need an email checker

[eggbert]

I am trying to find an email checker for KDE, kind of something like mail-notification on gnome. But I am not having much luck.

There are a lot of "plasmoids" that are supposed to check email. but most of them seem not to work, dont provide the features I need, or have various other issues.

I just need one that can check multiple accounts on pop mail and gmail. Anyone have any ideas?

[GreyGeek]

Re: need an email checker

I configure my gmail accounts to forward the mail to my ISP email account, after filtering of course. I set up KMail to download mail from my ISP account. You can set up multiple email accounts from different sources in KMail and have Kmail automatically download the mail. Or, you can click on the KMail system icon and pull down mail from one or all of the accounts. I did the same thing with Thunderbird, before I switched to KMail.

[eggbert]

Re: need an email checker

Thanks,

Don't really want to have anything to do with kmail or anakondi so not sure this would work for me. Ideally I just want a popup notification when email arrives.

Thunderbird does pop up an alert on new mail, but only if its running. Really what I am after is something like poptray on windows, or mail notification on gnome. Just a small system tray notifier, that will tell me I have new mail on its own.

[woodsmoke]

Re: need an email checker

One of the problems with any mail checker is that Yahoo won't let you do it unless you have their new paid account.

However, that can, supposedly, be worked around by changing to the "asian" Yahoo although I have never done it.

I no longer have an "ISP" mail account because of where I am now living so I can't check any of the plasmoids for it.

However, gmail generally works with all of them.

woodsmoke

[eggbert]

Re: need an email checker

Well, don't have a Yahoo mail account so don't really care about that

I have just looked some more and I STILL can't find a mail checker. It boggles the mind, this is such a simple thing, yet so integral to my workflow.

Surely someone some where has written an email checker for KDE that actually works? Most of the plasmoid ones look like they have been either abandoded or only support gmail. Grr!

[woodsmoke]

Re: need an email checker

Unfortunately, I have to agree in large part.

The only plasmoid I see is the "mail plasmoid" in the normal ones from the repos. There may be a newer one at KDE look.

An off the wall idea is gKrellm, which does not really fit in with the plasma look but it always worked for me.

woodsmoke

[doctordruidphd]

Re: need an email checker

You do have a couple of options.

Depending on where your account is, you may be able to configure kopete to do the checking for you. It does work for yahoo, and I assume gmail also, though I don't have an account there.

The other thing you can do is set up mpop to check your pop mail accounts via a cron job. Then you can use any of the linux mail notifiers (apt-cache search mail | grep notif), there are quite a few of them. "Mail notification", "kcheckgmail", maybe "cool mail", and others. You can probably set up your mail accounts so that it won't delete the messages when mpop downloads them.

It will take some fiddling, but it is do-able.

[eggbert]

Re: need an email checker

yeah was thinking about a few different ways to do it, but just seems so convoluted just to be able to get notified of new mail. Man, someone should write a mail notifier for KDE. The couple "widget" ones I looked at are so poorly written and do not even work right.

There used to be gnubiff I used a long time ago, but I don't even see it in the repos any more.

I also found this http://kshowmail.sourceforge.net/

Which looks like almost what i want, but they only have an i386 package for ubuntu and I am on 64 bit. Could I run that with ia32libs?

[Goeroeboeroe]

Re: need an email checker

I had exactly the same problem as you: a checker for pop. After a lot of searching I found two packages, that together more or less are a mailchecker. But I'm running on 11.04 (natty), so I don't know if this works for you.
I downloaded kbiff from http://pkgs.org/debian-sid/debian-ma....deb/download/
and
poptray minus from http://server-pro.com/poptrayminus/
There's a version 4 from kbiff for Suse (rpm) but that doesn't work for me. (Used alien, but just doesn't work and I don't have the skills to find out why).
These two work for me, more or less.
The more part: they fit in the plasma thing etc.
The less part: you can't check your mail before downloading with kbiff. But it gives a clear message when there's new post (sound and window).
You can check you mail before downloading with poptray minus to prevent spam, but it gives a warning for new mail that's almost invisible. And no sound.
Together they are more or less a pretty primitive mailchecker for popmail.
Sometimes they just stop stopping checking for mail and you have to right-click on them to force a check. After that they work again. It's far from perfect, but workable.

[eggbert]

Re: need an email checker

Thanks! poptrayminus is very close to what I need. Yes it is a little primative, and bummer about no sound, but I can live with that

Seems to work ok, it is checking both gmail and my ordinary pop accounts.

Still seems like there should be a GOOD mail checker for KDE. It is a must have for a lot of folks.

[Goeroeboeroe]

Re: need an email checker

I didn't find kshowmail when I searched (or it didn't yet exist). I dumped kbiff and poptrayminus and I'm using kshowmail now.
So thanks too!

[doctordruidphd]

Re: need an email checker

kshowmail looks veryinteresting

http://kshowmail.sourceforge.net/

compiled here just fine, seems to work with yahoo through secure ssl access.

It does a lot more than just checking mail, though, so watch which buttons you push.

[eggbert]

Re: need an email checker

Yeah seems pretty nice!

For anyone who is interested, I found an older 64 bit version for lucid here.

https://launchpad.net/~ferramroberto...+build/1893022

Too bad there is not a newer ppa for this nice app.

[woodsmoke]

Re: need an email checker

dlbl wrote:

Depending on where your account is, you may be able to configure kopete to do the checking for you. It does work for yahoo, and I assume gmail also, though I don't have an account there.

dlbl,
now that is just summat amazing.
It works!
it is in settings/configure notifications.

It pops, for me, a semitransparent window near the taskbar above the Kopete icon in the taskbar, but it may just be a "notificaton".

If I might ask, dlbl, about how long do you think that function has been present?

I admit that I had no clue that there might be such a capability and so never LOOKED for it, but ...I am wondering...

And, as a comment, it is rather amazing that the simple entry of the yahoo identity and password is all that is needed, considering the handwringing that has occured about Yahoo forwarding.

thanks dlbl.

woodsmoke

[doctordruidphd]

Re: need an email checker

I think it was my post suggesting kopete, so to answer your questions:

Kopete is just a notification about what's on your yahoo mail. It does not download it. That's all I really have ever done with it.

As far as I know, that function has been there for the last several kubuntu releases. Doesn't get much publicity, but it's there.

As I do have a paying yahoo mail account, I'm not sure whether this will work on a free account or not. You can, by the way, just tell yahoo you're in Canada, and it will give you a free pop mail account. I didn't know that when I set mine up...

FYI it's not all that hard to get yahoo forwarding to your linux email system set up. There is mpop (which I use) and fetchyahoo (which I don't use, no prejudice intended). But I mostly use the linux mail system for ham radio stuff, so I keep yahoo to itself with thunderbird.

Anyway, I'm so impressed with kshowmail I may be switching. It compiled (on 64 bit) the first time without errors -- that in itself is impressive -- and it does just about everything I need to do with email. Still studying it, but it does look good.