<section id="account_basic">
<title>Basic preferences</title>
<para>
+ The first tab of the account preferences, <quote>Basic</quote>,
+ contains, as its name indicates, basic account data. In this tab you can
+ specify your name, email address, organization and basic connection
+ information. The name of the account is just the name Claws Mail
+ will use when referring to this account, for example, in the account
+ switcher at the lower right-hand corner of the main window. The server
+ information lets you specify the receiving protocol to use (which is
+ not modifiable for existing accounts), the server(s) used to receive or
+ send your emails (usually <literal>pop.isp.com</literal> and <literal
+ >smtp.isp.com</literal>) and your login on the receiving server.
</para>
- </section>
-
- <section id="account_prefs">
- <title>Preferences for writting</title>
<para>
+ In the <quote>Receive</quote> tab you are able to change the default
+ behaviour of Claws Mail. For example, leaving messages on the server
+ for a while, preventing downloading of mails that are too large, or
+ specifying whether you want the filtering rules to apply to this
+ account's mails. The <quote>Receive size limit</quote> is used to limit
+ the time spent downloading large emails. Whenever you receive a mail
+ larger than this limit, it will be partially downloaded and you will
+ later have the choice to either download it entirely or delete it from
+ the server. This choice will be presented to you while viewing the
+ email.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ The <quote>Send</quote> tab contains preferences for special headers
+ that you might want to add to your outgoing emails, like X-Face or Face
+ headers, and authentication information for sending emails. Most of the
+ time, your ISP allows its subscribers to send email via the SMTP server
+ without authenticating, but in some setups, you have to identify
+ yourself before sending. There are different possibilities for doing
+ that. The best one, when available, is SMTP AUTH. When not available,
+ you'll usually use POP-before-SMTP, which connects to the POP server,
+ (which is authenticated), disconnects, and sends the mail.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ The <quote>Compose</quote> tab holds options for changing the behaviour
+ of the Composition window when used with the account. You can specify a
+ signature to insert automatically, and set default Cc, Bcc or Reply-To
+ addresses.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ In the <quote>Privacy</quote> tab you can choose the default level of
+ paranoia for your account. You might want all outgoing emails to be
+ digitally signed and/or encrypted. Signing all outgoing emails, not only
+ important ones, will for example allow you to protect yourself from
+ faked mails sent on your behalf to coworkers. This can help solve
+ embarrassing situations.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ The <quote>SSL</quote> tab is also security related, although this time
+ its settings apply to the transport of your emails and not their
+ content. Basically, using SSL encrypts the connection between you and
+ the server, which prevents people from snooping on your connection and
+ being able to read your mails and your password. SSL should be used if
+ it is available.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ Finally, the <quote>Advanced</quote> tab allows you to specify ports and
+ domains if the defaults are not used. Normally you can leave these
+ empty. You can also specify folders for sent, queued, draft, and deleted
+ messages here.
</para>
</section>
<section id="account_types">
<title>Account types</title>
<para>
+ We saw earlier that once an account is created, you can't change its
+ type (protocol) anymore. This is because preferences for these different
+ types are not quite the same, most of the POP3 related options are
+ irrelevant for IMAP, for example.
+ </para>
+ <section id="pop3">
+ <title>POP3</title>
+ <para>
+ POP3 is one of the two most used protocols and is available at almost
+ every ISP on Earth. Its advantage is that it allows you to download
+ email to your computer, which means that accessing your mail will be
+ really fast once you have it on your hard disk. The disadvantage of POP3
+ is that it is more difficult to keep your mail synchronised on multiple
+ computers, (you'll have to keep the mail on the server for a few days),
+ and you won't be able to easily keep track of which mails you have read,
+ or which mails you have replied to, etc., when using another computer.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ Mail received from a POP3 account will be stored in an MH mailbox in the
+ folder tree.
+ </para>
+ </section>
+ <section id="imap">
+ <title>IMAP</title>
+ <para>
+ IMAP is the second most used protocol and its goal is to address the
+ shortcomings of POP3. When using IMAP your folder list and your emails
+ are all kept on a central server. This slows down navigation a little as
+ each mail is downloaded on demand, but when you use another computer, or
+ email client, your emails will be in the same state that you left them,
+ including their status (read, unread, replied, etc.).
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ When you create an IMAP account an IMAP mailbox is created for it in the
+ folder tree.
+ </para>
+ </section>
+ <section id="news">
+ <title>News</title>
+ <para>
+ News (NNTP) is the protocol for sending and receiving USENET articles.
+ Messages are held on a central server and downloaded on demand. They
+ cannot be deleted by the user.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ When you create a News account a News mailbox is created for it in the
+ folder tree.
+ </para>
+ </section>
+ <section id="local">
+ <title>Local</title>
+ <para>
+ The <quote>Local mbox file</quote> type of account can be used if you
+ run an SMTP server on your computer and/or want to receive your logs
+ easily.
</para>
+ <para>
+ Mail received from a Local account is stored in an MH mailbox in the
+ folder tree.
+ </para>
+ </section>
+ <section id="smtp_only">
+ <title>SMTP only</title>
+ <para>
+ The account type <quote>None, (SMTP only)</quote> is a special type of
+ account that won't retrieve any mail, but will allow you to create
+ different identities that can be used to send out emails with various
+ aliases, for example.
+ </para>
+ </section>
</section>
<section id="account_multiple">
<title>Multiple accounts</title>
<para>
+ You can easily create multiple accounts in Claws Mail. For POP
+ accounts, you can choose to store all email from your different accounts
+ in the same folder(s), using the Receive tab preference. IMAP and News
+ accounts each get their own mailbox in the folder tree.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ You can choose which accounts get checked for new mail when using the
+ <quote>Get All</quote> command (or "Get Mail" in the toolbar) by
+ checking the relevant box in the Receive tab of their preferences or
+ in the <quote>G</quote> column of your accounts list.
</para>
</section>
<section id="account_morefilt">
<title>More filtering</title>
<para>
+ By default filtering rules are global, but they can also be assigned to
+ a specific account. When fetching mail, any rules that are assigned to
+ a specific account will only be applied to mails that are retrieved from
+ that account.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ Mail from any account can be filtered into another account's folders,
+ for example, a mail received by POP3 could be filtered into an IMAP
+ account's folder, and vice-versa. This is either a useful feature or an
+ annoying one, depending on what you want to achieve. If you'd rather
+ avoid that, but still want to automatically sort your incoming mail, the
+ best thing to do is to disable Filtering on certain accounts, and use
+ Processing rules in the Inbox folders that you specified, as Processing
+ rules are automatically applied when entering a folder and can be
+ manually applied from a folder's context menu.
</para>
</section>
projects / claws.git / blobdiff