6 1. What is Sylpheed Claws?
7 2. Switching between Sylpheed Claws and Sylpheed
8 * From Sylpheed to Sylpheed Claws
9 * From Sylpheed Claws to Sylpheed
10 3. Things Claws does different
11 * auto address replacement in summary view
12 * manual selection of MIME types for attachments
13 * sharing mail folders
14 * default to address for folders
15 * threading mode per folder
17 * spell checking (with installation instructions)
19 5. How to request features
24 1. What is Sylpheed Claws?
25 --------------------------
27 Sylpheed Claws is a bleeding edge branch of Sylpheed, a light weight mail
28 user agent for UNIX. Features in this branch may (or may not) end up in
31 Hiroyuki's ChangeLog is also included in the claws-branch distribution,
32 so it should be easy to spot which features were merged with Sylpheed
33 (and which features were not).
35 For brevity Sylpheed Claws is referred to as Claws, and Sylpheed as either
40 2. Switching between Sylpheed Claws and Sylpheed
41 ------------------------------------------------
43 From Sylpheed to Sylpheed Claws
44 -------------------------------
46 From the user perspective Claws is just a fancy Sylpheed, so it uses the
47 same sylpheed setting files located in ~/.sylpheed.
49 It's always a good idea to back up all files in ~/.sylpheed in case
50 you want to switch back to Sylpheed. (You don't have to backup the
53 There are some things that frequently come up when switching to Claws:
56 * Why does the advanced filtering system not work?
58 Claws uses the new filtering system as soon as you define a new rule for it.
59 Your old sylpheed filter rules will not be used. In subdirectory tools/ of
60 the distribution there is a Perl script called filter_conv.pl which convers
61 old filter rules to the claws filtering system.
64 * What happened to the compose email and compose news buttons?
66 There's a composite button for both composing mail and news. You can toggle
67 between composing mail and news by clicking on the button with the triangle.
70 * And to the Preferences and Execute buttons?
72 Sorry, they're not there.
75 From Sylpheed Claws to Sylpheed
76 -------------------------------
78 Moving from Claws to Sylpheed is also simple. Sylpheed should neglect the things
79 Claws put in the settings files. This also means that the old rules will work
82 If you want to switch back to Claws at a later time, make sure you back up at least
83 ~/.sylpheed/filteringrc (the Claws filtering rules), and ~/.sylpheed/sylpheedrc
84 (which may have some claws specific settings).
86 When switching back to Sylpheed you will not lose messages or message flags (color
87 labels, read / unread status of messages).
91 3. Things Claws does different
92 ------------------------------
94 Claws does a lot of things different. Here a quick run-down of things that
95 are hardly noticable, but deserve mentioning:
97 * auto address replacement in summary view
98 This matches a plain email address with a person in the address book. This
99 feature is enabled in Common Preferences | Tab Display | SummaryView Group |
100 Display sender using addressbook
102 * manual selection of MIME types for attachments
103 You can change the MIME type of an attachment by right-clicking in the
104 attachment list, selecting Property in the menu. The MIME type list
105 is a combo box with the known MIME types.
107 * sharing mail folders
108 You can also share or use shared mail folders. Right-click a folder and
109 select Property. Change the Folder chmod setting.
111 * default to address for folders
112 Most people filter mailing list mails to separate folders. Claws allows
113 you to associate a folder with a mailing list or a person. Right-click a
114 folder, select Property and change the Default To setting. When you
115 compose a new mail, when this folder is selected the recepient address
116 will be set to this address.
118 (NOTE: this is also a shoot-yourself-in-the-foot-setting! If you want
119 to send a private mail, don't have a folder selected with this setting
123 Quotation is wrapped like VIM would wrap it (at least that was the
124 goal). To enable this feature go to Common preferences->Compose and
125 make sure Wrap quotation is enabled. The text is automatically
126 wrapped when you reply to an e-mail if this feature is enabled.
128 * Spell checker for Sylpheed-Claws
131 b. Configuration and installation
138 The spell checker in sylpheed requires the Portable Spell Checker
139 Interface Library pspell (http://pspell.sourceforge.net), version
142 You will need also the actual spell checker. There are two alternatives:
144 i) ispell (http://fmg-www.cs.ucla.edu/fmg-members/geoff/ispell.html),
145 which is found on quasi every distribution. You have then to
146 install the pspell-ispell module found at the pspell site.
