README
======

The xmailbox program started out as an enhanced xbiff. However, the latest
version includes support for sound effects and animation. The default
functionality employs two images for the "mail in mailbox" and "no mail"
states, in the form of XPM type 3 files. The default images are, respectively,
that of an empty mailbox with its flag down, and that of an open mailbox,
with its flag up and a letter visible inside. Animation can be enabled for
playing up to 8 XPM files in repeated sequence.

The application can also, optionally, play a sound through a workstation's
audio device, instead of generating the default beep sound, whenever new
mail arrives. The following sound packages/drivers are supported:

    1) NCD audio server
    2) Rplay sound package
    3) Linux's Sun-compatible audio driver (/dev/audio)
    4) Standard SUN audio driver (/dev/audio)
    5) FreeBSD SUN-compatible audio driver (contributed by Brian Clapper - 
       bmc@telebase.com)
    6) Any external sound player (contributed by Laurent Martin -
       martin@isia.cma.fr)

By default, pressing any mouse button in the image forces xmailbox to 
remember the current size of the mail file as being the "empty" size and 
to change its image accordingly. In addition to this, the user can 
optionally have xmailbox invoke his/her favourite mail retrieving program.

This program is nothing more than a wrapper around the Mailbox widget
included with the program's source distribution. Mailbox was derived by
the Mailbox widget included with the Athena Widget Set. The first version
of Mailbox was a hack based on the X11R5 Mailbox widget written by
Jim Fulton, MIT X Consortium, and Ralph Swick, DEC/MIT Project Athena. The
xmailbox source is very similar to xbiff.

If you are planning to use the NCD Audio server or the rplay sound package, 
you can obtain these packages from ftp.x.org in /contrib/netaudio and 
/contrib/rplay respectively.  These packages provide network sound support.

To build xmailbox:
 1. make any required changes in Imakefile, by specifying where the
    XPM includes and libs are, as well as the desired audio interface,
 2. run xmkmf and then make.

This program has been tested on Sun Sparc 2,5,10,20 & IPX under SunOS
4.1.3 and 4.1.4, HP 9000/710 under HP-UX 9.01, and i86 PCs equipped with
Soundblaster-16 audio cards (although any card supported by the kernel
sound driver should work fine) under Linux 1.2.x, 1.3.x, and 2.0.x.

NOTE: You'll need xpm-3.4 or higher in order to compile xmailbox.
----  As of this writing, the latest version of xpm is 3.4; it can be
      obtained from ftp.x.org (in directory contrib, file xpm-3.4.tar.gz).

 Enjoy!

 Dimitrios P. Bouras (dbouras@hol.gr) and
 William K. W. Cheung (wcheung@mail.spiralcomm.com)

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THE AUTHORS (Dimitrios P. Bouras and William K. W. Cheung) MAKE NO
REPRESENTATIONS ABOUT THE SUITABILITY OF THIS SOFTWARE FOR ANY PURPOSE.
IT IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTY.

Xbiff IS COPYRIGHT 1988, X CONSORTIUM
SEE X(1) FOR A FULL STATEMENT OF RIGHTS AND PERMISSIONS.
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