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 * selective download, delete messages on server
23 5. How to request features
24 6. Installing Claws from CVS
29 1. What is Sylpheed Claws?
30 --------------------------
32 Sylpheed Claws is a bleeding edge branch of Sylpheed, a light weight mail
33 user agent for UNIX. Features in this branch may (or may not) end up in
36 Hiroyuki's ChangeLog is also included in the claws-branch distribution,
37 so it should be easy to spot which features were merged with Sylpheed
38 (and which features were not).
40 For brevity Sylpheed Claws is referred to as Claws, and Sylpheed as either
45 2. Switching between Sylpheed Claws and Sylpheed
46 ------------------------------------------------
48 From Sylpheed to Sylpheed Claws
49 -------------------------------
51 From the user perspective Claws is just a fancy Sylpheed, so it uses the
52 same Sylpheed setting files located in ~/.sylpheed.
54 It's always a good idea to back up all files in ~/.sylpheed in case
55 you want to switch back to Sylpheed. (You don't have to backup the
58 There are some things that frequently come up when switching to Claws:
61 * Why does the advanced filtering system not work?
63 Claws uses the new filtering system as soon as you define a new rule for it.
64 Your old Sylpheed filter rules will not be used. In subdirectory tools/ of
65 the distribution there is a Perl script called filter_conv.pl which converts
66 old filter rules to the claws filtering system.
69 * What happened to the compose email and compose news buttons?
71 There's a composite button for both composing mail and news. You can toggle
72 between composing mail and news by clicking on the button with the triangle.
75 * And to the Preferences and Execute buttons?
77 Sorry, they're not there.
80 From Sylpheed Claws to Sylpheed
81 -------------------------------
83 Moving from Claws to Sylpheed is also simple. Sylpheed should neglect the things
84 Claws put in the settings files. This also means that the old rules will work
87 If you want to switch back to Claws at a later time, make sure you back up at least
88 ~/.sylpheed/matcherrc (the Claws filtering rules), and ~/.sylpheed/sylpheedrc
89 (which may have some claws specific settings).
91 When switching back to Sylpheed you will not lose messages or message flags (color
92 labels, read / unread status of messages).
94 Switching between Sylpheed Claws and Sylpheed on a regular basis
95 ----------------------------------------------------------------
97 If you want to have both claws and main installed concurrently simply pass them
98 a different --prefix when doing ./configure. Then use the script 'sylpheed-switcher',
99 (which is provided in the tools directory), to launch the version you require without
100 fear of losing specific settings related to either claws or main. Further details can
101 be found in tools/README.
103 3. Things Claws does different
104 ------------------------------
106 Claws does a lot of things different. Here a quick run-down of things that
107 are hardly noticeable, but deserve mentioning:
109 * auto address replacement in summary view
110 -----------------------------------
111 This matches a plain email address with a person in the address book. This
112 feature is enabled in Common Preferences | Tab Display | SummaryView Group |
113 Display sender using addressbook
115 * manual selection of MIME types for attachments
116 -----------------------------------
117 You can change the MIME type of an attachment by right-clicking in the
118 attachment list, selecting Property in the menu. The MIME type list
119 is a combo box with the known MIME types.
121 * sharing mail folders
122 -----------------------------------
123 You can also share or use shared mail folders. Right-click a folder and
124 select Property. Change the Folder chmod setting.
126 * default to address for folders
127 -----------------------------------
128 Most people filter mailing list mails to separate folders. Claws allows
129 you to associate a folder with a mailing list or a person. Right-click a
130 folder, select Property and change the Default To setting. When you
131 compose a new mail, when this folder is selected the recipient address
132 will be set to this address.
134 (NOTE: this is also a shoot-yourself-in-the-foot-setting! If you want
135 to send a private mail, don't have a folder selected with this setting
139 -----------------------------------
140 To use different icon sets you need to create a directory:
141 mkdir ~/.sylpheed/themes
142 Icon sets should be placed in this directory in their own sub-directory.
143 They are then selectable from Pixmap Theme on the Interface tab of Commmon
146 * user definable actions
147 -----------------------------------
148 The "actions" feature is a convenient way for the user to launch external
149 commands to process a complete message file including headers and body or
150 just one of its parts. It allows also the use of an external command to
151 filter the whole text or just a selected part in the message window or in
152 the compose window. This is a generic tool that allows to do any uncommon
153 actions on the messages, and thus extends the possibilities of Sylpheed.
154 For example, Sylpheed does not include the rot13 cyphering algorithm
155 popular in some newsgroups. It does not support natively armored
156 encryption or clear signing. It does not support uuencoded messages. As
157 all these features can be handled by external programs, the actions
158 provide a convenient way to use them from the menu bar.
