				README
			     TsBiff 1.3.2


SYNOPSIS

tsbiff     - start the tsbiff program
tswakeup   - make a hidden tsbiff window visible again
tsconf     - Starts the configuration tool as a stand alone application


DESCRIPTION

TsBiff is a mail notification tool written in Java with the Swing
1.1.1 package. Below is a short description of what the program does
and how it does it.

The program will oversee your mailbox and notify you when new messages
appears. Notification is done via a window that appears up on your
desktop, with a snapshot of what the mailbox contains. The system can
use the POP3 protocol or simply parse a mailbox file in the local mail
spool directory. Either way, tsbiff will not retrieve mails from your
mailbox. Therefore, there is no reason to worry that your mail will be
touched; it will be left untouched and in mint condition, at least by
tsbiff.

The first time you start tsbiff, a configuration dialogue will be
displayed on-screen. This is in order for you to configure the system
before you start using it.

The first thing to do is to set up how the program will oversee your
mailbox. This is done in the "Fetch mail" tabbed pane.  Select the
protocol you would like to use. A hint: if you already have mail
delivered to your machine, then it is probably best to choose the mbox
protocol -- in that case, just tell tsbiff in which directory it will
find your mailbox file. If you're on someone elses machine or on a
Windows machine, you should probably use the POP3 protocol. In that
case you must give tsbiff the name of the machine running the POP3
server. A POP3 servers portnumber is 110 and you must also state your
username and password at the POP3 server.

If there's only a slight possibility that you ever would use tsbiff to
send email messages, you should seize the opportunity now and
configure the sendmail function as well. Switch to the "Send mail"
tabbed pane and insert the hostname for the sendmail server that you
will be using. You should not need to change the portnumber.

If you receive lots of unwanted or uninteresting mail, you may use
tsbiff's "Filter mail" option. This is to avoid the notification for
this kind of mail.

Finally, if you don't want tsbiff to occupy valuable property on your
desktop, use timeout. That way, tsbiff will only appear when new mail
enters your mailbox. In addition, it will then hide itself after a
certain time. You can always make tsbiff visible again if you want, by
executing the tswakeup command.  And of course whenever new mail
arrives tsbiff will appear again. 

(If you don't use timeout, you could still explicit hide the biff
window by choosing the "Hide window" pop-up menu option. As with time-
out, it will reappear when new mail arrives)


MISCELLANEOUS

Column-spacing:
 It is possible to change the column widths in the tsbiff window. To
 do so, you should turn on Table header titles (the first screen in
 the Config dialog, if you starts tsbiff for the first time, the
 titles are turned on). and use your mouse to change the width by
 clicking on the title separator and drag the mouse. After you have
 changed the spacing to your liking, you can turn the header titles
 off again in the config dialog.

Java version: 
 The scripts in the bin directory expects the JAVA_HOME environment
 variable to be set. As mention elsewhere tsbiff does work best
 with the jdk 1.1.x (x>7) version. So make sure that JAVA_HOME really points
 to jdk1.1.x. (or hardcode JAVA_HOME in the scripts). You will probably 
 be more content with a Java 1.1.7/8 VM anyhow, at least with this app-
 lication, since the Java 2 plattform grabs almost twice as much memory 
 (and that's a bit to much for a simple biff program)

Windows startup scripts:
 If you're on a Windows plattform, you must edit the .bat files in the
 bin directory.

Window manager:

 I decided to make the tsbiff window a plain Window instead of a
 Frame. The reason for this is that I wanted to remove any window
 decorations whatsoever from the tsbiff window. The Biff window looks
 better that way.

 But the tradeoff of using a plain window is that the native window
 manager will not let you move or resize the window. So I have
 implement my own simple "window manager" for this. Here's how to move
 and resize the tsbiff window:

 1) To move - the window has a 4 pixel wide border which you can click-
    and-drag to move the window. (The window will probably wobble a little 
    bit because the Java VM will not be as effective as native code to
    handle all the event's generated)

 2) To resize - move your mouse cursor to the windows lower right corner
    until it changes to a resize cursor, then click-and-drag to resize
    the window.

 3) NOTE: Some Java VM's will make the tsbiff window "wobble" quite a 
    bit due to the amount of events generated, other VW's are more
    effective when handling window events and provide a smooth window
    move. If your tsbiff window is moving all over the deskop when you
    try to move it, I suggest that you just set the window location
    variables in the ~/.tsbiffrc control file. The two variables to
    set is:
          window.location.x and window.location.y

Tsbiff properties file: 
 Tsbiff uses a file to save its properties. The filename is .tsbiffrc
 The file is saved in what the JVM reports as your home directory
 (i.e. "user.home") this will normally be $HOME on a Unix machine, on a
 Windows machine it is usually C:\


AUTHOR

Jan-Henrik Haukeland <hauk@tildeslash.com>
