gmail-plasmoid

Source (link to git-repo or to original if based on someone elses unmodified work): Add the source-code for this project on opencode.net

Description:

A Gmail notification widget for your desktop or panel.

This widget is designed to be docked in a panel, or added to your desktop, and display the number of unread messages in multiple Gmail accounts. Clicking on the widget will open the Gmail account in your favorite browser. The widget is written in python, meaning that there is no compiling necessary as long as you have the required script-engine installed.

For more screenshots visit the project homepage.

Features:
- *NEW* New simplified version re-implemented in qml and javascript available for testing (very early version with little error checking and many features missing and/or removed).
- *NEW* New qml version likely requires KDE 4.8 (but may work with KDE 4.7).
- *NEW* Testing qml version will coexist with existing gmail-plasmoid (testing version is called gmail-plasmoid-qml).
- *NEW* Any comments regarding new qml version appreciated.

- Selectable fetching mechanism to address multiple issues (see "Misc." configuration tab)
- Dynamic network connection detection
- Bulgarian, Chinese Traditional, Czech, French, German, Greek, Italian, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Spanish and Ukrainian translations
- Supports multiple Gmail accounts and Gmail labels
- Supports Gmail hosted domains
- Uses KWallet to securely store passwords
- Configurable icon and text font, size and color
- Configurable command run upon clicking the widget
- Configurable notifications using the KDE notification system
- Includes notification for when no unread emails exist (useful for running command to turn off message indicator LEDs, etc.)
- "Check email now" menu option to force email check upon command
- Ability to manually pause and resume email checking
- Threads context menu that shows unread messages on right-click

Please let me know if you find any problems or would like some new features included. The best place to request new features is on the project's homepage.

How to install:
- Download the latest version
- Uninstall any previous version (see instructions below)
- Run the following command in the directory where the file was placed (updated to reflect the actual filename):

[quote]plasmapkg -i gmail-plasmoid-0.7.20.plasmoid[/quote]
- The widget should now be listed in your "Add Widgets" screen

Note: If you get missing script-engine errors when loading the widget you need to install the plasma python script-engine (in openSUSE this requires the "python-kdebase4" and "python-devel" packages, in Fedora this requires the "kdebase-workspace-python-applet" package, in Kubuntu this requires the "plasma-scriptengine-python" package)

How to uninstall:
- Run the following command at the command line:

[quote]plasmapkg -r gmail-plasmoid[/quote]

Last changelog:

8 years ago

0.7.20 (11.07.2011)
- Added workaround for bug affecting kwallet

0.7.19 (10.07.2011)
- Fixed bug in label fetching
- Updated French translation

0.7.18 (09.07.2011)
- Added multiple fetch mechanisms
- Added dynamic network connection detection
- Added ability to reduce debug output

0.7.17 (04.07.2011)
- Updated kwallet handling
- Updated handling of translations
- Made configuration screen non-blocking
- Other minor fixes and changes

0.7.16 (13.02.2011)
- Fixed kwallet issue under KDE SC 4.6

0.7.15 (25.09.2010)
- Fixed issue with newer versions of SIP
- Updated to use default pop-up for better consistency with Plasma desktop

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Comments/Ratings

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dkarnout
11 years ago

sorry, had a previous version.
you used fixType
sorry again :)

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mjmccans
11 years ago

No problem, and your message is a good reminder that I may want to clean some of that stuff out of the plasmoid now that KDE 4.3 has been released. I’ll put that on my list of things to do.

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ValentinPavlyuchenko
11 years ago

Hello again,

I have a feature proposition:
For example I have email checking every 10 minutes and at some moment I see that e-mail have arrived. I click on the plasmoid and open gmail in my browser/mail program/etc. So there is a huge possibility that I will read that email in 1 minute (or even less) after clicking on the plasmoid.

Is there a place for the following feature: during next few minutes after clicking email will be checked very often (30 seconds as example), and after that time the checking will be done as usual (10 minutes in my example).
Why I propose this - because this will eliminate the need to click on "Check email now" after reading email to make indicator gray again. It will be useful for me, and, I hope, for others too.

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mjmccans
11 years ago

I think that is a good idea, and I will look into it and look again at Google’s guidelines for how often to poll the Gmail service. My use of the plasmoid is much like yours, although I have my polling time set to 5 minutes and I keep a mental note of when I have read the messages that are displayed. I think the best solution will come when Akonadi is fully integrated into Plasma. That way a universal mail checker could be written easily that would follow more of the Plasma structure (I don’t use a data engine in my plasmoid because it would not allow me to add the features I wanted) and would also provide almost instant updates through the use of IMAP IDLE. I’m keeping an eye on that front, but in the shorter term I will take a look at your suggestion when I have a moment (which does not seem to be very often these days).

