Sylpheed FAQ <author>Paul Kater (paul@nlpagan.net) and Jens Oberender (j.obi@troja.net) <abstract> Sylpheed FAQ (for version 0.6.6) </abstract> <toc> This FAQ consists of the following sections: <sect> Sylpheed FAQ - General information <sect1> Q01 Are there FAQ's in other languages? A. Yes. Here are links to several translations: <itemize> <item>http://www.enseirb.fr/~dinh/sylpheed/sylpheed-FAQ-fr.html: SYLPHEED FAQ in French courtesy of DINH V. Hoa <item>http://silver.lacmhacarh.gr.jp/sylpheed/sylpheedfaq-ja.htm: SYLPHEED FAQ in Japanese courtesy of WAKAI "SilverRain" Kazunao <item>http://beatles.cselt.it/~mau/sylpheed/sylpheedfaq.html: SYLPHEED FAQ in Italian courtesy of Maurizio Codogno <item>http://www.synconet.de/privhome/rs/sylpheed_faq.html: SYLPHEED FAQ in German (HTML-Version) <item>http://www.synconet.de/privhome/rs/sylpheed_faq.txt: the german text-only version, both courtesy of Ralf Schiffers. <item>http://www.cs.uoi.gr/~csst9910/el_sylfaq.html: SYLPHEED FAQ in Greek courtesy of Theofilos Intzoglou. <item>http://sylpheed.republika.pl: SYLPHEED FAQ in Polish courtesy of Przemyslaw Sulek. <item>http://www.geocities.com/hackpando/sylpheedfaq.html: HTML version by Marcelo Ramos, also: <item>http://www.geocities.com/hackpando/sylpheedfaq.txt: Text version <item>http://www.aic.uniovi.es/mones/sylpheed/faq-es/ : Linked HTML, by Ricardo Mones Lastra, as well as <item>http://www.aic.uniovi.es/mones/sylpheed/faq-es.dvi: FAQ-es.dvi (Device independent) <item>http://www.aic.uniovi.es/mones/sylpheed/faq-es.ps: the spanish FAQ as a Postscript file. <item>http://linux.fisek.com.tr/dfisek/sylpheed-sss.html: A turkish FAQ for Sylpheed is available, thanks to the translating of Doruk Fisek. <item>http://hem.passagen.se/webplats/sylpheed-faq-se.html: Swedish FAQ, courtesy of Mattias Stergren </itemize> You can download this faq in text format from http://nlpagan.net/sylpheedfaq.tar.gz </sect1> <sect1> Q02 What is Sylpheed? A. Sylpheed is an e-mail client (& news reader) based on GTK+, running on the X Window System, and aiming for <itemize> <item>Quick response <item>Graceful, and sophisticated interface <item>Easy configuration, intuitive operation <item>Abundant features </itemize> </sect1> <sect1> Q03 Where can I get Sylpheed? A. You can download it from <tt>http://sylpheed.good-day.net</tt> There are links to download the tarball sources, and also links to sites where you can download RPM's (for Redhat and Mandrake), DEB packages for Debian, and installations for Solaris and FreeBSD. </sect1> <sect1> Q04 Who writes Sylpheed? A. Hiroyuki Yamamoto (<tt>hiro-y@kcn.ne.jp</tt>) </sect1> <sect1> Q05 What does the name Sylpheed mean? A. It means "light weight", like air. This comes from the name of the wind spirits, the Sylphs. </sect1> <sect1> Q06 How does Sylpheed store mails? A. Mails are stored in the MH mailfile format as used by MH and EMH. Maildir and mbox format are not (yet) supported, although it is possible to import an mbox file into a Sylpheed mailbox. </sect1> <sect1> Q07 Why does the auto collection of mail not work? A. Autocollection works since version 0.5.1. If you need it or want it, you should upgrade. </sect1> <sect1> Q08 Does Sylpheed have mail filtering? A. Yes. You can find it in Configuration -> filtering tab. Please note that filtering is not yet implemented for IMAP accounts. </sect1> <sect1> Q09 Can Sylpheed handle IMAP mail? A. Yes. As of version 0.4.99 IMAP is supported. </sect1> <sect1> Q10 Can Sylpheed handle local unix mailboxes? A. Yes. </sect1> <sect1> Q11 Can Sylpheed handle IPv6? A. Yes, IPv6 is fully supported in Sylpheed. </sect1> <sect1> Q12 Does Sylpheed support encryption like GPG? A. Yes. GPG is implemented and works fine. For activating it in Sylpheed, see Q14 in the Installation section. </sect1> <sect1> Q13 How does Sylpheed check for MIME types? A. Sylpheed uses the Mutt type of mime checking. </sect1> <sect1> Q14 Does Sylpheed allow me to write HTML styled messages? A. No. A discussion has gone around over this topic, and the outcome was that HTML mail is not wanted. If you really need to send HTML, you can of course attach a webpage