6 1. What is Sylpheed Claws?
7 2. Switching between Sylpheed Claws and Sylpheed
8 * From Sylpheed to Sylpheed Claws
9 * From Sylpheed Claws to Sylpheed
10 3. Things Claws does different
11 * auto address replacement in summary view
12 * manual selection of MIME types for attachments
13 * sharing mail folders
14 * default to address for folders
15 * threading mode per folder
17 * spell checking (with installation instructions)
19 5. How to request features
24 1. What is Sylpheed Claws?
25 --------------------------
27 Sylpheed Claws is a bleeding edge branch of Sylpheed, a light weight mail
28 user agent for UNIX. Features in this branch may (or may not) end up in
31 Hiroyuki's ChangeLog is also included in the claws-branch distribution,
32 so it should be easy to spot which features were merged with Sylpheed
33 (and which features were not).
35 For brevity Sylpheed Claws is referred to as Claws, and Sylpheed as either
40 2. Switching between Sylpheed Claws and Sylpheed
41 ------------------------------------------------
43 From Sylpheed to Sylpheed Claws
44 -------------------------------
46 From the user perspective Claws is just a fancy Sylpheed, so it uses the
47 same sylpheed setting files located in ~/.sylpheed.
49 It's always a good idea to back up all files in ~/.sylpheed in case
50 you want to switch back to Sylpheed. (You don't have to backup the
53 There are some things that frequently come up when switching to Claws:
56 * When replying, the original sender's text is not quoted anymore.
58 Claws has a different quote format handler. Add either %Q or %q to the
59 quote format text. Also click the button "Description of symbols"
60 for more quotation symbols.
63 * Why does the advanced filtering system not work?
65 Claws uses the new filtering system as soon as you define a new rule for it.
66 Your old sylpheed filter rules will not be used. In subdirectory tools/ of
67 the distribution there is a Perl script called filter_conv.pl which convers
68 old filter rules to the claws filtering system.
71 * What happened to the compose email and compose news buttons?
73 There's a composite button for both composing mail and news. You can toggle
74 between composing mail and news by clicking on the button with the triangle.
77 * And to the Preferences and Execute buttons?
79 Sorry, they're not there.
82 From Sylpheed Claws to Sylpheed
83 -------------------------------
85 Moving from Claws to Sylpheed is also simple. Sylpheed should neglect the things
86 Claws put in the settings files. This also means that the old rules will work
89 If you want to switch back to Claws at a later time, make sure you back up at least
90 ~/.sylpheed/filteringrc (the Claws filtering rules), and ~/.sylpheed/sylpheedrc
91 (which may have some claws specific settings).
93 When switching back to Sylpheed you will not lose messages or message flags (color
94 labels, read / unread status of messages).
98 3. Things Claws does different
99 ------------------------------
101 Claws does a lot of things different. Here a quick run-down of things that
102 are hardly noticable, but deserve mentioning:
104 * auto address replacement in summary view
105 This matches a plain email address with a person in the address book. This
106 feature is enabled in Common Preferences | Tab Display | SummaryView Group |
107 Display sender using addressbook
109 * manual selection of MIME types for attachments
110 You can change the MIME type of an attachment by right-clicking in the
111 attachment list, selecting Property in the menu. The MIME type list
112 is a combo box with the known MIME types.
114 * sharing mail folders
115 You can also share or use shared mail folders. Right-click a folder and
116 select Property. Change the Folder chmod setting.
118 * default to address for folders
119 Most people filter mailing list mails to separate folders. Claws allows
120 you to associate a folder with a mailing list or a person. Right-click a
121 folder, select Property and change the Default To setting. When you
122 compose a new mail, when this folder is selected the recepient address
123 will be set to this address.
125 (NOTE: this is also a shoot-yourself-in-the-foot-setting! If you want
126 to send a private mail, don't have a folder selected with this setting
129 * threading mode per folder
130 Folders can have their own threading and sorting mode. Just select a
131 folder, and set their threading and sorting mode.
135 Quotation is wrapped like VIM would wrap it (at least that was the
136 goal). To enable this feature go to Common preferences->Compose and
137 make sure Wrap quotation is enabled. The text is automatically
138 wrapped when you reply to an e-mail if this feature is enabled.
140 * Spell checker for Sylpheed-Claws
143 b. Configuration and installation
150 The spell checker in sylpheed requires the Portable Spell Checker
151 Interface Library pspell (http://pspell.sourceforge.net), version
154 You will need also the actual spell checker. There are two alternatives:
156 i) ispell (http://fmg-www.cs.ucla.edu/fmg-members/geoff/ispell.html),
157 which is found on quasi every distribution. You have then to
158 install the pspell-ispell module found at the pspell site.
