2 What is Sylpheed Claws?
5 Sylpheed Claws is a bleeding edge branch of Sylpheed, a light weight mail
6 user agent for UNIX. Features in this branch may (or may not) end up in
9 Hiroyuki's ChangeLog is also included in the claws-branch distribution,
10 so it should be easy to spot which features were merged with Sylpheed
11 (and which features were not).
13 For brevity Sylpheed Claws is referred to as Claws, and Sylpheed as either
20 From the user perspective Claws is just a fancy Sylpheed, so it uses the
21 same sylpheed setting files located in ~/.sylpheed.
23 It's always a good idea to back up all files in ~/.sylpheed in case
24 you want to switch back to Sylpheed. (You don't have to backup the
27 There are some things that frequently come up when switching to Claws:
30 * When replying, the original sender's text is not quoted anymore.
32 Claws has a different quote format handler. Add either %Q or %q to the
33 quote format text. Also click the button "Description of symbols"
34 for more quotation symbols.
37 * Why does the advanced filtering system not work?
39 Claws uses the new filtering system as soon as you define a new rule for it.
40 Your old sylpheed filter rules will not be used. In subdirectory tools/ of
41 the distribution there is a Perl script called filter_conv.pl which convers
42 old filter rules to the claws filtering system.
45 * What happened to the compose email and compose news buttons?
47 There's a composite button for both composing mail and news. You can toggle
48 between composing mail and news by clicking on the button with the triangle.
51 * And to the Preferences and Execute buttons?
53 Sorry, they're not there.
57 Things Claws does different
58 ---------------------------
60 Claws does a lot of things different. Here a quick run-down of things that
61 are hardly noticable, but deserve mentioning:
63 * auto address replacement in summary view
64 This matches a plain email address with a person in the address book. This
65 feature is enabled in Common Preferences | Tab Display | SummaryView Group |
66 Display sender using addressbook
68 * manual selection of MIME types for attachments
69 You can change the MIME type of an attachment by right-clicking in the
70 attachment list, selecting Property in the menu. The MIME type list
71 is a combo box with the known MIME types.
73 * sharing mail folders
74 You can also share or use shared mail folders. Right-click a folder and
75 select Property. Change the Folder chmod setting.
77 * default reply-to address for folders
78 Most people filter mailing list mails to separate folders. Claws allows
79 you to associate a folder with a mailing list. Right-click a folder,
80 select Property and change the Default To setting.
82 (NOTE: this is also a shoot-yourself-in-the-foot-setting! If you want
83 to send a private mail, don't have a folder selected with this setting
86 * threading mode per folder
87 Folders can have their own threading and sorting mode. Just select a
88 folder, and set their threading and sorting mode.
91 Spell checking using pspell library (http://pspell.sourceforge.net)
92 can can be compiled in. You must have dictionaries available. You can
93 use aspell (http://aspell.sourceforge.net) or ispell dictionaries. For
94 the former, you have to install aspell. For the latter, you have to
95 install the pspell-ispell module (see pspell home page) in addition
96 to ispell. Spell checking can then enabled in Configuration |Common
97 Preferences | Compose. Use the file selector and select any file in
98 the directory where the dictionaries (*.pwli) are. Do not simply enter
99 the path in the text entry. You can select the default dictionary.
100 When composing, use the right-button click.
103 There are a lot more options. If you find one, don't hesitate to
110 Write a patch, submit it to the Sylpheed ML, Sylpheed Claws Users ML,
111 or bother any of the current Claws developers. There's no way to
112 predict whether your patch will or will not end up in Claws or Main.
113 Mostly they will. And if not, there's probably nothing wrong with
114 your code - or maybe there is. Generally, adding a cool or useful
115 thing to your patch will attract a lot of attention of other users
119 How to request features
120 -----------------------
122 Ask around in both Sylpheed ML and Sylpheed Claws Users ML. Note
123 that some developers may already thought about your feature, may
124 perhaps be implementing it - or the feature was already discussed
125 and rejected for whatever reason. Don't complain, be patient. Or
126 you might want to go ahead and hack a patch for it. That would
127 be very cool! (c. How to contribute)