IMAP IDLE command

IMAP IDLE command

[Łukasz Stelmach]

Hello.

Does Gnus support IMAP IDLE[1] command for *notification* about new
messages?

[1] http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2177.html
-- 
Miłego dnia,
Łukasz Stelmach

Re: IMAP IDLE command

[Byung-Hee HWANG]

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Łukasz Stelmach <lukasz.stelmach@iem.pw.edu.pl> writes:

> Hello.
>
> Does Gnus support IMAP IDLE[1] command for *notification* about new
> messages?
>
> [1] http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2177.html

A few months ago, i saw such feature at Thunderbird, not Gnus. In my
humble opinion, that is useless for now. Because current people use
mobile (cell phone) -- also desktop is going to useless, sadly.   

-- 
소여물 황병희(黃炳熙) | .. 출항 15분전..

"What time should Fred have the car waiting?"
		-- Tom Hagen, "Chapter 1", page 41

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Re: IMAP IDLE command

[Łukasz Stelmach]

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Byung-Hee HWANG <bh@izb.knu.ac.kr> writes:

> Łukasz Stelmach <lukasz.stelmach@iem.pw.edu.pl> writes:
>
>> Does Gnus support IMAP IDLE[1] command for *notification* about new
>> messages?
>>
>> [1] http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2177.html
>
> A few months ago, i saw such feature at Thunderbird, not Gnus.

Yes TB3 supports it and people I know who use TB are very pleased with
it.

> In my humble opinion, that is useless for now. Because current people
> use mobile (cell phone) -- also desktop is going to useless, sadly.

Well, I don't like reading mail on a mobile and I think it's pointless
when I sit in front of fullsized screen and keyboard. So a kind of
notification (not downloading because this might freeze my whole Emacs)
that I should "g" or "M-g" seems quite usefull. I could set up a
separate biff programme but I'd like Gnus to support it.

-- 
Miłego dnia,
Łukasz Stelmach

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Re: IMAP IDLE command

[Łukasz Stelmach]

Byung-Hee HWANG <bh@izb.knu.ac.kr> writes:

> Łukasz Stelmach <lukasz.stelmach@iem.pw.edu.pl> writes:
>
>> Does Gnus support IMAP IDLE[1] command for *notification* about new
>> messages?
>>
>> [1] http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2177.html

> A few months ago, i saw such feature at Thunderbird, not Gnus.

Yes TB3 supports it and people I know who use TB are very pleased with
it.

> In my humble opinion, that is useless for now. Because current people
> use mobile (cell phone) -- also desktop is going to useless, sadly.

Well, I don't like reading mail on a mobile and I think it's pointless
when I sit in front of fullsized screen and keyboard. So a kind of
notification (not downloading because this might freeze my whole Emacs)
that I should "g" or "M-g" seems quite usefull. I could set up a
separate biff programme but I'd like Gnus to support it.

-- 
Miłego dnia,
Łukasz Stelmach

Re: IMAP IDLE command

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Łukasz Stelmach <lukasz.stelmach@iem.pw.edu.pl> writes:

> Does Gnus support IMAP IDLE[1] command for *notification* about new
> messages?

Nope.  Gnus really doesn't have any sort of mechanism for getting
updates from the servers asynchronously.  But it'd be nice if it did.

But I guess this can be pushed down into the backends without Gnus
knowing anything about it.  I mean, nnimap could be using IDLE for
notifications, and just keeping track of what the server says is
happening.  A `g' from Gnus could then be basically a NOOP network-wise,
and just give Gnus the info that's already been received by IDLE.

I think.

However, doesn't IDLE just give info about what's going on in a single
mailbox?  That doesn't sound very useful.  But I dimly remember this
being discussed before?  There's a new IMAP extension that'll output new
data on all mailboxes?  That no IMAP servers implement yet?  Or
something?

