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
16 * spell checking (with installation instructions)
17 * simplify subject string
19 5. How to request features
20 6. Installing Claws from CVS
25 1. What is Sylpheed Claws?
26 --------------------------
28 Sylpheed Claws is a bleeding edge branch of Sylpheed, a light weight mail
29 user agent for UNIX. Features in this branch may (or may not) end up in
32 Hiroyuki's ChangeLog is also included in the claws-branch distribution,
33 so it should be easy to spot which features were merged with Sylpheed
34 (and which features were not).
36 For brevity Sylpheed Claws is referred to as Claws, and Sylpheed as either
41 2. Switching between Sylpheed Claws and Sylpheed
42 ------------------------------------------------
44 From Sylpheed to Sylpheed Claws
45 -------------------------------
47 From the user perspective Claws is just a fancy Sylpheed, so it uses the
48 same sylpheed setting files located in ~/.sylpheed.
50 It's always a good idea to back up all files in ~/.sylpheed in case
51 you want to switch back to Sylpheed. (You don't have to backup the
54 There are some things that frequently come up when switching to Claws:
57 * Why does the advanced filtering system not work?
59 Claws uses the new filtering system as soon as you define a new rule for it.
60 Your old sylpheed filter rules will not be used. In subdirectory tools/ of
61 the distribution there is a Perl script called filter_conv.pl which convers
62 old filter rules to the claws filtering system.
65 * What happened to the compose email and compose news buttons?
67 There's a composite button for both composing mail and news. You can toggle
68 between composing mail and news by clicking on the button with the triangle.
71 * And to the Preferences and Execute buttons?
73 Sorry, they're not there.
76 From Sylpheed Claws to Sylpheed
77 -------------------------------
79 Moving from Claws to Sylpheed is also simple. Sylpheed should neglect the things
80 Claws put in the settings files. This also means that the old rules will work
83 If you want to switch back to Claws at a later time, make sure you back up at least
84 ~/.sylpheed/filteringrc (the Claws filtering rules), and ~/.sylpheed/sylpheedrc
85 (which may have some claws specific settings).
87 When switching back to Sylpheed you will not lose messages or message flags (color
88 labels, read / unread status of messages).
92 3. Things Claws does different
93 ------------------------------
95 Claws does a lot of things different. Here a quick run-down of things that
96 are hardly noticable, but deserve mentioning:
98 * auto address replacement in summary view
99 This matches a plain email address with a person in the address book. This
100 feature is enabled in Common Preferences | Tab Display | SummaryView Group |
101 Display sender using addressbook
103 * manual selection of MIME types for attachments
104 You can change the MIME type of an attachment by right-clicking in the
105 attachment list, selecting Property in the menu. The MIME type list
106 is a combo box with the known MIME types.
108 * sharing mail folders
109 You can also share or use shared mail folders. Right-click a folder and
110 select Property. Change the Folder chmod setting.
112 * default to address for folders
113 Most people filter mailing list mails to separate folders. Claws allows
114 you to associate a folder with a mailing list or a person. Right-click a
115 folder, select Property and change the Default To setting. When you
116 compose a new mail, when this folder is selected the recepient address
117 will be set to this address.
119 (NOTE: this is also a shoot-yourself-in-the-foot-setting! If you want
120 to send a private mail, don't have a folder selected with this setting
123 * Spell checker for Sylpheed-Claws
126 b. Configuration and installation
133 The spell checker in sylpheed requires the Portable Spell Checker
134 Interface Library pspell (http://pspell.sourceforge.net), version
137 You will need also the actual spell checker. There are two alternatives:
139 i) ispell (http://fmg-www.cs.ucla.edu/fmg-members/geoff/ispell.html),
140 which is found on quasi every distribution. You have then to
141 install the pspell-ispell module found at the pspell site.
143 ii) aspell (http://aspell.sourceforge.net). This spell checker
144 must be installed after installing pspell. The version tested
145 is .33.7 alpha. It has three different suggestion modes (fast
146 -default- , normal, bad spellers), has the ability to learn
147 from mistakes (default).
149 And, last but not least, do not forget to install the dictionaries. Check
150 the corresponding spell checker home page for more information on this.
152 b. Configuring Sylpheed
153 -----------------------
155 Spell checking is enabled if you configure sylpheed appropriately. Add
156 the option '--enable-pspell' when configuring. E.g.:
158 ./configure --enable-pspell
160 The configure script needs 'pspell-config' in your path. If it is
161 in weird places, use '--with-pspell-prefix' to tell the path to
162 pspell-config. E.g., if pspell-config is really
163 /foo/bar/pspell-config, then use:
165 ./configure --enable-pspell --with-pspell-prefix=/foo/bar
167 If you have problems with not found includes or libraries, check
168 first where these are located, and add either options:
170 --with-pspell-includes=/foo/bar/include
174 --with-pspell-libs=/foo/bar/lib
178 Configure script summarizes the options compiled in. Check that
179 configure lists 'Pspell = yes'.
181 Then proceed as usual, with 'make' and 'make install'.
186 NOTE: if you upgraded from 0.7.0claws, please reselect your default
187 dictionary in the preferences.
