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 * simplify subject string
18 * user definable actions
19 * spell checking (with installation instructions)
21 5. How to request features
22 6. Installing Claws from CVS
27 1. What is Sylpheed Claws?
28 --------------------------
30 Sylpheed Claws is a bleeding edge branch of Sylpheed, a light weight mail
31 user agent for UNIX. Features in this branch may (or may not) end up in
34 Hiroyuki's ChangeLog is also included in the claws-branch distribution,
35 so it should be easy to spot which features were merged with Sylpheed
36 (and which features were not).
38 For brevity Sylpheed Claws is referred to as Claws, and Sylpheed as either
43 2. Switching between Sylpheed Claws and Sylpheed
44 ------------------------------------------------
46 From Sylpheed to Sylpheed Claws
47 -------------------------------
49 From the user perspective Claws is just a fancy Sylpheed, so it uses the
50 same sylpheed setting files located in ~/.sylpheed.
52 It's always a good idea to back up all files in ~/.sylpheed in case
53 you want to switch back to Sylpheed. (You don't have to backup the
56 There are some things that frequently come up when switching to Claws:
59 * Why does the advanced filtering system not work?
61 Claws uses the new filtering system as soon as you define a new rule for it.
62 Your old sylpheed filter rules will not be used. In subdirectory tools/ of
63 the distribution there is a Perl script called filter_conv.pl which converts
64 old filter rules to the claws filtering system.
67 * What happened to the compose email and compose news buttons?
69 There's a composite button for both composing mail and news. You can toggle
70 between composing mail and news by clicking on the button with the triangle.
73 * And to the Preferences and Execute buttons?
75 Sorry, they're not there.
78 From Sylpheed Claws to Sylpheed
79 -------------------------------
81 Moving from Claws to Sylpheed is also simple. Sylpheed should neglect the things
82 Claws put in the settings files. This also means that the old rules will work
85 If you want to switch back to Claws at a later time, make sure you back up at least
86 ~/.sylpheed/matcherrc (the Claws filtering rules), and ~/.sylpheed/sylpheedrc
87 (which may have some claws specific settings).
89 When switching back to Sylpheed you will not lose messages or message flags (color
90 labels, read / unread status of messages).
92 Switching between Sylpheed Claws and Sylpheed on a regular basis
93 ----------------------------------------------------------------
95 If you want to have both claws and main installed concurrently simply pass them
96 a different --prefix when doing ./configure. Then use the script 'sylpheed-switcher',
97 (which is provided in the tools directory), to launch the version you require without
98 fear of losing specific settings related to either claws or main. Further details can
99 be found in tools/README.
101 3. Things Claws does different
102 ------------------------------
104 Claws does a lot of things different. Here a quick run-down of things that
105 are hardly noticeable, but deserve mentioning:
107 * auto address replacement in summary view
108 -----------------------------------
109 This matches a plain email address with a person in the address book. This
110 feature is enabled in Common Preferences | Tab Display | SummaryView Group |
111 Display sender using addressbook
113 * manual selection of MIME types for attachments
114 -----------------------------------
115 You can change the MIME type of an attachment by right-clicking in the
116 attachment list, selecting Property in the menu. The MIME type list
117 is a combo box with the known MIME types.
119 * sharing mail folders
120 -----------------------------------
121 You can also share or use shared mail folders. Right-click a folder and
122 select Property. Change the Folder chmod setting.
124 * default to address for folders
125 -----------------------------------
126 Most people filter mailing list mails to separate folders. Claws allows
127 you to associate a folder with a mailing list or a person. Right-click a
128 folder, select Property and change the Default To setting. When you
129 compose a new mail, when this folder is selected the recipient address
130 will be set to this address.
132 (NOTE: this is also a shoot-yourself-in-the-foot-setting! If you want
133 to send a private mail, don't have a folder selected with this setting
137 -----------------------------------
138 To use different icon sets you need to create a directory:
139 mkdir ~/.sylpheed/themes
140 Icon sets should be placed in this directory in their own sub-directory.
141 They are then selectable from Pixmap Theme on the Interface tab of Commmon
144 * user definable actions
145 -----------------------------------
146 The "actions" feature is a convenient way for the user to launch external
147 commands to process a complete message file including headers and body or
148 just one of its parts. It allows also the use of an external command to
149 filter the whole text or just a selected part in the message window or in
150 the compose window. This is a generic tool that allows to do any uncommon
151 actions on the messages, and thus extends the possibilities of Sylpheed.
152 For example, Sylpheed does not include the rot13 cyphering algorithm
153 popular in some newsgroups. It does not support natively armored
154 encryption or clear signing. It does not support uuencoded messages. As
155 all these features can be handled by external programs, the actions
156 provide a convenient way to use them from the menu bar.