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen

Re: IMAP IDLE command

[Daniel Pittman]

Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:
> Łukasz Stelmach <lukasz.stelmach@iem.pw.edu.pl> writes:
>
>> Does Gnus support IMAP IDLE[1] command for *notification* about new
>> messages?
>
> Nope.  Gnus really doesn't have any sort of mechanism for getting
> updates from the servers asynchronously.  But it'd be nice if it did.
>
> But I guess this can be pushed down into the backends without Gnus
> knowing anything about it.  I mean, nnimap could be using IDLE for
> notifications, and just keeping track of what the server says is
> happening.  A `g' from Gnus could then be basically a NOOP network-wise,
> and just give Gnus the info that's already been received by IDLE.
>
> I think.
>
> However, doesn't IDLE just give info about what's going on in a single
> mailbox?

Correct.  Which...

> That doesn't sound very useful.  But I dimly remember this being discussed
> before?

...is what we concluded last time, and indeed it isn't very useful.

> There's a new IMAP extension that'll output new data on all mailboxes?  That
> no IMAP servers implement yet?  Or something?

Basically, as far as I can tell.  Current "best practice" is one connection
per mailbox you want to monitor, which presumably does very bad things WRT
servers with connection limits.

        Daniel
-- 
✣ Daniel Pittman            ✉ daniel@rimspace.net            ☎ +61 401 155 707
               ♽ made with 100 percent post-consumer electrons

Re: IMAP IDLE command

[Łukasz Stelmach]

Daniel Pittman <daniel@rimspace.net> writes:

> Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:
>> However, doesn't IDLE just give info about what's going on in a single
>> mailbox?
>
> Correct.  Which...
>
>> That doesn't sound very useful.  But I dimly remember this being discussed
>> before?
>
> ...is what we concluded last time, and indeed it isn't very useful.

I don't mind. I receive all my important mail in a single mailbox then
split them around with the great gnus-move-split-methods. Mail which
ends up in diffrent boxes may wait till I 'g' it.
-- 
Miłego dnia,
Łukasz Stelmach

Re: IMAP IDLE command

[Frank Schmitt]

Łukasz Stelmach <lukasz.stelmach@iem.pw.edu.pl> writes:

> Daniel Pittman <daniel@rimspace.net> writes:
>
>> Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:
>>> However, doesn't IDLE just give info about what's going on in a single
>>> mailbox?
>>
>> Correct.  Which...
>>
>>> That doesn't sound very useful.  But I dimly remember this being discussed
>>> before?
>>
>> ...is what we concluded last time, and indeed it isn't very useful.
>
> I don't mind. I receive all my important mail in a single mailbox then
> split them around with the great gnus-move-split-methods. Mail which
> ends up in diffrent boxes may wait till I 'g' it.

You can always use Gnubiff or something similar for IMAP-IDLE aware
new-mail-notifications.

-- 
Have you ever considered how much text can fit in eighty columns?  Given that a
signature typically contains up to four lines of text, this space allows you to
attach a tremendous amount of valuable information to your messages.  Seize the
opportunity and don't waste your signature on bullshit that nobody cares about.

Re: IMAP IDLE command

[Łukasz Stelmach]

Frank Schmitt <ich@frank-schmitt.net> writes:

> Łukasz Stelmach <lukasz.stelmach@iem.pw.edu.pl> writes:
>
>> Daniel Pittman <daniel@rimspace.net> writes:
>>
>>> Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:
>>>> However, doesn't IDLE just give info about what's going on in a single
>>>> mailbox?
>>>
>>> Correct.  Which...
>>>
>>>> That doesn't sound very useful.  But I dimly remember this being discussed
>>>> before?
>>>
>>> ...is what we concluded last time, and indeed it isn't very useful.
>>
>> I don't mind. I receive all my important mail in a single mailbox then
>> split them around with the great gnus-move-split-methods. Mail which
>> ends up in diffrent boxes may wait till I 'g' it.
>
> You can always use Gnubiff or something similar for IMAP-IDLE aware
> new-mail-notifications.

