What is Sylpheed Claws? ---------------------- Sylpheed Claws is a bleeding edge branch of Sylpheed, a light weight mail user agent for UNIX. Features in this branch may (or may not) end up in Sylpheed. Hiroyuki's ChangeLog is also included in the claws-branch distribution, so it should be easy to spot which features were merged with Sylpheed (and which features were not). For brevity Sylpheed Claws is referred to as Claws, and Sylpheed as either Sylpheed or Main. Switching to Claws ------------------ From the user perspective Claws is just a fancy Sylpheed, so it uses the same sylpheed setting files located in ~/.sylpheed. It's always a good idea to back up all files in ~/.sylpheed in case you want to switch back to Sylpheed. (You don't have to backup the directories.) There are some things that frequently come up when switching to Claws: * When replying, the original sender's text is not quoted anymore. Claws has a different quote format handler. Add either %Q or %q to the quote format text. Also click the button "Description of symbols" for more quotation symbols. * Why does the advanced filtering system not work? Claws uses the new filtering system as soon as you define a new rule for it. Your old sylpheed filter rules will not be used. In subdirectory tools/ of the distribution there is a Perl script called filter_conv.pl which convers old filter rules to the claws filtering system. * What happened to the compose email and compose news buttons? There's a composite button for both composing mail and news. You can toggle between composing mail and news by clicking on the button with the triangle. * And to the Preferences and Execute buttons? Sorry, they're not there. Things Claws does different --------------------------- Claws does a lot of things different. Here a quick run-down of things that are hardly noticable, but deserve mentioning: * auto address replacement in summary view This matches a plain email address with a person in the address book. This feature is enabled in Common Preferences | Tab Display | SummaryView Group | Display sender using addressbook * manual selection of MIME types for attachments You can change the MIME type of an attachment by right-clicking in the attachment list, selecting Property in the menu. The MIME type list is a combo box with the known MIME types. * sharing mail folders You can also share or use shared mail folders. Right-click a folder and select Property. Change the Folder chmod setting. * default reply-to address for folders Most people filter mailing list mails to separate folders. Claws allows you to associate a folder with a mailing list. Right-click a folder, select Property and change the Default To setting. (NOTE: this is also a shoot-yourself-in-the-foot-setting! If you want to send a private mail, don't have a folder selected with this setting set.) * threading mode per folder Folders can have their own threading and sorting mode. Just select a folder, and set their threading and sorting mode. * spell checking Spell checking using pspell library (http://pspell.sourceforge.net) can can be compiled in. You must have dictionaries available. You can use aspell (http://aspell.sourceforge.net) or ispell dictionaries. For the former, you have to install aspell. For the latter, you have to install the pspell-ispell module (see pspell home page) in addition to ispell. Spell checking can then enabled in Configuration |Common Preferences | Compose. Use the file selector and select any file in the directory where the dictionaries (*.pwli) are. Do not simply enter the path in the text entry. You can select the default dictionary. When composing, use the right-button click. There are a lot more options. If you find one, don't hesitate to mention it. How to contribute ----------------- Write a patch, submit it to the Sylpheed ML, Sylpheed Claws Users ML, or bother any of the current Claws developers. There's no way to predict whether your patch will or will not end up in Claws or Main. Mostly they will. And if not, there's probably nothing wrong with your code - or maybe there is. Generally, adding a cool or useful thing to your patch will attract a lot of attention of other users or developers. How to request features ----------------------- Ask around in both Sylpheed ML and Sylpheed Claws Users ML. Note that some developers may already thought about your feature, may perhaps be implementing it - or the feature was already discussed and rejected for whatever reason. Don't complain, be patient. Or you might want to go ahead and hack a patch for it. That would be very cool! (c. How to contribute)