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)
18 5. How to request features
23 1. What is Sylpheed Claws?
24 --------------------------
26 Sylpheed Claws is a bleeding edge branch of Sylpheed, a light weight mail
27 user agent for UNIX. Features in this branch may (or may not) end up in
30 Hiroyuki's ChangeLog is also included in the claws-branch distribution,
31 so it should be easy to spot which features were merged with Sylpheed
32 (and which features were not).
34 For brevity Sylpheed Claws is referred to as Claws, and Sylpheed as either
39 2. Switching between Sylpheed Claws and Sylpheed
40 ------------------------------------------------
42 From Sylpheed to Sylpheed Claws
43 -------------------------------
45 From the user perspective Claws is just a fancy Sylpheed, so it uses the
46 same sylpheed setting files located in ~/.sylpheed.
48 It's always a good idea to back up all files in ~/.sylpheed in case
49 you want to switch back to Sylpheed. (You don't have to backup the
52 There are some things that frequently come up when switching to Claws:
55 * Why does the advanced filtering system not work?
57 Claws uses the new filtering system as soon as you define a new rule for it.
58 Your old sylpheed filter rules will not be used. In subdirectory tools/ of
59 the distribution there is a Perl script called filter_conv.pl which convers
60 old filter rules to the claws filtering system.
63 * What happened to the compose email and compose news buttons?
65 There's a composite button for both composing mail and news. You can toggle
66 between composing mail and news by clicking on the button with the triangle.
69 * And to the Preferences and Execute buttons?
71 Sorry, they're not there.
74 From Sylpheed Claws to Sylpheed
75 -------------------------------
77 Moving from Claws to Sylpheed is also simple. Sylpheed should neglect the things
78 Claws put in the settings files. This also means that the old rules will work
81 If you want to switch back to Claws at a later time, make sure you back up at least
82 ~/.sylpheed/filteringrc (the Claws filtering rules), and ~/.sylpheed/sylpheedrc
83 (which may have some claws specific settings).
85 When switching back to Sylpheed you will not lose messages or message flags (color
86 labels, read / unread status of messages).
90 3. Things Claws does different
91 ------------------------------
93 Claws does a lot of things different. Here a quick run-down of things that
94 are hardly noticable, but deserve mentioning:
96 * auto address replacement in summary view
97 This matches a plain email address with a person in the address book. This
98 feature is enabled in Common Preferences | Tab Display | SummaryView Group |
99 Display sender using addressbook
101 * manual selection of MIME types for attachments
102 You can change the MIME type of an attachment by right-clicking in the
103 attachment list, selecting Property in the menu. The MIME type list
104 is a combo box with the known MIME types.
106 * sharing mail folders
107 You can also share or use shared mail folders. Right-click a folder and
108 select Property. Change the Folder chmod setting.
110 * default to address for folders
111 Most people filter mailing list mails to separate folders. Claws allows
112 you to associate a folder with a mailing list or a person. Right-click a
113 folder, select Property and change the Default To setting. When you
114 compose a new mail, when this folder is selected the recepient address
115 will be set to this address.
117 (NOTE: this is also a shoot-yourself-in-the-foot-setting! If you want
118 to send a private mail, don't have a folder selected with this setting
121 * Spell checker for Sylpheed-Claws
124 b. Configuration and installation
131 The spell checker in sylpheed requires the Portable Spell Checker
132 Interface Library pspell (http://pspell.sourceforge.net), version
135 You will need also the actual spell checker. There are two alternatives:
137 i) ispell (http://fmg-www.cs.ucla.edu/fmg-members/geoff/ispell.html),
138 which is found on quasi every distribution. You have then to
139 install the pspell-ispell module found at the pspell site.
141 ii) aspell (http://aspell.sourceforge.net). This spell checker
142 must be installed after installing pspell. The version tested
143 is .33.7 alpha. It has three different suggestion modes (fast
144 -default- , normal, bad spellers), has the ability to learn
145 from mistakes (default).
147 And, last but not least, do not forget to install the dictionaries. Check
148 the corresponding spell checker home page for more information on this.
150 b. Configuring Sylpheed
151 -----------------------
153 Spell checking is enabled if you configure sylpheed appropriately. Add
154 the option '--enable-pspell' when configuring. E.g.:
156 ./configure --enable-pspell
158 The configure script needs 'pspell-config' in your path. If it is
159 in weird places, use '--with-pspell-prefix' to tell the path to
160 pspell-config. E.g., if pspell-config is really
161 /foo/bar/pspell-config, then use:
163 ./configure --enable-pspell --with-pspell-prefix=/foo/bar
165 If you have problems with not found includes or libraries, check
166 first where these are located, and add either options:
168 --with-pspell-includes=/foo/bar/include
172 --with-pspell-libs=/foo/bar/lib
176 Configure script summarizes the options compiled in. Check that
177 configure lists 'Pspell = yes'.