Sure, but that's not the same ;-)
-- 
Miłego dnia,
Łukasz Stelmach

Re: IMAP IDLE command

[Dan Christensen]

You can get an external IDLE-aware program to notify Gnus using
emacsclient.  I used mail-notification for a while, and I've heard of
mswatch being used.

To avoid this happening while an IMAP command is already in progress, I
get emacsclient to call jdc-gnus-demon-scan-both below, which checks
the idle time.

One annoying thing: when emacsclient runs a function in emacs, it
seems to reset the idle time to zero.  So other things that you may
have set up to run after long idle times can get starved.  I don't
think this behaviour of emacs is correct:  unless there is human
interaction, I think emacs should be considered idle.

Dan


(defun jdc-gnus-demon-scan-both ()
  ; gnus-demon-idle-since returns the idle time in seconds as a float.
  ; These checks shouldn't be needed when this is run from gnus-demon, 
  ; but will help when it is run from ~/bin/mail-arrived.
  (when (and (not gnus-inhibit-demon)
	     (< 5 (gnus-demon-idle-since)))
    ; Setting gnus-inhibit-demon to t should prevent multiple occurrences from 
    ; running at once, either from mail-arrived or gnus-demon.  There is in 
    ; theory a race between the check above and setting the var below, but I 
    ; think emacs only allows context switches when waiting for
    ; output from a process.  In fact, if I cut and paste these into the shell:
    ;   emacsclient --no-wait --eval '(jdc-gnus-demon-scan-both)' &
    ;   emacsclient --no-wait --eval '(jdc-gnus-demon-scan-both)' &
    ; even without setting gnus-inhibit-demon to t here, still only one of 
    ; them does anything, probably because both the scan-mail and scan-news
    ; functions call functions that themselves inhibit the demon.  Still,
    ; better safe than sorry.
    (let ((gnus-inhibit-demon t))
      ; with-local-quit is used by gnus-demon, so do it here too for
      ; when we are called from mail-arrived:
      (with-local-quit
	(message "jdc-gnus-demon-scan-both running")
	(jdc-gnus-demon-scan-mail)
	(jdc-gnus-demon-scan-news)
	(message "jdc-gnus-demon-scan-both done")))))

; like stock function in gnus-demon.el, with a message, and also
; restricting to mail folders:  Hmm, the request-scan check seems to
; already limit to mainly mail servers, but also includes nnagent and
; nnweb.
(defun jdc-gnus-demon-scan-mail ()
  (interactive)
  (save-window-excursion
    (let ((servers gnus-opened-servers)
	  server
	  (nnmail-fetched-sources (list t)))
      (while (setq server (car (pop servers)))
	(and (member (car server) '(nnimap nnfolder nnml))
	     (gnus-check-backend-function 'request-scan (car server))
	     (or (gnus-server-opened server)
		 (gnus-open-server server))
	     (message "Scanning server: %s" server)
	     (gnus-request-scan nil server))))))

; like stock function, but limits to level <= 2.
; I think "news" is misleading; this is needed to update the 
; summary buffer when mail is fetched with jdc-gnus-demon-scan-mail.
; My version also has an extra save-excursion.
(defun jdc-gnus-demon-scan-news ()
  (interactive)
  (message "jdc-gnus-demon-scan-news running")
  (let ((win (current-window-configuration)))
    (unwind-protect
	(save-window-excursion
	  (when (gnus-alive-p)
	    (save-excursion
	      (with-current-buffer gnus-group-buffer
		(gnus-group-get-new-news 2)))))
      (set-window-configuration win))))

Re: IMAP IDLE command

[Tibor Simko]

On Mon, 29 Nov 2010, Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen wrote:
> Nope.  Gnus really doesn't have any sort of mechanism for getting
> updates from the servers asynchronously.  But it'd be nice if it did.

On a somewhat-related notification subject, and thinking of Gnus
internal (non-biff) notification techniques, what is the latest
state-of-the-art of gnus-notify.el and other per-article notification
approaches?  E.g. does new nnimap respect nnmail-read-incoming-hook or
nnmail-prepare-save-mail-hook or somesuch where a per-article
notification function could be plugged?

