The Claws Mail User Manual
The Claws Mail Team
Copyright © 2006/2007 The Claws Mail Team.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction
1.1. What is Claws Mail?
1.2. What Claws Mail is not
1.3. Main features
1.4. History of Claws Mail
1.5. Useful URLs
2. Getting started with Claws Mail
2.1. The initial wizard
2.2. Getting mail
2.3. Reading your mail
2.4. Writing your first mail
2.5. Sending your first mail
3. Basic mail handling
3.1. Mail folders
3.2. Folder organisation
3.3. IMAP subscriptions
3.4. Filtering
3.5. Searching
4. Account customisation
4.1. Basic preferences
4.2. Account types
4.2.1. POP3
4.2.2. IMAP
4.2.3. News
4.2.4. Local
4.2.5. SMTP only
4.3. Multiple accounts
4.4. More filtering
5. Address book
5.1. Basic management
5.2. Exporting and importing addresses
5.3. Filtering messages using the address book
5.4. Advanced features
5.4.1. Using LDAP servers
5.4.2. Integration with jPilot
5.4.3. vCard support
6. Advanced features
6.1. Actions
6.2. Templates
6.3. Processing
6.4. Colour Labels
6.5. Mailing-List support
6.6. Plugins
6.7. Deploying Claws Mail
6.8. Hidden preferences
6.9. Autofaces
7. Extending Claws Mail
7.1. Provided plugins
7.2. More plugins
7.3. Network access from the plugins
A. The Claws Mail FAQ
A.1. What are the differences between Claws Mail and
Sylpheed?
A.2. Does Claws Mail allow me to write HTML styled
messages?
A.3. How can I submit patches, report bugs, and talk about
Claws Mail with others?
A.4. Does Claws Mail have an anti-spam feature?
A.5. Does Claws Mail support Return Receipts?
A.6. How can I make Claws Mail notify me when new mail
arrives?
A.7. Why are special characters (e.g. umlauts) not
displayed correctly?
A.8. Can I quote just a section of the original message
when replying?
A.9. Where can I find the answers to more FAQs about Claws
Mail?
B. Default keyboard shortcuts
B.1. Motivations and general conventions
B.2. Main window
B.3. Compose window
C. Acknowledgements
D. Glossary
E. Gnu General Public License
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1. Introduction
1.1. What is Claws Mail?
Claws Mail is an email client aiming at being fast, easy-to-use
and powerful. It is mostly desktop-independent, but tries to
integrate with your desktop as best as possible. The Claws Mail
developers try hard to keep it lightweight, so that it should
be usable on low-end computers without much memory or CPU
power.
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1.2. What Claws Mail is not
Claws Mail is not a full-featured Personal Information Manager
like Evolution or Outlook, although external plugins provide
these functionalities. Claws Mail will not let you write and
send HTML emails or other kind of annoyances, hence it may not
be the software you need in some business environments.
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1.3. Main features
Claws Mail sports almost everything a perfect email client
needs. Mail retrieval over POP3, IMAP4, local mbox, over SSL;
support for various authentication schemes. It has multiple
accounts and mailboxes, powerful filtering and search
functionality, import/export capabilities using a number of
formats, support for GnuPG (digital signatures and encryption).
It supports plugins, customisable toolbars, spell checking, a
number of guards to prevent any data loss, per-folder
preferences, and much more. A complete list of features can be
found at http://www.claws-mail.org/features.php.
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1.4. History of Claws Mail
Claws Mail has existed since April 2001. It was initially named
Sylpheed-Claws and changed its name to Claws Mail in November
2006. The primary goal of Sylpheed-Claws was to be a test-bed
for potential features of Sylpheed
(http://sylpheed.good-day.net/), so that new features could be
tested thoroughly without compromising Sylpheed's stability.
Sylpheed-Claws developers regularly synchronised their codebase
with Sylpheed's codebase, and Sylpheed's author, Hiroyuki
Yamamoto, took back the new features he liked once they were
stabilised.
Originally both Sylpheed and Claws Mail were based on GTK1. The
work on the GTK2 versions started in early 2003, and the first
modern (GTK2-based) Sylpheed-Claws was released in March 2005.
