email client gmail

[marlene]

Hi,

I'm a new member, new to Linux  and new to aMSN. I've searched the forum first but couldn't find an answer to my question. So here it comes:

Is it possible to see if I'm having new messages in Gmail (webbrowser) or is "You have x new messages in your Inbox" only related to Hotmail?
(I'm using the Dutch version so the "Inbox message" could be different in English than I said above.)

A related problem to this is, how can I make Gmail my email client in the Preferences?

I have Fedora Core release 5 (Bordeaux)/KDE installed and we're using aMSN with 2 other profiles, each for every family member. I'm the only having Gmail, the others have Hotmail.

Thanks in advance!
Marlène

[lavacube]

Hi there,

Take a look at the POP3 extension for aMSN. I am not 100% sure if it works with the latest revision of aMSN, but it should work. It has a feature to launch your mail application by clicking on the notification that pops up. You can set it to your web browser [firefox?] and the URL to G-Mail. Example: firefox http://gmail.com/

Good luck!

[majinsoftware]

Not related to amsn but this is what I use for my gmail account.

http://checkgmail.sourceforge.net/

It puts a little icon your startbar thing dont know what they call it in linux, It tells you how many new emails your have.

And if you right click on it you can make new emails to send to people.

[kakaroto]

Hi Marlene,
indeed, the "You have x new messages in your inbox" is only for hotmail but you can use the pop3 plugin s lavacube suggested and you can set it up to check for your gmail account.
@majinsoftware : very nice software you found there! would be nice to have that link in the wiki.

[billiob]

A few months ago, the pop3 plugin supported gmail, but no longer.
I've planned to add it again : should be easier and better than the current and no working implementation.

[marlene]

@lavacube:
Thanks for your reaction! I had seen the POP3 extension for aMSN but thought it only works with POP-email en not web based Gmail. I have downloaded and installed the plugin today anyway but I don't get it to work. I'm not sure what to fill in at "POP3 server" and "Mail program".

@majinsoftware:
You also thanks! I checked this link out and I really think it's a great program and I will install it when nothing else works. But my problem with it is that it puts an icon (that pops up) in the system tray. As I told we use our laptop with 3 family members and we all have our own desktop, I'm sure the icon pops up in every desktop and also when I'm not home.

@kakaroto:
Thank you also for your reply, kakaroto! As you read above I've tried to install the plugin but it don't work. Maybe you will help me and tell how to configure this thing?

@billiob:
And there goes my hope... :lol: Thank you for this answer, billiob! :wink:   But do I read right and are you the developer of this plugin, or aMSN?  Anyway, it would be great to get it working with Gmail.

:::::::


 :arrow: maybe important: I have aMSN 0.96rc1 (16/06/2006)

Marlène

[kakaroto]

Hi Marlene,
First I'd like to thank you. You seem to be a reasonable person and polite, it's always a pleasure helping people who are civilized, and trust me, it's rare!
anyways, billiob is both an aMSN developer and one of the original developers of the pop3 plugin (along with Arieh). He's also the only developer maintaining it and he's the best person to ask for questions.
If I remember correctly, gmail allows you to use pop3, but it only works through SSL tunneling on a secure port/socket. I think billiob never implemented it that way, probably because there were issues with the pop3 support on gmail as it was still experimental at that time. Instead he made it simulate a browser accessing the webpage, entering the username and password, sending it to gmail, retreiving the web page with the emails, and reading the returned html and parsing it in order to determine the number of unread emails.
As far as I know, you can leave the pop3 server and port blank, as long as you enter an email address with @gmail.com it will use the method I described above to access the gmail account.

@billiob: maybe it's time to update it, I know a lot of people are hoping to use that. Why not use pop3 ? as I can see you included the pop3 package core code inside the pop3 plugin, so you can modify it without worriying ? all you need to do is add a checkbox for SSL support. then you'd need to change [socket -async ...] into [tls::socket -async ...] and that's it. I suggest you add an option for pop3::open "-ssl boolean" and do an if on that.
Also a suggestion, you copy pasted the pop3 package code, but if pop3 is used elsewhere, and a package require is done, it will overwrite your code, so you'd better change all

Code:

proc ::pop3::open

and similar into something like

Code:

::pop3_plugin::pop3::open

etc.. also, note that the plugin's namespace is already ::pop3 which is dangerous since you have a conflicting namespace with a tcllib package... change it into namespace ::pop3_plugin I think it would be wiser.

I hope it helps.

Marlene, just be patient a little. Thanks!

EDIT : forgot to post these two links : http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=13273 and http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=13287

[billiob]

@KKRT:
First, i used pop3 with gmail and it connected fine, but the main issue is there's no way to find only the new messages, because of the way gmail stores mails.
That's why i wrote that ugly piece of code.

But now, it fails :s

I've got the solution !
Using ATOM :
https://gmail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=13465
and http://wiki.tcl.tk/6087 to do the authentification.
It should work fine then.