A use case would go like this: instead of helping user to decide whether
to do `g' (as in the case of IMAP IDLE), one would do `g' periodically
anyway (e.g. via daemon), and if certain conditions are met for certain
articles, notification would get displayed for each interesting article.
(Could be all incoming ones, could be an interesting subset only.)

To decide whether an article is interesting enough for notification,
users would customize a variable say `gnus-notification-regexps' to
define conditions in nnmail-split-fancy style like:

   (("From" "John Boss")
    ("From" "Jane Wife")
    ("To" "emergency\\.team@foo\\.com")
    ("Subject" "IMAP IDLE"))

Hooking upon nnmail-read-incoming-hook or other some such appropriate
place, if a condition is satisfied, a `gnus-notification-function' would
be called, e.g. a simple notify-send call to display the sender and the
subject header via a function like:

   (defun gnus-notification-notify-send (from subject)
     "Notify about new email sent by FROM on SUBJECT."
     (start-process "gnus-notify-send" nil "notify-send"
                    "-i" "/usr/share/pixmaps/gnome-emacs.png"
                    (format "New email from %s" from)
                    (format "Subject: %s" subject)))

Would such a notification system be of general interest to have in Gnus?
It would basically only help users to decide whether to open certain
groups or not; though it could also serve for `quick-scanning' of
activity in some shared IMAP groups, in case several people have access
to the same IMAP account, for example.  (Though an external real-time
biffer may be better suited for this.)

WDYT?

Best regards
-- 
Tibor Simko

Re: IMAP IDLE command

[Łukasz Stelmach]

Tibor Simko <tibor.simko@cern.ch> writes:

> On Mon, 29 Nov 2010, Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen wrote:
>> Nope.  Gnus really doesn't have any sort of mechanism for getting
>> updates from the servers asynchronously.  But it'd be nice if it did.
[...]
> A use case would go like this: instead of helping user to decide whether
> to do `g' (as in the case of IMAP IDLE), one would do `g' periodically
> anyway (e.g. via daemon), and if certain conditions are met for certain
> articles, notification would get displayed for each interesting article.
> (Could be all incoming ones, could be an interesting subset only.)

I don't like the idea of automatic `g' it may work if you've got fat
cable and few servers you pull mail from. Today I've got something like
five IMAP servers configured and two POP3 accounts and a full `g' takes
about 10 seconds if IMAP connections have been closed. I would not be
happy with a 10s delay when I am coding.

That's why I think IMAP IDLE is such a good thing. If you do not use
server side splitting (procmail, sieve etc.) you alway get your inbound
mail in the INBOX. There is no need to watch for more than one folder
and it is enough you get a flag next to the INBOX group in the *Group*
buffer indicating that a new mail is ready for `M-g'.

It's quite late here so I won't go furher.
-- 
Miłego dnia,
Łukasz Stelmach

Re: IMAP IDLE command

[Steinar Bang]

>>>>> Łukasz Stelmach <lukasz.stelmach@iem.pw.edu.pl>:

> I don't like the idea of automatic `g' it may work if you've got fat
> cable and few servers you pull mail from. Today I've got something
> like five IMAP servers configured and two POP3 accounts and a full `g'
> takes about 10 seconds if IMAP connections have been closed. I would
> not be happy with a 10s delay when I am coding.

That's why I use a separate emacs to run gnus with daemonical `g'.

Re: IMAP IDLE command

[Łukasz Stelmach]

Steinar Bang <sb@dod.no> writes:

>>>>>> Łukasz Stelmach <lukasz.stelmach@iem.pw.edu.pl>:
>
>> I don't like the idea of automatic `g' it may work if you've got fat
>> cable and few servers you pull mail from. Today I've got something
>> like five IMAP servers configured and two POP3 accounts and a full `g'
>> takes about 10 seconds if IMAP connections have been closed. I would
>> not be happy with a 10s delay when I am coding.
>
> That's why I use a separate emacs to run gnus with daemonical `g'.

