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KBiff is very intuitive to use with obvious and self-explanatory
actions... to the author. For everybody else, a little explanation is
in order.
Here are a few words that will be tossed around in this handbook:
- command The command that will run with the user clicks on the
KBiff app. Usually, this is a mail program. This is not the
same as the "Run Command".
- mailbox The actual mailbox or file that KBiff will monitor.
KBiff will not ever modify this file.
- mailbox profile This is the configuration settings necessary
for KBiff to monitor a mailbox. It includes the profile name (i.e., "Inbox"),
the path to the actual mailbox ("/var/spool/mail/user"), the poll
time, the command to run when the icon is clicked, and the three pixmaps
to use to display the current state (no mail, old mail, and new mail). It
is possible to delete any mailbox profile as long as there is at least
one left.
- poll time The amount of time KBiff will wait before checking
again for new mail. It is in seconds. Default is 60 seconds.
- profile See mailbox profile
- Run Command This is the command that will run whenever you
get new mail
The first time you run KBiff (rather, every time KBiff runs without
being restored), the setup dialog will popup. If you have not created
any other mailbox profiles, there will be a default mailbox profile
created called "Inbox." It will try to use the environment variable
$MAIL as the mailbox path. It will not allow
you to delete this profile if you do not create another profile, first.
That is, KBiff must always have at least one profile.
See the Setup Dialog section for more details
on the dialog.
Fill in the parameters in the setup dialog (or verify that the shown
parameters are correct) and click on OK.
After the setup dialog goes away, KBiff will assume its natural state.
It first checks the given mailbox to see what state it is in. Based
on this state, it assigns its current pixmap to the corresponding
given pixmap. The size of the KBiff window will adjust to the size of
the pixmap given for old mail. By default, KBiff will assume a non-docked
window initally.
KBiff recognizes both right and left mouse clicks. A left mouse click
will launch the command specified in the setup dialog (usually an email
program). A right mouse lick will popup a menu. The popup menu is
detailed in the Popup Menu section.
It is possible to bypass the setup dialog once a profile has been created.
This is accomplished with the -profile command line option.
A possible use of it would be to create a .kdelnk file for KBiff and put
it in your Autostart folder. In the execute box, put
kbiff -profile "Inbox"
or whatever your profile name is. This will start KBiff up and bypass
the setup dialog.
Note that if you have session management enabled, this is not only
unnecessary (KBiff will automatically start up with the correct profile),
but it will cause two KBiffs to start.
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