179 Then proceed as usual, with 'make' and 'make install'.
184 NOTE: if you upgraded from 0.7.0claws, please reselect your default
185 dictionary in the preferences.
187 After successful compiling, you need to tell sylpheed where your
188 dictionaries reside. First run 'pspell-config pkgdatadir' on the
189 shell to get their path.
191 Then run sylpheed and go to Configuration -> Common preferences ->
192 Spell Checker. Check the box 'Enable spell checker (EXPERIMENTAL)' and
193 use the file selector ('...' button) to select the path where the
194 dictionaries reside. Within the file selector, go to that directory
195 and select *any* file in the file lists. Click ok. You should then
196 be able to select your default dictionary.
198 When composing, misspelled words are highlighted. Click on any
199 highlighted word with the right mouse button to get a list of
200 suggestions. The first entry of the menu just displays the unknown
201 word. Selecting "Accept in this session" (or hitting MOD1-Space,
202 where MOD1 is usually the ALT key), will ignore this word and accept
203 it in this message. Selecting the next entry "Add to dictionary", which
204 is bound to MOD1-Enter combination will add the unknown word to the
205 dictionary to learn it. The next entries are the suggested words.
206 The first 15 suggestions can be accessed typing one of the first letters
207 of latin alphabet (if this does not suit your language, please send
208 a mail to melvin.hadasht@free.fr). If you are using an aspell
209 dictionary, you can use its 'learn from mistake' feature, by pressing
210 the MOD1 key and selecting the suggestion (with the keyboard or with
211 the mouse). See pspell manual ยง4.7.1 for an explanation of this
214 If you click with the right mouse button everywhere else, or if you
215 shift-right-click even on a misspelled word, you get the
216 configuration menu. 'Check all' highlights all misspelled words.
217 With this menu, you can also change the dictionary while editing.
218 FInally, you can change the suggestion mode misktakes 'feature'
219 (useful only with aspell).
221 Spell checking can also be done using keyboard shortcuts. In the
222 "Edit" menu of the compose window, there are two menus "Check backwards
223 misspelled word" and "Forward to next misspelled word". Add to them
224 appropriate keyboard shortcuts. "Check backwards misspelled word"
225 checks backwards from cursor position for the first misspelled word.
226 If it finds one, it displays the suggestions lists which can be handled
227 with the keyboard as described before. When the suggestion menu is
228 closed, the cursor returns to its original position to be able to
229 continue editing. The "Forward to next misspelled word" do the same
230 thing in the other direction but moves the cursor at the end of the
231 misspelled word. This way, you can spell check easily a whole message
232 starting from its beginning and using the "Forward to next misspelled
233 word" keyboard short cut.
241 The only real known problems until now are configuration and
242 compilation problems due to libtool interaction with pspell.
244 If you do not compile pspell/aspell/pspell-ispell yourself, you
245 need to install them with their devel packages.
247 Pspell work with dynamic linking of libraries and thus uses the
248 libltdl library of libtool. If you have weird problems when
249 configuring showing 'libtool', chances are the libtool used when
250 compiling the pspell package is not compatible with what you have
251 on your system. The best solution, is to install the latest
252 libtool AND compile yourself pspell package. I can't help more
253 than that in this issue.
255 After successfully compiled and used sylpheed with spell checking,
256 the same problem can appear if you upgrade your libtool to a
257 version which libltdl is incompatible to your older one. The
258 symptoms are a crash when starting to compose. Disabling spell
259 checking avoids the problem. The solution should be to recompile pspell.
261 ii) New installed ispell dictionary are not detected
263 Installing a new ispell dictionary needs an additional step. Go
264 to the 'pkgdatadir' and run 'make-ispell-pwli'. You may need to
268 There are a lot more options. If you find one, don't hesitate to
278 submit it to the Sylpheed ML, Hiroyuki, or Paul Mangan
279 (for incorporation on the Sylpheed Patches page)
283 It is highly recommended to use the sourceforge project page
285 http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=384600&group_id=25528&func=browse
287 If that's too troublesome, either contact Paul Mangan or consider
288 posting to the sylpheed claws users mailing list.
290 Bugs can be reported in the same way; the recommended web page:
291 http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=25528&atid=384598
293 Ofcourse you can also post to the sylpheed claws users
296 Also, we really try to incorporate good contributions, but sometimes we
297 don't have enough time. If the contribution is really big, or requires
298 a long time to stabilize, send a mail to Paul Mangan. We can probably
299 arrange access to the Claws branch.
303 5. How to request features
304 --------------------------
306 Ask around in both Sylpheed ML and Sylpheed Claws Users ML. Note
307 that some developers may already thought about your feature, may
308 perhaps be implementing it - or the feature was already discussed
309 and rejected for whatever reason. You might want to go ahead and
310 hack a patch for it. (That would be very cool!) Another
311 possibility is to use the Feature Request Tracker at the
312 sourceforge project page.