6 1. What is Sylpheed Claws?
8 3. Things Claws does different
9 * auto address replacement in summary view
10 * manual selection of MIME types for attachments
11 * sharing mail folders
12 * default to address for folders
13 * threading mode per folder
15 * spell checking (with installation instructions)
17 5. How to request features
19 1. What is Sylpheed Claws?
20 --------------------------
22 Sylpheed Claws is a bleeding edge branch of Sylpheed, a light weight mail
23 user agent for UNIX. Features in this branch may (or may not) end up in
26 Hiroyuki's ChangeLog is also included in the claws-branch distribution,
27 so it should be easy to spot which features were merged with Sylpheed
28 (and which features were not).
30 For brevity Sylpheed Claws is referred to as Claws, and Sylpheed as either
37 From the user perspective Claws is just a fancy Sylpheed, so it uses the
38 same sylpheed setting files located in ~/.sylpheed.
40 It's always a good idea to back up all files in ~/.sylpheed in case
41 you want to switch back to Sylpheed. (You don't have to backup the
44 There are some things that frequently come up when switching to Claws:
47 * When replying, the original sender's text is not quoted anymore.
49 Claws has a different quote format handler. Add either %Q or %q to the
50 quote format text. Also click the button "Description of symbols"
51 for more quotation symbols.
54 * Why does the advanced filtering system not work?
56 Claws uses the new filtering system as soon as you define a new rule for it.
57 Your old sylpheed filter rules will not be used. In subdirectory tools/ of
58 the distribution there is a Perl script called filter_conv.pl which convers
59 old filter rules to the claws filtering system.
62 * What happened to the compose email and compose news buttons?
64 There's a composite button for both composing mail and news. You can toggle
65 between composing mail and news by clicking on the button with the triangle.
68 * And to the Preferences and Execute buttons?
70 Sorry, they're not there.
74 3. Things Claws does different
75 ------------------------------
77 Claws does a lot of things different. Here a quick run-down of things that
78 are hardly noticable, but deserve mentioning:
80 * auto address replacement in summary view
81 This matches a plain email address with a person in the address book. This
82 feature is enabled in Common Preferences | Tab Display | SummaryView Group |
83 Display sender using addressbook
85 * manual selection of MIME types for attachments
86 You can change the MIME type of an attachment by right-clicking in the
87 attachment list, selecting Property in the menu. The MIME type list
88 is a combo box with the known MIME types.
90 * sharing mail folders
91 You can also share or use shared mail folders. Right-click a folder and
92 select Property. Change the Folder chmod setting.
94 * default to address for folders
95 Most people filter mailing list mails to separate folders. Claws allows
96 you to associate a folder with a mailing list or a person. Right-click a
97 folder, select Property and change the Default To setting. When you
98 compose a new mail, when this folder is selected the recepient address
99 will be set to this address.
101 (NOTE: this is also a shoot-yourself-in-the-foot-setting! If you want
102 to send a private mail, don't have a folder selected with this setting
105 * threading mode per folder
106 Folders can have their own threading and sorting mode. Just select a
107 folder, and set their threading and sorting mode.
111 Quotation is wrapped like VIM would wrap it (at least that was the
112 goal). To enable this feature go to Common preferences->Compose and
113 make sure Wrap quotation is enabled. The text is automatically
114 wrapped when you reply to an e-mail if this feature is enabled.
116 * Spell checker for Sylpheed-Claws
119 b. Configuration and installation
126 The spell checker in sylpheed requires the Portable Spell Checker
127 Interface Library pspell (http://pspell.sourceforge.net), version
130 You will need also the actual spell checker. There are two alternatives:
132 i) ispell (http://fmg-www.cs.ucla.edu/fmg-members/geoff/ispell.html),
133 which is found on quasi every distribution. You have then to
134 install the pspell-ispell module found at the pspell site.
136 ii) aspell (http://aspell.sourceforge.net). This spell checker
137 must be installed after installing pspell. The version tested
138 is .33.7 alpha. It has three different suggestion modes (fast
139 -default- , normal, bad spellers), has the ability to learn
140 from mistakes (default).
142 And, last but not least, do not forget to install the dictionaries. Check
143 the corresponding spell checker home page for more information on this.