@Marlène:
I'll try to code it

[kakaroto]

Hello again,
I just tested pop3 plugin and I realize that it still works. I tried it and everything seems fine, it still finds my number of unread emails. So it works. Marlene, just try it, enter your gmail username and password and don't care about the mail "POP3 server" and "Port" fields.

[marlene]

Hi kakaroto and billiob,

Thank you both so much for helping me with this!  But now I'm more confused...
My username and password were already there and I left both POP3 server and Port blank -- I reactivated the plugin and re-started aMSN (you never know )
- result nothing changed
Then I also deleted something I had filled in at the Email Program field -- re-activate and re-start. Again nothing changed.

After that I search some topics about the plugin in this forum and there I read some answers like "Do you have the latest version of the plugin?" Well I thought I had downloaded it from SourceForge.net but I checked it and to be sure I downloaded and re-installed it again.

But noting was changed... :cry:

I also read something here on the forum about updating CVS with a link http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_id=9624023&forum_id=41292. But I'm sorry to say I didn't understand what to do, that went far beyond my 2 weeks linux knowledge.

I show you some screenshots about what I see (1 envelope not clickable), the configuration settings and the version of the plugin.







Again thanks for the time and energy you put into this!!    

(@kakaroto: In my search across this forum I read some things and I couldn't believe my eyes.  It's not more than normal to say Thanks to the people who help you, and also not more than normal to be polite, especially to the ones you do not know.    I know the internet for lot of years, but I'm always shocked when I read things people have written like they were talking to a machine, a not human or something -- no respect at all.)

Marlène

[kakaroto]

Hi Marlene (again),
I see you have an old version of the plugin, maybe that's the problem. If you don't understand what SVN/CVS means, then I'll make it easy for you :
Download these two files : https://svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/amsn/trunk/amsn-extras/plugins/pop3/pop3.tcl  and https://svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/amsn/trunk/amsn-extras/plugins/pop3/plugininfo.xml and replace your pop3 installation with these. that should give you the latest SVN version.
Note that billiob said it didn't work for him and while he was testing, it suddenly worked, that's weird and for now unexplained...
on my part, I've been curious enough to start doing some reverse engineering on the gmail service offered to the official gmail notifier program. It seems it goes over HTTP and I pretty much figured out everything on how it works for authenticating/sending/receiving requests but the results sent by gmail are in binary format and it's difficult to understand the underlying specifications. I'll do my best to find out more about those specs and maybe develop a gnotify plugin, separate from pop3 which would be aimed at providing email support only for gmail, with extensive features (like preview of email, see filenames of attachements, etc...)
I'll keep you informed about this.
By the way, I see in your screenshot that the pop3 line where it should say how many emails you got is completely blank, this seems to be similar to this : http://www.amsn-project.net/forums/viewtopic.php?p=12061#12061
I don't know why it happens, maybe it's the version of the plugin... maybe billiob can help. Tell us if that line has some text on it after you upgrade.
Thanks.

p.s.: Yeah I know, I just can't comprehend this, but now I got used to it. and you're right, it is not more than normal to be polite, it's just that a normal person amongst abnormal people makes that person abnormal :p
p.p.s.: for a linux n00b you seem to be doing pretty good! You were even able to think about showing us plugininfo.xml!!!

take care!

[lavacube]

I have been using Gmail in Thunderbird ever since they allowed for POP access. I've never had a problem in Thunderbird.

For the POP Server I have "pop.gmail.com" [no quotes] and the port as 995.

I am going to download this plugin and see if I can get it to work. Currently I use a Thunderbird Extension called Mailbox Alert.

P.S. - It does work on Linux, unlike most others. :-)

EDIT: Alright. I just tested with Kakaroto's new files and it does not seem to work as expected. It will check your account, but it will not return the amount of e-mails you have in your account.
EDIT2: fixed link to Mailbox Alert. :-)

[kakaroto]

Hi lavacube. It shouldn't show number of emails in your account. It should only show the number of NEW emails in your account.
By the way, I just finished (for today) my reverse engineering of the gmail protocol. Here's a first draft of the specs : http://www.amsn-project.net/wiki/index.php/Gmail
Let's hope it can get complete and we can implement it. We get a whole lot of info out of that protocol (attachment names, number of mails in a thread, preview of the body, etc...).
Tell me what you think, and if anyone is interested in coding parts of this.

[lavacube]

Hi lavacube. It shouldn't show number of emails in your account. It should only show the number of NEW emails in your account.

That's what I meant by it wouldn't give a number. I intentionally sent myself some new e-mails and it would not display a number. Yes, I ensured they were in my Inbox and were not marked as read. :-)

Tell me what you think, and if anyone is interested in coding parts of this.

If only my TCL didn't suck... I am mostly proficient in PHP as I do web development for a living. :-)

[majinsoftware]

Just a question Iv noticed that gmail now lets your use pop3 access to it wouldn't that work with the plugin?

yah iv been using linux for a full month now with out it stuffing up some how, Its a new record for me.