Sylpheed User's Manual <author>Paul Kater (paul@nlpagan.net) Nick Selby <abstract> Sylpheed User's Manual for Sylpheed-0.8.10 </abstract> <toc> Copyright (c) 2002 <it>The sylpheed documentation team</it>. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the <ref id="GNU Free Documentation License" name="section"> entitled "GNU Free Documentation License". The list of the members of <it>The sylpheed documentation team</it> is detailed in the <ref id="The Sylpheed documentation team" name="appendix">. <sect>What is Sylpheed? <figure loc="here"> <ph vspace="1cm"> <img src="snapshots/full_split.png"> </figure> <sect1>Introduction to Sylpheed. Sylpheed is a fast e-mail and news client. It will run on just about any Linux or Unix compliant system. Sylpheed is <itemize> <item>light on system resources <item>very fast <item>easy to learn and operate, due to its graceful and sophisticated interface <item>loaded with features </itemize> </sect1> <sect1>Interface Sylpheed's appearance and interface are familiar to users of other popular e-mail clients for Windows such as Outlook Express, Becky!, and Datula. The interface also emulates the mailers on Emacsen. Messages are managed by MH format, and Sylpheed can work with other MH format -based mailers (like Mew). You can also use fetchmail or/and procmail, and external programs for receiving (like inc or imget). </sect1> <sect1>Main features This list is not complete, but the most common features of Sylpheed are: <itemize> <item>Unlimited multiple account handling <item>Thread display <item>Filtering <item>MIME (attachments) <item>built-in image view <item>X-Face support <item>External editor support <item>Message queueing <item>Draft message function <item>Template <item>Line-wrapping <item>Clickable URI <item>XML-based addressbook <item>LDAP addressbook <item>Jpilot addressbook (for Palm types handhelds) <item>Newly arrived and unread message management <item>Multiple MH folder support <item>Mew/Wanderlust compatible key bindings <item>News reader function <item>Printing <item>UIDL support <item>APOP authentication <item>SMTP AUTH support <item>IPv6 support <item>GPG encryption and signature <item>Autoconf, automake support <item>Support of i18n of messages by gettext <item>Supports many locales, including UTF-8 (Unicode), when using libjconv <item>IMAP4 compliant </itemize> </sect1> <sect1>Methods for managing messages  There are several ways to manage messages. The best known is <tt>not at all.</tt> Many people receive an unmanageable amount of e-mail, which usually ends up in the INBOX folder, ignored and forgotten. If you are one of these people, you are constantly trying to locate that one important email you got 5 days ago in a inbox that contains more than 5000 messages. Locating one email out of very many unsorted messages is always a time-consuming and frustrating experience. Sylpheed helps this situation with its <tt>mailfolders and mailboxes.</tt>. Different mailboxes can store different kinds of mails. Suppose you are a member of a kiting club, and you get at least 30 e-mails per day from that club. You can create a separate kiting club mailbox, in which you can move any e-mail that comes from this club. You will always have all your kiting e-mails in one place. Tedious, you say, to move 30 mails a day to that box, when email comes in at random moments? It is certain that you will miss that very important email about transport to the kiting ground where you will have the contest of biggest and most beautiful kite! Well, for this situation there is also a solution- <tt>filters</tt>. Filters can automate the process of moving e-mails to new mailboxes. Further on in this manual you will also learn about setting up filters, so you do not have to manually move these kiting e-mails to the kiting club mailbox. <sect2>Okay, so what is the difference between a mailbox and a mailfolder? This is the same way you organize information on your harddisk. You create directories in which you put files or more directories. In Sylpheed, you can create mailboxes within mailboxes For example, you could create a mailbox (folder) that contains the mailboxes for all the different mailing lists to which you belong . A word of clarification- In Sylpheed, a maillbox is nothing more than a directory. In a directory you can create either a new directory or files. Sylpheed stores each e-mail in a separate file on disk. An example of how a mailbox tree could look is <figure loc="here"> <ph vspace="1cm"> <img src="snapshots/folder_tree.png"> </figure> As you can see, there is no real limit to the way you can set up your mailboxes. As long as you have diskspace available, you can create mailboxes and mailboxes within mailboxes. Of course, you should observe some common sense when you start creating mailboxes. It is not a good idea to keep all mail in one place but to create a maze of mailboxes is not a good idea either! </sect2> </sect1> <sect1>Features for the future This is a special chapter. As with all open source programs, many features can be requested by you, the user of Sylpheed. The best way to join in on the talks is to join one of the mailing lists on Sylpheed. For this, you can turn to the Information section of this manual and read up on how to join a mailing list. </sect1> </sect>