Since about this time, Sylpheed and Sylpheed-Claws' goals
started to diverge more, and Sylpheed-Claws became an entity of
its own. This is why its name is now Claws Mail.
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1.5. Useful URLs
Website: www.claws-mail.org
Latest News: http://www.claws-mail.org/news.php
Extra Plugins: http://www.claws-mail.org/plugins.php
Icon Themes: http://www.claws-mail.org/themes.php
Tools: http://www.claws-mail.org/tools.php
Mailing Lists: http://www.claws-mail.org/MLs.php
Bugtracker: http://www.thewildbeast.co.uk/claws-mail/bugzilla/
Project: http://sourceforge.net/projects/claws-mail/
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2. Getting started with Claws Mail
2.1. The initial wizard
The first time that you start Claws Mail, you will be asked a
few questions in order to set up an account. These questions
are easy to answer and grouped in several short pages.
First you will be asked to fill in your name, (usually guessed
from the operating system), your email address, and the name of
your organisation, (optional).
The following page will allow you to enter details of how to
retrieve your mail. The format of the page will be determined
by the "Server type":
POP3
If you choose POP3, you will need to enter the server
address, username, and password. The password is
optional, if you don't provide it here then you will be
prompted for it each time it is needed.
IMAP
If you choose IMAP, you will need to enter the server
address, username, password, and IMAP server directory.
The password is optional, if you don't provide it here
then you will be prompted for it each time it is needed.
The IMAP server directory is also optional, often it is
not needed and can be left empty.
Local mbox file
If you choose Local mbox file, you will need to enter
the location of your local mailbox spool file. This
location depends on your Operating System, but values
like /var/mail/username or /var/spool/mail/username are
common, where username is your system login.
On the next page you will enter the address of your SMTP
server, (sometimes referred to as "Outgoing server"). You will
also be asked whether to authenticate when sending mail; this
is often not the case if you're using an ISP to connect to
Internet, and often the case if you are configuring a
professional account.
If you chose either POP3 or Local mbox file, the next page will
ask you where you want to save your mail on disk. The default,
"Mail", is usually ok and will save your mails in a directory
called Mail in your home directory.
If Claws Mail is built with support for OpenSSL, you will next
see the "Security" page, here you will be able to choose to use
SSL encryption to send and receive your emails. Most ISPs do
not enable this, but many companies do; if you're unsure about
it, you can leave them unselected.
You can now click on the Save button, and start enjoying Claws
Mail.
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2.2. Getting mail
Retrieving your email can be done from the toolbar button named
"Get mail" or from the "Receive" submenu of the "Message" menu.
If you want Claws Mail to check your mail automatically at
regular intervals, you can ask it to do so from the "Mail
handling: Receiving" preference page which you'll find in the
"Configuration/Preferences..." menu. Just click the
"Automatically check new mail every [...] minute(s)" checkbox,
and set the interval to your liking.
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2.3. Reading your mail
Once you have retrieved your emails, the Inbox folder will
contain them. The total number of emails in a folder is shown
at the right of the folder's name, along with the number of
unread and new emails in it. To see them, click on the folder
row in the folder list, and the list of emails in that folder
will be displayed in the Message List pane. You can then select
an email using the mouse, or by using the Up and Down keys to
navigate through the list, and the Space bar to display and
scroll emails. You can use other keys to navigate through
emails, like P and N (previous and next).
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2.4. Writing your first mail
When clicking on the "Compose" button of the toolbar, a
composition window will open. This window contains different
fields which you should be able to recognise easily: if you
have multiple accounts, the From field can be used to select
which account you want to use for this email; the To field is
for recipient of the email. When you fill it in, a second To
field will appear, so that you can send the email to multiple
recipients. You can also change the To field to a Cc field or
other types of fields, by using its dropdown menu, or by typing
in the field that you require. After that, you will be able to
set the subject of your email, then type its body.
A little note about an email's subject: Claws Mail will ask you
for confirmation if you attempt to send an email with an empty
subject. This is because it can be annoying for the recipient
to receive emails without a subject, as it doesn't help in
handling email.
