Re: display-time, mail-icon and POP3 mailboxes

[storm@cua.dk (Kim F. Storm)]

Pavel@Janik.cz (Pavel Janík) writes:

>    From: storm@cua.dk (Kim F. Storm)
>    Date: 09 Feb 2002 00:14:55 +0100
> 
>    > I think it should at least be able to use the existing gnus and/or
>    > rmail settings (they cannot be that hard to use).
>    > You can then add extra mailboxes to check specifically.
>    > 
>    > What about these options:
>    >  - display-time-pop3-check-rmail  (nil/t, default t)
>    >  - display-time-pop3-check-gnus   (nil/t, default t)
>    >  - display-time-pop3-mail-boxes   (alist (server.passwd), default ())
> 
> Hmm, when I think about it - it would be better if those mail programs like
> RMAIL and Gnus could tells us alone if there is any new mail. Syntax of
> Gnus' mail-sources variable is pretty easy, but Gnus also support IMAP
> etc. and we should not duplicate code in display-time. What do you think?

I agree.  It seems to be the right approach for such packages to have
a hook function for display-time to check for unread mail (using whatever
method those packages support for retrieving mail).

> 
>    > With the pop3 sample code I posted some time ago, there is one serious
>    > problem: If emacs cannot connect to the pop3 server, it may hang (no
>    > user interaction) until the connect times out.  That is not
>    > satisfactory!
>    > 
>    > I don't know if this is relevant for your code (sorry, but I haven't
>    > had time to look at the code you sent me).
> 
> The same applies to pop3.el from Gnus.

In my experience [based on my own pop3 hacks], this is really, really
annoying (since the poll runs through a timer)!!!

If we want to support this in general, we must implement an async
version of open-network-stream (or add an optional arg to it to make
it async - that arg could be a function which is called when the
connection has been opened.

-- 
Kim F. Storm <storm@cua.dk> http://www.cua.dk