Comments on: Demystifying Mail.app Plugins for Leopard

By: RobertG

RobertG — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 11:17:56 +0000

I need a plug-in to manipulate attachments sort of like Eudora did. Example - automatically copy or extract to an external directory. I would prefer this to be an extension of the rule/filter set so I might not have to do it on all mails. I would pay for such an extension but obviously not hundreds if I was the only user. I can’t image it wouldn’t be very valuable to other previous Eudora switchers. Any ideas guys? Email to privateman at mac (dot) com
Thanks

[Update: Edited to obfuscate email address from spammers. -jre]

By: Andy Bell

Andy Bell — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 08:44:47 +0000

Great article, just what I was looking for.

I do have a question, do you know where in the long class dump I will be able to catch when a new mail is delivered and then find out which folder it was sent to?

Thanks
Andy

By: John

John — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 22:01:30 +0000

James,
People around here print their emails a lot, and we share very busy printers. We are finally switching everyone to Mail–from Eudora. Eudora put a single-line header with recipient(s) name, received timestamp, subject and page number at the top of each page. Users are getting cranky about having to dig through the printer output to find the emails they have printed.

Before I dive in to writing a Mail plugin to do this, do you see any gotchas? In other words, please stop me before I spend a lot of time on something that is impossible. And I know I should just tell them to stop printing things, but I kinda want to try to write a plugin.

Thanks,
John

By: fdiv.net » Apple Mail Hack: Move Message To Sent Folder

fdiv.net » Apple Mail Hack: Move Message To Sent Folder — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 14:46:27 +0000

[…] armed with James Eagan’s article on writing mailbundles I wrote a hack which adds a menu item, complete with keyboard shortcut, allowing the user to easily […]

By: ndtreviv

ndtreviv — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 12:14:43 +0000

I’m a Java programmer and this actually makes writing an Objective-C plugin feasible!

The only thing is…can you add some instructions for doing it in XCode? That would make this the ultimate Apple Plugin tutorial for me

By: Max

Max — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 06:50:30 +0000

When I omit the “-A” compiling does not work.

With your example source files, I get the following
error messages:

running py2app
*** filtering dependencies ***
365 total
361 filtered
1 orphaned
4 remaining
*** create binaries ***
*** byte compile python files ***
skipping byte-compilation of /Library/Python/2.5/site-packages/py2app-0.3.6-py2.5.egg/py2app/bootstrap/boot_plugin.py to boot_plugin.pyc
skipping byte-compilation of /Library/Python/2.5/site-packages/py2app-0.3.6-py2.5.egg/py2app/bootstrap/disable_linecache.py to disable_linecache.pyc
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/Library/Python/2.5/site-packages/py2app-0.3.6-py2.5.egg/py2app/build_app.py”, line 548, in _run
self.run_normal()
File “/Library/Python/2.5/site-packages/py2app-0.3.6-py2.5.egg/py2app/build_app.py”, line 619, in run_normal
self.create_binaries(py_files, pkgdirs, extensions, loader_files)
File “/Library/Python/2.5/site-packages/py2app-0.3.6-py2.5.egg/py2app/build_app.py”, line 683, in create_binaries
dry_run=self.dry_run)
File “/Library/Python/2.5/site-packages/py2app-0.3.6-py2.5.egg/py2app/util.py”, line 204, in byte_compile
if force or newer(mod.filename, cfile):
File “/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/distutils/dep_util.py”, line 22, in newer
raise DistutilsFileError, “file ‘%s’ does not exist” % source
DistutilsFileError: file ‘/Library/Python/2.5/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c7-py2.5.egg/pkg_resources.pyc’ does not exist
> /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/distutils/dep_util.py(22)newer()
-> raise DistutilsFileError, “file ‘%s’ does not exist” % source
(Pdb)

By: James Eagan

James Eagan — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 22:58:34 +0000

@Max: I wasn’t sufficiently clear about the -A option to py2app. It should continue to work if you move the bundle on the same machine (that’s how I use it), but it should never be used on other machines. For that, just omit the -A to build a standalone copy that embeds the python interpreter and all necessary libraries.

By: James Eagan

James Eagan — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 22:56:24 +0000

@Peter: Ah, you’re right. You could use a category to replace a method of an existing class, but that doesn’t help use here, since we want to be able to call its supermethod. Thus, it looks like this approach will no longer work under 64-bit machines. I’ll have to see what other options I can find for this use-case under such systems.

By: Max

Max — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 22:36:44 +0000

Compiling with “-A” (for alias) works, but the resulting
plugin is only some KB in size and will not work if copied
to the apropriate bundle folder.

However, such a “-A”-Mailbundle works, if the binary
of the ASP which is available for download is put
in the bundle folder. Obviously, because of the “-A”,
some files are missing which come with the binary.

Can anyone help me to find out, how I can create
a plugin, that can work on its own (without the binary
that is available for download here) added to the
bundles folder? Thanks!

By: CDS

CDS — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 08:53:34 +0000

A fantastically useful little plugin. One of the many things (another being Quicksilver) that Apple should be acquiring and including in the OS.

Have you considered adding an option within the dialog box to locate and attach the missing file?