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5 <title>Sylpheed-Claws User's Manual: What is Sylpheed-Claws?</title>
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14 <h2><a name="s1">1.</a> <a href="sylpheed.html#toc1">What is Sylpheed-Claws?</a></h2>
15 <h2><a name="ss1.1">1.1</a> <a href="sylpheed.html#toc1.1">Introduction
16 to Sylpheed-Claws.</a>
18 <p>Sylpheed-Claws is a fast e-mail and news client. It will run on just
19 about any Linux or Unix compliant system.</p>
20 <p>The power of Sylpheed-Claws is that it is
23 <li>light on resources</li>
25 <li>intuitive for most people</li>
26 <li>easy to work with</li>
27 <li>loaded with features</li>
28 <li>graceful and sophisticated in its interface</li>
31 <h2><a name="ss1.2">1.2</a> <a href="sylpheed.html#toc1.2">Interface</a>
33 <p>The appearance and interface are similar to some popular e-mail
34 clients for Windows, such as Outlook Express, Becky!, and Datula. The
35 interface is also designed to emulate the mailers on Emacsen, and
36 almost all commands are accessible with the keyboard.</p>
37 <p>The messages are managed by MH format, and you'll be able to use it
38 together with another mailer based on MH format (like Mew). You can
39 also utilize fetchmail or/and procmail, external programs for receiving
40 (like inc or imget), and other storage backends using plugins.</p>
41 <h2><a name="ss1.3">1.3</a> <a href="sylpheed.html#toc1.3">Main
44 <p>Currently implemented features are: </p>
46 <li>Unlimited multiple account handling</li>
47 <li>Thread display</li>
49 <li>MIME (attachments) </li>
50 <li>built-in image view </li>
51 <li>X-Face support </li>
52 <li>External editor support </li>
53 <li>Message queueing </li>
54 <li>Draft message function </li>
56 <li>Line-wrapping </li>
57 <li>Clickable URI </li>
58 <li>XML-based addressbook </li>
59 <li>LDAP addressbook </li>
60 <li>Jpilot addressbook (for Palm type handhelds)</li>
61 <li>Newly arrived and unread message management </li>
62 <li>Multiple MH folder support </li>
63 <li>Mew/Wanderlust compatible key bindings </li>
64 <li>News reader function </li>
66 <li>UIDL support </li>
67 <li>APOP authentication </li>
68 <li>SMTP AUTH support</li>
69 <li>IPv6 support </li>
70 <li>GPG encryption and signature</li>
72 <li>Autoconf, automake support </li>
73 <li>Support of i18n of messages by gettext </li>
74 <li>Supports many locales, including UTF-8 (Unicode), when using
76 <li>IMAP4 compliant</li>
78 This list is not complete, but this will at least show you the most
79 common features in Sylpheed-Claws.
81 <h2><a name="ss1.4">1.4</a> <a href="sylpheed.html#toc1.4">Plugins</a></h2>
84 <dt>Clam AntiVirus</dt>
85 <dd>Enables the scanning of message attachments in mail
86 received from a POP, IMAP or LOCAL account using Clam
87 AntiVirus. It can optionally delete the mail or save it
88 to a designated folder. Preferences can be found in
89 '/Configuration/Preferences/Filtering/Clam AntiVirus'.
90 Clam AntiVirus is available from
91 <a href=http://clamav.sourceforge.net/>http://clamav.sourceforge.net/</a></dd>
93 <dt>Dillo HTML Viewer</dt>
94 <dd>Enables the viewing of html messages using the Dillo web
95 browser, version 0.7.0 or newer. It uses Dillo's --local
96 option by default for safe browsing. Preferences can be
97 found in '/Configuration/Preferences/Message View/Dillo Browser'.
98 Dillo is available from
99 <a href=http://www.dillo.org/>http://www.dillo.org/<a/></dd>
101 <dt>MathML Viewer</dt>
102 <dd>Enables the viewing of attachments that have the
103 Content-Type 'text/mathml' using the GtkMathView widget
104 which is available from
105 <a href=http://helm.cs.unibo.it/mml-widget/>http://helm.cs.unibo.it/mml-widget/</a></dd>
108 <dd>Handles core PGP functions and is required by the PGP/Inline
109 and PGP/MIME plugins.
