ExcelMailer 0.2

[mario ruggier]

It is a pleasure to announce this first public release of ExcelMailer.

ExcelMailer is a small os-independent command line business tool for 
emailing personalized messages with attachments. Data and options are 
specified via an Excel file and the message content via plain text or 
HTML file templates. For each data row in the Excel file ExcelMailer 
prepares and sends, when explicitly requested, a personalized MIME 
email message and its attachments if any.

Highlights:

- The text message may be in plain text or in HTML or in both i.e. in 
HTML with an alternative plain text version.
- May define any number of data columns (only to is required) that are 
then all accessible in the message templates with ${ column heading }.
- Rich and flexible set of options, that may be conveniently saved in 
the Excel file itself as well as be explicitly overridden on the 
command line.
- Automatic recognition of input text encodings. Output text is always 
encoded in UTF-8.
- Extensive data validation before sending any messages. No emails are 
sent unless explicitly requested and all data checks pass. No error 
goes silent.
- Data rows can be tagged, for test runs or selective re-runs.
- All actions, such as sending of an email, are logged to a file named 
${ excel file }.log, placed alongside the Excel file.

Special thanks to John Machin, for the xlrd package, to Bryan 
Niederberger, for his recipe making using xlrd even easier, and to Skip 
Montanaro, for some sample code to facilitate handling of input 
encodings.

ExcelMailer is GPL3-licensed, and is available from:

     http://gizmojo.org/software/excelmailer/

Any and all comments, problem reports, suggestions welcome!

Thanks and all the best,

mario