Aggie Mailer

Aggie Mailer is a feature new to Aggie RC5. It can be used to automatically send E-mail messages when Aggie downloads a new RSS item.

Why Use the Mailer?

There seem to be two primary UI formats RSS aggregators use:

All items appear in a single linear list (usually in a HTML browser window).
The user is presented with a three-pane view; the first pane provides a list of RSS feeds to choose from, the second a list of item titles, and the third is a window (again, usually a HTML browser window) with the contents of the selected item.

Traditionally, Aggie provided only the former UI. It suffers, the following shortcomings:

It is very difficult to work with when there are many new items.
It is very difficult to track what items have been read.
It is very difficult to delete some items and keep others.

The Mailer brings the second UI to Aggie users. It generates a mail messages according to new or updated RSS items it finds, and sends them to an SMTP server. Users of this feature can use any E-mail client they have (Outlook, Eudora, whatever) to read RSS feeds. Thus, they automatically enjoy all the benefits of an E-mail client (sorting, recognizing items you have read, marking items for later consideration, item deletion, etc) while enjoying the advantages of RSS aggregation.

Configuring the Mailer

The Mailer can be configured via Aggie's configuration dialog box or by making manual changes to its configuration file.

Configuring via UI

To configure the Mailer via Aggie's UI, do the following:

Start Aggie.
Click on the "Config" button.
Click on the "Email" tab.
Set the configuration, as the following screenshot shows:

Some recommendations on Mailer configurations:

Checking or unchecking "Enabled (causes email to be sent)" enables or disables the Mailer.
The "Offline (emails created, but not sent)" is a debug feature; unless you're doing Aggie development, there's no reason to check it.
Aggie Mailer currently supports only the simplest form of login authentication. If your server does not require it, do not fill-in the username and password. If your server does require you to authenticate, be aware that the password is transmitted in-the-clear, and that it is stored in the clear in the configuration file.
The "Group method" is how RSS items are grouped in mail messages. "0" means items are not grouped (every RSS item is in its own message). "1" means all items in the feed are grouped in a single message. "2" means items are grouped with other items in the same feed that have the same title.
"Reverse items" controls the order of sending the messages -- in the same order as they appear in the feed (unchecked), or in the reverse order (checked).

Manual Configuration

The Mailer is configured by making changes to Aggie.xfg.

To configure Aggie to use the Mailer, follow this procedure:

First, if you have an instance of Aggie running, close it.
Open the Aggie.xfg file (found in the same directory as Aggie.exe) in a simple text editor. Notepad would do just fine.

Look for a text block that starts with the tag <Mailer> and ends with the tag </Mailer>. If you don't find any, copy the following text and paste it just before the closing tag </AggieConfig>

  <Mailer>
    <Enabled>true</Enabled>
    <Offline>false</Offline>
    <Host>your-host-name-here</Host>
    <Port>25</Port>
    <SenderAccount>your-email-address-here</SenderAccount>
    <ReceiverAccount>your-email-address-here</ReceiverAccount>
    <Username>your-username-here</Username>
    <Password>your-password-here</Password>
    <ReverseItems>true-or-false-here<ReverseItems>
    <HowToGroup>grouping-mode-here<HowToGroup>
  </Mailer>

Now you should replace the bold strings with the correct values for you. Replace your-host-name-here with the host name of an E-mail server that will let you post message (for example, my.emailer.com). Replace your-email-address-here with your E-mail address (for example, aggie@my.emailer.com).

That's it. The next time you run Aggie, it will generate both the first type of UI (a single list of items), and the second type of UI (a stream of E-mail messages sent to you).

Configuration Reference

For completeness, we describe here what each configuration parameter means. Note that all tags are case-sensitive.

Enabled: Can be either true or false (case-sensitive). Controls whether the Mailer is operational or not. This allows you to configure the Mailer, but temporarily disable it without deleting the configuration.
Offline: Can be either true or false (case-sensitive). This is a debugging feature that should be set to false. (If you're really interested, it disables the Mailer's driver that communicates with the E-mail server, thus allowing the Mailer to be tested when there is no active Internet connection.)
Host: The name of the host that will send the E-mail messages. This can be a DNS name or a dotted-number name.
Port: The port that the E-mail host listens at for incoming SMTP messages. This is almost always 25.
SenderAccount
ReceiverAccount: The E-mail account to send or receive the E-mail. These need not be the same account.
Username
Password: If your E-mail server requires authentication, these two optional entries should be set to the username and password to send to the server. (Note: currently the only authentication method supported sends passwords in base64-encoded cleartext.)
ReverseItems: Wether to reverse the order of items when mailing them (true) or keep them as they appear in the feed (false).
HowToGroup
An integer representing one of three grouping methods for items in mail messages.