to an e-mail. Several patches have been made to facilitate better HTML handling in Sylpheed. You can find these patches at the Sylpheed Patch Page (see further down in the document). </sect1> <sect1> Q15 Does Sylpheed have name completion in the address fields? A. Yes. When you search for a name that starts with "<tt>don</tt>", type "<tt>don</tt>" (without the quotes) and press the TAB key. This will show you the correct name (when only one "don" exists in your addressbook. Otherwise a dropdown list appears, which allows you to select the name you want. E.g. Donald Duck, Don Johnson. But also e-mail addresses starting with "<tt>don</tt>" will appear in the list (like "<tt>don.giovanni@maffia.org</tt>"). </sect1> <sect1> Q16 Fine, but when I hit the TAB key I get an error message. A. When you want to use name completion, make sure that there are names in your address book. If there are no names, even Sylpheed has a hard time completing something. </sect1> <sect1> Q17 Why is Sylpheed so fast? A. That's what it is designed for! </sect1> <sect1> Q18 Where can I get the current patches for Sylpheed? A. The Sylpheed Patch homepage: <tt>http://www.teledix.net/sylpheed/</tt> (Also see section on Installation on how to install a patch) </sect1> <sect1> Q19 How can I send in patches, report bugs, talk about Sylpheed with others? A. To talk to others, you should join the Sylpheed mailing list at <tt>http://sylpheed.good-day.net</tt>. Note that there is a japanese and an english list, so pick the right one! If you have made a patch that you want the world to know of, please get in touch with the manager of the Sylpheed Patch homepage, at <tt>sylpheed@thewildbeast.co.uk</tt> </sect1> <sect1> Q20 When I send mail, the Content-Type header says the mail is in US-ASCII, even when I specified ISO-8859-1? A. If ISO-8859-1 characters (>= 0x80) are not used in the message body, Sylpheed will automatically set the charset value in the Content-Type header as US-ASCII. </sect1> <sect1> Q21 Why does it look like word wrap is not working? A. Word wrapping is a bit peculiar perhaps. You can type lines as long as you like. By the time you send or queue a mail with long lines, Sylpheed will first wrap the lines to the line length you set up, and then the mail is queued. This is more convenient than you think. Once a line is wrapped (hard line breaks are inserted in the text) and you add something in a line there, the next line will move to a separate new line, leaving one or two words from the previous line "hanging there" alone. E.g. <verb> This is a long line is wrapped. </verb> Now you add one word in the first line: <verb> This is a very long line that is wrapped </verb> This would cause you a lot of manual reformatting to get a presentable mail again. </sect1> <sect1> Q22 Where can I find the latest FAQ on Sylpheed? A. Go to <tt>http://nlpagan.net/sylpheedfaq.htm</tt> where the english FAQ is available in english. There you can also find links to the FAQ in other languages. You can also go to http://www.sourceforge.net and check out the faq and manual from the sylpheeddoc project. Both documents are available in multiple languages there and usually contain the latest updates. </sect1> <sect1> Q23 Can I import a mbox into Sylpheed's MH mailfolders? A. Yes, just create/select the folder you want your mails in, and select "Import mbox file" in the File menu. </sect1> <sect1> Q24 Can I use procmail to sort my mails with the MH mail handling? A. Yes. Just make sure that you add /. to the end of a rule so procmail knows you are filtering into an MH mail folder. Example: <tt>0:</tt> <tt>* ^Subject:.*sylpheed</tt> <tt> sylpheedmail/.