145 b. Configuring Sylpheed
146 -----------------------
148 Spell checking is enabled if you configure sylpheed appropriately. Add
149 the option '--enable-pspell' when configuring. E.g.:
151 ./configure --enable-pspell
153 The configure script needs 'pspell-config' in your path. If it is
154 in weird places, use '--with-pspell-prefix' to tell the path to
155 pspell-config. E.g., if pspell-config is really
156 /foo/bar/pspell-config, then use:
158 ./configure --enable-pspell --with-pspell-prefix=/foo/bar
160 If you have problems with not found includes or libraries, check
161 first where these are located, and add either options:
163 --with-pspell-includes=/foo/bar/include
167 --with-pspell-libs=/foo/bar/lib
171 Configure script summarizes the options compiled in. Check that
172 configure lists 'Pspell = yes'.
174 Then proceed as usual, with 'make' and 'make install'.
179 After successful compiling, you need to tell sylpheed where your
180 dictionaries reside. First run 'pspell-config pkgdatadir' on the
181 shell to get their path.
183 Then run sylpheed and go to Configuration -> Common preferences ->
184 Compose. Check the box 'Enable spell checker (EXPERIMENTAL)' and
185 use the file selector ('...' button) to select the path where the
186 dictionaries reside. Within the file selector, go to that directory
187 and select *any* file in the file lists. Click ok. You should then
188 be able to select your default dictionary.
190 When composing, misspelled words are highlighted. Click on any
191 highlighted word with the right mouse button to get a list of
192 suggestions. You can also accept the highlighted word to the
193 session dictionary (equivalent to an 'ignore' option of other spell
194 checker), or you can add it to you personal dictionary.
196 If you click with the right mouse button everywhere else, or if you
197 shift-right-click even on a misspelled word, you get the
198 configuration menu. 'Check all' highlights all misspelled words.
199 With this menu, you can also change the dictionary while editing.
200 You can change the suggestion mode and toggle the learn from
201 misktakes 'feature' (useful only with aspell).
208 The only real known problems until now are configuration and
209 compilation problems due to libtool interaction with pspell.
211 If you do not compile pspell/aspell/pspell-ispell yourself, you
212 need to install them with their devel packages.
214 Pspell work with dynamic linking of libraries and thus uses the
215 libltdl library of libtool. If you have weird problems when
216 configuring showing 'libtool', chances are the libtool used when
217 compiling the pspell package is not compatible with what you have
218 on your system. The best solution, is to install the latest
219 libtool AND compile yourself pspell package. I can't help more
220 than that in this issue.
222 After successfully compiled and used sylpheed with spell checking,
223 the same problem can appear if you upgrade your libtool to a
224 version which libltdl is incompatible to your older one. The
225 symptoms are a crash when starting to compose. Disabling spell
226 checking avoids the problem. The solution should be to recompile pspell.
228 ii) New installed ispell dictionary are not detected
230 Installing a new ispell dictionary needs an additional step. Go
231 to the 'pkgdatadir' and run 'make-ispell-pwli'. You may need to
235 There are a lot more options. If you find one, don't hesitate to
244 submit it to the Sylpheed ML, Hiroyuki, or Paul Mangan
245 (for incorporation on the Sylpheed Patches page)
249 It is highly recommended to use the sourceforge project page
251 http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=384600&group_id=25528&func=browse
253 If that's too troublesome, either contact Paul Mangan or consider
254 posting to the sylpheed claws users mailing list.
256 Bugs can be reported in the same way; the recommended web page:
257 http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=25528&atid=384598
259 Ofcourse you can also post to the sylpheed claws users
262 Also, we really try to incorporate good contributions, but sometimes we
263 don't have enough time. If the contribution is really big, or requires
264 a long time to stabilize, send a mail to Paul Mangan. We can probably
265 arrange access to the Claws branch.
268 5. How to request features
269 --------------------------
271 Ask around in both Sylpheed ML and Sylpheed Claws Users ML. Note
272 that some developers may already thought about your feature, may
273 perhaps be implementing it - or the feature was already discussed
274 and rejected for whatever reason. You might want to go ahead and
275 hack a patch for it. (That would be very cool!) Another
276 possibility is to use the Feature Request Tracker at the
277 sourceforge project page.