1 Claws Mail - a GTK+ based, lightweight, and fast e-mail client
3 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
5 Copyright (C) 1999-2018 The Claws Mail Team and Hiroyuki Yamamoto
9 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
10 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
11 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
12 (at your option) any later version.
14 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
15 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
16 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
17 GNU General Public License for more details.
19 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
20 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
22 For more details see the file COPYING.
24 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
28 1. What is Claws Mail?
34 7. Partial downloading of POP3 mails
38 11. How to request features
39 12. Installing Claws from Git
44 1. What is Claws Mail?
45 --------------------------
47 Claws Mail (previously known as Sylpheed-Claws) is a lightweight and
48 highly configurable email client and news reader based on the GTK+
49 GUI toolkit, it runs on the X Window System.
51 Claws Mail is free software distributed under the GNU GPL.
53 To run Claws Mail use 'claws-mail' on the command line.
55 When claws-mail is executed for the first time a configuration
56 'Wizard' will appear prompting you for the minimum information
57 necessary to create a new account.
63 Claws Mail' capabilities are extended by plugins. It comes with
64 the following plugins included, all of which are built automatically
65 if the required libraries are present.
67 Plugins are installed in $PREFIX/lib/claws-mail/plugins/
68 and have a suffix of '.so'
69 To load a plugin go to '/Configuration/Plugins' and click
70 the 'Load Plugin' button.
71 Select the plugin that you want and click 'OK'
73 All plugin preferences can be found under
74 '/Configuration/Preferences/Plugins/'.
77 Notifies of new mail via the mail LED available on some laptops. The
78 LED can be set to blinking or on states when new mail is received.
79 Appropriate kernel modules have to be loaded first for this plugin to
80 work. Laptops supported are from ACER (acerhk and acer_acpi modules),
81 ASUS (asus_laptop and asus_acpi), IBM (ibm_acpi), Lenovo (tm_smapi)
82 and Fujitsu (apanel) manufacturers.
85 Saves mail addresses typed in the 'To', 'Cc' or 'Bcc' fields of
86 outgoing messages to a designated folder in the address book.
87 Addresses are saved only if not already present in the address book.
90 Archives mail folders using libarchive library. Folders can be archived
91 with or without compression (ZIP, GZIP or BZIP2) and also in several
92 formats (TAR, SHAR, PAX or CPIO).
93 Libarchive is available from http://www.libarchive.org/.
96 Selectively removes attachments from messages. Messages are permanently
97 modified by using this feature, so be careful!
100 Warns the user of possibly forgotten attachments when some keywords
101 are found in the outgoing messages. False positives (being warned when
102 no attachment is realy needed) exist, but some configuration options
103 can help to reduce their probability.
106 Enables the scanning of incoming mail received from a POP,
107 IMAP, or LOCAL account using Bogofilter. It can optionally
108 delete mail identified as spam or save it to a designated folder.
109 Bogofilter is a pure Bayesian filter, therefore it has better
110 speed performance than SpamAssassin but might catch less spam.
111 Bogofilter is available from http://bogofilter.sourceforge.net/.
114 Checks all messages received from IMAP, POP or local accounts using
115 BSFilter, a bayesian spam filter program, which has to be installed
116 locally. Messages identified as spam can be deleted or saved to a
118 Bsfilter is available from http://sourceforge.jp/projects/bsfilter/.
121 Uses the Clam AntiVirus in daemon mode to scan received messages from
122 IMAP, POP or local accounts. Scanning is done through a socket to the
123 daemon, so it has to be previously configured to allow this.
124 Clam AntiVirus is available from http://www.clamav.net/.
127 Uses the Dillo browser (http://www.dillo.org) to render HTML mails
128 and HTML parts of multipart messages. Dillo is started with
129 special options to embed its window inside Claws Mail's message
130 view and to render the HTML safely. If required, remote content
131 can be also retrieved.
134 Renders HTML mails and HTML parts of multipart messages using the
135 GTK+ port of the WebKit library. External content is blocked by
136 default (including images) to avoid remote tracking, but can be
137 enabled either globally or just on the displayed message. The GTK+
138 WebKit is available from http://trac.webkit.org/wiki/WebKitGTK/.
141 Modifies downloaded messages and inserts special headers containing
142 some download information: UIDL, Claws Mail account name, POP server,
143 user ID and retrieval time. These headers can be used later for more
144 elaborate filtering or processing rules.
