Notification of new email at gmail?

Notification of new email at gmail?

[Robert L Knighten]

I am now using emacs to dirctly send and receive email using gmail as
the mail server.  This works well except that new mail notification on
the mode line no longer works as the mail doesn't appear in any file on
the computer until VM is invoked.  Is there any application available
that can provide the notification function on the mode line?  I've found
independent applications that will popup a notification on my desktop,
but I would much prefer to keep it in the emacs mode line.

-- Bob

Re: Notification of new email at gmail?

[Anselm Helbig]

Hi Bob!

> I am now using emacs to dirctly send and receive email using gmail as
> the mail server.  This works well except that new mail notification on
> the mode line no longer works as the mail doesn't appear in any file on
> the computer until VM is invoked.  Is there any application available
> that can provide the notification function on the mode line?  I've found
> independent applications that will popup a notification on my desktop,
> but I would much prefer to keep it in the emacs mode line.

I don't use VM myself, but a quick look at the documentation seems to
indicate that you need to set the `vm-auto-get-new-mail' variable:

  *Non-nil value causes VM to automatically move mail from spool files
  to a mail folder when the folder is first visited.  Nil means
  you must always use `vm-get-new-mail' to pull in newly arrived messages.

  If the value is a number, then it specifies how often (in
  seconds) VM should check for new mail and try to retrieve it.
  This is done asynchronously and may occur while you are editing
  other files.  It should not disturb your editing, except perhaps
  for a pause while the check is being done."

I used a similar setting in my setup once - I'm using wanderlust - but
it became too annoying: if your internet connection hangs or mail
provider becomes unresponsive your whole emacs session hangs. So maybe
you'd rather go back and use fetchmail/getmail or some external
utility - wmmail is one, but there sure are others that also get the
job done. 

HTH, 

Anselm



-- 
Anselm Helbig 
mailto:anselm.helbig+news2009@googlemail.com

Re: Notification of new email at gmail?

[Richard Riley]

Anselm Helbig <anselm.helbig+news2009@googlemail.com> writes:

> Hi Bob!
>
>> I am now using emacs to dirctly send and receive email using gmail as
>> the mail server.  This works well except that new mail notification on
>> the mode line no longer works as the mail doesn't appear in any file on
>> the computer until VM is invoked.  Is there any application available
>> that can provide the notification function on the mode line?  I've found
>> independent applications that will popup a notification on my desktop,
>> but I would much prefer to keep it in the emacs mode line.
>
> I don't use VM myself, but a quick look at the documentation seems to
> indicate that you need to set the `vm-auto-get-new-mail' variable:
>
>   *Non-nil value causes VM to automatically move mail from spool files
>   to a mail folder when the folder is first visited.  Nil means
>   you must always use `vm-get-new-mail' to pull in newly arrived messages.
>
>   If the value is a number, then it specifies how often (in
>   seconds) VM should check for new mail and try to retrieve it.
>   This is done asynchronously and may occur while you are editing
>   other files.  It should not disturb your editing, except perhaps
>   for a pause while the check is being done."
>
> I used a similar setting in my setup once - I'm using wanderlust - but
> it became too annoying: if your internet connection hangs or mail
> provider becomes unresponsive your whole emacs session hangs. So maybe
> you'd rather go back and use fetchmail/getmail or some external
> utility - wmmail is one, but there sure are others that also get the
> job done. 
>
> HTH, 
>
> Anselm

I'm not sure if that answers the question of how to get the modeline to
indicate if there are any new emails waiting .. in other words rather
than tie up vm/gnus/whatever fetching emails, rather read something
that tells you if its time to poll the gmail servers and do a fetch.

FWIW (and OT), I knocked up a very crude and (local) network heavy
script to check my maildir on my email server (which then gnus reads
from IMAP) to tell me if there was any new mail for xmobar (xmonad task
bar thingy).


,----
| #!/bin/bash
| 
| # script for use with xmobar
| if [ "$1" = "" ]; then
|    echo "needs a hostname. Exit."
|    exit
| fi
| 
| host=$1
| 
| newmails=$(ssh $host "find ~/Maildir/.default/new -maxdepth 1 -type f -print | wc -l")
| 
| if [ "$newmails" -eq "0" ]
| then
| 	echo "No New Mail"
| else
| 	echo "**<fc=gold>Mail:$newmails</fc>**"
| fi
`----


-- 

Re: Notification of new email at gmail?

[thierry.volpiatto]

Hi,

Anselm Helbig <anselm.helbig+news2009@googlemail.com> writes:

> Hi Bob!
>
>> I am now using emacs to dirctly send and receive email using gmail as
>> the mail server.  This works well except that new mail notification on
>> the mode line no longer works as the mail doesn't appear in any file on
>> the computer until VM is invoked.  Is there any application available
>> that can provide the notification function on the mode line?  I've found
>> independent applications that will popup a notification on my desktop,
>> but I would much prefer to keep it in the emacs mode line.
>
> I don't use VM myself, but a quick look at the documentation seems to
> indicate that you need to set the `vm-auto-get-new-mail' variable:
>
>   *Non-nil value causes VM to automatically move mail from spool files
>   to a mail folder when the folder is first visited.  Nil means
>   you must always use `vm-get-new-mail' to pull in newly arrived messages.
>
>   If the value is a number, then it specifies how often (in
>   seconds) VM should check for new mail and try to retrieve it.
>   This is done asynchronously and may occur while you are editing
>   other files.  It should not disturb your editing, except perhaps
>   for a pause while the check is being done."
>
> I used a similar setting in my setup once - I'm using wanderlust - but
> it became too annoying: if your internet connection hangs or mail
> provider becomes unresponsive your whole emacs session hangs. So maybe
> you'd rather go back and use fetchmail/getmail or some external
> utility - wmmail is one, but there sure are others that also get the
> job done. 

Have a look at warn-mail.el. It work with fetchmail.

http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/emacs/warn-mail.el

-- 
A + Thierry Volpiatto
Location: Saint-Cyr-Sur-Mer - France

Re: Notification of new email at gmail?

[Robert L Knighten]

Robert L Knighten <RLK0@knighten.org> writes:

> I am now using emacs to dirctly send and receive email using gmail as
> the mail server.  This works well except that new mail notification on
> the mode line no longer works as the mail doesn't appear in any file on
> the computer until VM is invoked.  Is there any application available
> that can provide the notification function on the mode line?  I've found
> independent applications that will popup a notification on my desktop,
> but I would much prefer to keep it in the emacs mode line.

Following up on the various replies, I recently switched from using
fetchmail to deliver mail to spool files to simply using VM with pop-ssl
inside Emacs to directly fetch mail from Google.  So before invoking
vm-get-new-mail the mail is only on the Google server.  I can indeed
automatically poll Google, but because this is being done for multiple
accounts spread across a local network that is more costly than just
using fetchmail to deliver to the spool files.  There appear to be other
alternatives, but I haven't seen any of them used in Emacs.  I they
have, that is what I am looking for.

-- Bob
 

-- 
Robert L. Knighten
RLK@knighten.org