automatic mail checking & notify

automatic mail checking & notify

[David Benjamin]

Is there a way (or has someone coded a way) to have gnus automatically
check mail at set intervals, and perhaps beep (or call a program to 
play an annoying ice cream truck sound) when new mail is recieved?

This would be a great feature, as a frequent complaint of co-workers
using Eudora (on win32) is that it will play the notify sound on
receipt of *any* message.  More desirable would be to play a sound
only when certain groups get mail, such as personal mail.

Any help/pointers/ruminations appreciated.

Dave Benjamin
dbjag@aolnorth.com

Re: automatic mail checking & notify

[Brian Edmonds]

David Benjamin <dbjag@aolnorth.com> writes:
> More desirable would be to play a sound only when certain groups get
> mail, such as personal mail.

You might want to check out the faces (picons) project, and in
particular the xfaces program.  It does a far better job of showing me
what mail I have waiting than I expect Gnus ever could (given the
fundemental limitations of emacs).

I don't recall where to get it, but I found it with a simple web search,
so I'm sure you can do the same.

Brian.

Re: automatic mail checking & notify

[Mark Boyns]

edmonds@cs.ubc.ca (Brian Edmonds) writes:

> David Benjamin <dbjag@aolnorth.com> writes:
> > More desirable would be to play a sound only when certain groups get
> > mail, such as personal mail.

You can invoke a sound player from your .forward or .qmail file.
Programs like mailsound can play different sounds depending on message
contents.

> You might want to check out the faces (picons) project, and in
> particular the xfaces program.  It does a far better job of showing me
> what mail I have waiting than I expect Gnus ever could (given the
> fundemental limitations of emacs).
> 
> I don't recall where to get it, but I found it with a simple web search,
> so I'm sure you can do the same.

xfaces and picons are available here:

    ftp://cs.indiana.edu/pub/faces/

Re: automatic mail checking & notify

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

David Benjamin <dbjag@aolnorth.com> writes:

> Is there a way to detect new mail for a level of subscription or,
> failing that, for a specific group?

In Red Gnus, the form 

(nnmail-new-mail-p (gnus-group-real-name group))

will say whether GROUP has gotten new mail or not.

-- 
  "Yes.  The journey through the human heart 
     would have to wait until some other time."

Re: automatic mail checking & notify

[David Benjamin]

Thanks very much for the pointers to display-time.el, Picons, and Xfaces.
The display-time.el code was very educational, however the Picons and Xfaces
stuff isn't of use to since I'm running on WIN32, and mail works different.

Perhaps I could bother everyone for a second question.  I've a small piece
of code below which will check every X seconds for articles of subscribedness
level Y, this is perfect for what I want.  I can make all important
stop-what-your-doing-and-read-me mail groups at level 1 or so and limit
interruptions for mail directly to me and, of course, any and all
postings to alt.hygiene.male.

However, I'm stuck as to how to detect whether any new mail has actually
been recieved for the groups fetched.  Is there a way to detect new mail
for a level of subscription or, failing that, for a specific group?

Again, thanks very much for your help.  Gnus is good.

Dave Benjamin
dbjag@aolnorth.com

--

(defvar check-gnus-timer nil)

(defvar check-gnus-interval 300
  "* Seconds between gnus-checks.")

(defvar check-gnus-level 1
  "* Gnus level to check.")

(defun check-gnus ()  
  ""
  (interactive)
  (and check-gnus-timer (cancel-timer check-gnus-timer))
  (setq check-gnus-timer
	(run-at-time nil check-gnus-interval 'check-gnus-event-handler)))

(defun check-gnus-event-handler ()
  (message (concat (current-time-string) "- check-gnus - checking mail..."))

  ; hmm. perhaps I should save current state here for comparison after check?

  (gnus-group-get-new-news check-gnus-level)

  ; insert here:
  ; clever piece of code that will detect if new mail has been
  ; received, and play an amusing sound, like this...

  (call-process "playsnd" nil t nil "s:\\buzzly.wav")
)

---