Letting you know you have new mail.

This is a very simple Emacs Biff, it supports multiple spool files and
uses less screen real estate then display-time.  Simply drop this into
your .emacs and it will show ^| (flag) on your modeline if you have
new mail.  Bugs: it assumes that your mail client empties the spool
files, which is not always true. May not work on non-unix systems.

	;; List of spool files
	(setq ebiff-spool-files-alist '("~/Mail/GnuEmacsHelp.spool"
			      "/var/spool/mail/username"))
	;; Emacs Biff
	(defun ebiff ()
	  (catch 'str
	    (dolist (spool ebiff-spool-files-alist (throw 'str ""))
	      (if (not (= (nth 7 (file-attributes (expand-file-name spool))) 0))
		  (throw 'str " ^| ")))))

	;; Add it to the modeline
	(add-to-list 'global-mode-string '(:eval (ebiff)))

Starting from this idea, another version which supports Maildir with
multiple folders, and displays an envelope icon when running in graphic
mode.

	(make-face 'my-mail-face)
	(set-face-attribute 'my-mail-face nil
			    :inherit 'mode-line :foreground "black" :background "white")
	
	(defvar my-mail-icon
	  (find-image '((:type xpm :file "letter.xpm" :ascent center)
			(:type pbm :file "letter.pbm" :ascent center))))
	
	(defvar my-have-mail-p nil)
	
	(defun my-check-mail()
	  (catch 'have-mail
	    (dolist (folder 
		     (cons "~/Maildir/new" (file-expand-wildcards "~/Maildir/.*/new")) 
		     (throw 'have-mail nil))
	      (if (not (or (string= folder "~/Maildir/.Trash/new")
			   (= (length (directory-files folder nil "[^.].*" t)) 0)))
		  (throw 'have-mail t)))))
	
	(defun my-check-mail-timer()
	  (setq my-have-mail-p (my-check-mail))
	  (if my-have-mail-p
	      (run-at-time "5 sec" nil 'my-check-mail-timer)
	    (run-at-time "60 sec" nil 'my-check-mail-timer)))
	
	(my-check-mail-timer)
	
	(add-to-list 'global-mode-string 
		     '(:eval (propertize (if my-have-mail-p " ^| " "") 
				   'face 'my-mail-face 'display my-mail-icon)))

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CategoryMailAddons