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2.5. Sending your first mail
When you have finished writing your first email, you can either
click the "Send" button to send your email immediately, or use
the "Send later" button to queue the message for later sending.
When using "Send", the composition window will close itself
when the mail has been sent; it will stay open if there is an
error. When using "Send later", the composition window will
immediately close, and your email will be stored in your Queue
folder. It will then be sent when you click the "Send" button
in the main window's toolbar.
The emails that you send are saved in the Sent folder of your
mailbox, so that you can recall what you wrote to whom, or use
an already sent email as a template to write another.
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3. Basic mail handling
3.1. Mail folders
If you receive a lot of emails, you will probably soon find
that your Inbox folder is growing to the point where you have a
hard time finding an email again, even if you received it just
a few days ago. This is why Claws Mail, like most good mail
clients, provides you with multiple possibilities in organising
your mails.
You can create as many folders and subfolders as you need. For
example, one folder for your family, one folder for friends,
folders for mailing-lists, archive folders for old mails that
you still want to have available, etc. To create a new folder,
simply right-click on its parent folder and choose "New
folder..." from the drop-down menu. If you want to create a
folder "Friends" inside your Inbox folder, for example, just
right-click on the Inbox folder, choose "New folder...", and
type in "Friends" in the dialogue that appears. Click the OK
button, and the new folder is created.
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3.2. Folder organisation
Now that you have created folders, you can manipulate them and
their contents using menu items or drag 'n' drop. Moving one
folder into another, for example, can be done by right-clicking
on the folder you want to move, choosing the "Move folder..."
menu item, and selecting the destination folder. This will move
the folder, with the mail it contains, to a subfolder of the
chosen folder. Alternatively, you can drag a folder to another
one by clicking on it, keeping the mouse pressed, moving the
mouse cursor over the destination folder and releasing the
button.
If you want to remove a folder and the mail it contains, simply
right-click on the folder and choose "Delete folder...". As
this is potentially harmful, (the mails in the folder will be
deleted and not recoverable), you will be asked for
confirmation.
In the same manner that you move a folder to another one, you
can move emails from one folder to another. The same method
applies for this: either drag 'n' drop emails to a folder, or
choose "Move..." after right-clicking on the mail. You can
select multiple emails by using the Control or Shift key while
clicking on them. You can also copy emails to another folder by
pressing the Control key when drag'n'dropping, or by choosing
"Copy..." from the email's contextual menu.
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3.3. IMAP subscriptions
The IMAP protocol allows one to store a list of subscribed
folders. Most mail user agents hide the unsubscribed folders
away from the GUI, and have a little window allowing to
subscribe to these unsubscribed folders. In Claws Mail,
subscriptions are respected by default, and only subscribed
folders will be displayed. If you want to see all your folders,
you can just uncheck "Show subscribed folders only" in the IMAP
mailbox' contextual menu or the account preferences. You'll be
able to subscribe and unsubscribe folders from this contextual
menu too. If the unsubscribed folders are hidden from the list,
you will have two ways to subscribe to a folder: either show
all folders, subscribe the ones you want, and hide unsubscribed
folders again; or, if you know the folder's name, use "Create
new folder" in its parent's contextual menu.
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3.4. Filtering
Once you have a nice folder hierarchy in place, you'll probably
want Claws Mail to sort your incoming emails automatically, in
order to avoid having to move messages manually each time they
arrive. For this you can use the Filtering feature.
You will find the filtering preferences via the "Configuration"
menu, "Filtering" item. From this dialogue you will be able to
define new rules, modify or delete existing rules, re-order the
rules, and enable/disable them. Filtering rules are defined by
five things: the enabled status, a name, an account name, a
condition, and an action. All disabled rules are simply
ignored. The "Name" entry is optional, it's there to help you
identify your rules. An account name can be chosen, which will
restrict the rule to mail retrieved from the named account
only, skipping it for mail retrieved from all other accounts.
The default value is "All", which means that the rule is global
and will be applied to all mail, reagrdless of the account from
which it was retireved, (see paragraph below). The condition
format is an expression defining what Claws Mail should look
for when filtering mail, for example: "to matchcase
claws-mail-users" is for messages sent to any address
containing "claws-mail-users". You can easily define conditions
by clicking the "Define..." button at the right of the field.
