path: root/README

	Sylpheed - lightweight and user-friendly e-mail client

   Copyright(C) 1999-2006 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.
It runs on X Window System, and Microsoft Windows.

Sylpheed is a free software distributed under the GNU GPL.

Sylpheed has the following features:

    * Simple, beautiful, and well-polished user interface
    * Comfortable operationality which is built in detail
    * Immediately available with minimal configuration
    * Lightweight operation
    * High reliability
    * Internationalization and Multilingualization support
    * High-level Japanese processing
    * Various protocols support
    * Powerful filtering and search
    * Junk mail control
    * Flexible cooperation with external commands

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

The messages are managed by MH format, and you'll 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 format messages. You can also utilize fetchmail or/and
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

Features

	o multiple accounts
	o powerful filtering
	o powerful search (query search, quick search, search folder)
	o Junk mail control
	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 X-Face display
	o user-defined headers
	o mark / color label
	o Mew/Wanderlust compatible key bind
	o multiple MH folder support
	o mbox importing / exporting
	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 offline mode
	o remote operation by command line
	o per-folder configuration
	o LDAP, vCard, and JPilot support
	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 encodings 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

(replace de_DE 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 on 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..." on 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 have to modify them in normal use). You must edit
~/.sylpheed-2.0/sylpheedrc by an editor when 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]
logwindow_line_limit		specify the limit of line numbers of log
				window
				0: unlimited  n (> 0): n lines [default: 1000]

Unlike 1.0.x, this version doesn't allow the direct modification of menu
shortcuts by default. You can use the follwing 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 before GNOME 2.8 or other environments
   Add (or create a new one) gtk-can-change-accels = 1 to ~/.gtkrc-2.0.

3. When Sylpheed is not running, directly edit ~/.sylpheed-2.0/menurc using
   editors.

Information
===========

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

	http://sylpheed.good-day.net/

There's also the manual of Sylpheed written by
Yoichi Imai <yoichi@silver-forest.com> on:

	http://y-imai.good-day.net/sylpheed/

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.good-day.net/sylpheed

a source tree named `sylpheed' 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>