161 To create a new action, go to Configuration -> Actions.... The "Action
162 Creation" dialog offers to enter the Menu name that will trigger the
163 command. The created menu will be found in the Tools -> Actions submenu.
164 By inserting a slash / in the menu name, you create a submenu.
166 The command is entered in the Command line entry. Note that Sylpheed
167 stores every single email in a separate file. This allows to use the
168 following syntax for the command:
170 * %f denotes the file name of the selected message. If you selected more
171 than one, then the command will be launched for each message with
172 the appropriate file name
173 * %F denotes the list of the file names of the selected message. If only
174 one message is selected, this amounts to %f, but if more messages
175 are selected, then the command will be launched only once with the
176 list of the file names. (You can use both %f and %F in one command:
177 then the command will be launched for each selected message with
178 the name of this message and with the list of all selected
179 messages. I did not find a practical example for this.)
180 * %p denotes the current selected message part of a multipart message.
181 The part is decoded accordingly. If the message is not a multipart
182 message, it denotes the message body.
183 * Prepending >: this will allow you to send to the command's standard
184 input a text that you will enter in a dialog window.
185 * Prepending *: this will allow you to send to the command's standard
186 input a text that you will enter in a dialog window. But in
187 contrast to prepending >, the entered text is hidden (useful when
189 * Appending an ampersand &: this will run the command asynchronously.
190 That means "fire and forget". Sylpheed won't wait for the command
191 to finish, nor will it catch its output or its error messages.
192 * Prepending the vertical bar | (pipe-in): this will send the current
193 displayed text or the current selected text from the message view
194 or the compose window to the command standard input. The command
195 will silently fail if more than one message is selected.
196 * Appending the vertical bar | (pipe-out): this will replace the current
197 displayed text or the current selected text from the message window
198 or the compose window by the command standard output. The command
199 will silently fail if more than one message is selected.
201 Note: It is not possible to use actions containing %f, %F or %p from the
204 When a command is run, and unless it is run asynchronously, Sylpheed will
205 be insensitive to any interaction and it will wait for the command to
206 finish. If the command takes too long (5 seconds), it will popup a dialog
207 window allowing to stop it. This dialog will also be displayed as soon as
208 the command has some output: error messages or even its standard output
209 when the command is not a "pipe-out" command. When multiple commands are
210 being run, they are run in parallel and each command output is separated
211 from the outputs of the others.
216 Here are some examples that are listed in the same syntax as used for
217 storing the actions list. You can copy and past the definition in your
218 ~/.sylpheed/actionsrc file (exit Sylpheed before). The syntax is very
219 simple: one line per action, each action contains the menu name and the
220 command line separated by a colon and a space ": "
222 Purpose: rot13 cyphering
223 Definition: Rot13: |tr a-zA-Z n-za-mN-ZA-M|
224 Details: This will apply the rot13 cyphering algorithm to the
225 (selected) text in the message/compose view.
227 Purpose: Decoding uuencoded messages
228 Definition: UUdeview: xdeview %F&
229 Details: xdeview comes with uudeview. If an encoded file is split in
230 multiple messages, just select them all and run the command.
232 Purpose: Display uuencoded image
233 Definition: Display uuencoded: uudec %f&
234 Details: Displays uuencoded files. The uudec[1] script can be found in
235 the 'tools' directory of the distribution package.
237 Purpose: Alter messages
238 Definition: Edit message: gvim -f %F
239 Details: Allows editing of any received message. Can be used to remove
240 unneeded message parts, etc.
242 Purpose: Pretty format
243 Definition: Par: |par 72Tbgjqw74bEe B=._A_a 72bg|
244 Details: par is a utility that can pretty format any text. It does a
245 very good job in indenting quoted messages, and justifying
246 text. Used when composing a message
249 Definition: Part/Dillo: dillo %p&
250 Details: Browse the selected message part in Dillo.
253 Definition: GnuPG/Clear Sign: |gpg-sign-syl|
254 Details: Clear sign a message. The gpg-sign-syl[2] script is responsible
255 for asking the passphrase and for running gnupg.
257 Purpose: Verify Clear Signed
258 Definition: GnuPG/Verify: |gpg --no-tty --verify
259 Details: Verify clear signed messages. The result is displayed in the
260 actions output dialog.
262 Purpose: Decrypt ASCII Armored
263 Definition: GnuPG/Decrypt: *gpg --no-tty --command-fd 0 --passphrase-fd 0 --decrypt %f|
264 Details: Decrypt ASCII armored messages. The passphrase is entered
265 into the opened action's input dialog.
