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100 lines
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Markdown
100 lines
4.2 KiB
Markdown
# email2pdf
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**⚠️ DEPRECATED: This repository is deprecated, as I don't use email2pdf any more or have the time to maintain it. For now, it will remain here in case anyone wishes to fork and maintain it.**
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email2pdf is a Python script to convert emails to PDF from the command-line.
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It is not interactive (it doesn't run from a browser or have a GUI), but is
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intended to be run as a [mail delivery
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agent](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_delivery_agent) - it won't retrieve
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emails for you, but it will take them from standard input as an MDA will and
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'deliver' them to PDF files. It is well-placed to use together with
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[getmail](http://pyropus.ca/software/getmail/), perhaps run on a schedule
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using [cron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cron) or similar. You can also just
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use it as a standalone utility to convert a raw email (normally an
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[.eml](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email#Filename_extensions) file) to a
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PDF. Type `email2pdf --help` for more information on usage and options
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available.
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For more information on hacking/developing email2pdf, please see
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[HACKING.md](https://github.com/andrewferrier/email2pdf/blob/master/HACKING.md).
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Note that use is subject to the [license
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conditions](https://github.com/andrewferrier/email2pdf/blob/master/LICENSE.txt).
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## Installing Dependencies
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Before you can use email2pdf, you need to install some dependencies. The
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instructions here are split out by platform:
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### Debian/Ubuntu
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* [wkhtmltopdf](http://wkhtmltopdf.org/) - Install the `.deb` from
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http://wkhtmltopdf.org/ rather than using apt-get to minimise the
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dependencies you need to install (in particular, to avoid needing a package
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manager).
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* [getmail](http://pyropus.ca/software/getmail/) - getmail is optional, but it
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works well as a companion to email2pdf. Install using `apt-get install
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getmail`.
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* Others - there are some other Python library dependencies. Run `make
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builddeb` to create a `.deb` package, then install it with `dpkg -i
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mydeb.deb`. This will prompt you regarding any missing dependencies.
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### OS X
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* [wkhtmltopdf](http://wkhtmltopdf.org/) - Install the package from
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http://wkhtmltopdf.org/downloads.html.
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* [getmail](http://pyropus.ca/software/getmail/) - TODO: This hasn't been
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tested, so there are no instructions here yet! Note that getmail is
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optional.
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* Install [Homebrew](http://brew.sh/)
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* `xcode-select --install` (for lxml, because of
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[this](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19548011/cannot-install-lxml-on-mac-os-x-10-9))
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* `brew install python3` (or otherwise make sure you have Python 3 and `pip3`
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available).
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* `brew install libmagic`
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* `pip3 install -r requirements.txt`
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## Configuring getmail
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getmail is not strictly a dependency, but when it is combined with email2pdf,
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it can be used to retrieve new emails from a remote IMAP server and
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automatically convert them to PDFs locally. The
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[`getmailrc.sample`](https://github.com/andrewferrier/email2pdf/blob/master/getmailrc.sample)
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file in the repository can be used as a starting point for your own getmailrc
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to do this. Note that the sample will need editing, of course - see the
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getmail documentation for more information on that. Also, it is configured by
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default to *delete* remote emails from the server once they are converted - be
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careful with that. You might want to consider setting up your crontab
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something like this:
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```
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@hourly getmail --verbose | logger
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```
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This will ensure that getmail is invoked hourly to fetch email, and log its
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output to syslog.
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If your mailserver is unreliable, you might want to consider wrapping the getmail
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cron job with [cromer](https://github.com/andrewferrier/cromer).
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## Configuring procmail
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I don't have any direct experience using procmail with email2pdf, so don't have any
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specific setup steps, although I understand it can be made to work. You should be
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aware that currently there is an outstanding issue with I/O encodings with procmail
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that you may need to work around - see [issue #76](https://github.com/andrewferrier/email2pdf/issues/76) for more information.
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## Related Projects
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Harvinderpal Ghotra has refactored email2pdf into a
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[library](https://github.com/hghotra/eml2pdflib), which may be helpful if you
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need to embed email2pdf-like functionality in a Python program (although there
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is no specific effort to keep these two projects in sync).
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