Current Version: 0.9.1

What is imapbiff?
-----------------
imapbiff is a small perl/tk program that notifies you of new mail in an IMAP 
mail account.  It only checks IMAP accounts, not local mail files or POP accounts.
When you do not have any unread messages in your IMAP Inbox, it will display a 
mailbox icon with the flag lowered.  When it detects new messages in your IMAP
Inbox, it will beep and raise the flag.  Whenever it is querying the IMAP server,
a "?" is displayed to indicate that it is checking for messages.

Requirements
------------
- perl
- The Tk perl module (DOES NOT come with most perl installations).
- The Getopt module (comes with most perl installations).
- The IO perl module (comes with most perl installations).

Installation
------------
Check the first line of imapbiff to see if it is pointing at the correct location
of your perl interpreter.  If not, change this line so that it contains a correct
path to perl.

Usage
-----
You can either pass command line arguments to imapbiff, or use a .imapbiffrc file
in your home directory.  The format of the .imapbiffrc file is:

host <IMAP server hostname>
user <your user name on the IMAP server>
sleep <number of seconds to sleep between checks>
password <your password>
nobeep 

It is recommended to not store your password in the file, and rather let imapbiff
bring up a window to prompt you for your password.  Example .imapbiffrc:

host my.mail.host.org
user marndt
sleep 600

This would try to login as marndt at my.mail.host.org every 600 seconds.  You will
be prompted for your password when imapbiff starts, and upon having new mail, the
icon will change and a beep will be sent out.

You can also specify command line options, which override the .imapbiffrc options:

-d
  debug mode: in this mode, imapbiff will not run as a daemon, but rather print
  out debugging messages to the terminal you start it from.
-q 
  quiet mode: do not beep when you have new messages.  Identical to having a line
  with "nobeep" on it in the .imapbiffrc file.
-h <host>
  host: use <host> as the IMAP server.  No default, this must be specified either in
  the .imapbiffrc or on the command line.
-s <sleep>
  sleep: sleep for <sleep> seconds between checks.  Defaults to 120 seconds.
-u <user>
  user: connect to the IMAP server as <user>.  Defaults to the user you run imapbiff
  as.

While imapbiff is running, you can use the mouse buttons for the folllowing:

Button 1: click on the pixmap with button 1 to lower the mailbox flag, and remember
          the current number of unseen messages in your mailbox.  If any new 
          messages come, the flag will go up again.  If imapbiff sees that you have
          read the messages, it will automatically lower the threshold so that you
          are notified when new messages arrive.

Button 2: click on the pixmap with button 2 to initiate an immediate check of your
          mailbox.  

Issues
------
On older perl installations, the IO::Socket module does work correctly with 
imapbiff's alarm setup.  If imapbiff is dying, run it in debug mode (-d), and
look at the output when it dies.  If it dies saying "Alarm clock", then you will
need to upgrade your perl IO module.  If it is dying for any other reason, please
let me know.

To-do
-----
- Verify that imapbiff works with other IMAP servers.  It has been tested to work
  with a UW IMAP server, but not others.  If you use it with a different IMAP
  server, let me know how it works.
- Get prettier pixmaps!

Author and Homepage
-------------------
Author: Michael Arndt
Email: marndt@bulldog.tzo.org
Home Page: http://bulldog.tzo.org/imapbiff/imapbiff.html

Thanks you's:
-------------
I got the pixmaps for the mailbox from a color xbiff program.  I don't know what
it was, but if anyone recognizes the pixmaps, let me know and I will give credit
to the original creator of the pixmaps.  
