAP server.

Depending on the type of the mailbox, some settings may take effect while others will be silently ignored.

The following keywords are useful for the mbox: file update unread-is-new

The following keywords are useful for the maildir: file update

The following keywords are useful for the mh: file update unread-is-new use-mh-sequences

The following keywords are useful for the pop3: update auth server user password timeout

The following keywords are useful for the imap: update server user password mailbox timeout persistent

file file-name

For mbox, mh and maildir, specifies the location of the mailbox in the filesystem.

Default: none.

Note: if no mailbox section is present in the configuration file or no configuration file is found, the value of the environment variable $MAIL will be used as the location of the UNIX mailbox format mail file.

update period

Specifies the period between two updates of this mailbox. The mailbox will be updated period seconds after the previous update is finished.

Default: 10.

unread-is-new [ yes | no ]

For mbox and mh, specifies whether the messages which are flagged as unread are counted as new messages.

Default: no.

use-mh-sequences [ yes | no ]

For mh, specifies whether asmail should parse the .mh_sequences file in this mH mail directory to count new messages. If this option is set to "no", then asmail will parse every message in the mH directory searching for "Status" headers.

Default: no.

auth plain md5

Specifies the type of authentication allowed for the POP3 service. plain stands for the cleartext password authentication, md5 stands for the APOP authentication using MD5 hashes. You can specify either of them or both.

If both are allowed and the server supports APOP, first APOP will be tried.

Default: plain md5.

server server-name

The server name to connect to.

Default: none.

user user-name

Your user name on the server.

Default: none.

password your-password

Your password on the server.

Default: none.

mailbox mailbox-name

Your mailbox on the server. This is only useful with IMAP servers, you can specify an alternative to the standard "INBOX" value.

Default: INBOX for IMAP, none for the rest.

timeout server-timeout

The connection to the server will time out after server-timeout seconds waiting for the answer.

Default: 60.

persistent [ yes | no ]

The connection to the server can be either opened once and kept open or the connection can be opened and closed every time we need to check for the e-mail status, i.e. every update period seconds. If you do not want the connection set-up and login procedure to execute every time, set this to yes.

Default: no.

This section relates to the representation on the screen of mailbox status and counters. There are the following elements in this representation:

mailbox state A letter R appears whenever the mailbox is being updated.

error state A letter appears that shows the error state of the mailbox. The letters may be folowing: L - login procedure failed T - timeout while waiting for server response C - connection problem F - general fault indication When an error is indicated, asmail prints a descriptive message on the standard output.

number of messages The number of messages is represented by two numbers, for the number of new messages and the total number of messages.

The statistics may be displayed for each of the mailboxes separately as well as for the total of all mailboxes. When the total is displayed, the indicators of the mailbox state and the error state will report if any of mailboxes are updated or have errors.

each [ yes | no ]

Whether the tool should display a line of statistics for each of the mailboxes separately.

Default: no.

total [ yes | no ]

Whether the tool should display the summary line for the total number of messages in all mailboxes.

Default: yes.

status [ yes | no ]

Whether the status indicator should preceed every line describing the number of messages in a mailbox and the total.

Default: yes.

old [ yes | no ]

Whether the status indicator should display the number of old (read) messages in the mailbox.

Default: yes.

new [ yes | no ]

Whether the status indicator should display the number of new (unread) messages in the mailbox.

Default: yes.

delimiter characters

The characters are used to separate the number of new messages from the number of old messages in the display.

Default: "/".

x pixels

Start the status indicator at pixels offset horizontally from the top left corner.

Default: 0.

y pixels

Start the status indicator at pixels offset vertically from the top left corner.

Default: 52.

font font-specification

Use the font-specification for the status indicator.

Default: -*-*-medium-r-normal--10-*-*-*-*-*-*-*.

color name

Use the specified color for the status indicator. The color may be a single word or multiple words surrounded by quotes.

Default: black.