147 Includes your Gmail account contacts in the list generated for
148 Tab-address completion on compose window, using the GData library.
149 Gdata library is available from https://live.gnome.org/libgdata/.
152 Displays sender avatars from https://www.libravatar.org/, from own
153 sender's domain if enabled or even an automatically generated one.
156 Handles mailboxes in Mbox format using the libEtPan! library. Mbox
157 files can be added to the folder tree and used like regular mailboxes.
158 LibEtPan! is available from http://www.etpan.org/.
161 Manage sieve filters on a server using the ManageSieve protocol.
164 Writes a header summary to a log file for each mail received after
165 sorting. The file for the summary is ~/Mail/NewLog.
168 Provides various ways of notifying the user of new and unread email.
169 Current methods include: a banner, a popup window, a user command,
170 a message to a LCD daemon, a system tray icon and an indicator icon.
171 Sound notifications are also possible through libcanberra. Each method
172 can be customized in detail through the plugin preferences.
173 Indicator library is available from https://launchpad.net/libindicator/
174 and libcanberra from http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/libcanberra/.
177 Extends the filtering possibilities of Claws Mail. Provides a Perl 5
178 interface to Claws Mail's filtering mechanism, allowing the use of full
179 Perl power in email filters. A conversion script is provided to
180 translate user rules into perl rules suitable for this plugin.
181 Perl is available from http://www.perl.org/.
184 Displays Portable Document Format (PDF) and PostScript attachments
185 within the message view using Poppler. PostScript attachments are
186 converted to PDF on the fly by the 'gs' tool, which has to be installed
187 first. The 'gs' tool is available from http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/.
188 The Poppler library is available from http://poppler.freedesktop.org/.
191 Handles core PGP functions and is required by the PGP/Inline
192 and PGP/MIME plugins.
193 Uses GnuPG/GPGME, ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/gpgme/.
196 Handles inline PGP signed and/or encrypted mails. You can
197 decrypt mails, verify signatures or sign and encrypt your
198 own mails. Uses GnuPG/GPGME, ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/gpgme/.
201 Handles PGP/MIME signed and/or encrypted mails. You can
202 decrypt mails, verify signatures or sign and encrypt your
203 own mails. Uses GnuPG/GPGME, ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/gpgme/.
206 Provides Python scripting access to Claws Mail functions. A testing
207 console is also featured. Scripts can be saved to specific folders
208 for automatic loading on startup or being available as new menu items
209 under the '/Tools/Python scripts' menu.
210 Python is available from http://python.org/.
213 Creates mailboxes where newsfeeds in RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0 or Atom format
214 can be added. Each newsfeed will create a folder with the appropriate
215 entries, fetched from the web. You can read them, and delete or keep
219 Handles S/MIME signed and/or encrypted mails. You can decrypt mails,
220 verify signatures or sign and encrypt your own mails.
223 Scans incoming mail received from a POP, IMAP or LOCAL account using
224 SpamAssassin. It can optionally delete mail identified as spam or save
225 it to a designated folder.
226 SpamAssassin is available from http://spamassassin.apache.org/.
229 Reports spam messages to online spam harvesting sites. Sites suported
230 are http://www.signal-spam.fr/ and http://www.spamcop.net/. The Debian
231 mailing list spam nomination system is also supported.
234 Decodes attachments with 'application/ms-tnef' MIME type (also known
235 as "winmail.dat" files) in Claws Mail, using the ytnef library.
236 Decoded parts can be saved to files.
237 The ytnef library is available from http://ytnef.sourceforge.net/.
240 Displays vCalendar messages. Only the meeting subset of the vCalendar
241 format is currently supported, which includes planning, sendding and
242 receiving invitations and answering them. Public calendar (WebCal)
243 subscriptions, free/busy information export/import and reminding of
244 events is also supported.
247 Additonal plugins can be found here:
248 https://www.claws-mail.org/plugins.php
253 The "actions" feature is a convenient way for the user to launch external
254 commands to process a complete message file including headers and body or
255 just one of its parts. It allows also the use of an external command to
256 filter the whole text or just a selected part in the message window or in
257 the compose window. This is a generic tool that allows to do any uncommon
258 actions on the messages, and thus extends the possibilities of Claws Mail.
259 For example, Claws Mail does not include the rot13 cyphering algorithm
260 popular in some newsgroups. It does not support uuencoded messages. As
261 all these features can be handled by external programs, the actions
262 provide a convenient way to use them from the menu bar.
267 To create a new action, go to Configuration -> Actions.... The "Action
268 Creation" dialog offers to enter the Menu name that will trigger the
269 command. The created menu will be found in the Tools -> Actions submenu.
