NEWMAIL(1L)         USENET Community Trust(Elm Version 2.3)         NEWMAIL(1L)


NAME
      newmail,wnewmail - programs to asynchronously notify of new mail

SYNOPSIS
      newmail [-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 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 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
                interested in actually debugging the program.





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      -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 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 imcoming 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
      messages 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


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      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
      Dave Taylor, Hewlett-Packard Laboratories.

SEE ALSO
      notify in sh(1) or csh(1)

BUG REPORTS TO
      Syd Weinstein     elm@DSI.COM (dsinc!elm)

COPYRIGHTS
      © Copyright 1986, 1987 by Dave Taylor
      © Copyright 1988, 1989, 1990 by The USENET Community Trust





































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