Mailbox-Plugin / Readme
This is a plugin for the Video Disk Recorder (VDR).
Written by: Alexander Rieger
Project's homepage: http://alex.vdr-developer.org>
Latest version available at the homepage.
Contents:
=========
1. Description
2. License / Disclaimer
3. Installation
4. Usage
4.1 Overview
4.2 Key-mapping help screen
4.3 Mailbox-View
4.4 MailList-View
4.5 Mail-View
5. Configuration
5.1 Starting VDR with the plugin
5.1.1 Parameter -m mailcmd.sh
5.1.2 Parameter -c mailconv.sh
5.2 Configuration of the plugin
5.3 General settings of the plugin
5.4 Setting up mail accounts
5.5 Folder selection
6. Known Problems / Todo
7. Thanks
1. Description:
===============
Mailbox is a plugin for the Video Disk Recorder (VDR) by Klaus Schmidinger.
The Mailbox-plugin provides access to multiple e-mail accounts to display the
contained e-mails on the On-Screen-Display (OSD) of the Video Disk Recorder.
This plugin uses the c-client-library of the IMAP server of University of
Washington (UW IMAP) to access e-mail accounts.
As the c-client library supports the IMAP and POP3 protocol the Mailbox-
plugin is able to access both types of mail accounts. Due to the fact that
IMAP provides more features than POP3, several plugin functions are only
available when working with IMAP accounts.
A POP3 server, as opposed to an IMAP server, doesn't keep track which mails
have already been retrieved by a mail client. As the plugin doesn't store any
information (besides the configuration data) either, all e-mails are reported
as new by the Mailbox-plugin for every query of a POP3 account. This might be
the most notable drawback when using POP3 with the Mailbox-plugin.
The plugin supports the following features:
- Access and display e-mails of multiple IMAP or POP3 accounts.
- Multiple displays:
- Mailbox-View: Shows a list of all mail accounts with the total amount as
well as the number of new mails.
(for POP3 accounts all e-mails are reported as new.)
- MailList-View: Shows the list of mails within one mail account with
status-flags, subject and sender.
- Mail-View: Shows subject, sender, date/time, status-flags and the body
of a mail.
- Mails encoded in quoted-printable or Base64 are decoded and - if
necessary - converted to the charset used by VDR.
- The parameter 'format=flowed' is honoured when wrapping mails at the OSD
boundaries. Additionally some non-standard wrapping enhancements may
be activated to make wrapped text more readable.
- IMAP/POP3: when displaying a multipart mail, only parts with content-type
text are displayed.
- IMAP: when displaying a multipart mail, only parts with content-type text
are retrieved.
- IMAP: when a mail is displayed in the Mail-View the \seen flag for this
mail is set automatically (configurable).
- IMAP: set/clear the flags \seen, \flagged and \deleted for mails in the
MailList-View and in the Mail-View.
- Expunge mails with the \deleted flag set when a mailbox is closed
(configurable).
- Periodic check for new mails in the background and perform one of the
following actions if new mails have been received since the last check:
- Display a status message on the OSD; pressing Ok opens the Mail account.
- Show the number of new mails in the main menu entry of the plugin.
- Start an external application.
Additionally the presence of new mail can be queried by other plugins using
the internal service interface. As an example this could be used by skin-
plugins to show a suitable icon within the status displays on the OSD.
- Access to e-mails or configuration data of an account can be protected with
a numerical code. To open the mail or the configuration view the code needs
to be entered with the remote control.
- In every view of the plugin an information page can be opened by pressing the
key 0 which shows all key assignments of the remote control.
NOTE: The account settings are stored in a plain text file in a directory
'plugins/mailbox' below the directory where VDR stores its setup files. The
file will be created with umask 0x600, therefore only the user which executes
VDR is able to read this file.
The mail account passwords are stored in an obscured way in this file.
There's is no real encryption; it just makes the passwords difficult to
read for humans.
If you consider this insecure, don't use this plugin.
2. License / Disclaimer:
========================
Free project statement
This is a FREE and completely non-commercial project. The source code is
protected by the GNU general public license.
The Mailbox-plugin is a plugin for Klaus Schmidinger's vdr.
Copyright (C) 2008 Alexander Rieger
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.
See the file COPYING for the complete license text.
The Mailbox-plugin isn't distributed/packaged with the c-client library of
University of Washington (UW). The plugin simply requires that the c-client
library is already installed on the destination computer.
Nevertheless it may be necessary to insert the following excerpt from the
"Free-Fork License" of UW-IMAP/c-client here:
This software is made available "as is", and
THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION
ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND IN NO EVENT SHALL THE UNIVERSITY OF
WASHINGTON BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INDIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL
DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA
OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT (INCLUDING
NEGLIGENCE) OR STRICT LIABILITY, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION
WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.