110 Uses GnuPG/GPGME, <a href=ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/gpgme/>ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/gpgme/</a></dd>
113 <dd>Handles inline PGP signed and/or encrypted mails. You can
114 decrypt mails, verify signatures or sign and encrypt your
115 own mails. Uses GnuPG/GPGME, <a href=ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/gpgme/>ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/gpgme/</a></dd>
118 <dd>Handles PGP/MIME signed and/or encrypted mails. You can
119 decrypt mails, verify signatures or sign and encrypt your
120 own mails. Uses GnuPG/GPGME, <a href=ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/gpgme/>ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/gpgme/</a></dd>
122 <dt>SpamAssassin</dt>
123 <dd>Enables the scanning of incoming mail received from a POP,
124 IMAP or LOCAL account using SpamAssassin. It can optionally
125 delete mail identified as spam or save it to a designated
126 folder. Preferences can be found in '/Configuration/
127 Preferences/Filtering/SpamAssassin'.
128 SpamAssassin is available from <a href=http://spamassassin.org>http://spamassassin.org</a><br>
130 --enable-spamassassin-plugin</dd>
133 <dd>Places an icon in the system tray that indicates whether
134 you have any new mail. A tooltip also shows the current
135 new, unread and total number of messages</dd>
139 <p>All plugins, except SpamAssassin, are built automatically
140 if the required libraries are present.</p>
142 <p>Plugins are installed in $PREFIX/lib/sylpheed-claws/plugins/
143 and have a suffix of '.so'<br>
144 To load a plugin go to '/Configuration/Plugins' and click
145 the 'Load Plugin' button.<br>
146 Select the plugin that you want and click 'OK'
148 <p>More plugins can be found here:
149 <a href=http://claws.sylpheed.org/plugins.php>http://claws.sylpheed.org/plugins.php</a></p>
152 <h2><a name="ss1.5">1.5</a> <a href="sylpheed.html#toc1.5">Methods for
153 managing messages</a>
155 <p>There are several ways to manage messages. The best known is <code>not
157 <p>Too many people receive lots of e-mails and just let them end up in
158 the INBOX folder. Which after a while becomes unmanageable. Try to
159 locate that one mail about an important event you got 5 days ago, in a
160 mailbox that has over 5000 messages in it. Even when sorted on date, it
161 might take you a tremendous time to locate it.</p>
162 <p>For this there are <code>mailfolders and mailboxes.</code></p>
163 <p>When you read on in this manual, you will learn about creating
164 mailboxes and also folders that can contain more mailboxes. What are
166 <p>Overview. Simple as that. In different mailboxes you can store
167 different kinds of mails. Suppose you are a member of a kiting club.
168 And you get at least 30 e-mails per day from that club. The smart thing
169 to do now is to create a separate mailbox for these mails. So when an
170 e-mail comes in from the kiting club, you can move it to the kiting
171 club mailbox. That way you know that you have all your kiting e-mails
173 <p>Tedious, you say? To move 30 mails a day to that box, when they come
174 in at random moments? You bet that is a tedious job. You can be certain
175 that you will miss that very important one about transport to the
176 kiting ground where you will have the contest of biggest and most
178 <p>Well, also for this there is a solution. Those are called <code>filters</code>.</p>
179 <p>Filters can automate the process of moving e-mails to new locations.
180 Further on in this manual you will also learn about setting up filters,
181 so you do not have to move these kiting e-mails to the kiting club
183 <h3>Okay, so what is the difference between a mailbox and a mailfolder?</h3>
184 <p>This is actually the exact same thing as you do on your harddisk.
185 You create directories in which you can put files and more directories.</p>
186 <p>In the case of Sylpheed, you can create a mailbox in which you can
187 put more mailboxes that somehow belong together. For example, you could
188 create a mailbox (folder) that contains the mailboxes for all the
189 mailing lists you belong to.</p>
190 <p>A word of clarification is perhaps in need here. In Sylpheed, a
191 maillbox is nothing more than a directory. And in a directory you can
192 create a new directory. But also files. And Sylpheed-Claws stores each e-mail
193 in a separate file on disk.
194 An example of how a mailbox tree could look is</p>
195 <p>As you can see, there is no real limit to the way you can set up
196 your mailboxes. As long as you have diskspace available, you can create
197 mailboxes and mailboxes within mailboxes.</p>
198 <p>Of course, you should observe some common sense when you start
199 creating mailboxes. To keep all mail in one place is not a good idea,
200 but to create a maze of mailboxes is not a good idea either!</p>
201 <h2><a name="ss1.6">1.6</a> <a href="sylpheed.html#toc1.6">Features
204 <p>This is a special chapter. As with all open source programs, many
205 features can be requested by you, the user of Sylpheed-Claws. The best
206 way to join in on the talks is to join one of the mailing lists on
207 Sylpheed. For this, you can turn to the Information section of this
208 manual and read up on how to join a mailing list.</p>
210 <a href="sylpheed-2.html">Next</a>
212 <a href="sylpheed.html#toc1">Contents</a>