I use Gnus together with other Emacs apps like Org-mode and BBDB to get
something like GNU Outlook, so this is a no go for me.

-- 
Miłego dnia,
Łukasz Stelmach

Re: IMAP IDLE command

[Steinar Bang]

>>>>> Łukasz Stelmach <lukasz.stelmach@iem.pw.edu.pl>:

> I use Gnus together with other Emacs apps like Org-mode and BBDB

So do I (that is: org-mode is still on the infant learning stage, and
has been so since I discovered it for over a year ago.  I sense power
there, but haven't had the occasion to make the leap).

> to get something like GNU Outlook,

The horror! :-)
(in several meanings of the above name...)

> so this is a no go for me.

Hm... what I meant to say is that I use a separate emacs for code
editing, debugging etc. to the one I'm running Gnus (and BBDB and (kind
of) org-mode).

The Gnus etc. emacs does demonical `g'.

Re: IMAP IDLE command

[Łukasz Stelmach]

Steinar Bang <sb@dod.no> writes:

>>>>>> Łukasz Stelmach <lukasz.stelmach@iem.pw.edu.pl>:
>
>> I use Gnus together with other Emacs apps like Org-mode and BBDB
>
> So do I (that is: org-mode is still on the infant learning stage, and
> has been so since I discovered it for over a year ago.  I sense power
> there, but haven't had the occasion to make the leap).
>
>> to get something like GNU Outlook,
>
> The horror! :-)
> (in several meanings of the above name...)

Sound's awfull but what I mean is a tool to integrate several activities
in one place. It really works.

>> so this is a no go for me.
>
> Hm... what I meant to say is that I use a separate emacs for code
> editing, debugging etc. to the one I'm running Gnus (and BBDB and (kind
> of) org-mode).

Even if I don't write *code* in the Gnus process I still work a lot with
Org and hiccups would disturb me here too (if not more, when I code I
probably watch the screen and think more than I type). However, I code
in the same process I Org because I take notes about coding with Org
(org-remember/org-capture) and use Org as my personal bugzilla. No go.

There is probably an option, however, `g'-ing when idle. Because I like
the Pomodoro Technique[1] so I take break on quite regular basis. Gnus
could check mail after few minutes if idleness.

[1] http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/
-- 
Miłego dnia,
Łukasz Stelmach

Re: IMAP IDLE command

[Steinar Bang]

>>>>> Łukasz Stelmach <lukasz.stelmach@iem.pw.edu.pl>:

> There is probably an option, however, `g'-ing when idle. Because I
> like the Pomodoro Technique[1] so I take break on quite regular
> basis. Gnus could check mail after few minutes if idleness.

Here are my settings from my .gnus.el, dated 2003-05-15 23:23:19:

 ;; Automatically fetch news and mail every 15 minutes when idle
 (gnus-demon-add-handler 'gnus-demon-scan-news 15 t)


11 days later, on 2003-05-26 11:55:55, I changed it to the code below (I
don't know why I made that change.  I've messed up the commit, and
committed it with another change in the same file.  Maybe this was an
experimental setting that got accidentally committed?  Anyway it's been
this way for quite a while... I don't know if it actually works, since
it still seems to scan news when idle...):

 ;; Automatically fetch news and mail every 15 minutes when idle
 (defun sb-gnus-demon-scan-imap ()
   (let ((win (current-window-configuration)))
     (unwind-protect
 	(save-window-excursion
 	  (save-excursion
 	    (when (gnus-alive-p)
 	      (save-excursion
 		(set-buffer gnus-group-buffer)
 		(gnus-group-get-new-news 2)))))
       (set-window-configuration win))))

 (gnus-demon-add-handler 'sb-gnus-demon-scan-imap 15 t)
 (gnus-demon-add-rescan)

Re: IMAP IDLE command

[Julien Danjou]

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On Thu, Dec 02 2010, Łukasz Stelmach wrote:
> There is probably an option, however, `g'-ing when idle. Because I like
> the Pomodoro Technique[1] so I take break on quite regular basis. Gnus
> could check mail after few minutes if idleness.