</tt> Check man procmail for details. </sect1> <sect1> Q25 When I upgrade Sylpheed, are there things I should be aware of? A. Yes! Upgrade to 0.4.50: you should reconfigure your newsgroup settings Upgrade to 0.4.63: you should set the URL string colors from the Configuration menu. Upgrade to 0.4.65: some menu items have been moved </sect1> <sect1> Q26 How can I quickly update the views in Sylpheed? A. Just press Alt-U or select "update" from the summary menu. </sect1> <sect1> Q27 Why can't I use gvim as external editor? A. If one wishes to use gvim as an external editor it's necessary to start it with the no-fork option -f, i.e. in the configuration dialog box you need to enter "gvim -f %s". If not the editor forks and open up a separate file and when one quits the editor the changes are lost and don't show up in the composer window. (Thanks, Ed Collins!) </sect1> </sect> <sect> Sylpheed FAQ - Installation and Configuration <sect1> Q01 What does it take to compile Sylpheed? A. Any POSIX compliant UNIX or similar OS eg. Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris GTK+ 1.2.6 or later A recent ANSI C compiler (gcc 2.7.2.3 should also work) Note: it is reported that Sun C will not compile Sylpheed. Optionally: <itemize> <item>Imlib or gdk-pixbuf (for built-in image view) <item>libcompface (for X-Face) <item>libjconv (for I18N) <item>GPGME (for GnuPG) <item>the equivalent of GTK+-devel and Xfree86-devel. </itemize> Otherwise ./configure will fail. </sect1> <sect1> Q02 How do I set up Sylpheed? A. When you run Sylpheed for the first time, it will ask you where you want to store your mailboxes. The default is <homedir>/Mail. You can change this to anything you like as long as it is a valid directory name. </sect1> <sect1> Q03 How do I set up an account? A. After loading Sylpheed for the first time, you can add an e-mail account by clicking the "Configuration" menu. Select the option "Create new account" and fill in the appropriate fields. </sect1> <sect1> Q04 How many accounts can I set up in Sylpheed? A. The number is unlimited. The limit is reached when your computer stops responding. </sect1> <sect1> Q05 Why does Sylpheed not delete my mails when I press "delete"? I set a filter, and Sylpheed does not filter. I moved a mail to a different mailbox and it did not move. A. You have to click the "execute" button. The other solution: in the configuration settings (common preferences -> interface tab) you have to check the "execute commands immediately" box. </sect1> <sect1> Q06 Can I set up special addresses/ports for my mailserver / newsserver? A. Yes, you can. In the configuration per account you can specify the exact port addresses you want to use. </sect1> <sect1> Q07 Does Sylpheed have options for threading messages? A. Yes. You can switch it on and off in the Summary Menu, just select "Thread View" or press Ctrl+T. </sect1> <sect1> Q08 Can I create multiple levels of subfolders to store mail? A. Absolutely. This is no problem. </sect1> <sect1> Q09 Why isn't Sylpheed sending my mail out? A. You need to create at least one account in order to send. (This is a wonderful gotcha on LAN installs with only a local mailbox feed). </sect1> <sect1> Q10 How do I apply a patch after downloading it? A. Copy patch to sylpheed directory Apply the patch: <tt>% patch -p0 < some.patch</tt> Or, if it's gzipped: <tt>% gzip -dc some.patch.gz | patch -p0</tt> Run <tt>./autogen.sh</tt>, remove the generated <tt>/config.cache</tt> file (unless you want to install in prefix <tt>/usr/local</tt>). Run <tt>./configure</tt> with the appropriate options and then <tt>make</tt>. (Text as found on the Sylpheed patches page.) </sect1> <sect1> Q11 How do I compile in support for compface pictures? A. You have to have a package called <tt>libcompface</tt> installed, so this is available for compiling into Sylpheed. </sect1> <sect1> Q12 How do I make my own compface image? A. The faces package contains a program called xbm2ikon script, which converts a 48x48 xbm to the format suitable for compface. Thanks to Jeff Dairiki, you can have a complete online course in this. Visit http://www.dairiki.org/xface/ for the details. </sect1> <sect1> Q13 How can I tell my browser/newsclient/other program to use Sylpheed as e-mail program? A. In the settings part of the program, write <tt>sylpheed --compose</tt> </sect1> <sect1>Q14 How do I enable GPG support in Sylpheed? A. When compiling Sylpheed, make sure you add <tt>--enable-gpgme</tt> in the ./configure command. When that completes successfully, there is a "privacy" section in the Common preferences. </sect1> <sect1>Q15 Mutt