Jabic - A combined biff and clock applicatin

For a long time I wanted an application which combined the usefull features of xbiff and a clock. Most of the time it would display the clock, and then if new messages arrived it would change appearance and notify about the new messages. In addition it should extend the functionality offered by xbiff by allowing multiple incoming folders and by offering to test both on files and maildirs (and maybe even support pop3-checking)

Unfortunately jabic isn't implemented yet, but it will come some day

Visual appearance of jabic

Jabic should offer both a textual version, and graphical version. As a start the textual version should only give a status report, and not be an interactive version. That means you need to run it every now and then...

The graphical version should offer both an analog and a digital clock (optionally with or without displaying seconds). In both cases the area where the time is displayed is divided into ten different background areas. When displaying a digital clock it's ten blocks (one for each character in the time displayed and one in front and one at the end). When displaying an analog clock the areas are to be half circles/arcs. Five in the upper half and five in the lower half.

This areas change color if the corresponding mailfolder (which might be both a file and a directory) has received new info. The rules for when to change to original color again is described later on.

In both graphical modes there are certain actions available, these are:

Left Click
Displays a list of the folders, with the status of each folder
Left double click
Resets the status of all folders
Right click
Display a menu offering the following items:
None
When the mouse been above the image for a while display the date
The status is changed to new when there has been a change since the last time checked, which is to be stored each time (by touching a given file). The status is changed to unchanged if and only if the mailfolder has been made smaller (either the file itself or number of files in folder). Maybe this last rule need to be modified by till example adding a counter which says how long something should be regarded as a new message.

Command line options

Jabic should at least understand the following options:
display
The address of the display to use
geometry
The size and or position to use when display jabic
text
To force using the text option
analog | digital
Display analog/digital clock
colorscheme
Use the given schemename as default

Configuration file

Jabic reads it configuration from $HOME/config/jabicrc or $HOME/.jabicrc. If none of these are present it uses $MAIL as single folder. It the file is the present it consist of lines folder#: <filename>. Where # is a number from 1 to 10. It's legal to use environment variables within this file.

In addition one might use the command line options (without the '-' in front) in the configuration file. An example configuration file might be: 

folder1: $MAIL
folder2: $MAILDIR/new/maildirectory/
folder3: $MAILDIR/new/mboxfile
folder4: $USER@somehost:cryptPasswd
analog
colorscheme: naval
As can be seen from the example one differentiates between a maildirectory and a mail-file by adding the trailing slash or not. ( If pop3-support is added the last line shows the syntax. Do note that it's the crypted password which are to be used. If the password isn't given then it will be asked for when starting jabic. Maybe the implementation of pop3 will change the way this handled)

This configuration file also says to use the naval colorscheme (something blueish? :)) and to display an analog clock.

Jabic the program and documentation is developed by Even Holen, evenh+prg+jabic@pvv.ntnu.no