;; Check every 5 minutes when emacs is idle
(gnus-demon-add-handler 'gnus-group-get-new-news 5 t)

-- 
Julien Danjou
// ᐰ <julien@danjou.info>   http://julien.danjou.info

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Re: IMAP IDLE command

[Łukasz Stelmach]

Julien Danjou <julien@danjou.info> writes:

> On Thu, Dec 02 2010, Łukasz Stelmach wrote:
>> There is probably an option, however, `g'-ing when idle. Because I like
>> the Pomodoro Technique[1] so I take break on quite regular basis. Gnus
>> could check mail after few minutes if idleness.
>
> ;; Check every 5 minutes when emacs is idle
> (gnus-demon-add-handler 'gnus-group-get-new-news 5 t)

That's terrific! This is exactly what PT is about. When you work you
work and do not touch incoming communication channels. Take a break, a
real one with standing up and wandering physically and mentally around
and you can get e-mail. Fabulous :-)

-- 
Miłego dnia,
Łukasz Stelmach

Re: IMAP IDLE command

[Łukasz Stelmach]

Steinar Bang <sb@dod.no> writes:

>>>>>> Łukasz Stelmach <lukasz.stelmach@iem.pw.edu.pl>:
>
>> There is probably an option, however, `g'-ing when idle. Because I
>> like the Pomodoro Technique[1] so I take break on quite regular
>> basis. Gnus could check mail after few minutes if idleness.
>
> Here are my settings from my .gnus.el, dated 2003-05-15 23:23:19:
>
>  ;; Automatically fetch news and mail every 15 minutes when idle
>  (gnus-demon-add-handler 'gnus-demon-scan-news 15 t)
>
> 11 days later, on 2003-05-26 11:55:55, I changed it to the code below (I
[...]
>  ;; Automatically fetch news and mail every 15 minutes when idle
>  (defun sb-gnus-demon-scan-imap ()
[...]

Thanks. I'll probably try the former first. If it does not work I'll try
to figure out what sb-gnus-demon-scan-imap is about.

I've just read the code and what would suit me best is 

    ;; Check every 30 minutes but not until 5 minutes of idleness have
    ;; elapsed.
    (gnus-demon-add-handler 'gnus-demon-scan-news 30 5)

I just  love Emacs and its applications for their flexiblity.

-- 
Miłego dnia,
Łukasz Stelmach

Re: IMAP IDLE command

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Mon, 29 Nov 2010 16:10:43 +1100 Daniel Pittman <daniel@rimspace.net> wrote: 

DP> Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:
>> However, doesn't IDLE just give info about what's going on in a single
>> mailbox?

DP> Correct.  Which...

>> That doesn't sound very useful.  But I dimly remember this being discussed
>> before?

DP> ...is what we concluded last time, and indeed it isn't very useful.

At least INBOX and INBOX.spam monitoring would be nice for me.  Could
Gnus use IDLE and set the mail indicator (in the modeline)
asynchronously?  Right now it's set from $MAIL for me, which is not very
useful.

Ted

Re: IMAP IDLE command

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> writes:

> At least INBOX and INBOX.spam monitoring would be nice for me.  Could
> Gnus use IDLE and set the mail indicator (in the modeline)
> asynchronously?

It's possible.  Isn't asking "is there new mail in INBOX" best emulated
by this function?

(defun is-there-mail-in-inbox-p ()
  t)

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen

Re: IMAP IDLE command

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Wed, 15 Dec 2010 20:34:27 +0100 Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> wrote: 

LMI> Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> writes:
>> At least INBOX and INBOX.spam monitoring would be nice for me.  Could
>> Gnus use IDLE and set the mail indicator (in the modeline)
>> asynchronously?

LMI> It's possible.  Isn't asking "is there new mail in INBOX" best emulated
LMI> by this function?

LMI> (defun is-there-mail-in-inbox-p ()
LMI>   t)

For performance I'd make it a defsubst ;)

Ted