NEWS!

19 Apr 2000 -- Version 0.3.5 released.
- some patches to avoid errors compiling on Solaris (Moritz Barsnick <barsnick@gmx.net>)
- some Makefile.in and configure.in tweaking

18 Apr 2000 -- Version 0.3.4 released. "mailprog" and "newmail" now also options in .glbiffrc; some Makefile.in cleanup.

9 Apr 2000 -- Version 0.3.3 released. Really minor stuff: FINALLY removed sig_restorer reference which prevented proper compilation on some non-Intel platforms. Also glbiff now links against libGL and libGLU instead of directly against the Mesa libraries.

13 Feb 2000 -- Version 0.3.2 released. Only a minor change: the left-over GLUT library check has been removed.

13 Jan 2000 -- Version 0.3.1 released.

5? Jan 2000 -- All the recent releases appear to have a serious bug, that causes glbiff to crash as of the start of the new year. It's not a Y2K bug; glbiff will always crash during the months of January. The problem lies in me having been coding while I should have been sleeping... :)

Thanks to Peter Tirsek <peter@tirsek.com> for spotting this, and even better, sending in a patch. I probably won't be releasing an explicit patched version of glbiff, as version 0.3.1 is nearly complete and will be coming out shortly (patched, of course).

Download

README file

glbiff v0.3.5
=============
This is a program similar to xbiff, except that it provides somewhat
nicer output. It requires the Mesa (OpenGL clone) libraries to render
the 3D mailbox. The idea comes from the "mailbox" program available on
SGI machines, and hence tries to mimic some of the features present in
it.

Note that this is an alpha version, and hence there are still "some"(tm)
outstanding bugs.

The program was written and tested on Linux. It may require some minor
changes for other flavours of UNIX.

Major changes
=============
There now is a "NEWS" file.  Please look there for info on the "latest and
greatest".

Getting glbiff
==============
The latest version, as well as most up to date documentation is always
available at 
	http://www.dgp.toronto.edu/~mac/projects/glbiff.html

Requires 
========
* OpenGL (or Mesa libraries)

Installing
==========
First, you should create a .glbiffrc in your home directory (see the
sample that comes with the code: "glbiffrc.sample")

Next, execute the commands:
 configure
 make
 make install
 make install-man

Non-standard paths to include/library files
===========================================
This is mostly intended for people who have private builds of Mesa, placed in
a non-standard location.  

One method to have glbiff find the include files and libraries is to
preset the CPPFLAGS, CXXFLAGS, LDFLAGS, and LIBS environment variables with
the additional paths to search, which then get incorporated during the "make".
Example "./configure" call on Solaris:

# CPPFLAGS="-I/some/unusual/dir/include" CFLAGS="-O6" \
        CXXFLAGS="-O6 -fpermissive" LDFLAGS="-L/some/unusual/dir/lib \
	-R/some/unusual/dir/lib" ./configure --with-x \
	--prefix=/some/unusual/dir

Alternatively, the "configure" script can be made to find the
library and include files through the use of a "config.site" file.  More
information on this can be found in the "autoconf" info page entitled "Setting
Site Defaults".

In short, the easiest way to proceed is as follows:
1) create a file called "config.site"
2) put the following lines in it:
	#!/bin/sh
	CFLAGS="$CFLAGS -I/path/to/your/Mesa/include/files"
	LIBS="-L/path/to/the/Mesa/libraries $LIBS"
3) modify both paths as necessary
4) set the "CONFIG_SITE" environment variable to point to it
   (i.e., in a Bourne shell, do 
    "CONFIG_SITE=/my/path/to/file/config.site; export CONFIG_SITE")
5) now you are ready to run "configure" again

Present capabilities/features 
=============================
* monitors multiple mailboxes (only mbox format[1 folder=1 file] for now) 
* left mouse button click brings up mail reader (can be specified with 
  command line argument "-mailprog")
* right mouse button click opens the mailbox without bringing up the
  mail reader (useful to check the message count)
* runs a user defined script/program when new mail arrives in any of
  the mailboxes ("-newmail")
* raised flag indicates unread mail in one of the mailboxes 
* user-configurable time-of-day sky rendering

Future improvements/Bugs
========================
[see the TODO file]

Legal stuff
===========
As of version 0.3.1, `glbiff' is distributed under the GPL license.  Please
see the file `COPYING' for further information.

Thanks to...
============
* Wim Dumon  - spotted some ugly bugs
* Chuck Robey  - FreeBSD fixes and the Imakefile
* Frederick (Rick) A Niles  - egcs patch
* Eric Leblanc  - patches and maintaing the Debian package
* Peter Tirsek  - "January" bug patch
* Moritz Barsnick  - patches for Solaris
* and probably others that I've forgotten about...

Comments, queries... 
====================
Comments, queries, bugs, patches, ... send to 
Maciej Kalisiak