The last part of a filtering rule is the action, which
instructs Claws Mail what to do with mail matching the
condition we just defined. For example, "mark_as_read" marks
the mail as read as soon as it arrives in your inbox, or "move
#mh/Mailbox/inbox/Friends" moves the mail to your "Friends"
subfolder. Here, too, a "Define..." button is available to help
you define the action to take.
Filtering rules can be assigned to a single, specific account.
To do this select an account from the "Account" combo below the
"Name" entry. When you set a specific account the filtering
rule will only be applied to messages retrieved from the named
account. The default value is "All", which means that the rule
will be appied globally, to messages retrieved from any
account. When filtering messages manually, if there are any
per-account filtering rules defined, you will be asked what you
wish to do with those rules. Possible choices are to skip the
rules, or apply these rules regardless of the account to which
they belong, or use the rules for the currently selected
account. Caution: if you unset the "Show this message next
time" checkbox and click "Filter", on subsequent manual
filtering this choice will be applied without any confirmation.
Account specific rules are only available for filtering, (at
incorporation or manually), the feature is not available for
folder Processing or Pre/Post-Processing.
Once you have defined the rule, you can add it to the list of
rules with the "Add" button. Don't forget that the order of the
rules is important: if Claws Mail finds a rule suitable for an
email that either moves or deletes the email, it will stop
looking for further rules for that email. This is why, at the
right of the rules list, you will find four buttons allowing
the re-ordering of rules. The rules can also be reordered by
drag 'n' drop.
There is also a quick method of creating filtering rules based
on the selected message. After selecting a mail of the type you
want to filter, choose "Create filter rule..." from the "Tools"
menu, and choose a type from the submenu: "Automatically"
mainly helps for mailing-lists posts, "by From" creates a
filter based on the sender of the email, "by To" creates a
filter based on the recipient, and "by Subject" creates a
filter based on the subject. Each one of these types of
filtering has its advantages, it's up to you to find out what
would be the more practical. Usually, "by From" is nice to sort
out your regular contacts' mails, whereas "by To" is more
useful to sort mails sent to your different accounts.
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3.5. Searching
There are several methods for searching your emails.
One of them is relatively standard, and can be found in the
"Edit" menu, it's the "Search folder..." item. This will open a
window where you can specify one or more fields to search in:
From, To, Subject, and Body. After having specified your
criteria, click on the "Back" or "Forward" buttons to navigate
through the matching emails, or use "Find all" to select all
the matching emails at once. Be aware that searching for text
in the body of emails is much slower than searching in its
headers, because the body of emails isn't cached by Claws Mail.
"Extended Search" mode can be turned on by clicking the
relevant checkbox, thus allowing you to use match expressions
like those used in "Filtering" rules.
If you're looking at a large email and want to find a
particular part of it, you can use the "Find in current
message..." item of the "Edit" menu. This works like search in
a text document.
The final way of searching for emails is using "Quick Search",
which you can display or hide by cilicking the little
magnifying glass icon under the Message List. It is also
accessible from the "Quick Search" item of the "Edit" menu.
"Quick Search" is more powerful than the normal search as it
can search in standard headers (From, To, Subject) or in
"Extended" mode using just about any criteria you can think of.
When in "Extended" mode, the "Information" button is visible,
enabling you to see the search syntax. An "Edit" button is also
available which allows you to quickly create a rule. You can
also configure "Quick Search" to search recursively through
subfolders, whether it should reset itself when you change
folders, and whether to use Type-ahead search (this is a search
which results update dynamically if you pause in the typing).
When you hit Enter after having specified the search string,
the Message List will shrink to present you with only the
matching messages. If you set the search to be recursive, any
subfolder of the current one that has matching emails will
change its icon to a magnifying glass icon. This way, you can
search in your whole mailbox at once. If the search is in
Sticky mode, the filter will stay applied when you go to
another folder. This can be disturbing at first, as you can
forget about it, but is useful in some cases, for example if
you want to search in the body of emails and are not sure of
which folder contains the searched email: a recursive search on
the body of emails in a whole mailbox can be really slow.
