Re: Notification when new email received

FROM : Steve Cronin
DATE : Mon Nov 19 16:04:51 2007

Has;

I had not realized that Mail rules could be created by scripts!
This overcomes my hesitation with what I had thought to be the best 
solution:  have Mail tell me when mail arrives!
I did not want to make a customer have to create a mail rule - many 
folks would rather stab themselves with a rusty fork.
Based on your response I've already got a rule created by script that 
will ping me with only the exact messages I'm interested in! YES!
Even better for my purposes than a generalized distributed 
notification (which could get pretty noisy!)

This will drive me to add a modicum of scriptability to my app, which 
as you point out, will allow me to reuse this mechanism for other 
mail clients down the road...

Thanks a TON!
Steve


On Nov 19, 2007, at 5:39 AM, has wrote:

> Steve Cronin wrote:
>

>> I've checked around and I don't see any formal means to be notified
>> when a new piece of email is received.
>> Yes, I do realize the general problem of the many different mail
>> clients but my interest is (for now) in Mail.app.
>>
>> Given that, what would be the general counsel for best way to keep 
>> up-
>> to-date with new mail?
>>
>> I have the AppleScript to get unread counts from any desired
>> mailbox,  I'm thinking I should just run this AppleScript using 
>> NSTimer.

>
>
> Polling the unread count would be unreliable; e.g. users may get 
> and read new mails between polls.
>
> AKAIF, the only formal notification mechanism in Mail is its rules 
> system. e.g. You could set up a Mail rule that runs an AppleScript 
> when new messages arrive (rule creation can be scripted if you want 
> to set this up automatically). That script could then send an Apple 
> event to your application informing it that new mail has arrived, 
> along with any information about the received messages that your 
> application might need.
>
> Depending on your requirements it might be possible for some other 
> email clients to invoke the same API, which will simplify adding 
> support for those.
>
> You'd need to say more about what your app does and how it needs to 
> interact with email clients to give more specific suggestions.
>
> You might also file a feature request on Mail, asking that it send 
> a distributed notification when new mail arrives.
>
> HTH
>
> has
> --
> http://appscript.sourceforge.net
> http://rb-appscript.rubyforge.org
>