163 To create a new action, go to Configuration -> Actions.... The "Action
164 Creation" dialog offers to enter the Menu name that will trigger the
165 command. The created menu will be found in the Tools -> Actions submenu.
166 By inserting a slash / in the menu name, you create a submenu.
168 The command is entered in the Command line entry. Note that Sylpheed
169 stores every single email in a separate file. This allows to use the
170 following syntax for the command:
172 * %f denotes the file name of the selected message. If you selected more
173 than one, then the command will be launched for each message with
174 the appropriate file name
175 * %F denotes the list of the file names of the selected message. If only
176 one message is selected, this amounts to %f, but if more messages
177 are selected, then the command will be launched only once with the
178 list of the file names. (You can use both %f and %F in one command:
179 then the command will be launched for each selected message with
180 the name of this message and with the list of all selected
181 messages. I did not find a practical example for this.)
182 * %p denotes the current selected message part of a multipart message.
183 The part is decoded accordingly. If the message is not a multipart
184 message, it denotes the message body.
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.
187 * Prepending *: this will allow you to send to the command's standard
188 input a text that you will enter in a dialog window. But in
189 contrast to prepending >, the entered text is hidden (useful when
191 * Appending an ampersand &: this will run the command asynchronously.
192 That means "fire and forget". Sylpheed won't wait for the command
193 to finish, nor will it catch its output or its error messages.
194 * Prepending the vertical bar | (pipe-in): this will send the current
195 displayed text or the current selected text from the message view
196 or the compose window to the command standard input. The command
197 will silently fail if more than one message is selected.
198 * Appending the vertical bar | (pipe-out): this will replace the current
199 displayed text or the current selected text from the message window
200 or the compose window by the command standard output. The command
201 will silently fail if more than one message is selected.
203 Note: It is not possible to use actions containing %f, %F or %p from the
206 When a command is run, and unless it is run asynchronously, Sylpheed will
207 be insensitive to any interaction and it will wait for the command to
208 finish. If the command takes too long (5 seconds), it will popup a dialog
209 window allowing to stop it. This dialog will also be displayed as soon as
210 the command has some output: error messages or even its standard output
211 when the command is not a "pipe-out" command. When multiple commands are
212 being run, they are run in parallel and each command output is separated
213 from the outputs of the others.
218 Here are some examples that are listed in the same syntax as used for
219 storing the actions list. You can copy and past the definition in your
220 ~/.sylpheed/actionsrc file (exit Sylpheed before). The syntax is very
221 simple: one line per action, each action contains the menu name and the
222 command line separated by a colon and a space ": "
224 Purpose: rot13 cyphering
225 Definition: Rot13: |tr a-zA-Z n-za-mN-ZA-M|
226 Details: This will apply the rot13 cyphering algorithm to the
227 (selected) text in the message/compose view.
229 Purpose: Decoding uuencoded messages
230 Definition: UUdeview: xdeview %F&
231 Details: xdeview comes with uudeview. If an encoded file is split in
232 multiple messages, just select them all and run the command.
234 Purpose: Display uuencoded image
235 Definition: Display uuencoded: uudec %f&
236 Details: Displays uuencoded files. The uudec[1] script can be found in
237 the 'tools' directory of the distribution package.
239 Purpose: Alter messages
240 Definition: Edit message: gvim -f %F
241 Details: Allows editing of any received message. Can be used to remove
242 unneeded message parts, etc.
244 Purpose: Pretty format
245 Definition: Par: |par 72Tbgjqw74bEe B=._A_a 72bg|
246 Details: par is a utility that can pretty format any text. It does a
247 very good job in indenting quoted messages, and justifying
248 text. Used when composing a message
251 Definition: Part/Dillo: dillo %p&
252 Details: Browse the selected message part in Dillo.
255 Definition: GnuPG/Clear Sign: |gpg-sign-syl|
256 Details: Clear sign a message. The gpg-sign-syl[2] script is responsible
257 for asking the passphrase and for running gnupg.
259 Purpose: Verify Clear Signed
260 Definition: GnuPG/Verify: |gpg --no-tty --verify
261 Details: Verify clear signed messages. The result is displayed in the
262 actions output dialog.
264 Purpose: Decrypt ASCII Armored
265 Definition: GnuPG/Decrypt: *gpg --no-tty --command-fd 0 --passphrase-fd 0 --decrypt %f|
266 Details: Decrypt ASCII armored messages. The passphrase is entered
267 into the opened action's input dialog.
269 [1] The uudec script can be found in the 'tools' directory of the
270 distribution package. It needs uudecode and ImageMagick's display. The
271 latter can be replaced by any image viewer that can get input from
272 standard input. The script could also be modified to use temporary files
273 instead of standard input.
