SUMMARY

I propose a way of recording and alerting me of new mail.

THE PROBLEM

I read my mail typically under Linux using Pine, but sometimes over IMAP using
other mail readers.  I've wanted a better way of managing new mail as it
arrives during the day.  The "new" mail flag within Pine are for those
messages whose body has not yet been read, although the sender and subject may
be known. (I treat these as "to-do" messages in my inbox that I have not yet
handled.)  What I'm talking about is managing even "newer" mail, that is, mail
that has just just arrived, where I don't yet know the sender or the subject.

For example, if I step away from my desk for a few hours, I can't use the
"from" command under Linux to see what has arrived since I left, because this
lists all messages flagged as "new" in Pine, and there are too many of those.

THE BASICS

First, I create a file called .NoMail that contains this:

        From MAILER-DAEMON Tue Jan 14 12:15:21 2003
        Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2003 12:15:21 -0500 (EST)
        From: Mail System Internal Data <MAILER-DAEMON@postbox.cs>
        Subject: DON'T DELETE THIS MESSAGE -- FOLDER INTERNAL DATA
        X-IMAP: 1042564519 0000000001
        Status: RO

        This text is part of the internal format of your mail folder, and is
        not a real message.  It is created automatically by the mail system
        software.  If deleted, important folder data will be lost, and it will
        be re-created with the data reset to initial values.

This will keep IMAP happy.  Then I create a file called .NM that is a copy of
this file. The .NM file will contain headers of new mail as it arrives.  To do
so, I have a recipe in my .procmailrc files that says this:

        :0 hc:
        $HOME/.NM

This copies mail headers onto the end of the file .NM for any mail messages
that make it to there in the procmail script.  (Some messages are deemed less
urgent and get moved by .procmailrc to somewhere else before this recipe, so
that I don't see them arriving, although I will still read them eventually.)

Then I alias "nfrom" (= "new from") to this command

        from -f $HOME/.NM  | tail +2

to list the headers of the mail that has just arrived.  I also alias "pine" to

        /bin/cp $HOME/.NoMail $HOME/.NM; /usr/bin/pine

so that every time I start "pine", the latest messages I have received are no
longer considered to be new as far as "nfrom" is concerned.  They will still
be flagged as "new" (= to be dealt with) within Pine, of course.

THE ICING

To complete the picture, I have a utility that runs on a PC or Mac (under
Linux or OS X), to repeatedly check for new mail, display how many messages
"nfrom" will see, and play a sound when there is a new arrival.  The utility
consists of two scripts, a bash script called "sounder" to play the sound on
the PC or Mac, and a tcl/wish script called "nbiff-local" that runs on the
mail server and does all the checking.  I run them using SSH to connect to the
mail server, piping the output of "nbiff-local" to the "sounder" script:

        ssh -Y -f <server> '~/bin/nbiff-local' | ~/bin/sounder <soundfile>

Here is "sounder":

        #!/bin/bash
        # Repeatedly play a system sound when the next input is "mail".  
        while [ 1 ]
        do
          read p
          [ "foo$p" == "foomail" ] && <playsound> $1
        done

Here <playsound> is any utility that can play a given sound file.  Here is the
"nbiff-local" utility:

        #!/usr/bin/X11/wish
	wm withdraw .
	#  config
	set account "mymail"
	set interval 30000
	set windowloc "-20+100"
	#  run
	set msgs 0
	set t [toplevel .test -bg black]
	wm overrideredirect $t 1
	wm geometry $t $windowloc
	label $t.name -text $account -font "5x7" -fg white -bg black
	pack $t.name -padx 0 -pady 0
	label $t.msg -textvariable msgs -font "12x24" -fg SpringGreen -bg black
	pack $t.msg -padx 3 -pady 3
	# loop forever, running nfrom to get the number of new mail messages
	while {1} {
	    set new [exec from -f $HOME/.NM | tail +2 | wc -l]
	    if {$new > $msgs} {puts "mail"}
	    set msgs $new
	    update
            after $interval
        }

This puts up a small window under X11 with the number of new messages, and
outputs the string "mail" each time that number goes up (a new message has
arrived).  Since the output is piped to "sounder", this string is read as
input, which then causes the soundfile to be played.