The K Desktop Environment

Next Previous Table of Contents

4. The Setup Dialog

The setup dialog handles all configuration items for KBiff. As a result, there are no command line parameters.

4.1 Dialog Areas

4.1.1 Profile Name

The top part of the dialog consists of a drop down list and two buttons. The drop down list contains the names of all the "profiles." A profile is a set of configuration settings for one mailbox under one name. The two buttons are New and Delete. Both buttons work on profiles, only. Neither touch the actual mailbox files.

4.1.2 Profile Settings

The middle section of the dialog has three edit boxes. The first is for the absolute path of the mailbox or file to monitor. By default, this will be taken from your $MAIL environment variable. The second box contains the "Poll" time. KBiff will check the mailbox specified in the first edit box every Poll seconds. The default Poll time is 60 seconds. The last edit box contains a command. Whatever is here will be executed whenever the user left-clicks on KBiff. Typically, you will enter a mail client invokation here (like "kmail"). There is no default command.

Example: If Joe User (joe_user) starts up KBiff with $MAIL pointing to /var/spool/mail/joe_user and he clicks Ok without modifying anything, then KBiff will check the mailbox /var/spool/mail/joe_user every 60 seconds for new mail. When Joe click on KBiff, nothing will happen.

4.1.3 Mail Icons

The final section has three icon loaders. These three icons are used for the three states of KBiff: no mail, old mail, and new mail. The pixmaps shown are for the un-docked state (32x32). The pixmaps used in docked state are whatever pixmaps are named "mini-<pixmap>.xpm where <pixmap> is the name of the large pixmap. By default, the names of the large pixmaps are "nomail.xpm", "oldmail.xpm", and "newmail.xpm." The mini version of them are "mini-nomail.xpm", "mini-oldmail.xpm", and "mini-newmail.xpm."

4.2 Setup Tasks

4.2.1 Creating a New Profile

By default, KBiff creates a profile called "Inbox" to monitor your system email. You can, however, create as many profiles to monitor as many mailboxes as you wish (you could even create a bunch of profiles to monitor the same mailbox, if you wanted to).

To do so, click the New button. It will prompt you for the profile name. Note that KBiff does not verify that the name you picked is unique. Once this is entered, KBiff will fill in all the fields with default values. You may then alter any of the settings to suit your purposes. No settings will be saved until you click the Ok button.

4.2.2 Deleting a Profile

Clicking on the Delete button will delete the current profile. It will not delete the actual mailbox. KBiff also will not delete all of your profiles. If you try to delete them all, KBiff will automatically create the default profile ("Inbox") again.

4.2.3 Editing a Profile

Select a profile from the drop down list. Change any of the settings or pixmaps. Click Ok. That's it!

4.2.4 Using a Profile

Select a profile from the drop down list. Click Ok.

Next Previous Table of Contents