Mail Applet

[edit] Info

The Mail Applet allows anyone to quickly receive notification on new mail right from their AWN. It currently includes out-of-the-box support only for GMail, but allows pluggable backends that open up the possibility for anyone to write a backend for their mail service. In the future, Yahoo Mail, IMAP, POP, and others could be available.

[edit] Status

This applet is currently being actively maintained by pavpanchekha. It is at version 2.4 and is currently included in all of the AWN-Extras branches.

This applet is to be considered stable.

[edit] Installation

This applet is part of Awn Extras as version 2.4.

The applet requires the feedparser library for Python. The package name for various distributions can be found at the Awn Extras dependency matrix.

The applet also requires the GNOME Keyring Daemon. Please run the daemon before starting AWN. This is required to securely store your password. In the future, AWNLib will hopefully support other password storage mechanisms. Lastly, your system will require notify-send if you are not using testing. Most systems come with it installed.

Note that the Mail applet will pop up a helpful message if you are missing any of the requirements.

[edit] Help Out

The Mail Applet developer is glad if you help him out. The Mail Applet is written in Python, but even if you are not handy with it you can still help. Here are some suggestions on what to do:

1. Find bugs: This is always useful and helps make the applet better
2. Ask for features: How else will the applet know what to do?
3. Create a theme: All of the current themes in the Mail Applet were submitted by others. Yours can be there too. You will need four images: read.svg, unread.svg, login.svg, and error.svg
4. Improve AWNLib: The Mail Applet depends heavily on AWNLib and any improvements can be quickly incorporated into several applets
5. Hack some code: Just write improvements for the applet.
6. Write a backend: The currently necessary parts of a backend are:

__init__(self, key): key is an AWNLib Keyring.Key instance.
update(self): update the list of mails. This will be called periodically
subjects: A list of subject strings.
url(self) or showWeb(self): either return the url of the web interface
    for your backend or actually call the browser yourself.
showDesk(self): This is optional. Evoke the desktop mail client.

[edit] Screenshots

Mail Applet Screenshots

The mail applet lets you see if you have unread mail right from your desktop	You can see what mail you've been sent right from the applet
You can customize your theme and select different mail backends.