270 By inserting a slash / in the menu name, you create a submenu.
272 The command is entered in the Command line entry. Note that Claws Mail
273 stores every single email in a separate file. This allows to use the
274 following syntax for the command:
276 * %f denotes the file name of the selected message. If you selected more
277 than one, then the command will be launched for each message with
278 the appropriate file name
279 * %F denotes the list of the file names of the selected message. If only
280 one message is selected, this amounts to %f, but if more messages
281 are selected, then the command will be launched only once with the
282 list of the file names. (You can use both %f and %F in one command:
283 then the command will be launched for each selected message with
284 the name of this message and with the list of all selected
285 messages. I did not find a practical example for this.)
286 * %p denotes the current selected message part of a multipart message.
287 The part is decoded accordingly. If the message is not a multipart
288 message, it denotes the message body.
289 * Prepending >: this will allow you to send to the command's standard
290 input a text that you will enter in a dialog window.
291 * Prepending *: this will allow you to send to the command's standard
292 input a text that you will enter in a dialog window. But in
293 contrast to prepending >, the entered text is hidden (useful when
295 * Appending an ampersand &: this will run the command asynchronously.
296 That means "fire and forget". Claws Mail won't wait for the
297 command to finish, nor will it catch its output or its error
299 * Prepending the vertical bar | (pipe-in): this will send the current
300 displayed text or the current selected text from the message view
301 or the compose window to the command standard input. The command
302 will silently fail if more than one message is selected.
303 * Appending the vertical bar | (pipe-out): this will replace the current
304 displayed text or the current selected text from the message window
305 or the compose window by the command standard output. The command
306 will silently fail if more than one message is selected.
308 Note: It is not possible to use actions containing %f, %F or %p from the
311 When a command is run, and unless it is run asynchronously, Claws Mail
312 will be insensitive to any interaction and it will wait for the command to
313 finish. If the command takes too long (5 seconds), it will popup a dialog
314 window allowing to stop it. This dialog will also be displayed as soon as
315 the command has some output: error messages or even its standard output
316 when the command is not a "pipe-out" command. When multiple commands are
317 being run, they are run in parallel and each command output is separated
318 from the outputs of the others.
323 Here are some examples that are listed in the same syntax as used for
324 storing the actions list. You can copy and past the definition in your
325 ~/.claws-mail/actionsrc file (exit Claws Mail before). The syntax
326 is very simple: one line per action, each action contains the menu name
327 and the command line separated by a colon and a space ": "
329 Purpose: rot13 cyphering
330 Definition: Rot13: |tr a-zA-Z n-za-mN-ZA-M|
331 Details: This will apply the rot13 cyphering algorithm to the
332 (selected) text in the message/compose view.
334 Purpose: Decoding uuencoded messages
335 Definition: UUdeview: xdeview %F&
336 Details: xdeview comes with uudeview. If an encoded file is split in
337 multiple messages, just select them all and run the command.
339 Purpose: Display uuencoded image
340 Definition: Display uuencoded: uudec %f&
341 Details: Displays uuencoded files. The uudec[1] script can be found in
342 the 'tools' directory of the distribution package.
344 Purpose: Alter messages
345 Definition: Edit message: gvim -f %F
346 Details: Allows editing of any received message. Can be used to remove
347 unneeded message parts, etc.
349 Purpose: Pretty format
350 Definition: Par: |par 72Tbgjqw74bEe B=._A_a 72bg|
351 Details: par is a utility that can pretty format any text. It does a
352 very good job in indenting quoted messages, and justifying
353 text. Used when composing a message
356 Definition: Part/Dillo: dillo %p&
357 Details: Browse the selected message part in Dillo.
360 [1] The uudec script can be found in the 'tools' directory of the
361 distribution package. It needs uudecode and ImageMagick's display. The
362 latter can be replaced by any image viewer that can get input from
363 standard input. The script could also be modified to use temporary files
364 instead of standard input.
369 Claws has support for different icon sets. Several icon sets can be
370 downloaded from https://www.claws-mail.org/themes.php
371 You will need to create a directory called 'themes' in your config
372 directory, unpack them into this directory, and then use the interface
373 to select them, /Configuration/Preferences/Display/Themes
375 This interface can also be used to install new themes.
378 5. Quick Search with extended search
379 ------------------------------------
380 Quick Search, with its powerful Extended search function,
381 enables searching through folder's messages.