does not recognize Sylpheed's MH structure A. For this to work you need to use the "touch" command in every MH folder. "touch" the file .xmhcache and Mutt should do just fine. </sect1> <sect1>Q16 Viewing a GIF file within Sylpheed causes a segmentation fault. A. In case this happens, you can easily fix that by adding the following to /etc/mime.types: <tt>image/gif gif</tt> </sect1> </sect> <sect> Sylpheed FAQ - Interface <sect1> Q01 How do I make Sylpheed display my language? A. You have to set some environment variables such as <tt>LANG,LC_CTYPE, LC_MESSAGES</tt> to your local language. Usually <tt>LANG</tt> (or <tt>LC_ALL</tt>) is sufficient. </sect1> <sect1> Q02 I don't like the default font. Can I change that? A. Yes. In Configuration->common preferences under the "Display" tab. </sect1> <sect1> Q03 There are too many columns in the message list!! A. In Configuration->common preferences under the "Display" tab you can press the button "Set display item of summary". That pops up a screen with all the options you can show or leave out of the message list. </sect1> <sect1> Q04 Can I use a different editor to write my mails? A. You can. In Configuration->common preferences under the "Other" tab you can define your editor of choice. Remember, if you want to use a command line editor like vi or emacs, to write the name of the shell (term, term, rxvt) with the -e parameter in front of the editor. E.g.: <tt>rxvt -e vi %s</tt> </sect1> <sect1> Q05 How to change the font size in the Sylpheed interface? A. You can set the GTK+ font by <tt>~/.gtkrc</tt>, or <tt>~/.gtkrc.mine</tt>, (which is included by <tt>~/.gtkrc</tt>). For example: <tt>style "default" { font = "-adobe-helvetica-medium-r-normal--12-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1 " } widget_class "*" style "default"</tt> </sect1> <sect1> Q06 Sylpheed saves my outgoing mail (in Outbox). Can I make it stop doing that? A. In Configuration->common preferences there's a checkbox "Save sent message to outbox". Uncheck it, and it's solved. </sect1> <sect1> Q07 How can I change the key-bindings (hot-keys) in Sylpheed? A. That is very simple. Suppose you want to assign a shortcut key to a function, e.g. sending all mail out should start when you press Ctrl-Y. Click the Message' menu and move the mouse over "Send all messages". Now you press Ctrl-Y. Immediately the menu text is updated and the function is in place. Please note that a previous function that Ctrl-Y was assigned to, will no longer have a shortcut key. If you want to remove the key binding, do the same thing, but press the "delete" key on the menu-item. Then the key binding is removed. </sect1> <sect1> Q08 Can I close windows without the mouse? A. Of course!! Not all windows, but by pressing ESCape, you can close the addressbook, the window of viewing a mail-source (message->view source), the window of viewing the headers, and several others. Just give it a try and you will find all of them. </sect1> <sect1> Q09 Can I change the way the date is displayed in the message summary? A. As of 0.4.65 you can. The options are: %y = year in numbers %m = month in number %d = day in numbers %c = date/time for locale %A = full weekday name %a = short month name %B = full month name %b = short month name %H = hours in 24-clock %I = hours in 12-clock For more information go to the configuration menu, select Common preferences / Display and move the mouse cursor over the input box for the date display format. </sect1> <sect1> Q10 Why can't I see the compface pictures? A. You need to enable displaying of the header pane in the general preferences </sect1> <sect1> Q11 I still can't see the pictures. Why not? A. You may not have compiled in Compface support. See Q11 in the Installation/Configuration section. </sect1> <sect1> Q12 Why does the URL Launcher not launch my webbrowser? A. You need to double-click the url. </sect1> <sect1>Q13 Attachments with spaces in the name won't open! A. When you try to launch a helper application, like an image viewer, with an attachment that has spaces in the name, put quotes around the %s parameter. Example: gedit '%s' </sect1> </article>