POPPY(1)POPPY(1)NAMEpoppy - client to perform simple tasks with a POP3/IMAP server
SYNOPSISpoppy [options] [server_name]
poppy [options] [username@server_name]
DESCRIPTIONpoppy retreives mail headers one by one from a mail server using the
POP3 or IMAP mail transfer protocol and then allows you to perform sim‐
ple tasks on those messages. It is primarily used by systems that have
limited system resources, such as slow ppp connections, low disk space,
or limited graphical support. It is written to work with version 4 and
5 of Perl. When started, poppy looks for configuration information in
the ~/.poppyrc file. Check the FILES section for information on this
file.
poppy will individually read the header to each mail message on the
POP3/IMAP server and then allow you to view, save, delete or reply to
these messages.
poppy was written to fill a specific need. Most POP3 mail readers sim‐
ply download and delete all emails from the mail server or download
them and don't delete them at all. There is usually no way to tell the
mail server afterwards to delete only specific emails. poppy allows
you to go in and delete emails specifically. This way one could read
all their email from one location, say work, and then delete all but
the important message so that they can later download them all, say
from home. This is especially nice since you are able to make the best
use out of your high speed internet connections to improve the time
spent on your low speed connection.
Programs that support IMAP are usually a little better in that they
will only retrieve the mail headers but there is currently very few
programs that fully support multiple email accounts that are both IMAP
and POP3 accounts.
A second use is to speed your downloading times. poppy works well
along with other mail readers. Most other POP3 mail readers download
all your mail first and then let you view each one. If you get large
emails it can take a long download period before you can read your
mail. Also, on unreliable connections, it is sometimes impossible to
download your email when someone sends you a large email if the long
download aborts. Using poppy you can read just the headers to see
which are important and then read the interesting ones and possible
delete any exsessively large ones. You can then later use your main
mail program to download the bulk of email during idle computer use.
And lastly, you can create simple replies to the original author of the
email if you have defined an SMTP host to be used to relay the message.
Poppy can even use a different From address for each mail account you
have.
poppy is a very simple program written in perl(1) and is easily modi‐
fied. Note that you must have perl Version 4 or higher installed on
your system to use this verion of poppy.
OPTIONS
After a message header is displayed you are given the following options
[V]iew message
Display the current message, using $PAGER if defined in your
enviornment.
[T]op of message
Display a specified number of lines from top of the message.
Note: all of the message header will be displayed even if less
than the number of lines in the header are requested. If a
value is not present with the command then it will be prompted
for.
[D]elete message
Delete the current message from server. You may optionally
specify a range of messages to delete by adding the range to the
option (example: "D 1-4").
[S]ave message
Save/Append current message to a specified file in standard unix
mailbox format. If a filename is not specified after the com‐
mand then it will be prompted for.
[N]ext message
Skip to the next message on the server.
[P]revious message
Go to the previous message on the server.
[G]o to a message
Allows you to jump to a different message. If message number is
not specified along with this option (example: "G 2") then it
will be prompted for.
[R]eply
Send a reply back to the author of the current message.
[A]bort
Quit and do not delete any previous messages from the POP3/IMAP
server. Note that on IMAP servers other mail programs could
have marked messages to be deleted but didn't actually use the
Purge command to delete them. Using the [A]bort function in
poppy will cause these messages to be unmarked for deletion.
[Q]uit Quit program and possibly delete all specified messages from
POP3/IMAP server.
[Enter]
Go to next message on the server.
[-] Go to the previous message on the server.
[|] Pipe the current message to an external program specifed after
the pipe option (example: "| more").
[!] Shell to an external program. If no parameters are given with
the option then it runs a shell program. If parameters are
given then it attempts to execute the parameters.
The following Command Line options are supports.
-a Work with all messages. Overrides the -g option.
-c name
Use specified configuration filename instead of the default.
-f Enter "From" Mode. Display all messages From and Subject
fields. Similar to the unix command "from". This command can
be used along with the "-g" option to display a short listing of
all your new email or with the "-a" option to display all of
your email headers.
-g Goto first new message at startup. Not all POP3 servers support
tracking the last read message.
-h Print short help message
-l Display Long Mail Headers.
-s Display Short Mail Headers.
-v Verbose Mode. Print out debuging messages
-q Quiet Mode. Print out less messages then usual.
server_name
The full name or a substring to search for in your .poppyrc
file. If found, it will log in to this server to read mail. If
no server_name is specified then poppy will log in to the first
server listed in your the .poppyrc file.
user_name@server_name
A combination of the user name and server name to search for in
your .poppyrc file. This is useful if you have multiple user
accounts on a single mail server. Substrings can still be used
for the server name.
FILES
~/.poppyrc
Per user configuration file. This file contains multiple lines
of data, each starting with a keyword and followed by parame‐
ters. There must be at least one line that contains the POP3 or
IMAP keyword.
The format of the pop and imap keyword lines are as follows:
pop server_name server_port login_name password
imap server_name server_port login_name password
server_name is the name of the host from which mail is to be
retrieved. This machine must be running a pop3 or imap daemon.
server_port is the port number of the server port of the
POP3/IMAP service on this host, and is typically port 110 for
POP3 or 143 for IMAP.
login login name used on server.
password password on the server. If password is left of the line
then poppy will prompt the user each time it is ran. The pass‐
word may contain spaces.
smtp smtp_host smtp_port email_address server_name user
smtp_host is the hostname of the SMTP host.
smtp_port is the port address of the SMTP host. It is almost
always port 25.
email_address is the address to use for all outgoing emails on
this SMTP host.
server_name user is the server name and user name of the POP3 or
IMAP server associated with this STMP host. It is valid to have
one stmp line that does not include the server_name and user it
associated with. This will be used as a default SMTP server for
accounts that do not specifically associate an SMTP server with
it. If the server_name and user field is left off then it must
be the last smtp line in the configuration file.
editor program
program is the name of the editor to run with creating email
messages to send.
pager program
program is the name of the pager program to use when view
emails.
shell program
program is the external program to run when the command is
used.
gonew Add this keyword with no parameters when you would like to start
up poppy by default to start at new messages.
You may have multiple lines containing the pop or imap keyword if you
need to access multiple mail servers.
You may have multiple lines containing the smtp keyword to associate a
different SMTP server and From address for each POP3 or IMAP account.
A line containing just a default SMTP server and From address is also
valid. If you have multiple connections to the internet it is sug‐
gested to create multiple .poppyrc files to get around firewall prob‐
lems associated with SMTP servers.
Since it contains sensitive data, ~/.poppyrc must have permissions 600
(chmod 600 ~/.poppyrc). poppy will complain and exit if ~/.poppyrc has
the wrong permissions.
If the file ~/.poppyrc does not exist poppy will prompt for the host,
port and login information interactively and then save this data to
~./poppyrc.
Note that under Win95/NT, you may wish to use a different name than
~/.poppyrc as your configuration file. This is changable inside the
poppy script.
ENVIROMENT
PAGER If set it will use this program to view mail messages. It can
also be defined inside the script.
EDITOR If set it will use this program when creating email messages.
SHELL If set it will use this program as the default to run when a
user uses the shell command ("!").
AUTHORS
Chris Bagwell (chris@cnpbagwell.com)
SEE ALSO
The POP3 protocol is documented in RFC 1939 and the IMAP protocol is
documented in RFC 1730. SMTP protocol is documented in RFC821.
POPPY(1)