383 Extended Search allows one to define criteria that messages must
384 have in order to match and be displayed in the summary view pane.
385 Search types titled From, Subject and To are self explanatory.
386 Search type extended allows one to use Claws Mail's powerful
387 filtering engine to select messages. Examples:
388 from regexpcase "foo"
389 subject regexp "Bug" & to regexp "claws-mail"
391 Additionally, it is possible to use simpler yet equally
392 powerfull patterns for message selections. Mutt users will
393 immediately recognise most of the available patterns:
395 Pattern Parameter Selects
396 ----------------------------------------------------
398 ag # messages whose age is greater than #
399 al # messages whose age is lower than #
400 b S messages which contain S in the message body
401 B S messages which contain S in the whole message
402 c S messages carbon-copied to S
403 C S message is either to: or cc: to S
405 e S messages which contain S in the Sender field
406 E S true if execute "S" succeeds
407 f S messages originating from user S
409 h S messages which contain S in any header name or value
410 H S messages which contain S in the value of any header
411 i S messages which contain S in Message-Id header
412 I S messages which contain S in inreplyto header
413 k # messages which are marked with color #
415 n S messages which are in newsgroup S
418 r messages which have been replied to
420 s S messages which contain S in subject
421 se # messages whose score is equal to #
422 sg # messages whose score is greater than #
423 sl # messages whose score is lower than #
424 Se # messages whose size is equal to #
425 Sg # messages whose size is greater than #
426 Ss # messages whose size is smaller than #
427 t S messages which have been sent to S
428 tg S messages with tags containing S
429 tagged messages which are tagged
432 x S messages which contain S in References header
433 x "cmd args" messages returning 0 when passed to command
435 y S messages which contain S in X-Label header
437 & logical AND operator
438 | logical OR operator
439 ! or ~ logical NOT operator
440 % case sensitive search
442 all filtering expressions are allowed
445 S means regexp string
447 It is possible to use logical operators AND (&), OR (|) and
448 NOT (! or ~). Case sensitive search is achieved with %.
452 f "john beavis" messages from john beavis
453 %f "John Beavis" messages from John Beavis (case sensitive)
454 ~s foo messages which do not have foo in the subject
455 f foo & ~s bar messages from foo that do not have bar in thesubject
461 /Configuration/Preferences/Customize Toolbars lets you define the
462 toolbar you want. The configuration dialog enables you to set an icon,
463 an appropriate text, and map an action to it. Actions to choose
464 from are predefined. You can also have your "Claws Mail Actions"
465 (refer to "Actions" above) on your toolbar.
468 * Configuration->Actions
469 - add an entry "Dillo: dillo %p&"
470 * Configuration->Custom toolbar
471 - select Claws Mail Actions Feature
472 - select "Dillo: dillo %p&" from drop down list
473 - choose an icon and click ok
477 7. Partial downloading of POP3 mails
478 ------------------------------------
479 Messages over the configured size limit, (/[Account preferences]/
480 Receive/Message size limit), will be partially retrieved. These
481 messages will have a Notice View displayed (above the Message View),
482 informing of the partially retrieved state and the total size of the
483 message. The Notice View will also contain two buttons, 'Mark for
484 download' and 'Mark for deletion'. If the user clicks 'Mark for
485 download', the message will be downloaded in full at the next message
486 retrieval, (and the partial one deleted); if the user checks 'Mark for
487 deletion' it will be removed from the server after the normal delay
488 as specified in the POP3 account's 'Receive' preferences.
489 If a user moves a partially retrieved message to the Trash folder
490 it will be deleted on the server at the next retrieval after the
491 Trash folder has been emptied.
497 There's several options which are not widely used and were not
498 added to the configuration interface to avoid excesive bloat.
500 The complete and up to date list of hidden options can be found
501 on Hidden preferences section of Claws Mail Manual:
503 https://www.claws-mail.org/manual/claws-mail-manual.html#adv_hidden
508 Tools are small scripts which can help integrate Claws Mail with
509 other programs; perform format conversions between different kinds
510 of mailboxes, address books, etc.; be used in Claws Mail Actions for
511 a variety of purposes; or used in other programs to ease their
512 interoperability with Claws Mail.
514 You will find all the tools in the 'tools' directory and a detailed
515 description of the available scripts in 'tools/README.'
