Sylpheed FAQ (for version 0.4.65)
Sylpheed FAQ - General information
Q01 Are there FAQ's in other languages?
A. Yes, at the bottom of this page there are links to
several translations already, including french, italian
and japanese.
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
* Quick response
* Graceful, and sophisticated interface
* Easy configuration, intuitive operation
* Abundant features
Q03 Where can I get Sylpheed?
A. You can download it from http://sylpheed.good-day.net
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.
Q04 Who writes Sylpheed?
A. Hiroyuki Yamamoto
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.
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.
Q07 Why does the auto collection of mail not work?
A. Because it's not implemented yet. But since Sylpheed has
not yet reached version 1.0, you bet this will come.
Q08 Does Sylpheed have mail filtering?
A. Yes. You can find it in Configuration -> common
preferences -> filtering tab.
Q09 Can Sylpheed handle IMAP mail?
A. IMAP4 is still under construction. You can make a folder
in the mailbox tree that allows you at least to read
IMAP mail. Until IMAP4 is completely operational, the
best way to work is to use fetchmail to access your ISP's
IMAP server.
Q10 Can Sylpheed handle local unix mailboxes?
A. Yes.
Q11 Can Sylpheed handle IPv6?
A. Yes, IPv6 is fully supported in Sylpheed.
Q12 Does Sylpheed support encryption like GPG?
A. This is currently worked on, by the actual person who
created GPG.
Q13 How does Sylpheed check for MIME types?
A. Sylpheed uses the Mutt type of mime checking.
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).
Q15 Does Sylpheed have name completion in the address
fields?
A. Yes. When you search for a name that starts with "don",
type "don" (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 "don" will appear in the list (like
"don.giovanni@maffia.org").
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.
Q17 Why is Sylpheed so fast?
A. That's what it is designed for!
Q18 Where can I get the current patches for Sylpheed?
A. The Sylpheed Patch homepage:
http://www.teledix.net/sylpheed/
(Also see section on Installation on how to install a
patch)
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 http://sylpheed.good-day.net. 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 sylpheed@thewildbeast.co.uk
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.
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.
This is a long line
is wrapped.
Now you add one word in the first line:
This is a very long line
that
is wrapped
This would cause you a lot of manual reformatting to get
a presentable mail again.
Q22 Where can I find the latest FAQ on Sylpheed?
A. Go to http://nlpagan.net/sylpheedfaq.htm where the
english FAQ is maintained. There you can also find
links to the FAQ in other languages.
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.
Q24 Can I use procmail to sort my mails with the MH mail
handling?
A. Yes. Check man procmail for details.
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
Sylpheed FAQ - Installation and Configuration
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:
- Imlib or gdk-pixbuf (for built-in image view)
- libcompface (for X-Face)
- libjconv (for I18N)
- GPGME (for GnuPG)
- the equivalent of GTK+-devel and Xfree86-devel.
Otherwise ./configure will fail.
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 /Mail. You can change this to
anything you like as long as it is a valid directory
name.
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.
Q04 How many accounts can I set up in Sylpheed?
A. The number is unlimited. The limit is reached when
your computer stops responding.
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.
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.
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.
Q08 Can I create multiple levels of subfolders to store
mail?
A. Absolutely. This is no problem.
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).
Q10 How do I apply a patch after downloading it?
A. Copy patch to sylpheed directory
Apply the patch:
% patch -p0 < some.patch
Or, if it's gzipped:
% gzip -dc some.patch.gz | patch -p0
Run ./autogen.sh, remove the generated /config.cache
file (unless you want to install in prefix
/usr/local).
Run ./configure with the appropriate options and
then make.
(Text as found on the Sylpheed patches page.)
Sylpheed FAQ - Interface
Q01 How do I make Sylpheed display my language?
A. You have to set some environment variables such as
LANG,LC_CTYPE, LC_MESSAGES to your local language.
Usually LANG (or LC_ALL) is sufficient.
Q02 I don't like the default font. Can I change that?
A. Yes. In Configuration->common preferences under the
"Display" tab.
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.
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.: rxvt -e vi %s
Q05 How to change the font size in the Sylpheed
interface?
A. You can set the GTK+ font by ~/.gtkrc, or
~/.gtkrc.mine,
(which is included by ~/.gtkrc).
For example:
style "default"
{
font =
"-adobe-helvetica-medium-r-normal--12-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
"
}
widget_class "*" style "default"
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.
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.
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.
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.
Want to download the FAQ?
Here are some links to the Sylpheed FAQ in other languages:
SYLPHEED FAQ
in French courtesy of DINH V. Hoa
SYLPHEED FAQ in Japanese courtesy of WAKAI "SilverRain" Kazunao
SYLPHEED FAQ in Italian courtesy of Maurizio Codogno
SYLPHEED FAQ in German (HTML-Version)
or the german text-only version, both courtesy of Ralf Schiffers.
SYLPHEED FAQ in Greek courtesy of Theofilos Intzoglou.