160 ii) aspell (http://aspell.sourceforge.net). This spell checker
161 must be installed after installing pspell. The version tested
162 is .33.7 alpha. It has three different suggestion modes (fast
163 -default- , normal, bad spellers), has the ability to learn
164 from mistakes (default).
166 And, last but not least, do not forget to install the dictionaries. Check
167 the corresponding spell checker home page for more information on this.
169 b. Configuring Sylpheed
170 -----------------------
172 Spell checking is enabled if you configure sylpheed appropriately. Add
173 the option '--enable-pspell' when configuring. E.g.:
175 ./configure --enable-pspell
177 The configure script needs 'pspell-config' in your path. If it is
178 in weird places, use '--with-pspell-prefix' to tell the path to
179 pspell-config. E.g., if pspell-config is really
180 /foo/bar/pspell-config, then use:
182 ./configure --enable-pspell --with-pspell-prefix=/foo/bar
184 If you have problems with not found includes or libraries, check
185 first where these are located, and add either options:
187 --with-pspell-includes=/foo/bar/include
191 --with-pspell-libs=/foo/bar/lib
195 Configure script summarizes the options compiled in. Check that
196 configure lists 'Pspell = yes'.
198 Then proceed as usual, with 'make' and 'make install'.
203 After successful compiling, you need to tell sylpheed where your
204 dictionaries reside. First run 'pspell-config pkgdatadir' on the
205 shell to get their path.
207 Then run sylpheed and go to Configuration -> Common preferences ->
208 Compose. Check the box 'Enable spell checker (EXPERIMENTAL)' and
209 use the file selector ('...' button) to select the path where the
210 dictionaries reside. Within the file selector, go to that directory
211 and select *any* file in the file lists. Click ok. You should then
212 be able to select your default dictionary.
214 When composing, misspelled words are highlighted. Click on any
215 highlighted word with the right mouse button to get a list of
216 suggestions. You can also accept the highlighted word to the
217 session dictionary (equivalent to an 'ignore' option of other spell
218 checker), or you can add it to you personal dictionary.
220 If you click with the right mouse button everywhere else, or if you
221 shift-right-click even on a misspelled word, you get the
222 configuration menu. 'Check all' highlights all misspelled words.
223 With this menu, you can also change the dictionary while editing.
224 You can change the suggestion mode and toggle the learn from
225 misktakes 'feature' (useful only with aspell).
232 The only real known problems until now are configuration and
233 compilation problems due to libtool interaction with pspell.
235 If you do not compile pspell/aspell/pspell-ispell yourself, you
236 need to install them with their devel packages.
238 Pspell work with dynamic linking of libraries and thus uses the
239 libltdl library of libtool. If you have weird problems when
240 configuring showing 'libtool', chances are the libtool used when
241 compiling the pspell package is not compatible with what you have
242 on your system. The best solution, is to install the latest
243 libtool AND compile yourself pspell package. I can't help more
244 than that in this issue.
246 After successfully compiled and used sylpheed with spell checking,
247 the same problem can appear if you upgrade your libtool to a
248 version which libltdl is incompatible to your older one. The
249 symptoms are a crash when starting to compose. Disabling spell
250 checking avoids the problem. The solution should be to recompile pspell.
252 ii) New installed ispell dictionary are not detected
254 Installing a new ispell dictionary needs an additional step. Go
255 to the 'pkgdatadir' and run 'make-ispell-pwli'. You may need to
259 There are a lot more options. If you find one, don't hesitate to
269 submit it to the Sylpheed ML, Hiroyuki, or Paul Mangan
270 (for incorporation on the Sylpheed Patches page)
274 It is highly recommended to use the sourceforge project page
276 http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=384600&group_id=25528&func=browse
278 If that's too troublesome, either contact Paul Mangan or consider
279 posting to the sylpheed claws users mailing list.
281 Bugs can be reported in the same way; the recommended web page:
282 http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=25528&atid=384598
284 Ofcourse you can also post to the sylpheed claws users
287 Also, we really try to incorporate good contributions, but sometimes we
288 don't have enough time. If the contribution is really big, or requires
289 a long time to stabilize, send a mail to Paul Mangan. We can probably
290 arrange access to the Claws branch.
294 5. How to request features
295 --------------------------
297 Ask around in both Sylpheed ML and Sylpheed Claws Users ML. Note
298 that some developers may already thought about your feature, may
299 perhaps be implementing it - or the feature was already discussed
300 and rejected for whatever reason. You might want to go ahead and
301 hack a patch for it. (That would be very cool!) Another
302 possibility is to use the Feature Request Tracker at the
303 sourceforge project page.