http://expect.nist.gov/tkbiff/

http://expect.sourceforge.net/tkbiff/ (2011-01-11)

tkbiff is a mail notification program.  Besides doing what it is supposed to, tkbiff is also a nice example of a polished Tcl/Tk application.  It's wonderfully configurable, well documented, and also serves as a Rosetta Stone for [IMAP], [POP], and file-based mail servers.  Tkbiff is also portable to all of UNIX, Win, and MacOS and there's a fair amount of code to make that happen just right.  (The Tcl language is portable but that doesn't mean that all programs are trivially portable!)

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[LES]: Eh, looks good. But what a totally blunt approach. It created a .tkbiff file in my home folder, but it's not just configuration. It's the entire program! Someday I'll get around to reading all that and making it work.  :-(
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[DL]: I'm not sure 'blunt' is the right word to describe it but it certainly doesn't follow the traditional approach of making everything a pre-defined Preference.  Instead, the entire GUI is there in your .tkbiff file!  This reason for taking this approach is explained in Q1 of the   FAQ: http://expect.nist.gov/tkbiff/FAQ.html#q1

While deciding if you agree, I ask you to think about your present email checker and ask yourself - Is there anything about it you'd like it would do differently but are unable to because there is no Preference to change it?
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[jima] (2006-08-24): How about connecting to gmail from tkbiff?

Does anyone know if that is possible? (I am trying but not getting it to work).

[RLH] Is POP access enabled for your gmail account?

[jima] Yes it is, I checked it by using Outlook on it. I am getting help from [DL], perhaps I am not setting the configuration properly.

[DL] It's either a bug in [tls] (I'm using 1.5.0) or my understanding of how to use it!  I'll demonstrate:

Try entering the following 3 lines into tkcon:

 % package require tls
 % proc w {f} {fconfigure $f -blocking 0;fileevent $f readable {set ::event 0};vwait ::event}
 % set f [tls::socket -async pop.gmail.com 995]; w $f; puts [read $f]

All that code does is to open a secure connection to pop.gmail.com.  But it hangs waiting for an event.  Forever.

If I run the same code (without the tls stuff) to a non-ssl pop server, it works fine.  I see the pop greeting immediately.  (I don't know of any public non-secure pop hosts; you'll have to substitute your own in the code below.)

 % proc w {f} {fconfigure $f -blocking 0;fileevent $f readable {set ::event 0};vwait ::event}
 % set f [socket -async pop.localhost.com 110]; w $f; puts [read $f]

If I open a connection to gmail WITHOUT the fileevent/vwait, it works (although it takes about a minute to complete the read):

 % package require tls
 % set f [tls::socket -async pop.gmail.com 995]
 % read $f

And if I point it at my company's secure pop server, it hangs!

I'm thoroughly confused but it sure looks like a tls issue.

[deb] I've never been able to get TLS connections to work in tkbiff, but using a pipe to the openssl connect command works fine for me with GMail and other servers.  Here is the key line of my .tkbiff file:
 set protocol(connect) {open "|openssl s_client -connect $protocol(host):$protocol(port) -quiet 2> /dev/null" RDWR}

So I can connect to GMail okay, but it turns out to be not so useful anyway.  The problem I find is that once it is presented a message through the POP interface, GMail seems to forget about it.  The next time I poll, all the messages that showed up the previous time disappear, as if I had emptied the mailbox.  I'm no expert on POP, but I think their server is not honoring RETR or something.  Disappointing, because I love tkbiff.
 
[DKF]: Maybe consider using an IMAP interface instead, if one is supported? (I do ''not'' pretend to be knowledgable about GMail…)

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