275 [2] The gpg-sign-syl script can be found in the 'tools' directory of the
276 distribution package.
278 * Spell checker for Sylpheed-Claws
279 -----------------------------------
281 b. Configuration and installation
289 As for version 0.8.3 (and cvs version 0.8.2claws3), Sylpheed-Claws uses
290 the new GNU/aspell 0.50 for spell checking instead of the obsolete pspell
291 and old aspell 0.33.x. You will need to upgrade your system. See
292 http://www.gnu.org/software/aspell for instructions on how to do this.
294 The spell checker in Sylpheed requires the new GNU/aspell library
295 (http://www.gnu.org/software/aspell), version 0.50 or newer.
297 You also need the dictionaries. Check GNU/aspell home page for how
298 to download and install them.
300 NB: The old dictionaries used by the old aspell will not work.
302 b. Configuring Sylpheed
303 -----------------------
305 Spell checking is enabled if you configure Sylpheed appropriately. Add
306 the option '--enable-aspell' when configuring. E.g.:
308 ./configure --enable-aspell
310 The configure script needs the 'aspell' executable to be in your path.
311 If it is in unusual places, use '--with-aspell-prefix' to tell the path of
312 the aspell executable. E.g., if aspell's full path is
313 /foo/bar/bin/aspell, then use:
315 ./configure --enable-aspell --with-aspell-prefix=/foo/bar
317 The '--with-aspell-prefix=PREFIX' option will let the configure
318 script search for includes and libraries in PREFIX/include and PREFIX/lib.
320 You can also specify manually the includes and libraries path by using
321 either following options:
323 --with-aspell-includes=/foo/bar/include
327 --with-aspell-libs=/rab/oof/lib
331 The configure script summarizes the options compiled in. Check that
332 it lists 'GNU/aspell = yes'.
334 Then proceed as usual, with 'make' and 'make install'.
339 NOTE: if you upgraded from Sylpheed-Claws 0.8.2 (or cvs version 0.8.2claws2)
340 or earlier, please check if the dictionary path was updated in the
341 Configuration -> Common Preferences -> Spell Checker menu. If not, update
342 it accordingly as explained below.
344 After successful compiling, you need to tell Sylpheed where your
345 dictionaries reside. The configure script should have found it,
346 but in case it did not, run 'aspell config dict-dir' on the
347 shell to get the path to the dictionaries.
349 Then run Sylpheed and go to Configuration -> Common preferences ->
350 Spell Checker. Check the box 'Enable spell checker' and
351 use the file selector ('...' button) to select the path where the
352 dictionaries reside. Within the file selector, go to that directory
353 and select *any* file in the file lists. Click OK. Then, you should
354 be able to select your default dictionary.
356 When composing, misspelled words are highlighted. Click on any
357 highlighted word with the right mouse button to get a list of
358 suggestions. The first entry of the menu just displays the unknown
359 word. Selecting 'Accept in this session' (or hitting MOD1-Space,
360 where MOD1 is usually the ALT key) will ignore this word and accept
361 it in this message. Selecting the next entry, "Add to dictionary", which
362 is bound to MOD1-Enter combination, will add the unknown word to your
363 personal dictionary to learn it. The next entries are the suggested words.
364 The first 15 suggestions can be accessed by typing one of the first letters
365 of Latin alphabet (if this does not suit your language, please send
366 a mail to melvin.hadasht@free.fr). Aspell has a 'learn from mistake'
367 function that can be used by pressing the MOD1 key and selecting the
368 suggestion (with the keyboard or with the mouse). See GNU/aspell manual
369 ยง6.3 for an explanation of this feature (also called 'replacement storing').
371 If you click with the right mouse button everywhere else, or if you
372 shift-right-click even on a misspelled word, you get the
373 configuration menu. 'Check all' highlights all misspelled words.
374 With this menu, you can also change the dictionary while editing.
375 Finally, you can change the suggestion mode, and the learn from
378 Spell checking can also be done using keyboard shortcuts. In the
379 'Edit' menu of the compose window, there are two menus 'Check backwards
380 misspelled word' and 'Forward to next misspelled word'. Add to them
381 appropriate keyboard shortcuts. 'Check backwards misspelled word'
382 checks backwards from cursor position for the first misspelled word.
383 If it finds one, it displays the suggestions lists which can be handled
384 with the keyboard as described before. When the suggestion menu is
385 closed, the cursor returns to its original position to be able to
386 continue editing. The 'Forward to next misspelled word' do the same
387 thing in the other direction but moves the cursor at the end of the
388 misspelled word. This way, you can spell check easily a whole message
389 starting from its beginning and using the 'Forward to next misspelled
390 word' keyboard short cut.