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warnec
11 years ago

BTW, won't making it autostarted make it ask for password just like it does now? Should it be by any way possible to have it always opened at the start of the system without supplying it with the password first?

And you said about some issue with KIO/Kwallet that the other plasmoid developers were saying about as well. Do you think it might be a bug? If so, is there any bug report for this?

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mjmccans
11 years ago

You do not need to autostart Kwallet as it will be started automatically the first time that a program tries to access the wallet. If you set a password for your wallet then you will get a password prompt each time you log in, but you can also ways set a blank password, and then there will be no password prompt upon login and the plasmoid will work without asking for any passwords (I have it set up this way on one computer on which I am not overly concerned about password security). Basically, go into your Personal Settings, go to the Advanced tab, click on KDE Wallet and then make sure the KDE wallet subsystem is enabled.

As for a bug report, I am not sure if there is a report and I have not reported one. It would be in KIO, and the issue is the fact that it still prompts the user for a password even when one is supplied in the calling arguments. If you find a matching bug report please let me know.

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warnec
11 years ago

So every time I open KDE I still get this prompt. When the prompt window is open, I get no wallet icon in my tray, so the wallet must be closed. THe wallet icon appears as soon as I write my password to the prompt. I tried setting the wallet to autostart with the system in SystemSettings, but don't know the command for it. (There are no commands like "kwallet", kdewallet" or "wallet")

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warnec
11 years ago

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warnec
11 years ago

Ok, thanks for your answer. Will see if making kwallet run at the system start fix the issue. And if the problem you described a bug in Kwallet, how about filing a bug? Or do you know a link to a bug report for it? I could file it, but don't know all the details.

I've got another problem - I gave my account details to gmailplasmoid, and here's the console output:

[code]
plasmoidviewer gmail-plasmoid
Updating pl translation...
Command: msgfmt -o /home/warnec/.kdemod4/share/locale/pl/LC_MESSAGES/gmail-plasmoid.mo /home/warnec/.kdemod4/share/apps/plasma/plasmoids/gmail-plasmoid/contents/code/i18n/pl/gmail-plasmoid.po
Translation updated.
Update .notifyrc file...
Outputting notifyrc file
gmail-plasmoid icon installed
Updating command to:firefox %u
QPainter::font: Painter not active
Done updateIcon
Done updateIcon
Wallet opened
Checking mail...
No accounts configured
Done updateIcon
Done updateIcon
Done updateIcon
Done updateIcon
Done updateIcon
Add account
Save account details
Adding account
create account
Checking mail...
[maciekw4/maciekw4] Checking mail...
[maciekw4/maciekw4] Fetching feed...
Done updateIcon
[maciekw4/maciekw4] Process results
[maciekw4/maciekw4] Atom feed received
All fetching is complete
Done updateIcon
Done updateIcon
Checking mail...
[maciekw4/maciekw4] Checking mail...
[maciekw4/maciekw4] Fetching feed...
[maciekw4/maciekw4] Process results
[maciekw4/maciekw4] Atom feed received
All fetching is complete
Done updateIcon
[/code]

So seems like working fine, no? Well,no. It displays a gray envelope as if there were no new messages, and I looked at my account's atom feed using Firefox:

http://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom

And it lists 10 new messages.

PS.: I use 0.7.10 version.

PPS.: When I click on the envelope, a Firefox window with gmail opens, and I can clearly see that there are 10 new emails.

PPPS.: I doubt it's an account-specific issue, but I can send you my gmail account data via PM, if you believe that would be helpful (so you can try yourself)

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mjmccans
11 years ago

While I’m not sure if this is the issue, my guess from your output is that you have “maciekw4” in the “label” field in the account configuration dialog (the third input box on that dialog). If you wish to check your Gmail inbox, the “label” field should be left blank. However, I may be incorrect so if you continue to have problems feel free to send me a PM and I will try and help you debug the issue (and I should not need your account data to debug the problem).

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warnec
11 years ago

You are right. It's because I wrote "maciekw4" for botht the account name and the label. Without giving a name for the label, it works fine. Still didn't test the password prompt issue though. Will report tommorow, maybe ;)

PS.: what is the "label" field for, then?

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mjmccans
11 years ago

The “label” field allows you to check only a given label in Gmail for new messages. For example, if you want to display how many messages are in your spam label, you can enter “spam” in the label field and it will return the unread count for that label. It also works for custom labels that you create in Gmail. I realize that the nomenclature is somewhat confusing, but I tried to explain it in the tooltips for each field. Hopefully this makes sense.

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warnec
11 years ago

Nice to see your are updating the translations, but in current form, it's really hard to use the plasmoid for me. It prompts for the kwallet password every time I start KDE. Are you trying to fix that?