267 [1] The uudec script can be found in the 'tools' directory of the
268 distribution package. It needs uudecode and ImageMagick's display. The
269 latter can be replaced by any image viewer that can get input from
270 standard input. The script could also be modified to use temporary files
271 instead of standard input.
273 [2] The gpg-sign-syl script can be found in the 'tools' directory of the
274 distribution package.
276 * Spell checker for Sylpheed-Claws
277 -----------------------------------
279 b. Configuration and installation
286 The spell checker in sylpheed requires the Portable Spell Checker
287 Interface Library pspell (http://pspell.sourceforge.net), version
290 You will need also the actual spell checker. There are two alternatives:
292 i) ispell (http://fmg-www.cs.ucla.edu/fmg-members/geoff/ispell.html),
293 which is found on quasi every distribution. You have then to
294 install the pspell-ispell module found at the pspell site.
296 ii) aspell (http://aspell.sourceforge.net). This spell checker
297 must be installed after installing pspell. The version tested
298 is .33.7 alpha. It has three different suggestion modes (fast
299 -default- , normal, bad spellers), has the ability to learn
300 from mistakes (default).
302 And, last but not least, do not forget to install the dictionaries. Check
303 the corresponding spell checker home page for more information on this.
305 b. Configuring Sylpheed
306 -----------------------
308 Spell checking is enabled if you configure sylpheed appropriately. Add
309 the option '--enable-pspell' when configuring. E.g.:
311 ./configure --enable-pspell
313 The configure script needs 'pspell-config' in your path. If it is
314 in weird places, use '--with-pspell-prefix' to tell the path to
315 pspell-config. E.g., if pspell-config is really
316 /foo/bar/pspell-config, then use:
318 ./configure --enable-pspell --with-pspell-prefix=/foo/bar
320 If you have problems with not found includes or libraries, check
321 first where these are located, and add either options:
323 --with-pspell-includes=/foo/bar/include
327 --with-pspell-libs=/foo/bar/lib
331 Configure script summarizes the options compiled in. Check that
332 configure lists 'Pspell = yes'.
334 Then proceed as usual, with 'make' and 'make install'.
339 NOTE: if you upgraded from 0.7.0claws, please reselect your default
340 dictionary in the preferences.
342 After successful compiling, you need to tell sylpheed where your
343 dictionaries reside. First run 'pspell-config pkgdatadir' on the
344 shell to get their path.
346 Then run sylpheed and go to Configuration -> Common preferences ->
347 Spell Checker. Check the box 'Enable spell checker (EXPERIMENTAL)' and
348 use the file selector ('...' button) to select the path where the
349 dictionaries reside. Within the file selector, go to that directory
350 and select *any* file in the file lists. Click ok. You should then
351 be able to select your default dictionary.
353 When composing, misspelled words are highlighted. Click on any
354 highlighted word with the right mouse button to get a list of
355 suggestions. The first entry of the menu just displays the unknown
356 word. Selecting "Accept in this session" (or hitting MOD1-Space,
357 where MOD1 is usually the ALT key), will ignore this word and accept
358 it in this message. Selecting the next entry "Add to dictionary", which
359 is bound to MOD1-Enter combination will add the unknown word to the
360 dictionary to learn it. The next entries are the suggested words.
361 The first 15 suggestions can be accessed typing one of the first letters
362 of Latin alphabet (if this does not suit your language, please send
363 a mail to melvin.hadasht@free.fr). If you are using an aspell
364 dictionary, you can use its 'learn from mistake' feature, by pressing
365 the MOD1 key and selecting the suggestion (with the keyboard or with
366 the mouse). See pspell manual ยง4.7.1 for an explanation of this
369 If you click with the right mouse button everywhere else, or if you
370 shift-right-click even on a misspelled word, you get the
371 configuration menu. 'Check all' highlights all misspelled words.
372 With this menu, you can also change the dictionary while editing.
373 Finally, you can change the suggestion mode, and the learn from
374 misktakes feature (only when using an aspell dictionary).
376 Spell checking can also be done using keyboard shortcuts. In the
377 "Edit" menu of the compose window, there are two menus "Check backwards
378 misspelled word" and "Forward to next misspelled word". Add to them
379 appropriate keyboard shortcuts. "Check backwards misspelled word"
380 checks backwards from cursor position for the first misspelled word.
381 If it finds one, it displays the suggestions lists which can be handled
382 with the keyboard as described before. When the suggestion menu is
383 closed, the cursor returns to its original position to be able to
384 continue editing. The "Forward to next misspelled word" do the same
385 thing in the other direction but moves the cursor at the end of the
386 misspelled word. This way, you can spell check easily a whole message
387 starting from its beginning and using the "Forward to next misspelled
388 word" keyboard short cut.
