KBiff KBiff
Version 1.0.2

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4. The Setup Dialog
The setup dialog handles all configuration items for KBiff. As a result, there is no need for command line parameters in nearly all cases.

4.1 Profile Name

The top part of the dialog consists of a drop down list and three 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 three buttons are New, Rename, and Delete. The buttons work on the profiles, only. They do not touch the actual mailbox files. When KBiff is started for the first time, there will be one profile automatically created. This is the Inbox profile which monitors the system mailbox.

4.2 Preference Tabs

There are four preference tabs. These are full of options that apply to the current profile. The current profile is the one that is currently displayed in the drop down list. There are no global settings.

4.2.1 General Preferences

The general preferences for each profile are contained in this tab. There are five fields here:

4.2.1.1 Poll
This setting controls how much time KBiff will wait until it checks the mailbox again. The time is in seconds. The default is 60 seconds (one minute).

To choose a time other than the default, here, it is a good idea to analyze the frequency in which your mail arrives. If, for instance, you have fetchmail downloading new mail every 5 minutes, then it doesn't make sense to set the time for less than that. On the other hand, if you are using the POP3 feature of KBiff, you should probably use a higher interval. Setting it less than 60 might give you unexpected results if your network connection isn't very fast.

4.2.1.2 Mail client
This field specifies what command will run when KBiff is left-clicked. While this is typically a mail client, it does not have to be. It can be any command that can be run with its own X window. In other words, putting elm in this field will not work. Putting kvt -e elm would. There is no default here.

4.2.1.3 Dock in panel
This controls whether or not KBiff will start docked into the panel or not when the user exits the setup dialog. Note that it is still possible to switch between docked and undocked regardless of this option. This only controls the initial state. This is checked default.

4.2.1.4 Enable session management
This controls whether or not KDE session management is enabled. This should be turned off only in rare cases. The most common case where session management is disabled is when a user is running KDE under the same account on several different computers at the same time. In this case, it would probably be desirable to turn off session management and use the -profile command line option instead.

In all other cases, session management should probably be left on.

4.2.1.5 Icons
KBiff uses three icons to represent the three states: No Mail, Old Mail, and New Mail. The icons shown are the "large" icons. To select new ones, click on the buttons and a icon loader dialog will pop up. Note that even though KBiff supports animated GIFs, they will not appear animated here.

4.2.2 New Mail Preferences

This tab groups together the options that control what happen when new mail arrives.

4.2.2.1 Run Command
This is a shell command that will be executed when new mail arrives. A typical example of this would be play newmail.au. This would cause the file newmail.au to be played whenever new mail arrives. By default, this is turned off.

4.2.2.2 Play Sound
This specifies a sound to play when new mail arrives. As of this version, it will only play .wav files. Simply specify the path to the file to have it played. By default, this is turned off.

4.2.2.3 System Beep
Enabling this will cause KBiff to beep whenever new mail arrives. This is probably the least intrusive, yet still active, method of alerting the user that new mail as arrived. By default, this is on.

4.2.3 Mailbox Preferences

This groups together the options controlling the physical mailbox itself.

4.2.3.1 Monitor Local Mailbox
This specifies the local mailbox to monitor. KBiff considers any file that it can access over the standard file system to be a local mailbox. An interesting side effect of this is that KBiff can be used to monitor any local file. It does not have to be a "true" mailbox, even! By default, this is on.

4.2.3.2 Monitor Remote Mailbox
If this is selected, then KBiff will monitor a remote mailbox using the POP3 protocol. Currently, KBiff can only handle USER/PASS authentication. Support for APOP might be included in future releases.

The three fields that are required are the POP3 Server (the hostname of the POP3 server), the Username (sometimes called the "mailbox" name), and the Password. There is also a checkbox that controls whether or not the password is saved in between sessions.

KBiff does not encrypt the password when it is saved! It will scramble it a little, but anybody with the source code (or a little patience) could unscramble it in an instant. If you are on an insecure network, it is strongly recommended that the store password option be turned off

4.2.4 About

This tab has information about KBiff.

4.2.4.1 About KBiff
This contains information about which version of KBiff is being used. It also has contact information about the author.

Note that the email address is a hyperlink. Clicking on it is supposed to pop up your mail client in order to send mail to the author. Unfortunately, there is no automated way of doing this in KBiff at the present time. There is some code here, though. To send email using this hyperlink, KBiff looks for the environment variable MAILER. If it finds it, it will use the contents of this variable as the email program to use.

For example, if MAILER is set like so:

  % setenv MAILER "kvt -e mutt"
then KBiff will use kvt -e mutt as the default mail client, here.

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