manual/intro.xml

   1 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
   2 <section id="ch_intro">
   3 <title>Introduction</title>
   4
   5   <section id="intro_what">
   6     <title>What is Claws Mail?</title>
   7     <para>
   8         Claws Mail is an email client aiming at being fast, easy-to-use and
   9         powerful. It is mostly desktop-independent, but tries to integrate
  10         with your desktop as best as possible. The Claws Mail developers try
  11         hard to keep it lightweight, so that it should be usable on low-end
  12         computers without much memory or CPU power.
  13     </para>
  14   </section>
  15
  16   <section id="intro_whatnot">
  17     <title>What Claws Mail is not</title>
  18     <para>
  19         Claws Mail is not a full-featured Personal Information Manager like
  20         Evolution or Outlook, although external plugins provide these
  21         functionalities. Claws Mail will not let you write and send HTML
  22         emails or other kind of annoyances, hence it may not be the software
  23         you need in some business environments.
  24     </para>
  25   </section>
  26
  27   <section id="intro_features">
  28     <title>Main features</title>
  29     <para>
  30         Claws Mail sports almost everything a perfect email client needs.
  31         Mail retrieval over POP3, IMAP4, local mbox, over SSL; support for
  32         various authentication schemes. It has multiple accounts and
  33         mailboxes, powerful filtering and search functionality, import/export
  34         capabilities using a number of formats, support for GnuPG (digital
  35         signatures and encryption). It supports plugins, customisable
  36         toolbars, spell checking, a number of guards to prevent any data loss,
  37         per-folder preferences, and much more. A list of features can be
  38         found at <ulink url="http://www.claws-mail.org/features.php"
  39         >www.claws-mail.org/features.php</ulink>.
  40     </para>
  41   </section>
  42
  43   <section id="intro_history">
  44     <title>History of Claws Mail</title>
  45     <para>
  46         Claws Mail has existed since April 2001. It was initially named
  47         Sylpheed-Claws and changed its name to Claws Mail in November 2006.
  48         The primary goal of Sylpheed-Claws was to be a test-bed for potential
  49         features of <ulink url="http://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/"
  50         >Sylpheed</ulink>, so that new features could be tested thoroughly
  51         without compromising Sylpheed's stability. Sylpheed-Claws developers
  52         regularly synchronised their codebase with Sylpheed's codebase, and
  53         Sylpheed's author, Hiroyuki Yamamoto, took back the new features he
  54         liked once they were stabilised.
  55     </para><para>
  56         Originally both Sylpheed and Claws Mail were based on GTK1. The work
  57         on the GTK2 versions started in early 2003, and the first modern
  58         (GTK2-based) Sylpheed-Claws was released in March 2005. Since about
  59         this time, Sylpheed and Sylpheed-Claws' goals started to diverge more,
  60         and Sylpheed-Claws became an entity of its own. This is why its name
  61         is now Claws Mail.
  62     </para>
  63   </section>
  64
  65   <section id="intro_information">
  66     <title>Useful URLs</title>
  67     <para>
  68         Website: <ulink url="http://www.claws-mail.org"
  69         >www.claws-mail.org</ulink>
  70     </para>
  71     <para>
  72         Latest News: <ulink url="http://www.claws-mail.org/news.php"
  73         >www.claws-mail.org/news.php</ulink>
  74     </para>
  75     <para>
  76         Plugins: <ulink url="http://www.claws-mail.org/plugins.php"
  77         >www.claws-mail.org/plugins.php</ulink>
  78     </para>
  79     <para>
  80         Icon Themes: <ulink url="http://www.claws-mail.org/themes.php"
  81         >www.claws-mail.org/themes.php</ulink>
  82     </para>
  83     <para>
  84         Tools: <ulink url="http://www.claws-mail.org/tools.php"
  85         >www.claws-mail.org/tools.php</ulink>
  86     </para>
  87     <para>
  88         Mailing Lists: <ulink url="http://www.claws-mail.org/MLs.php"
  89         >www.claws-mail.org/MLs.php</ulink>
  90     </para>
  91     <para>
  92         Bugtracker: <ulink url="http://www.thewildbeast.co.uk/claws-mail/bugzilla/"
  93         >www.thewildbeast.co.uk/claws-mail/bugzilla/</ulink>
  94     </para>
  95     <para>
  96         Source code:
  97     </para>
  98     <variablelist>
  99       <varlistentry>
 100         <term>Tarballs</term>
 101         <listitem>
 102           <para>
 103             <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/projects/claws-mail/files/"
 104             >sourceforge.net/projects/claws-mail/files/</ulink>
 105           </para>
 106         </listitem>
 107       </varlistentry>
 108       <varlistentry>
 109         <term>VCS repository</term>
 110         <listitem>
 111           <para>
 112             <ulink url="http://git.claws-mail.org/"
 113             >git.claws-mail.org/</ulink>
 114           </para>
 115         </listitem>
 116       </varlistentry>
 117     </variablelist>
 118   </section>
 119
 120 </section>
 121