396 The only real known problems until now are configuration and
397 compilation problems due to libtool interaction with pspell.
399 If you do not compile pspell/aspell/pspell-ispell yourself, you
400 need to install them with their devel packages.
402 Pspell work with dynamic linking of libraries and thus uses the
403 libltdl library of libtool. If you have weird problems when
404 configuring showing 'libtool', chances are the libtool used when
405 compiling the pspell package is not compatible with what you have
406 on your system. The best solution, is to install the latest
407 libtool AND compile yourself pspell package. I can't help more
408 than that in this issue.
410 After successfully compiled and used sylpheed with spell checking,
411 the same problem can appear if you upgrade your libtool to a
412 version which libltdl is incompatible to your older one. The
413 symptoms are a crash when starting to compose. Disabling spell
414 checking avoids the problem. The solution should be to recompile pspell.
416 ii) New installed ispell dictionary are not detected
418 Installing a new ispell dictionary needs an additional step. Go
419 to the 'pkgdatadir' and run 'make-ispell-pwli'. You may need to
422 * simplify subject string
423 It is possible to remove parts of string from the subject line.
424 Example: [Sylpheed-claws-users] This is a test
425 becomes: This is a test
426 This is a per folder property. Right click on a folder and select
427 property, enable Simplify Subject RegExp check box. Example
428 regexp for the above is: \[Sylpheed-claws-(devel|users)\]
429 Another example for the Sylpheed mailing list (not claws!) is:
430 \[sylpheed:[0-9]{5}\]
433 New cache is a new data cache structure for sylpheed, that will
434 solve many of the problems sylpheed currently has with updates to
435 flags. But you will also notice a large speed gain when you open
438 New cache uses two new configuration parameters that can be
439 adjusted in ~/.sylpheed/sylpheedrc (no gui for them available yet).
441 cache_max_mem_usage (default: 4096)
442 the maximum kB of memory sylpheed should use.
443 It will try to keep the memory usage below this
444 value, but it will always use the assigned
445 amount of memory for speed gain.
447 cache_min_keep_time (default: 15)
448 the minimum time in minutes sylpheed will keep
449 the folder cache in memory. If a cache is more
450 recent than this time it will not be freed even
451 if the memory usage is above the maximum. You
452 should probably set this value higher than your
453 mail check interval. Otherwise the cache will
454 always be freed between checks even if the folder
455 is accessed on every check, which will cause much
458 The check if memory can be freed is currently done after the
459 active folder has been changed or whenever a new cache is read,
460 i.e. triggered by mail incorporation.
462 New mails in MH folders are not detected automatically like before,
463 when you enter the folder. You have to update the folder manually,
464 or activate the auto update setting in the options.
466 There are a lot more options. If you find one, don't hesitate to
476 submit it to the Sylpheed ML, Hiroyuki, or Paul Mangan
477 (for incorporation on the Sylpheed Patches page,
478 <http://www.thewildbeast.co.uk/sylpheed/>)
482 It is highly recommended to use the sourceforge project page
484 http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=384600&group_id=25528&func=browse
486 If that's too troublesome, either contact Paul Mangan or consider
487 posting to the sylpheed claws users mailing list.
489 Bugs can be reported in the same way; the recommended web page:
490 http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=25528&atid=384598
492 Of course you can also post to the sylpheed claws users
495 Also, we really try to incorporate good contributions, but sometimes we
496 don't have enough time. If the contribution is really big, or requires
497 a long time to stabilize, send a mail to Paul Mangan. We can probably
498 arrange access to the Claws branch.
502 5. How to request features
503 --------------------------
505 Ask around in both Sylpheed ML and Sylpheed Claws Users ML. Note
506 that some developers may already thought about your feature, may
507 perhaps be implementing it - or the feature was already discussed
508 and rejected for whatever reason. You might want to go ahead and
509 hack a patch for it. (That would be very cool!) Another
510 possibility is to use the Feature Request Tracker at the
511 sourceforge project page.
515 6. Installing Claws from CVS
516 ----------------------------
521 To download the latest cvs cd to the directory where you wish to download
522 to and type the following information:
524 cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sylpheed-claws.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/sylpheed-claws login
526 When prompted for a password press the RETURN key.
527 After anonymously logging in:
529 cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sylpheed-claws.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/sylpheed-claws co sylpheed-claws
535 To compile and install use the following commands:
537 ./autogen.sh [add configure options as required]
539 make install [as root]
541 You will need a full set of development tools installed to be able to run
542 autogen.sh. See also ac/README.
projects / claws.git / blob