517 10. How to contribute
518 ---------------------
520 You are encourged to send patches via the Claws Mail bugzilla at
521 https://www.thewildbeast.co.uk/claws-mail/bugzilla/index.cgi
522 But please first read the patch guidelines here:
523 https://www.claws-mail.org/devel.php
525 If that's too troublesome, either contact Paul Mangan
526 <paul@claws-mail.org> or consider posting to the
527 Claws Mail-users mailing list.
528 https://www.claws-mail.org/MLs.php
530 Bugs can be reported with Claws' bugzilla at:
531 https://www.thewildbeast.co.uk/claws-mail/bugzilla/index.cgi
533 Of course, you can also post to the Claws Mail-users mailing list.
535 Also, we really try to incorporate good contributions, but sometimes we
536 don't have enough time. If the contribution is really big, or requires
537 a long time to stabilise, send a mail to Paul Mangan
538 <paul@claws-mail.org>. We can probably arrange access to the
539 Claws Mail Git repository.
543 11. How to request features
544 ---------------------------
546 Ask around in Claws Mail-users ML. Note that some developers may
547 have already thought about your feature and may, perhaps, be implementing
548 it, or the feature was already discussed and rejected for whatever reason.
549 You might want to go ahead and hack a patch for it. (That would be very
550 cool!) Another possibility is to add a request to our bugzilla, (severity:
552 https://www.thewildbeast.co.uk/claws-mail/bugzilla/index.cgi
555 12. Installing Claws Mail from Git
556 --------------------------------------
561 To download the latest Git, cd to the directory where you wish to download
562 to and type the following information:
564 git clone https://git.claws-mail.org/readonly/claws.git
566 Later, when you want to update your local repository, you'll just have to
567 go back to the 'claws' directory, and type:
574 To compile and install use the following commands:
576 ./autogen.sh [add configure options as required]
578 make install [as root]
580 You will need a full set of development tools installed to be able to run
581 autogen.sh. See also ac/README.
644 2006-12-04 2.6.1 [first release as Claws Mail]
685 2004-05-31 0.9.11claws
686 2004-03-08 0.9.10claws
687 2004-02-06 0.9.9claws
688 2003-12-19 0.9.8claws
689 2003-11-26 0.9.7claws
690 2003-10-02 0.9.6claws
691 2003-09-10 0.9.5claws
692 2003-08-04 0.9.4claws
693 2003-07-12 0.9.3claws
694 2003-05-24 0.9.0claws
695 2003-03-12 0.8.11claws
696 2003-02-12 0.8.10claws
697 2003-01-24 0.8.9claws
698 2002-12-26 0.8.8claws
699 2002-12-23 0.8.7claws
700 2002-11-25 0.8.6claws
701 2002-10-07 0.8.5claws
702 2002-09-22 0.8.3claws
703 2002-08-28 0.8.2claws
704 2002-07-30 0.8.1claws
705 2002-07-23 0.8.0claws
706 2002-06-15 0.7.8claws
707 2002-05-18 0.7.6claws
708 2002-04-28 0.7.5claws
709 2002-03-11 0.7.4claws
710 2002-02-19 0.7.2claws
711 2002-02-14 0.7.1claws
712 2002-01-14 0.7.0claws
713 2001-12-16 0.6.6claws
714 2001-10-16 0.6.5claws8
715 2001-09-30 0.6.2claws
716 2001-08-14 0.6.1claws
717 2001-07-13 0.5.1claws
718 2001-07-01 0.5.0claws3
719 2001-06-16 0.4.99claws
720 2001-05-29 0.4.99claws3
721 2001-05-11 0.4.67claws1
728 https://www.claws-mail.org/
730 https://www.claws-mail.org/faq/
732 https://www.claws-mail.org/releases.php
733 Release Announcement Feed
734 https://www.claws-mail.org/releases.rss
736 https://www.claws-mail.org/news.php
738 https://www.claws-mail.org/downloads.php
740 https://www.claws-mail.org/plugins.php
742 https://www.claws-mail.org/themes.php
744 https://www.claws-mail.org/MLs.php
745 Users Mailing List archive
746 https://lists.claws-mail.org/pipermail/users/index.html
747 Commits Announcement List archive
748 https://lists.claws-mail.org/pipermail/commits/index.html
749 Bug/Patch/Feature Request Tracker
750 https://www.thewildbeast.co.uk/claws-mail/bugzilla/index.cgi
751 Internationalisation Status
752 https://www.claws-mail.org/i18n.php
754 https://www.claws-mail.org/sponsors.php
756 https://planet.claws-mail.org/
757 Claws Mail for Windows homepage
758 https://www.claws-mail.org/win32/