1 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
2 <section id="ch_plugins">
3 <title>Extending Claws Mail</title>
5 <section id="plugins_default">
6 <title>Provided plugins</title>
8 Claws Mail's capabilities are extended by plugins. It comes with
9 the plugins listed below included, all of which are built automatically
10 if the required libraries are present.
12 Plugins are installed in <filename class="directory"
13 >$PREFIX/lib/claws-mail/plugins/</filename> and have a suffix of
14 <quote>.so</quote>. To load a plugin go to
15 <quote>Configuration/Plugins</quote> and click the
16 <quote>Load Plugin</quote> button. Select the plugin that you want and
17 click <quote>Open</quote> button.
19 If you don't find the plugin you're looking for, it is possible that
20 your Operating System distribution provides it in a separate package.
21 In this case, search for the plugin in your package manager.
23 Some plugins provide the same functionality as others, (for example, the
24 three HTML message viewers). In this case you will have to choose which
25 one to load, as Claws Mail will refuse to load more than one of
29 There is an onlile list of all plugins available at <ulink
30 url="http://www.claws-mail.org/plugins.php"
31 >http://www.claws-mail.org/plugins.php</ulink>.
35 <term>ACPI Notifier</term>
38 Enables new mail notification via the LEDs found on some laptops like
39 Acer, Asus, Fujitsu and IBM laptops.
40 More information: <ulink
41 url="http://www.claws-mail.org/plugin.php?plugin=acpinotifier"
42 >www.claws-mail.org/plugin.php?plugin=acpinotifier</ulink>
47 <term>AddressKeeper</term>
50 Saves all unknown recipient addresses (<quote>To</quote>,
51 <quote>Cc</quote> and/or <quote>Bcc</quote>) to a designated
57 <term>AttachWarner</term>
60 Reminds you about possibly forgotten attachments. Checks for common
61 expressions found when attaching a file and warns you if no attachment
62 was added to the mail you're sending.
63 More information: <ulink
64 url="http://www.claws-mail.org/plugin.php?plugin=attachwarner"
65 >www.claws-mail.org/plugin.php?plugin=attachwarner</ulink>
70 <term>AttRemover</term>
73 Allows you to remove attachments from emails.
78 <term>Bogofilter</term>
81 The Bogofilter plugin comes with two major features:
83 The ability to scan incoming mail received from a POP, IMAP or LOCAL
84 account using Bogofilter. It can optionally delete mail identified
85 as spam or save it to a designated folder. Mail scanning can be turned
88 The ability for users to teach Bogofilter to recognise spam or ham.
89 You can train Bogofilter by marking messages as spam or ham from the
90 Message List contextual menu, or using the relevant toolbar button in
91 the main window or the message window (see
92 <quote>Configuration/Preferences/Toolbars</quote>). Messages
93 marked as spam are optionally saved to a designated folder.
95 Plugin preferences can be found in
96 <quote>Configuration/Preferences/Plugins/Bogofilter</quote>.
98 Bogofilter's advantage over Spamassassin is its speed.
100 Bogofilter is available from <ulink
101 url="http://bogofilter.sourceforge.net/"
102 >http://bogofilter.sourceforge.net/</ulink>.
107 <term>BSFilter</term>
110 BSFilter is a plugin that is very similar to the Bogofilter plugin
111 but uses the bsfilter (<ulink url="http://bsfilter.org/index-e.html"
112 >bsfilter.org/index-e.html</ulink>) bayesian spam filter as a backend.
114 Like Bogofilter, you have to train it with spam and ham
115 messages in order for bsfilter to start recognising spam.
117 Plugin preferences can be found in
118 <quote>Configuration/Preferences/Plugins/BSFilter</quote>.
126 Allows scanning all messages received from IMAP, POP or local accounts
127 using the clam daemon part of the Clam AV (AntiVirus) software.
135 Enables the display of HTML messages using the GTK+ port of the
141 <term>Fetchinfo</term>
144 Inserts headers containing some download information, like UIDL,
145 Claws Mail' account name, POP server, user ID and retrieval time.
153 Provides an interface to Google services using the gdata library.
154 Currently, the only implemented functionality is to include Google
155 Contacts in the Tab-address completion.
160 <term>GeoLocation</term>
163 Provides geolocation functionality based on the addresses contained
169 <term>Mail Archiver</term>
172 Enables folders and subfolders to be archived in several different
178 <term>mailMBOX</term>
181 Handles mailboxes in MBox format.
189 Writes a msg header summary to a log file, (Default:
190 <filename>~/Mail/NewLog</filename>), on arrival of new mail
191 <emphasis>after</emphasis> sorting.