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4. Account customisation
4.1. Basic preferences
The first tab of the account preferences, "Basic", contains, as
its name indicates, basic account data. In this tab you can
specify your name, email address, organization and basic
connection information. The name of the account is just the
name Claws Mail will use when referring to this account, for
example, in the account switcher at the lower right-hand corner
of the main window. The server information lets you specify the
receiving protocol to use (which is not modifiable for existing
accounts), the server(s) used to receive or send your emails
(usually pop.isp.com and smtp.isp.com) and your login on the
receiving server.
In the "Receive" tab you are able to change the default
behaviour of Claws Mail. For example, leaving messages on the
server for a while, preventing downloading of mails that are
too large, or specifying whether you want the filtering rules
to apply to this account's mails. The "Receive size limit" is
used to limit the time spent downloading large emails. Whenever
you receive a mail larger than this limit, it will be partially
downloaded and you will later have the choice to either
download it entirely or delete it from the server. This choice
will be presented to you while viewing the email.
The "Send" tab contains preferences for special headers that
you might want to add to your outgoing emails, like X-Face or
Face headers, and authentication information for sending
emails. Most of the time, your ISP allows its subscribers to
send email via the SMTP server without authenticating, but in
some setups, you have to identify yourself before sending.
There are different possibilities for doing that. The best one,
when available, is SMTP AUTH. When not available, you'll
usually use POP-before-SMTP, which connects to the POP server,
(which is authenticated), disconnects, and sends the mail.
The "Compose" tab holds options for changing the behaviour of
the Composition window when used with the account. You can
specify a signature to insert automatically, and set default
Cc, Bcc or Reply-To addresses.
In the "Privacy" tab you can choose the default level of
paranoia for your account. You might want all outgoing emails
to be digitally signed and/or encrypted. Signing all outgoing
emails, not only important ones, will for example allow you to
protect yourself from faked mails sent on your behalf to
coworkers. This can help solve embarrassing situations.
The "SSL" tab is also security related, although this time its
settings apply to the transport of your emails and not their
content. Basically, using SSL encrypts the connection between
you and the server, which prevents people from snooping on your
connection and being able to read your mails and your password.
SSL should be used if it is available.
Finally, the "Advanced" tab allows you to specify ports and
domains if the defaults are not used. Normally you can leave
these empty. You can also specify folders for sent, queued,
draft, and deleted messages here.
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4.2. Account types
We saw earlier that once an account is created, you can't
change its type (protocol) anymore. This is because preferences
for these different types are not quite the same, most of the
POP3 related options are irrelevant for IMAP, for example.
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4.2.1. POP3
POP3 is one of the two most used protocols and is available at
almost every ISP on Earth. Its advantage is that it allows you
to download email to your computer, which means that accessing
your mail will be really fast once you have it on your hard
disk. The disadvantage of POP3 is that it is more difficult to
keep your mail synchronised on multiple computers, (you'll have
to keep the mail on the server for a few days), and you won't
be able to easily keep track of which mails you have read, or
which mails you have replied to, etc., when using another
computer.
Mail received from a POP3 account will be stored in an MH
mailbox in the folder tree.
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4.2.2. IMAP
IMAP is the second most used protocol and its goal is to
address the shortcomings of POP3. When using IMAP your folder
list and your emails are all kept on a central server. This
slows down navigation a little as each mail is downloaded on
demand, but when you use another computer, or email client,
your emails will be in the same state that you left them,
including their status (read, unread, replied, etc.).
When you create an IMAP account an IMAP mailbox is created for
it in the folder tree.
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4.2.3. News
News (NNTP) is the protocol for sending and receiving USENET
articles. Messages are held on a central server and downloaded
on demand. They cannot be deleted by the user.
When you create a News account a News mailbox is created for it
in the folder tree.
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4.2.4. Local
The "Local mbox file" type of account can be used if you run an
SMTP server on your computer and/or want to receive your logs
easily.
Mail received from a Local account is stored in an MH mailbox
in the folder tree.
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4.2.5. SMTP only
The account type "None, (SMTP only)" is a special type of
account that won't retrieve any mail, but will allow you to
create different identities that can be used to send out emails
with various aliases, for example.