(see complete text at )
The same applies analogously for the author of the Mailbox-plugin.
3. Installation
===============
The installation instructions are located in the separate file INSTALL.
4. Usage
========
4.1 Overview
------------
There are three different views which are displayed most of the time when
using the Mailbox-plugin:
- Mailbox-View: Shows a list of all mail accounts with the total amount as
well as the number of new mails.
- MailList-View: Shows the list of mails within one mail account with
status-flags, subject and sender.
- Mail-View: Shows subject, sender, date/time, status-flags and the body
of a mail.
When the plugin is activated from the main menu of VDR the Mailbox-View is
displayed. After selecting the desired mail account and pressing the
appropriate key the MailList-View displays all e-mails within the selected
account. Within the MailList-View the Mail-View can be activated to display
the selected e-mail.
4.2 Key-mapping help screen
---------------------------
In every view of the plugin a help screen can be displayed to show the
current key mapping of the remote control and the functions they activate.
Depending on the type of the current mail account (IMAP/POP3), the current
situation and the selected OSD item different functions may be available.
Enabled functions may be activated by pressing 'Ok' directly from the help
screen. Pressing 'Back' closes the help screen and displays the previous OSD.
As there is no help key on the remote control, the key '0' is used to activate
the key-mapping help screen.
If the current OSD item consumes the key '0' itself (e.g. an item to enter
characters or numbers), it's not possible to display the key-mapping help
screen.
Note: As the key-mapping help screen can be opened from every view of the
plugin, almost no key assignments are described in this README.
4.3 Mailbox-View
----------------
After the Mailbox-plugin is activated from the main menu of VDR the Mailbox-
View is opened and all accounts are checked for the number of new e-mails as
well as the total amount of of e-mails.
After selecting the desired mail account with the cursor keys the MailList-
View can be opened for the current account.
4.4 MailList-View
-----------------
The plugin reads the headers (status flags/subject/from) of the mails
within the selected mailbox and displays them in a list.
The flags are displayed with the following characters:
'N' - \seen is not set ('N' for *N*ew)
'F' - \flagged is set
'D' - \deleted is set
'A' - \answered is set
Several keys can be used to jump to the next/previous or the next/previous
new mail. Additionally the status flags seen, deleted and flagged may be
toggled with the remote control.
Selecting a mail with the cursor keys and pressing Ok opens the Mail-View
showing the current mail.
Pressing 'Back' closes the MailList-View and returns to the Mailbox-View.
If the option "Cleanup on close" is enabled for this account, all mails
with the \deleted flag set will get expunged from the mailbox.
5.4 Mail-View
-------------
The plugin reads the e-mail from the mail server and displays subject,
sender, date/time and the mail text.
If the mail is a single-part-mail the whole message text gets fetched.
IMAP only: If the mail is a multipart mail only parts with content-type
text are fetched. Only parts with content-type text are displayed.
As far as possible, the same keys can be used as in the MailList-View to
toggle status flags and to jump to previous / next mails.
If the option "Auto mark seen" is enabled for the current account the \seen
flag will be set for every mail which is displayed in the 'mail-view'.
Initially the message text is wrapped according to the option selected in
the general settings (see below). The word-wrapping mode may be temporarily
changed with a key of the remote control.
5. Configuration
================
5.1 Starting VDR with the plugin
--------------------------------
5.1.1 Parameter -m mailcmd.sh
-------------------------------
The plugin is able to do a periodic check for new mails in the background
and perform several actions whenever the number of new mails changes.
If you want the plugin to start an external command you have to pass the path/
name of the program to the plugin with the command line parameter -m. See the
documentation of VDR on how to pass a command line parameter to a plugin.
The command will be called the following parameters:
Param 1:
Param 2:
Param 3: 'dummy', reserved for later use
Param 4: 'dummy', reserved for later use
Param 5:
Param 6:
A sample script 'mailcmd.sh' is located in the source directory of the plugin.
'mailcmd.sh' logs the given parameters to the syslog using the command logger.
Before starting the mailbox-plugin with the external command, please check
that your script works as expected by calling it from a shell with
$ mailcmd.sh AccountName UserName dummy dummy 1 1
The background checking feature of the plugin must be enabled in the general
settings of the plugin. Additionally you have to enable the background
checking for every mail account and activate the option to start the external
application.
If you enable the background checking feature, the plugin starts a separate
thread to check for new mail in given intervals. This thread is stopped when
you enter the Mailbox-plugin or the configuration of the plugin. Whenever
you leave the plugin or the configuration of the plugin the thread is started
again.
