path: root/faq/en/sylpheed-faq.sgml

<!doctype linuxdoc system>
<article>
    <title>Sylpheed FAQ
    <author>Paul Kater (paul@nlpagan.net)
    and Jens Oberender (j.obi@troja.net)
    <abstract>
       Sylpheed FAQ (for version 0.6.4)
    </abstract>
<toc>
<p>
This FAQ consists of the following sections:
<sect>
Sylpheed FAQ - General information

<sect1>
Q01 Are there FAQ's in other languages?<p>
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?<p>
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?<p>
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?<p>
A. Hiroyuki Yamamoto (<tt>hiro-y@kcn.ne.jp</tt>)
</sect1>

<sect1>
Q05 What does the name Sylpheed mean?<p>
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?<p>
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?<p>
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?<p>
A. Yes. You can find it in Configuration -> filtering tab.<p>
 Please note that filtering is not yet implemented for IMAP accounts.
</sect1>

<sect1>
Q09 Can Sylpheed handle IMAP mail?<p>
A. Yes. As of version 0.4.99 IMAP is supported.
</sect1>

<sect1>
Q10 Can Sylpheed handle local unix mailboxes?<p>
A. Yes.
</sect1>

<sect1>
Q11 Can Sylpheed handle IPv6?<p>
A. Yes, IPv6 is fully supported in Sylpheed.
</sect1>

<sect1>
Q12 Does Sylpheed support encryption like GPG?<p>
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?<p>
A. Sylpheed uses the Mutt type of mime checking.
</sect1>

<sect1>
Q14 Does Sylpheed allow me to write HTML styled messages?<p>
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?<p>
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.<p>
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?<p>
A.   That's what it is designed for!
</sect1>

<sect1>
Q18  Where can I get the current patches for Sylpheed?<p>
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?<p>
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?<p>
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?<p>
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>
<p>
Now you add one word in the first line:
<verb>
     This is a very long line
     that
     is wrapped
</verb>
<p>
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?<p>
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.<p>
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?<p>
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?<p>
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:<p>
<tt>0:</tt><p>
<tt>* ^Subject:.*sylpheed</tt><p>
<tt>  sylpheedmail/.</tt><p>
Check man procmail for details.
</sect1>

<sect1>
Q25  When I upgrade Sylpheed, are there things I should be aware of?<p>
A.   Yes!<p>
Upgrade to 0.4.50: you should reconfigure your newsgroup settings<p>
Upgrade to 0.4.63: you should set the URL string colors from the Configuration menu.<p>
Upgrade to 0.4.65: some menu items have been moved
</sect1>

<sect1>
Q26  How can I quickly update the views in Sylpheed?<p>
A.   Just press Alt-U or select "update" from the summary menu.
</sect1>
</sect>

<sect>
Sylpheed FAQ - Installation and Configuration

<sect1>
Q01  What does it take to compile Sylpheed?<p>
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?<p>
A.   When you run Sylpheed for the first time, it will
ask you where you want to store your mailboxes. The
default is &lt;homedir&gt;/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?<p>
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?<p>
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.<p>
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?<p>
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?<p>
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?<p>
A.   Absolutely. This is no problem.
</sect1>

<sect1>
Q09  Why isn't Sylpheed sending my mail out?<p>
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?<p>
A.   Copy patch to sylpheed directory
     Apply the patch:
<p>
     <tt>&percnt; patch -p0 &lt; some.patch</tt>
<p>
     Or, if it's gzipped:
<p>
     <tt>&percnt; gzip -dc some.patch.gz &verbar; patch -p0</tt>
<p>
     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?<p>
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?<p>
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?<p>
A.  In the settings part of the program, write
       <tt>sylpheed --compose</tt>
</sect1>

<sect1>Q14 How do I enable GPG support in Sylpheed?<p>
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<p>
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.<p>
A. In case this happens, you can easily fix that by adding the following to /etc/mime.types:<p>
<tt>image/gif              gif</tt>
</sect1>
</sect>

<sect>
Sylpheed FAQ - Interface

<sect1>
Q01  How do I make Sylpheed display my language?<p>
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?<p>
A.   Yes. In Configuration->common preferences under the
     "Display" tab.
</sect1>

<sect1>
Q03  There are too many columns in the message list!!<p>
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?<p>
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 &percnt;s</tt>
</sect1>

<sect1>
Q05  How to change the font size in the Sylpheed interface?<p>
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?<p>
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?<p>
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?<p>
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?<p>
A.   As of 0.4.65 you can. The options are:
     &percnt;y = year in numbers     &percnt;m = month in number
     &percnt;d = day in numbers      &percnt;c = date/time for locale
     &percnt;A = full weekday name   &percnt;a = short month name
     &percnt;B = full month name     &percnt;b = short month name
     &percnt;H = hours in 24-clock   &percnt;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?<p>
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?<p>
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?<p>
A.   You need to double-click the url.
</sect1>
<sect1>Q13 Attachments with spaces in the name won't open!<p>
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>