Poppy version 4.01
------------------

Thanks for checking out Poppy.  Poppy is a set of perl scripts that
allow you to perform simple tasks on a POP3 or IMAP server.  It is
both an application and a library that can be used to develop other
applications.  The phrase "poppy" will be used when discussing the
application and the phrase "Poppy" will be used when discussing the
perl module.

I find poppy of most use in "limited resource environments" whether
that is low disk space, slow internet connection, or no graphical
environment.

The application poppy will connect to either a POP3 or IMAP server
and display the header of the last unread message.  It will then
allow you to do various operations such as view the current message,
save it to a mbox file, delete the message, reply to the message
(if you have access to an SMTP server), display other headers,
and various other operations.

poppy doesn't download anything from the server until you've asked
to perform an operation on a specific message.  Because of this,
you can do various things not possible with other email programs.
For example, you can skip over or delete large messages that are crashing
your other email programs.

poppy's manual page describes all the avaliable options and how
to customize it using a configuration file.

poppy is very easy to set up although it may require manually editing
the script itself to specify different paths.

INSTALLATION

Quick Install Instructions
--------------------------

You can try out poppy without installing by running inside the currently 
directory.

If you would like to install poppy then the following quick instructions
will work.  Its suggested though that you continue reading for detailed
installation information.

First, you will need to pick a location to install Poppy, the perl module,
and another directory to install poppy, the application.  For simplicity,
I'll assume you've chosen /home/username/bin for both.

Copy Poppy.pm to your selected perl module directory and poppy to your
selected bin diretory.

cp poppy Poppy.pm /home/username/bin

Next, edit poppy so that the first line contains the correct path
to the perl binary.  You should also append a "-I/path/to/modules" option
to the first line so that it knows how to find Poppy.pm.

An example modification for the above paths would be:

#!/usr/bin/perl -I/home/username/bin

Thats all (phew).  The following is more information on each step.

Installing Poppy (the perl module)
----------------------------------

Before using poppy, the application, you must find a location that
you want to install Poppy, the perl module.  If you would like to
make Poppy globally accessable then you can use the included
Makefile.PL to automate the install process.

To install this module type the following:

   perl Makefile.PL
   make
   make test
   make install

This approach allows any application to find Poppy.pm without having
to specify a "-I" option.  This means that you can skip modifying
poppy to add this information.

If you want to install Poppy.pm into a custom location then simply
copy Poppy.pm to the directory of your choice.  All scripts that
access it will need to be informed of its location with the -I
option.

Installing poppy (the application)
----------------------------------

Once you've decided on an install location of Poppy, you can then install
poppy.

First, make sure that the first line in poppy has the correct path
to your version of perl.  

If you did not install Poppy so that it is globally visible then
you will need to also modify the first line of poppy to let perl
know were to find Poppy.pm.  This is done by appending
"-I/path/to/module" to the first line inside poppy.

Next, if your running this under Win9x then you may wish to change the 
variable $cfgfilename to point to some place more DOS-like where you wan't
to store a config file.  This is probably an optional step with newer
versions of windows since they handle long filenames.

Configuration
-------------

There are a few variables inside poppy that you can change their values but
most can also be set by command line options or using a configuration
file.

When running poppy for the first time, it will help you create a
configuration file.  After that you will need to modify it with a
text edit if you need to set additional features.  The poppy man
page goes into further details on modifying the configuration file.

DEPENDENCIES

This module does not have any dependencies on external libraries.

COPRYRIGHT AND LICENCE

This program is Copyright 1997,2003 by Chris Bagwell <chris@cnpbagwell.com>.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option)
any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

If you do not have a copy of the GNU General Public License write to
the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge,
MA 02139, USA.

THANKS

Thanks for trying out poppy.  Hope it is useful for you.  Please send
any bug report to me at the address listed below.  I would love to hear any
"neat program" comments as well...

Chris Bagwell (chris@cnpbagwell.com)
