Clock and Mailcheck Applet

Copyright © 2000 by Telsa Gwynne and Eric Baudais

Table of Contents
Clock and Mailcheck Applet

Clock and Mailcheck Applet

Clock and Mailcheck applet, shown in Figure 1, displays the current time and how much mail is in your mailbox. It also notifies you when new mail arrives by flashing. To add this applet to a Panel, right-click on the Panel and choose Panel->Add to panel->Applet->Clocks->Clock and Mailcheck.

Figure 1. Clock and Mailcheck Applet

Usage

View the time and number of messages in your inbox in the applet's display. The envelope will flash when new email arrives.

Right-clicking on the applet brings up a menu containing the following items:

  • Properties… — opens the Properties dialog.

  • Help — displays this document.

  • About… — shows basic information about Clock and Mailcheck Applet, inluding the applet's version and the author's name.

Customization

You can customize Clock and Mailcheck applet by right-clicking on it and choosing Properties…. This will open the Properties dialog(shown in Figure 2), which allows you to change various settings.

Figure 2. Properties dialog

The Properties dialogue is divided in two sections, one for general options and one for themes.

The properties in the General tab are:

  • Display time in 12 hours format (AM/PM) — Check this button to show the time in 12-hour format.

  • Display time relative to GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) — This allows you to change the timezone Clock and Mailcheck uses. The time can be anything from twelve hours ahead of GMT to twelve hours behind it. Remember also to select the checkbox, to use the new timezone. Note that you can only alter the time by an integral number of hours.

  • Mail file — Enter you email inbox file which should be checked for new mail. Typically, this is /var/spool/mail/yourusername or something similar. You can only enter one file.

  • When new mail is received, run... — It is possible to execute commands when new mail arrives. For example, it is very common for people to have a sound file played as mail arrives. You can put the command to run and the file to run it on in this space and ensure the checkbox is checked for it to occur. If you have more than one command, you can separate them by a semi-colon. For example,

    • esdplay /full/path/to/file.wav

    • cd /path/to/directory ; esdplay file.wav

    These two have the same effect. You will need the full path for this, without using shortcuts such as cd ~.

  • Always blink when new mail is waiting — If you select this checkbox, then the red envelope will blink until you read your unread email. Normally, this is off, and the blinking lasts only a few seconds.

  • Number of messages to consider mailbox full — Set the number of messages you mailbox must have to be considered "full". Certain themes will show a special symbol indicating the mailbox is full.

  • When clicked, run... — When this is set, clicking the left mouse button on the applet will run a program. The default is to run the Balsa mail client. (If Balsa is not installed, nothing will happen.) Set this to be your favorite email program.

The properties in the Theme tab allows you to set the appearance of Clock and Mailcheck applet. Clock and Mailcheck applet comes with many themes which are stored in $PREFIX/clockmail/. By default, it does not use a theme. Note that not all of the themes show both the time and the state of your mailbox.

Figure 3. Properties dialog showing theme tab

After you have made all the changes you want, click on OK to apply the changes and close the Properties dialog. To cancel the changes and return to previous values, click the Cancel button.

Known Bugs and Limitations

  1. You can't change the time through the clock properties. This is not really a bug; it's because you must be root to alter the time for the whole of the system, using the date command.

  2. If you adjust the system clock backwards using the date command, the clock will stop working until the system time reaches the time the clock displays. It will start working normally then.

  3. The mailcounter theme gets the number of messages in your inbox wrong.

  4. Several themes do not reshape to the size of a vertical panel and force the panel to be wider.

  5. Doesn't handle multiple mailboxes.

Authors

ClockMail was written by John Ellis (). Please send all comments, suggestions, and bug reports to the GNOME bug tracking database. (Instructions for submitting bug reports can be found on-line. If you are using GNOME 1.1 or later, you can also use Bug Report Tool (bug-buddy), available in the Utilities submenu of Main Menu, for submitting bug reports.

This manual was written by Telsa Gywnne () and Eric Baudais (). Please send all comments and suggestions regarding this manual to the GNOME Documentation Project by sending an email to . You can also submit comments online by using the GNOME Documentation Status Table.

License

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

A copy of the GNU General Public License is included as an appendix to the GNOME Users Guide. You may also obtain a copy of the GNU General Public License from the Free Software Foundation by visiting their Web site or by writing to

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