Looking for mailwatch app

[Grant Edwards]

On 2008-09-02, Grant Edwards <grante at visi.com> wrote:

>> I changed how the icons were loaded to accommodate non-square
>> icons, and forgot that the new way I was using doesn't support
>> icons with absolute paths. Should be fixed in svn now, but I
>> didn't have time to test it extensively.
>
> That's what users are for... :)
>
> Thanks for the quick response -- I'll give it a try some time
> tomorrow.

It's working very nicely now. FWIW, the python program below is
passed one or more mailwatcher .rc file names on the command
line. For each of the .rc files, it reads the mailbox name and
generates corresponding svg icons and sticks the icon paths
back into the mailwatch .rc files.

A couple nice-to-have features that I've always wanted (but
never had) in a mailwatcher:

 * It would be handy to have a way send the mailwatcher(s) a
   signal to update.  The sequence of events where this would
   be useful is:

    1) The watcher detects new mail and changes the icon.

    2) Clicking on the icon starts an MUA.

    3) The user deletes/saves/whatever the new message.

    4) The user closes the MUA.    

   Now, for the next 9+ minutes (assuming a 10 minute polling
   period), the user doesn't know whether there's new mail or
   not.  The icon shows new mail, but that isn't meaningful
   until the next polling period.

   If there was a way to trigger an update when the MUA exits,
   there wouldn't be that period of uncertainty.

   Another approach would be for the watcher to clear the
   new-mail status when the MUA is launched and not poll again
   until the MUA exits.
   

 * It would be cool if the panel containing the mailwatchers
   could stay hidden when there is no new mail.  Can an
   auto-hide panel "un-hide" itself based on the state of one
   of the plugins?  

I don't know enough about how panels/plugins work to know if
those features are even remotely feasible or not. What's in SVN
now has all the features required to nicely replace my old
solution.  Maybe I'll start reading up on how XFCE panels and
plugins work...

   
------------------------------------------------------------------------
#!/usr/bin/python
import sys,glob,os
from pysvg import pysvg


def makeIcon(label,filename,color="black",n=24,iconpath=os.getcwd()):
    s = pysvg.SVG("",height=1.1*n,width=5*n)
    s.addElement(pysvg.text(label,0.2*n,0.95*n,style_dict={'font-family':'Ariel','font-size':n, 'fill':color}))
    path = iconpath+"/"+filename
    open(path,"w").write(s.getXML())
    return path

def getFieldValue(lines,key):
    for line in lines:
        if line.startswith(key+"="):
            return line.split("=")[1].strip()
        
def setFieldValue(lines,key,value):
    i = [line.startswith(key) for line in lines].index(True)
    lines[i] = "%s=%s\n" % (key,value)


rcfiles = sys.argv[1:]
    
for f in rcfiles:
    lines = open(f,"r").readlines()
    mailboxName = getFieldValue(lines,"mailbox_name0")
    iconFileName = makeIcon(mailboxName,"nomail-%s.svg" % mailboxName, "black")
    setFieldValue(lines,"normal_icon",iconFileName)
    iconFileName = makeIcon(mailboxName, "newmail-%s.svg" % mailboxName,"red")
    setFieldValue(lines,"new_mail_icon",iconFileName)
    os.rename(f,f+"~")
    open(f,"w").write(''.join(lines))
------------------------------------------------------------------------


-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow! I invented skydiving
                                  at               in 1989!
                               visi.com