189 After successful compiling, you need to tell sylpheed where your
190 dictionaries reside. First run 'pspell-config pkgdatadir' on the
191 shell to get their path.
193 Then run sylpheed and go to Configuration -> Common preferences ->
194 Spell Checker. Check the box 'Enable spell checker (EXPERIMENTAL)' and
195 use the file selector ('...' button) to select the path where the
196 dictionaries reside. Within the file selector, go to that directory
197 and select *any* file in the file lists. Click ok. You should then
198 be able to select your default dictionary.
200 When composing, misspelled words are highlighted. Click on any
201 highlighted word with the right mouse button to get a list of
202 suggestions. The first entry of the menu just displays the unknown
203 word. Selecting "Accept in this session" (or hitting MOD1-Space,
204 where MOD1 is usually the ALT key), will ignore this word and accept
205 it in this message. Selecting the next entry "Add to dictionary", which
206 is bound to MOD1-Enter combination will add the unknown word to the
207 dictionary to learn it. The next entries are the suggested words.
208 The first 15 suggestions can be accessed typing one of the first letters
209 of latin alphabet (if this does not suit your language, please send
210 a mail to melvin.hadasht@free.fr). If you are using an aspell
211 dictionary, you can use its 'learn from mistake' feature, by pressing
212 the MOD1 key and selecting the suggestion (with the keyboard or with
213 the mouse). See pspell manual ยง4.7.1 for an explanation of this
216 If you click with the right mouse button everywhere else, or if you
217 shift-right-click even on a misspelled word, you get the
218 configuration menu. 'Check all' highlights all misspelled words.
219 With this menu, you can also change the dictionary while editing.
220 FInally, you can change the suggestion mode misktakes 'feature'
221 (useful only with aspell).
223 Spell checking can also be done using keyboard shortcuts. In the
224 "Edit" menu of the compose window, there are two menus "Check backwards
225 misspelled word" and "Forward to next misspelled word". Add to them
226 appropriate keyboard shortcuts. "Check backwards misspelled word"
227 checks backwards from cursor position for the first misspelled word.
228 If it finds one, it displays the suggestions lists which can be handled
229 with the keyboard as described before. When the suggestion menu is
230 closed, the cursor returns to its original position to be able to
231 continue editing. The "Forward to next misspelled word" do the same
232 thing in the other direction but moves the cursor at the end of the
233 misspelled word. This way, you can spell check easily a whole message
234 starting from its beginning and using the "Forward to next misspelled
235 word" keyboard short cut.
243 The only real known problems until now are configuration and
244 compilation problems due to libtool interaction with pspell.
246 If you do not compile pspell/aspell/pspell-ispell yourself, you
247 need to install them with their devel packages.
249 Pspell work with dynamic linking of libraries and thus uses the
250 libltdl library of libtool. If you have weird problems when
251 configuring showing 'libtool', chances are the libtool used when
252 compiling the pspell package is not compatible with what you have
253 on your system. The best solution, is to install the latest
254 libtool AND compile yourself pspell package. I can't help more
255 than that in this issue.
257 After successfully compiled and used sylpheed with spell checking,
258 the same problem can appear if you upgrade your libtool to a
259 version which libltdl is incompatible to your older one. The
260 symptoms are a crash when starting to compose. Disabling spell
261 checking avoids the problem. The solution should be to recompile pspell.
263 ii) New installed ispell dictionary are not detected
265 Installing a new ispell dictionary needs an additional step. Go
266 to the 'pkgdatadir' and run 'make-ispell-pwli'. You may need to
269 * simplify subject string
270 It is possible to remove parts of string from the subject line.
271 Example: [Sylpheed-claws-users] This is a test
272 becomes: This is a test
273 This is a per folder property. Right click on a folder and select
274 property, enable Simplify Subject RegExp check box. Example
275 regexp for the above is: \[Sylpheed-claws-(devel|users)\]
276 Another example for the Sylpheed mailing list (not claws!) is:
277 \[sylpheed:[0-9]{5}\]
279 There are a lot more options. If you find one, don't hesitate to
289 submit it to the Sylpheed ML, Hiroyuki, or Paul Mangan
290 (for incorporation on the Sylpheed Patches page)
294 It is highly recommended to use the sourceforge project page
296 http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=384600&group_id=25528&func=browse
298 If that's too troublesome, either contact Paul Mangan or consider
299 posting to the sylpheed claws users mailing list.
301 Bugs can be reported in the same way; the recommended web page:
302 http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=25528&atid=384598
304 Ofcourse you can also post to the sylpheed claws users
307 Also, we really try to incorporate good contributions, but sometimes we
308 don't have enough time. If the contribution is really big, or requires
309 a long time to stabilize, send a mail to Paul Mangan. We can probably
310 arrange access to the Claws branch.
314 5. How to request features
315 --------------------------
317 Ask around in both Sylpheed ML and Sylpheed Claws Users ML. Note
318 that some developers may already thought about your feature, may
319 perhaps be implementing it - or the feature was already discussed
320 and rejected for whatever reason. You might want to go ahead and
321 hack a patch for it. (That would be very cool!) Another
322 possibility is to use the Feature Request Tracker at the
323 sourceforge project page.