A few seconds after the background thread is started, it checks the mail
accounts for mails for the first time and starts the external command for all
mail accounts. Afterwards the external command is only started if the number
of new mails of an account has changed. Additionally the external command is
also started for all configured mail accounts after you leave the settings of
the plugin.
5.1.2 Parameter -c mailconv.sh
--------------------------------
The plugin is able to display mail(-parts) which are formatted in html.
To convert the html-source to plain text the plugin calls an external
command / shell script, which has to be passed with the parameter
"-c " (e.g. "-c mailconv.sh") to the plugin.
For mail-parts in html format the plugin...
1) writes the html-source to a temporary file
2) calls the mailconv.sh-command with the following parameters:
-i
-s
-o
-d
-w
3) displays the contents of the destination file if mailcmd.sh returns
with exit-code 0
4) deletes source- and destination-file
The name of the html source-file is '/tmp/vdr-mail-.html
and the name of the text destination-file is '/tmp/vdr-mail-.txt'.
Therefore, vdr needs the appropriate rights in the file system.
A sample script 'mailconv.sh' is located in the source directory of the plugin
which shows the usage of either w3m, html2text or lynx for the conversion.
Needless to say, (one of) these external applications has to be installed
separately.
Some remarks about html mails in general:
- Simple mails consist of only one plain text part, which is displayed as
before.
- A mail may consist of multiple parts (MULTIPART/ALTERNATIVE) where both
parts contain the same text. One of these parts is formatted as plain text
and the other part contains the same text formatted as html.
Since the plugin can only display plain text anyway, it displays the
plain text part and ignores the html part.
(see RFC 2046, section 5.1.4)
By pressing the key 8 the plugin displays all parts of the mail performing
a conversion for html-parts.
- A mail may have one html part only: The plugin converts the html-text as
described above and displays the converted text.
5.2 Configuration of the plugin
-------------------------------
In the setup menu of the plugin you can configure global settings of the
plugin and add, modify, delete or change the order of multiple mail accounts.
5.3 General settings of the plugin
----------------------------------
Following options are available in the general settings of the plugin:
- Check every (minutes): 0..35, 0 disables this feature, default is 0.
Sets the interval for the periodic background check for new mail in minutes.
- Connection timeout (seconds): 0..
Sets the time the network functions wait for a response from the mail server.
A value of 0 uses the system default. A reasonable value would be somewhat
smaller than the watchdog timeout of VDR (option -w when starting VDR).
The default setting is 0 to use the system default.
- Sort order:
Selects whether the mails are listed in ascending or descending order in the
MailList-View and the Mail-View.
- Maximum number of Mails:
Specifies the maximum number of mails fetched from the mail server. Depending
on the number of mails in a mail account and the speed of the connection to
the mail server, fetching many mails may take quite some time and cause VDR
to exit when the watchdog timeout is reached. Therefore the number of mails to
retrieve should be set to a reasonable value.
- Word-wrap mode:
There are four modes how the word-wrapping is done in Mail-View.
Note: Modes 2-4 may not be supported with the current skin as the skin must
implement the methods cSkin::GetTextAreaWidth() and cSkin::GetTextAreaFont().
At least the standard-skins Classic and ST:TNG and the Elchi-skin currently
support this methods.
The modes are:
Wrap mode: "1: wrap by vdr"
The mail text is wrapped by VDR at the boundaries of the OSD. This is the
only mode which is supported with all skins.
Wrap mode: "2: continue quotes"
When a quoted line (a line that starts with one or more '>') must be wrapped
at the OSD boundaries, the same number of quote-characters are prepended to
the second part of the wrapped line to improve readability of the quoted text.
Wrap mode: "3: honour format flowed"
Lines that end with 'soft breaks' (SPACE + CRLF) in mail parts that have set
the parameter 'format=flowed', are treated as 'flowed lines' and therefore
concatenated with the following line (see RFC 2646).
Wrap mode: "4: combine lines"
Whereas mode 3 uses a well defined feature of mail format, this mode tries to
guess whether two consecutive lines may be combined for mail parts which do
not have set 'format-flowed'.
Two consecutive lines are concatenated if the first line ends with a lower
character ('a'-'z') and the following line starts with a lower character and
additionally both lines start with the same number of quote characters.
Of course the last wrap mode doesn't follow any standard behaviour.
Nevertheless it may help to improve readability in many cases.
If wrap-mode 4 is enabled and an e-mail looks weird in Mail-View, it is
always possible to toggle through the different wrap modes using key 5 on
the remote control.
5.4 Setting up mail accounts
----------------------------
The configuration dialog of a mail account contains many options. The
availability of some options depends on the type of the mail account.