The section describes the animation presented on the screen. Basically, you can supply a number of XPM files in this section and the tool will happily cycle through them. There are three states: nomail, old, new. For each state, you add as many XPM files as you like. If there is only one file, asmail will not really cycle through it, only display once, saving thus the system resources.

refresh refresh-rate

The supplied XPM files are cycled through every refresh-rate milliseconds (1/100th of a second).

Default: 10.

nomail xpm-file

Add this xpm-file to the animation of display to represent the state of empty mailbox.

old xpm-file

Add this xpm-file to the animation of display to represent the state of mailbox with only read mail.

new xpm-file

Add this xpm-file to the animation of display to represent the state of mailbox when there is new e-mail in it.

frame xpm-file

Use this xpm-file as the background image. The background image may use transparency. You can specify more than one but only the first one will be used.

You can specify the keyword none instead of the name of the file to be used for the frame. The result will be no frame at all around the applet window.

x11 { beep no on_mouse_left aterm -e bash -c pine & on_new_mail cat /usr/local/share/asmail/sounds/drip.au > /dev/audio & shape yes stat { each yes total yes delimiter " " x 5 y 2 font -*-helvetica-bold-r-*-*-10-*-*-*-*-*-*-* color black } animate { refresh 10 nomail /usr/local/share/asmail/pixmaps/e-no.xpm old /usr/local/share/asmail/pixmaps/e0.xpm new /usr/local/share/asmail/pixmaps/e1.xpm new /usr/local/share/asmail/pixmaps/e2.xpm new /usr/local/share/asmail/pixmaps/e3.xpm new /usr/local/share/asmail/pixmaps/e4.xpm new /usr/local/share/asmail/pixmaps/e5.xpm new /usr/local/share/asmail/pixmaps/e6.xpm new /usr/local/share/asmail/pixmaps/e7.xpm new /usr/local/share/asmail/pixmaps/e8.xpm new /usr/local/share/asmail/pixmaps/e9.xpm new /usr/local/share/asmail/pixmaps/e10.xpm new /usr/local/share/asmail/pixmaps/e11.xpm new /usr/local/share/asmail/pixmaps/e12.xpm new /usr/local/share/asmail/pixmaps/e13.xpm new /usr/local/share/asmail/pixmaps/e14.xpm new /usr/local/share/asmail/pixmaps/e15.xpm new /usr/local/share/asmail/pixmaps/e16.xpm new /usr/local/share/asmail/pixmaps/e17.xpm new /usr/local/share/asmail/pixmaps/e18.xpm new /usr/local/share/asmail/pixmaps/e19.xpm new /usr/local/share/asmail/pixmaps/e20.xpm new /usr/local/share/asmail/pixmaps/e21.xpm new /usr/local/share/asmail/pixmaps/e22.xpm new /usr/local/share/asmail/pixmaps/e23.xpm new /usr/local/share/asmail/pixmaps/e24.xpm new /usr/local/share/asmail/pixmaps/e25.xpm new /usr/local/share/asmail/pixmaps/e26.xpm new /usr/local/share/asmail/pixmaps/e27.xpm new /usr/local/share/asmail/pixmaps/e28.xpm new /usr/local/share/asmail/pixmaps/e29.xpm new /usr/local/share/asmail/pixmaps/e30.xpm } }

mailbox { type mbox file /var/spool/mail/albert update 5 unread-is-new no }

mailbox { type maildir file /home/albert/MailDir update 5 }

mailbox { type mh file /home/albert/mhmail update 5 unread-is-new yes use-mh-sequences yes }

mailbox { type pop3 auth plain md5 server example.com user yourname password yourpassword update 120 timeout 30 }

mailbox { type imap server example.org user yourname password yourpassword update 60 timeout 30 }

~/.asmailrc

asmail(1)

Copyright (c) 2002-2003 Albert Dorofeev <albert@tigr.net>

Distributed under GNU General Public License v2 ; see LICENSE file for more informations.

Albert "Tigr" Dorofeev <albert@tigr.net>

See the README file for credits.