396 No known problems as the time of this writing (0.8.2claws3).
398 * simplify subject string
399 -----------------------------------
400 It is possible to remove parts of string from the subject line.
401 Example: [Sylpheed-claws-users] This is a test
402 becomes: This is a test
403 This is a per folder property. Right click on a folder and select
404 property, enable Simplify Subject RegExp check box. Example
405 regexp for the above is: \[Sylpheed-claws-(devel|users)\]
406 Another example for the Sylpheed mailing list (not claws!) is:
407 \[sylpheed:[0-9]{5}\]
410 -----------------------------------
411 New cache is a new data cache structure for sylpheed, that will
412 solve many of the problems sylpheed currently has with updates to
413 flags. But you will also notice a large speed gain when you open
416 New cache uses two new configuration parameters that can be
417 adjusted in ~/.sylpheed/sylpheedrc (no gui for them available yet).
419 cache_max_mem_usage (default: 4096)
420 the maximum kB of memory sylpheed should use.
421 It will try to keep the memory usage below this
422 value, but it will always use the assigned
423 amount of memory for speed gain.
425 cache_min_keep_time (default: 15)
426 the minimum time in minutes sylpheed will keep
427 the folder cache in memory. If a cache is more
428 recent than this time it will not be freed even
429 if the memory usage is above the maximum. You
430 should probably set this value higher than your
431 mail check interval. Otherwise the cache will
432 always be freed between checks even if the folder
433 is accessed on every check, which will cause much
436 The check if memory can be freed is currently done after the
437 active folder has been changed or whenever a new cache is read,
438 i.e. triggered by mail incorporation.
440 New mails in MH folders are not detected automatically like before,
441 when you enter the folder. You have to update the folder manually,
442 or activate the auto update setting in the options.
444 There are a lot more options. If you find one, don't hesitate to
447 * selective download, delete messages on server
448 -----------------------------------
449 The selective download window lets you select messages, that
450 should be retrieved from or deleted on the server.
451 The selection can be automated by setting up a *global*
452 filtering rule (folder based rules are ignored), e.g
453 subject match "SPAM" delete_on_server
454 Next time, you retrieve the headers using selective download,
455 all messages that matched this criteria are marked.
456 NOTE: Selective download is a pop3 only feature and makes
457 no sense if used as a folder processing filter.
461 Configuration->Custom toolbar lets you define the toolbar
462 you want. The configuration dialog enables you to set an icon,
463 an appropriate text and map an action to it. Actions to choose
464 from are predefined. You may as well have your "Sylpheed Actions"
465 (refer to "user definable actions" above) on your toolbar.
467 * Configuration->Actions
468 - add an entry "Dillo: dillo %p&"
469 * Configuration->Custom toolbar
470 - select Sylpheed Actions Feature
471 - select "Dillo: dillo %p&" from drop down list
472 - choose an icon and click ok
481 submit it to the Sylpheed ML, Hiroyuki, or Paul Mangan
482 (for incorporation on the Sylpheed Patches page,
483 <http://www.thewildbeast.co.uk/sylpheed/>)
487 It is highly recommended to use the sourceforge project page
489 http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=384600&group_id=25528&func=browse
491 If that's too troublesome, either contact Paul Mangan or consider
492 posting to the sylpheed claws users mailing list.
494 Bugs can be reported in the same way; the recommended web page:
495 http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=25528&atid=384598
497 Of course you can also post to the sylpheed claws users
500 Also, we really try to incorporate good contributions, but sometimes we
501 don't have enough time. If the contribution is really big, or requires
502 a long time to stabilize, send a mail to Paul Mangan. We can probably
503 arrange access to the Claws branch.
507 5. How to request features
508 --------------------------
510 Ask around in both Sylpheed ML and Sylpheed Claws Users ML. Note
511 that some developers may already thought about your feature, may
512 perhaps be implementing it - or the feature was already discussed
513 and rejected for whatever reason. You might want to go ahead and
514 hack a patch for it. (That would be very cool!) Another
515 possibility is to use the Feature Request Tracker at the
516 sourceforge project page.
520 6. Installing Claws from CVS
521 ----------------------------
526 To download the latest cvs cd to the directory where you wish to download
527 to and type the following information:
529 cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sylpheed-claws.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/sylpheed-claws login
531 When prompted for a password press the RETURN key.
532 After anonymously logging in:
534 cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sylpheed-claws.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/sylpheed-claws co sylpheed-claws
540 To compile and install use the following commands:
542 ./autogen.sh [add configure options as required]
544 make install [as root]
546 You will need a full set of development tools installed to be able to run
547 autogen.sh. See also ac/README.