196 <term>Notification</term>
199 Provides various ways to notify the user of new and unread email.
200 More information: <ulink
201 url="http://www.claws-mail.org/plugin.php?plugin=notification"
202 >www.claws-mail.org/plugin.php?plugin=notification</ulink>
207 <term>PDF Viewer</term>
210 Allows rendering of PDF and PostScript attachments using the Poppler
211 library and GhostScript external program.
212 More information: <ulink
213 url="http://www.claws-mail.org/plugin.php?plugin=pdf_viewer"
214 >www.claws-mail.org/plugin.php?plugin=pdf_viewer</ulink>
222 Intended to extend the filtering possibilities of Claws Mail. It
223 provides a Perl interface to Claws Mail' filtering mechanism,
224 allowing the use of full Perl power in email filters.
229 <term>PGP/Core, PGP/Inline and PGP/MIME</term>
232 Handles PGP signed and/or encrypted mails. You can decrypt mails,
233 verify signatures or sign and encrypt your own mails. Uses GnuPG/GPGME,
234 <ulink url="ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/gpgme/"
235 >ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/gpgme/</ulink>.
236 More information: <ulink
237 url="http://www.claws-mail.org/plugin.php?plugin=gpg"
238 >www.claws-mail.org/plugin.php?plugin=gpg</ulink>
246 This plugin provides Python integration features.
247 More information: <ulink
248 url="http://www.claws-mail.org/plugin.php?plugin=python"
249 >www.claws-mail.org/plugin.php?plugin=python</ulink>
257 Allows you to read your favorite newsfeeds in Claws. RSS 1.0, 2.0 and
258 Atom feeds are currently supported.
259 More information: <ulink
260 url="http://www.claws-mail.org/plugin.php?plugin=rssyl"
261 >www.claws-mail.org/plugin.php?plugin=rssyl</ulink>
269 Handles S/MIME signed and/or encrypted mails. You can decrypt mails,
270 verify signatures or sign and encrypt your own mails. Uses GnuPG/GPGME
271 and GpgSM, <ulink url="ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/gpgme/"
272 >ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/gpgme/</ulink>.
277 <term>SpamAssassin</term>
280 The SpamAssassin plugin comes with two major features:
282 The ability to scan incoming mail received from a POP, IMAP or LOCAL
283 account using SpamAssassin. It can optionally delete mail identified
284 as spam or save it to a designated folder. Mail scanning can be turned
285 off, which is useful if your email is scanned on your server.
287 The ability for users to teach SpamAssassin to recognise spam or ham.
288 You can train SpamAssassin by marking messages as spam or ham from the
289 Message List contextual menu, or using the relevant toolbar button in
290 the main window or the message window (see
291 <quote>Configuration/Preferences/Toolbars</quote>). Messages
292 marked as spam are optionally saved to a designated folder.
294 Plugin preferences can be found in
295 <quote>Configuration/Preferences/Plugins/SpamAssassin</quote>.
297 SpamAssassin's advantage over Bogofilter is that it's not only a
298 bayesian filter, but it also performs various local and network tests
299 to determine spaminess.
301 SpamAssassin is available from <ulink
302 url="http://spamassassin.apache.org/"
303 >http://spamassassin.apache.org/</ulink>. Version 3.1.x or higher is
304 required to use the learning feature in TCP mode.
309 <term>SpamReport</term>
312 This plugin reports spam to various places.
313 Currently the sites <ulink url="http://spam-signal.fr"
314 >spam-signal.fr</ulink> and <ulink url="http://spamcop.net"
315 >spamcop.net</ulink> are supported, and the <ulink
316 url="http://lists.debian.org">Debian lists (lists.debian.org)</ulink>
317 spam nomination system.
