# The Kshowmail Handbook

Eggert Ehmke

    eggert.ehmke@berlin.de

Allistar Melville

    allistar@silvermoon.co.nz

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 Eggert Ehmke
&FDLNotice;
01/02/2004
3.1.1

This Handbook describes Kshowmail Version 3.1.1

KDE kshowmail kmail pop3 mail checker

## Introduction

Kshowmail is a KDE tool to watch mails on a POP3 server. Headers and complete mails can be viewed without loading them to the local mail client. Unpleasant mail can be deleted from the server. The list of displayed mails can be refreshed via configurable timers. Filters can be defined to mark known spam and unwanted mail. Mails marked by filters can be deleted automatically. A sound can be played if new mail arrives. A command menu allows user configurable commands like dcop commands to launch kmail. A special command can be defined to send complain mail against spam. Multiple accounts are supported.

## Using Kshowmail

### General Usage

Add some accounts in the "Options" config dialog. Connect to the internet. Now you may list the mails on the pop3 servers by pressing the "Refresh" button. All other buttons and menu entries should explain themself. Have fun !

### Keyboard-Shortcuts

These keyboard shortcuts are defined:

F2

  Show headers of selected mails

F3

  Show complete selected mails

F5

  Refresh new mails

Shift-F5

  Force refresh of all mails

F10

  Configure accounts

Del

  Delete selected mails from server

Ctrl-C

  Clear the mail list. (No mails will be deleted from the server)

### Filters

Filters can be used to select known spam and other unwanted mail. You can define as much filters as you want. They will be applied on all mails each time the message list is refreshed.

In the Dialogue "Filter" you can select a state. In the state "Deactivated" all filters are switched off. In the state "Activated" all filters are switched on. Filtered mails are selected in the message list and can be deleted manually. In the state "Automatic delete" all filtered mails are deleted immediatly. Please be careful when you select this state ! It may be useful to test new filters some time in the "Activated" state. In the file ~/.kde/share/apps/kshowmail/kshowmail.log you can monitor mails that have been deleted automatically.

Each filter contains one or two conditions, that can be linked together. Especially powerful conditions can be created using regular expressions. Here the regular expressions of the TQt-Library are utilized, for a detailed documentation see the documentation of the class KRegExpEditor, or one of the numerous texts about regular expressions in the internet. What is a regular expression?

#### Regular Expressions examples

MS Corporation|Microsoft: either "MS Corporation" or "Microsoft" will be recognized

(mail|message) delivery: either "mail delivery" or "message delivery" will be recognized

ms (program )?security: either "ms security" or "ms program security" will be recognized

[\x0100-\xffff]: all characters outside the ASCII character set are recognized (chinese and korean characters)

These templates can be combined arbitrarily.

### Command Line Parameters

You can provide the selected account on the command line. If the option -config is set on the command line, the configuration dialog is started immediatly. This can be helpful, if the function "Terminate kshowmail if no new mail" is activated. The option -refresh can be used to start the refresh processing immediatly.

### External programs

To start external programs like kmail, add a entry in the commands menu. Command names show up in the Actions menu. If they contain the character '&', the following letter will be used as keyboard shortcut.

The following parameters are placeholders and will be substituted by the actual values:

<user> User name

<passwd> Password

<server> Server

<header> The mail header will be copied to a temporary file, the name of this file will be substituted here.

<body> The mail body will be copied to a temporary file, the name of this file will be substituted here.

A very effective method is the dcop command that allows to call selected methods of other KDE programs. You can create a command that calls KMail to get the mail from the server:

`dcop kmail KMailIface checkMail`

The KDE program kdcop is useful to evaluate the functions of other KDE programs.

### Sending complain mails

The command to send complain mails is a special one. To keep flexibility, it has been implemented as an external command too. I suggest to use the perl program "spam.pl" version 0.20 or better of Daniel Stenberg. It can be received at http://spam.sourceforge.net. To make it run with kshowmail, follow these steps:

1. Install spam.pl in a suitable directory, say /usr/local/bin.

2. Create the files ~/.spam/friends and ~/.spam/from. More details are available in the spam.pl documentation.

3. Create an entry in the kshowmail command menu. The name of the entry has to be "complain" ! Otherwise the command will not be recognized correctly. Enter this text as command line:

`spam.pl -d < <body>`

This causes the mail body to be piped into spam.pl.

The debug option -d may be removed later, if you are satisfied with the results. Only then the complain mails will be actually sent. Add other options as you like.

Be careful to choose the right entries in the ~/.spam/friends file. At least the local domain should be inserted. Use this feature at your own risk !

As you press the button "Send complain mail", for each highlighted mail there will be one or more complain mails generated and sent immediatly. The receiver of these mails are determined by spam.pl. As long as the option -d is activated, only a message will be displayed to show what would happen. To activate the feature, remove the debug flag.

If you prefer other anti spam programs, try to set them up in a similar way. Contact me if there are any problems.

## Questions and Answers

&reporting.bugs; &updating.documentation;

To be provided

To be provided.

## Credits and License

&tdeApp;

Program copyright 2000-2003 Eggert Ehmke eggert.ehmke@berlin.de

Contributors:

- Nicolas Vignal nicolas.vignal@fnac.net who provided RPMs for RedHat, and the french translation.

- Edgardo Garcia edyx@mindless.com who provided the spanish translation

- Mattias Newzella newzella@swipnet.se who provided the swedish translation

- Sandor Laza slaza@xs4all.nl who provided the hungarian translation

- Gabriele Postorino g.posto@tin.it who provided the italian translation

- Many users did a lot of testing and created a lot of ideas that are now part of kshowmail. I want to say "thank you" to all of you !

&underFDL; &underGPL;

## Installation

### How to obtain Kshowmail

The actual version is to be found on http://sourceforge.net/projects/kshowmail or on http://freshmeat.net

### Requirements

Developed and tested under SuSE 8.2. In order to successfully use Kshowmail, you need TDE and TQt.

You can find a list of changes at http://sourceforge.net/projects/kshowmail

### Compilation and Installation

In order to compile and install Kshowmail on your system, type the following in the base directory of Kshowmail:

        % ./configure
          or even:
        % ./configure --prefix=$TDEDIR

        % make

          as root:
        % make install

It may be useful to set the environment variable TDEDIR before these steps.

Since Kshowmail uses autoconf and automake you should have not trouble compiling it. Should you run into problems please report them to me.

&documentation.index;