- Account name:
A readable string as name for the account.
This is used to display information on the OSD at several places (Mailbox-
View, OSD-Messages,...) and has no further meaning.
- Restrict access:
The access to e-mails or configuration data of an account can be protected
with a numerical code. To open the mail or the configuration view the code
needs to be entered with the remote control.
The values have the following meaning:
- Unrestricted: no code is necessary to enter the configuration or to
read e-mails.
- Setup: a code is necessary to enter the configuration, no code
is necessary to read e-mails.
- Setup & view: a code is necessary to enter the configuration and to
read e-mails.
- Access code:
This code must be entered with the remote control to enter the setup view
or to read e-mails depending on the previous setup option.
- Auto mark seen:
If set to yes the plugin marks every e-mail automatically as seen when
displayed.
.
Note: The \seen flag only works with IMAP accounts as the server stores the
status of this flag.
- Cleanup on close:
If set to yes the plugin expunges all e-mails which have the \deleted flag
set when a mailbox is closed.
- Background check:
Enables / disables if this account is checked periodically in the background.
This option is only available if the background check is enabled in the
general plugin settings.
The following three options decide which action should be performed if new
mail arrives:
- Status message:
Displays a status message on the on screen:
"New mail in , open?"
or
"2 new mails in , open?"
If the Ok-button is pressed while this message is visible, the plugin directly
opens the MailList-View for the respective account.
- Main menu entry:
If enabled the presence of new mail is displayed as an appendix to the main
menu entry of the plugin:
The normal main menu entry is: "Mailbox". If two new e-mails are in a mail
account the main menu entry is "Mailbox (2 new)".
If this option is enabled for multiple mail accounts the number of new mails
is appended for every mail account which has this option enabled.
Example: If this option is enabled for two accounts and the first account
doesn't contain new e-mails but the second account contains three mails,
the main menu entry is: "Mailbox (0/3 new)". So if the number of new e-mails
is displayed in the main menu entry, it's always obvious, which mail account
contains how many new e-mails.
Note: The main menu entry is only updated if the main menu is opened with
the Menu-button on the remote control. It is not possible to update the
main menu entry while any other OSD-menu is open.
- External command:
If this option is enabled for a mail account, an external command is
executed whenever the number of new mails changes.
The name/path of the external command is given with the parameter "-m"
to the plugin when starting VDR.
- Service interface:
The internal service call to query if new e-mails are present returns true
if at least one mail account with this option enabled has new mail. The
service call can be used e.g. by skins to highlight an a-mail icon in
status views.
--- Account settings ---
- Account type:
The Mailbox plugin uses the c-client library for accessing the mail accounts
on the mail server.
C-client expects to get the settings of an account in a string in a somewhat
difficult and longish string. To make it a little easier to enter this string,
the Mailbox plugin presents some of the options in separate OSD items. The
resulting mailbox access string as passed to the c-client library is displayed
in the OSD status line.
A description of this mailbox access string can be found in the documentation
of the c-client-library; the online-version is available as follows:
If the item 'Account type' is set to 'User defined' the complete mailbox
access string has to be entered with the remote control on the OSD.
If the item 'Account type' is set to IMAP, POP3 or NNTP, the mailbox access
string can be entered by switching several individual options.
While configuring a mail account it is always possible to check whether the
current settings are valid and the mail account is accessible with the
current setting by pressing the appropriate key on the remote control.
After checking whether the mail account is accessible, the number of e-mails
or an error message is displayed in the status line on the OSD. Additionally
a communication log can be displayed if the 'Debug' option was enabled before
checking.
When configuring an IMAP account, it is possible to select a folder by
pressing the appropriate key on the remote (see below).
After the mail account was configured and tested successfully the configuration
can be closed with the Ok key.
Note: It is more or less possible to access a news-server (nntp) and retrieve
news messages. Due to the fact that the plugin doesn't keep track of already
seen messages, this option isn't really usable. The option is simply present
for completeness as c-client supports the nntp-protocol.
5.5 Folder selection
--------------------
The folder selection view is used to select a single folder of an IMAP (or
NNTP) account and to check if the folder is accessible.
Note: If this view is called for a server which isn't reachable over a very
fast connection and if there are a lot of folders in the mail account the
plugin will most likely cause VDR to exit when the watchdog is triggered.
This especially happens of you try to get the list of newsgroups from a news-
server over a slow connection.
6. Thanks
==========
Last but not least, I want to thank Klaus Schmidinger for his incredible
work on VDR, the developers of plugins, patches and other extensions, the
developers of the DVB-drivers, Mark Crispin for developing the c-client-
library and all users for their valuable feedback and everyone else I
may have forgotten...
Have fun,
Alex