322 <term>TNEF parse</term>
325 This plugin enables reading <literal>application/ms-tnef attachments</literal>.
326 More information: <ulink
327 url="http://www.claws-mail.org/plugin.php?plugin=tnef_parser"
328 >www.claws-mail.org/plugin.php?plugin=tnef_parser</ulink>
333 <term>vCalendar</term>
336 Enables vCalendar message handling like that produced by Evolution or
337 Outlook, and Webcal subscriptions.
338 More information: <ulink
339 url="http://www.claws-mail.org/plugin.php?plugin=vcalendar"
340 >www.claws-mail.org/plugin.php?plugin=vcalendar</ulink>
346 If you're a developer, writing a plugin to extend Claws Mail's
347 capabilities is probably the best and easiest solution. We will
348 provide hosting to your code, and will be glad to answer your questions
349 in the mailing-list or on the IRC channels,
350 <literal>#claws</literal> on Freenode or IRCnet.
354 <section id="plugins_network">
355 <title>Network access from the plugins</title>
357 Some of the external plugins, for example RSSyl, vCalendar or GtkHtml
358 Viewer, need Internet access for their operations (retrieving feeds in
359 the case of RSSyl or vCalendar, and fetching images in the case of
360 GtkHtml Viewer). These plugins use the Curl library. Hence, if your
361 Internet access is restricted by a proxy, you will need to tell libCurl
362 to use this proxy. This is done by setting an environment variable,
363 <literal>http_proxy</literal>. For example,
364 <literal>http_proxy=http://user:passwd@myproxy.example.com:8080</literal>
365 will tell libCurl to connect to port 8080 of the machine
366 myproxy.example.com, with the user <quote>user</quote> and password
367 <quote>passwd</quote> to connect to the Internet.
369 You can either set this variable before starting Claws Mail, by
371 <command>http_proxy=http://user:passwd@myproxy.example.com:8080
372 claws-mail</command>, or set it in your
373 <filename>~/.bashrc</filename> file (or your shell equivalent), by
374 adding the following line<footnote><para>Other shells may have
375 diferent syntaxes, check your shell's manual page.</para></footnote>:
376 <command>export http_proxy=http://user:passwd@myproxy.example.com:8080</command>
377 (you'll have to reconnect to have it taken into account).
381 <section id="plugins_obsolete">
382 <title>Obsolete plugins</title>
384 Some plugins have became obsolete with time, either because an
385 improved one was written, or they're not necessary anymore or just
386 because nobody is actively developing it.
388 These are listed below, mostly for historical purposes. You are free
389 to use them, as they probably still work if you're able to build them,
390 but note that they are not currently supported.
392 Of course, if you are interested you are encouraged to become the
393 maintainer of any of them. Contact the team on the mailing list (see
394 <xref linkend="intro_information" />) or on IRC (see above).
398 <term>Dillo HTML Viewer</term>
401 Enables the viewing of HTML messages using the Dillo web browser,
402 version 0.7.0 or newer. It uses Dillo's <literal>--local</literal>
403 option by default for safe browsing. Preferences can be found in
404 <quote>/Configuration/Preferences/Plugins/Dillo Browser</quote>.
405 Dillo is available from <ulink url="http://www.dillo.org/"
406 >http://www.dillo.org/</ulink>.
408 For displaying HTML messages or parts Fancy plugin should be used.
413 <term>CacheSaver</term>
416 Saves the caches every 60 seconds (or user-defined period). It helps
417 avoiding the loss of metadata if your computer (<emphasis>or
418 Claws Mail!</emphasis>) crashes. (NOTE: using this plugin can slow
421 This plugin is not required anymore.
426 <term>GtkHtml2 Viewer</term>
429 Like Dillo, enables the viewing of HTML messages, but in a nicer way
431 More information: <ulink
432 url="http://www.claws-mail.org/plugin.php?plugin=gtkhtml2"
433 >www.claws-mail.org/plugin.php?plugin=gtkhtml2</ulink>
435 For displaying HTML messages or parts Fancy plugin should be used.
443 Assists in keeping the address book of a Windows CE device (Pocket
444 PC, iPAQ, Smartphone, etc.) in sync with Claws Mail' address book,
445 with respect to email addresses.
447 This plugin is not maintained anymore.
452 <term>Trayicon</term>
455 Places an icon in the system tray that indicates whether you have any
456 new mail. A tooltip also shows the current new, unread and total number
459 For this feature the system tray icon option of Notification plugin