How do you check for new emails?

Mail clients use the UIDL command to retrieve the unique message id to see if they have read the message or not. Rebol's POP protocol doesn't do this. But you can fudge it. Jeff @ Rebol wrote a modified POP protocol that allows you to send the TOP command. This means that you can grab all the headers ( including subject, from, and message id ) when you open up the mailbox without having to read the message bodies. You can then parse out the message ids, and then only retrieve the subject/from details as you need. You will need to track the message ids though. Here's his post again ( it's hard to find on Escribe ) Jeff (jeff from rebol.com) wrote: Well, that's pretty simple. It would be a little more difficult to have a different refinement for read with pop-- but pop can pretty easily be modified to return the top info, or store the info similarly to the way we had the LIST command do it. Perhaps the URL could be a little different: x: open pop://user:[pass--server]/summary Will cause x/locals to get a field that contains the TOP info. Of course, its up to you to parse the TOP info afterwards. So... change the number in top-check block to how ever many lines of context you want. Here you go: ------------------------------------------------------- REBOL [ Title: "A slightly modified version of pop" ] make Root-Protocol [ {Communicate with POP. This protocol is block oriented not string oriented.} port-flags: system/standard/port-flags/pass-thru open-check: [ ; port is bound to confirm frame none "+OK" ["USER" port/user] "+OK" ["PASS" port/pass] "+OK" ] close-check: ["QUIT" "+OK"] write-check: [none "+OK"] stat-check: ["STAT" "+OK"] list-check: ["LIST" "+OK"] top-check: [reform ["TOP" num 10] "+OK"] open: func [port /total/tblock/summary][ open-proto port port/state/tail: second total: load net-utils/confirm port/sub-port stat-check port/locals: make object! [ total-size: third total net-utils/confirm port/sub-port list-check sizes: load read-til-dot port make string! 100 summary: either port/target summary [ tblock: system/words/copy [] repeat num port/state/tail [ net-utils/confirm port/sub-port reduce bind top-check 'num append tblock read-til-dot port make string! 100 ] tblock ][none] msg-nums: make block! port/state/tail repeat n port/state/tail [append msg-nums n] ; lookaside index ] port/state/index: 0 ; a zero based index ] read-til-dot: func [port buf][ while [(line: system/words/pick port/sub-port 1) <> "."] [ insert tail buf line insert tail buf newline ] buf ] read-message: func [ "Read a message from the POP server" port n [integer!] /local buf line ][ insert port/sub-port reform [ "RETR" system/words/pick port/locals/msg-nums port/state/index + n] net-utils/confirm port/sub-port write-check read-til-dot port buf: make string! 1024 ; guess at size ] pick: func [ "Read the Nth message from the POP port" port ][ read-message port 1 ] copy: func [ "Copy a set of messages into a block" port /local msgs n ][ msgs: make block! port/state/num repeat n port/state/num [ append msgs read-message port n ] msgs ] remove: func [ "Remove the current message" port ][ while [ port/state/num > 0 ][ insert port/sub-port reform [ "DELE" system/words/pick port/locals/msg-nums port/state/index + 1] net-utils/confirm port/sub-port write-check system/words/remove at port/locals/msg-nums port/state/index + 1 port/state/tail: port/state/tail - 1 port/state/num: port/state/num - 1 ] port ] net-utils/net-install POP self 110 ] -- Graham Chiu

There is a field in the header that it set the first time a mail is read: Status: RO Don't know if it's the same on all mailservers. But it works for me atleast. / John