Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!know!sdd.hp.com!ucsd!ucbvax!ENG.UMD.EDU!ziegast
From: ziegast@ENG.UMD.EDU (Eric Ziegast)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.mh
Subject: Xbiff Blues
Message-ID: <9010251441.AA05712@bacchus.eng.umd.edu>
Date: 25 Oct 90 14:41:34 GMT
References: <9010250519.AA10460@moria.eng.umd.edu>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 42

I write:
>"G. Bowden Wise" writes:
>>(2) The other scenario I would like to be able to do is have all my
>>    incoming mail automatically incorporated into my 'inbox'.  I 
>>    believe I have the same problem as I mentioned in number 1, but 
>>    I cannot remember for sure.  But, one thing I dont like when I do 
>>    this is that I no longer get notificatin that I have recieved
>>    mail.  I have tried using 'rcvtty' but to no avail.  Also, is
>>    there a way to let the X Windows client xbiff know that mail has
>>    been received?
>
>Maybe you should try:
>
>	default - ^ ? "/usr/local/lib/mh/rcvstore +newbox"
>
>and have your MAIL variable point to ~/Mail/newbox/1.
>
>If you have any "new" mail, there will be a (exactly one) message in
>~/Mail/newbox/1 and your xbiff icon will beep and light up.  You must
>use "setenv MAIL ~/Mail/newbox/1" before you start xbiff.  Otherwise, 
>it'll probably point to /var/spool/mail/$user where you will never get 
>new mail.

It appears as though I'm wrong. I look at the Mailbox widget source and
see that the mail box is really hard coded to:

    w->mailbox.filename = "MAILBOX_DIRECTORY/username"

For BSD this is /usr/spool/mail/$user
For SYS5 this is /usr/mail/$user

It can be changed by using the -file option in xbiff.

	xbiff -file ~/Mail/newbox/1

Oddly, this doesn't work on some systems here (at eng.umd.edu) while
on others it does.  I think our local X guru put in something to make
xbiff more intelligent by seeing if the file is in Mail (not mh or
any other file) format.  I'll look into it, though.
________________________________________________________________________
Eric W. Ziegast, University of Merryland, Engineering Computing Services
ziegast@eng.umd.edu - Eric@[301.405.3689]