148 ii) aspell (http://aspell.sourceforge.net). This spell checker
149 must be installed after installing pspell. The version tested
150 is .33.7 alpha. It has three different suggestion modes (fast
151 -default- , normal, bad spellers), has the ability to learn
152 from mistakes (default).
154 And, last but not least, do not forget to install the dictionaries. Check
155 the corresponding spell checker home page for more information on this.
157 b. Configuring Sylpheed
158 -----------------------
160 Spell checking is enabled if you configure sylpheed appropriately. Add
161 the option '--enable-pspell' when configuring. E.g.:
163 ./configure --enable-pspell
165 The configure script needs 'pspell-config' in your path. If it is
166 in weird places, use '--with-pspell-prefix' to tell the path to
167 pspell-config. E.g., if pspell-config is really
168 /foo/bar/pspell-config, then use:
170 ./configure --enable-pspell --with-pspell-prefix=/foo/bar
172 If you have problems with not found includes or libraries, check
173 first where these are located, and add either options:
175 --with-pspell-includes=/foo/bar/include
179 --with-pspell-libs=/foo/bar/lib
183 Configure script summarizes the options compiled in. Check that
184 configure lists 'Pspell = yes'.
186 Then proceed as usual, with 'make' and 'make install'.
191 After successful compiling, you need to tell sylpheed where your
192 dictionaries reside. First run 'pspell-config pkgdatadir' on the
193 shell to get their path.
195 Then run sylpheed and go to Configuration -> Common preferences ->
196 Compose. Check the box 'Enable spell checker (EXPERIMENTAL)' and
197 use the file selector ('...' button) to select the path where the
198 dictionaries reside. Within the file selector, go to that directory
199 and select *any* file in the file lists. Click ok. You should then
200 be able to select your default dictionary.
202 When composing, misspelled words are highlighted. Click on any
203 highlighted word with the right mouse button to get a list of
204 suggestions. You can also accept the highlighted word to the
205 session dictionary (equivalent to an 'ignore' option of other spell
206 checker), or you can add it to you personal dictionary.
208 If you click with the right mouse button everywhere else, or if you
209 shift-right-click even on a misspelled word, you get the
210 configuration menu. 'Check all' highlights all misspelled words.
211 With this menu, you can also change the dictionary while editing.
212 You can change the suggestion mode and toggle the learn from
213 misktakes 'feature' (useful only with aspell).
220 The only real known problems until now are configuration and
221 compilation problems due to libtool interaction with pspell.
223 If you do not compile pspell/aspell/pspell-ispell yourself, you
224 need to install them with their devel packages.
226 Pspell work with dynamic linking of libraries and thus uses the
227 libltdl library of libtool. If you have weird problems when
228 configuring showing 'libtool', chances are the libtool used when
229 compiling the pspell package is not compatible with what you have
230 on your system. The best solution, is to install the latest
231 libtool AND compile yourself pspell package. I can't help more
232 than that in this issue.
234 After successfully compiled and used sylpheed with spell checking,
235 the same problem can appear if you upgrade your libtool to a
236 version which libltdl is incompatible to your older one. The
237 symptoms are a crash when starting to compose. Disabling spell
238 checking avoids the problem. The solution should be to recompile pspell.
240 ii) New installed ispell dictionary are not detected
242 Installing a new ispell dictionary needs an additional step. Go
243 to the 'pkgdatadir' and run 'make-ispell-pwli'. You may need to
247 There are a lot more options. If you find one, don't hesitate to
257 submit it to the Sylpheed ML, Hiroyuki, or Paul Mangan
258 (for incorporation on the Sylpheed Patches page)
262 It is highly recommended to use the sourceforge project page
264 http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=384600&group_id=25528&func=browse
266 If that's too troublesome, either contact Paul Mangan or consider
267 posting to the sylpheed claws users mailing list.
269 Bugs can be reported in the same way; the recommended web page:
270 http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=25528&atid=384598
272 Ofcourse you can also post to the sylpheed claws users
275 Also, we really try to incorporate good contributions, but sometimes we
276 don't have enough time. If the contribution is really big, or requires
277 a long time to stabilize, send a mail to Paul Mangan. We can probably
278 arrange access to the Claws branch.
282 5. How to request features
283 --------------------------
285 Ask around in both Sylpheed ML and Sylpheed Claws Users ML. Note
286 that some developers may already thought about your feature, may
287 perhaps be implementing it - or the feature was already discussed
288 and rejected for whatever reason. You might want to go ahead and
289 hack a patch for it. (That would be very cool!) Another
290 possibility is to use the Feature Request Tracker at the
291 sourceforge project page.