Sylpheed - lightweight and user-friendly e-mail client

Copyright(C) 1999-2018 Hiroyuki Yamamoto hiro-y@kcn.ne.jp

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option)
any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation,
Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA

For more details see the file COPYING.

What's Sylpheed

Sylpheed is an e-mail client based on GTK+ GUI toolkit.
Sylpheed runs on Unix-like systems such as Linux, BSD and Mac OS X, or
Microsoft Windows (XP or later).

Sylpheed is a free software distributed under the GNU GPL (the library part
LibSylph is GNU LGPL).

Sylpheed has the following features:

* Simple, beautiful, and well-polished user interface
* Comfortable operationality which is built in detail
* Well-organized, easy-to-understand configuration
* Lightweight operation
* High reliability
* Internationalization and Multilingualization support
* High-level Japanese processing
* Various protocols support
* Multi-thread support
* Security feature (GnuPG, SSL/TLSv1)
* Powerful filtering and search
* Junk mail control
* Flexible cooperation with external commands
* Plug-in faculty

The appearance and interface are similar to some popular e-mail clients for
Windows, such as Outlook or Becky!. Many commands are accessible with
the keyboard like the Emacs-based mailers such as Mew and Wanderlust.
So you will be able to migrate to Sylpheed without much discomfort, even if
you are accustomed to other mailers.

The messages are managed by MH format, and you will be able to use it together
with another mailer based on MH format (like Mew). It has less possibility
of losing mails on failures since one file corresponds to one mail. You can
import or export mbox and eml format messages. You can also utilize fetchmail
and/or procmail, and external programs on receiving (like inc or imget).

Currently implemented major features

Supported protocols

o POP3
o IMAP4rev1
o SMTP
o NNTP
o SSL/TLSv1 (POP3, SMTP, IMAP4rev1, NNTP)
o IPv6
o SOCKS4/5

Features

o multiple accounts
o powerful filtering (POP3, IMAP4, local spool)
o powerful search (query search, quick search, search folder)
o Junk mail control
o plug-in faculty
o thread display
o display and transfer of attachments by MIME
o inline image display
o News reader
o SMTP AUTH support (PLAIN / LOGIN / CRAM-MD5)
o CRAM-MD5 authentication (SMTP AUTH / IMAP4rev1)
o APOP authentication (POP3)
o PGP signature / encryption (requires GPGME)
o spell checking (requires GtkSpell)
o SOCKS4/5 proxy support
o X-Face display
o user-defined headers
o mark / color label
o Mew/Wanderlust compatible key bind
o multiple MH folder support
o mbox and eml import / export
o action function to work with external commands
o external editor
o message queueing
o automatic mail checking
o draft message
o template
o line-wrapping
o autosave
o clickable URI
o address book
o newly arrived and unread message management
o printing
o POP3 remote mailbox
o offline mode
o tray icon (minimize to tray icon, new mail notification)
o customization of toolbar
o remote operation by command line
o per-folder configuration
o LDAP, vCard, and JPilot support in address book
o CSV, LDIF file import in address book
o auto-registration of recipient's addresses to address book
o auto-completion of addresses
o Drag & Drop
o autoconf, automake support
o internationalization of messages by gettext
o m17n (multilingualization) support

and more.

Installation

See INSTALL for installation instructions.

Usage

Preparation before running

If you are using a character encoding other than UTF-8 for filename,
you must set the following environmental variable (it will not work if
it is not specified):

(use locale-specific encoding)
% export G_FILENAME_ENCODING=@locale

or

(manually specifying encoding)
% export G_FILENAME_ENCODING=ISO-8859-1

If you want to display messages translated to your language,
you must specify some environmental variables related to locale.
For example:

% export LANG=de_DE.UTF-8

(replace de_DE.UTF-8 to the actual locale name)

If you don't want translated messages, set LC_MESSAGES to "C"
(and unset LC_ALL if specified).

How to run

Input `sylpheed' on a command line, or double-click the icon in a file
manager to execute.

Initial startup

When Sylpheed is executed for the first time, it automatically creates the
configuration files under ~/.sylpheed-2.0/, and asks you the location of
mailbox. The default is ~/Mail. If some files, which are non-MH format,
already exist on the directory, you will have to specify another location.

If ~/.sylpheed-2.0/ doesn't exist, but the previous version of configuration
exists in ~/.sylpheed/, migration will be made automatically after the
confirmation.

If the locale encoding is not UTF-8 and the environmental variable
G_FILENAME_ENCODING is not set, an alert dialog will be displayed.

Required settings

Initially, you have to create at least one account to send or receive
messages (you can read messages that already exist without creating
accounts). The configuration dialog will be shown by clicking
"Configuration -> Create new account..." in the menu, or "Account" on
the toolbar. Then, fill the required settings.

Refer to the manual supplied with this program for the general usage.

Hidden settings

You can configure most of the features in Sylpheed through the preferences
dialog, but there are a few parameters which don't have user interface
(you don't need to modify them in normal use). You must edit
~/.sylpheed-2.0/sylpheedrc by an editor while Sylpheed is not running.

allow_jisx0201_kana allow JIS X 0201 Kana (half-width kana) on
sending
0: off 1: on [default: 0]
translate_header translate headers such as 'From:', 'To:' and
'Subject:'
0: off 1: on [default: 1]
enable_rules_hint enable alternating row colors for summary view
0: off 1: on [default: 1]
bold_unread show unread messages using bold font in
summary view
0: off 1: on [default: 1]
textview_cursor_visible show cursor in the text view
0: off 1: on [default: 0]
mime_image_viewer specify the command to open attached image
files [default: none]
mime_audio_player specify the command to open attached audio
files [default: none]
mime_command specify the command to open MIME attachments
[default: none]
logwindow_line_limit specify the limit of line numbers of log
window
0: unlimited n (> 0): n lines [default: 1000]
mark_as_read_on_new_window only mark messages as read when they are
opened with new window
0: off 1: on [default: 0]

Unlike 1.0.x, this version doesn't allow direct modification of the menu
shortcuts by default. You can use the following methods to configure them:

1. Using GNOME 2.8 or later
   Run gconf-editor from 'Applications - System Tools - Configuration Editor'.
   Select 'desktop - gnome - interface' and check 'can-change-accels' in it.

2. Using GNOME before 2.8, or other environments
   Add gtk-can-change-accels = 1 to the file ~/.gtkrc-2.0 (or create a new
   one, if it doesn't exist).

3. When Sylpheed is not running, directly edit ~/.sylpheed-2.0/menurc with
   an editor.

Information

You can check the newest version and information about Sylpheed at:

http://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/

You can also download files from the SourceForce.JP project page:

http://sourceforge.jp/projects/sylpheed/

The bug tracking system of Sylpheed is:

http://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/redmine/projects/sylpheed

The Sylpheed documentation in English and several other languages can be
obtained from:

http://sylpheeddoc.sourceforge.net/

Feedback

Comments, ideas and (most of all) bug reports (and especially patches) are
very welcome.

Subversion

You can get the newest source code from the Subversion repository.

Move to an appropriate directory, and with the command:

svn checkout svn://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/sylpheed/trunk

a source tree named 'trunk' is created under the current directory.

The subdirectory of sylpheed is divided as following:

* trunk/     Main tree
* branches/  Miscellaneous experimental branches
* tags/      Release-tagged branches

To update to the newest source tree, run the command:

svn update

at the target directory.

--
Hiroyuki Yamamoto hiro-y@kcn.ne.jp