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mjmccans
11 years ago

Sorry about the delay in responding and, as you noted in your message, I have been quite busy lately and have not been making as many changes to the plasmoid as I would like. I apologize if I am repeating things that you already know, but some password retention issues have been discussed already and that is where I would start trying to debug your issue.

If you do not have kwallet enabled in your system settings you will be asked for your password each time you start KDE, even if you select the “save password” option. This is simply how the kde libraries function without kwallet enabled, and since I am trying to leverage the DKE infrastructure as much as possible I am not overly excited about working around these libraries. For whatever reason, KIO seems to ask for the password for protected resources even when the password is supplied to it when called. While it is very possible that I am calling KIO incorrectly (please let me know if you see an issue) others have confirmed this behaviour in their applications.

A possible solution to this problem would be to use python functions to fetch the Gmail atom feed, which is actually how I implemented the first version of the plasmoid. However, this seemed to cause a multitude of other more serious problems since the plasmoid would not follow people’s network settings (proxy settings were the particular issues that caused me to switch to KIO). The following issue report discusses this issue: http://code.google.com/p/gmail-plasmoid/issues/detail?id=7

Basically, to make a long story short, the plasmoid should work correctly with kwallet enabled, but if it does not for you then you have probably found a new bug and hopefully I can help you track it down. I hope this helps.

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RazZziel
11 years ago

Another problem I'm seeing, and that doesn't happen with other plasmoids, is that while the configuration window is open, I can't interact with KDE desktop.

I can alt+tab to other windows and interact with them, but I can't, for example, select a window in the taskbar, or open the K menu.

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mjmccans
11 years ago

I like your idea for using the default KDE browser and I think it is a really good idea; I simply have not had time to look into how to implement the feature. However, I will try to take a look at the implementation in Konversation (the screenshot was also helpful).

As for the modal nature of the configuration dialog, unless I am doing something very wrong this appears to be an unfortunate side-effect of scripted plasmoids. I have seen this exact behaviour with other python plasmoids, but I have not looked at the issue very deeply. However, if you find a scripted plasmoid that does not exhibit this behaviour please let me know and I will take a look at how they avoided the issue.

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RazZziel
11 years ago

I just checked konversation source, and it seems pretty straigtforward: check "Application::openUrl" at http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/extragear/network/konversation/src/application.cpp?revision=1011927&view=markup

What you say about scripted plugins may be right, I don't remember having tried other scripted plugins. It's probably a plasma bug.

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RazZziel
11 years ago

It would be nice having this plasmoid using KDE's default browser by default (and another program as an option), and not just "firefox %u".

Most people will probably want to use the same browser everywhere, so having a global browser configuration makes way more sense.

This is how konversation does it: http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/4324/konvbrowser.png

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lukic
11 years ago

I have tried to use this widget on Kubuntu 9.04 with kde 4.3 but it's not working. The widget is working fine but it won't connect to my Gmail account to check for new mail.
Is there a solution for this? Thanks

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mjmccans
11 years ago

Lukic, hopefully we can get this working for you (it does work under KDE 4.3). Does the plasmoid tell you that your network connection is down or does it give you some other error? If it is giving you some other error, can you run the plasmoid in a terminal using the command below and let me know what errors, if any, are displayed:

plasmoidviewer gmail-plasmoid

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lukic
11 years ago

Thanks for your replay.
I have started pasmoid in the terminal like you said and I don't receive any errors. I think it's even checking my mailbox for new mail but it won't notify me about new messages. When I click on Check email now I can see that some data is being sent and received on Network monitor. But the icon is always black ( or any other color I pick ) even though I have new mail.

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mjmccans
11 years ago

If this issue is still not resolved please send me a private message with your email address and I will send you a testing version of the plasmoid so we can try to figure out why it is not working. I hope to have some time this weekend to work on this so, with any luck, I will be able to send you a new version on Saturday.

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lukic
11 years ago

Problem solved. I have installed 0.7.10b from this link: http://gmail-plasmoid.googlecode.com/issues/attachment?aid=4808440175808155846&name=gmail-plasmoid-0.7.10b.plasmoid and now it works great. :)
Thanks for your time.

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ValentinPavlyuchenko
11 years ago

I see the following problem:
Plasmoid reports "Network connection appears to be down." while I'm already connected to internet via LAN.
If I comment out connection checking in main.py everything works ok.

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mjmccans
11 years ago

Another user recently had a very similar problem recently. Are you using network manager or a hybrid setup that partially uses network manager? While I could be wrong, there appears to be a problem with the solid network detection functions such that it will always report that there is no network connection with some setups. I would like to try to figure out what is causing this problem so it can be reported to the correct people.

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8 years ago

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xekon Oct 04 2017 9 excellent

supports multiple accounts! most important feature, being able to see relevance of messages directly from the widget is the second best feature! thanks.