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4.3. Multiple accounts
You can easily create multiple accounts in Claws Mail. For POP
accounts, you can choose to store all email from your different
accounts in the same folder(s), using the Receive tab
preference. IMAP and News accounts each get their own mailbox
in the folder tree.
You can choose which accounts get checked for new mail when
using the "Get All" command (or "Get Mail" in the toolbar) by
checking the relevant box in the Receive tab of their
preferences or in the "G" column of your accounts list.
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4.4. More filtering
By default filtering rules are global, but they can also be
assigned to a specific account. When fetching mail, any rules
that are assigned to a specific account will only be applied to
mails that are retrieved from that account.
Mail from any account can be filtered into another account's
folders, for example, a mail received by POP3 could be filtered
into an IMAP account's folder, and vice-versa. This is either a
useful feature or an annoying one, depending on what you want
to achieve. If you'd rather avoid that, but still want to
automatically sort your incoming mail, the best thing to do is
to disable Filtering on certain accounts, and use Processing
rules in the Inbox folders that you specified, as Processing
rules are automatically applied when entering a folder and can
be manually applied from a folder's context menu.
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5. Address book
5.1. Basic management
The address book is accessible via the "Tools/Address book"
menu. It is arranged in different sections: the "Address Book"
and its subsections, which contain the contacts that you added
locally; the vCard sections, which contain imported vCards;
and, if support for them was built into Claws Mail, the LDAP
and jPilot sections, containing contacts from your LDAP servers
or handheld devices.
In the "Address Book" section, you can create multiple address
books; each one is able to contain addresses and/or folders.
This can help you in organising your contacts by category. In
addition to this, you can create groups of addresses, which can
be used from the composition window to send mails to multiple
people at once. The menus in the address book window allow you
to do all of this. For example, you can create a Family folder
inside your "Personal Addresses" address book, using the
"Book/New folder" menu when "Personal Addresses" is selected,
or by right-clicking on it. In the same way, you can add
contacts to an address book or folder by using the "Address"
menu, or by right-clicking an item in the list in the
right-hand part of the window. When adding a contact, a new
window will appear, where you'll be able to specify the details
of the contact in the first tab (Display Name, First Name,
...), and a list of email addresses in the second tab.
A simpler way to save your contacts to your address book is to
save them when reading one of their emails, using the
"Tools/Add sender to address book" menu, or by right-clicking
on an email address in the message view.
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5.2. Exporting and importing addresses
Claws Mail can import address books easily from the majority of
email programs. From the "Tools" menu in the address book, you
will be able to import Pine or Mutt address books. As these
formats are not so widespread, you can also import LDIF files.
LDIF is a widely-used format, so most other email programs can
export their address book to this format. Importing an LDIF
file is done via "Tools/Import LDIF file" and is a three-step
operation: select the file to import and an address book name,
check the fields you want to import if the defaults do not
please you, then use the "Save" button.
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5.3. Filtering messages using the address book
It is possible to filter messages by matching addresses found
in headers against the address book, use for this the match
type "Found in addressbook" when defining the condition
expression of a filtering rule. You have to select the address
header to match against a part of the address book. The address
header can be To, From, Cc, Reply-to and Sender (if at least
one address in that header matches, the rule will be applied).
Some special items allow to match at least one address found in
"Any" address header, or to match "All" addresses found in all
address headers. Click the "Select..." button to choose the
address book part to search in (either a book or a sub-folder),
or select "Any" to search in the whole address book.
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5.4. Advanced features
5.4.1. Using LDAP servers
LDAP servers are used to share address books across networks.
They are often available in companies. Enabling an LDAP server
in Claws Mail is quite straight forward. Choose "Book/New LDAP
server" in the "Book" menu, then choose a name for this LDAP
server. Enter the hostname of the server (e.g.
"ldap.claws-mail.org"), its port, if necessary (the standard
port is 389). You can then either fill in the "Search Base"
yourself if you know what to use, or click on "Check Server" to
have Claws Mail attempt to guess it automatically. If your
server requires authentication, you can set it in the
"Extended" tab. When you close this window by clicking "Ok",
the server appears in the address book's sources list on the
left-hand side. When selecting the server, you will see an
empty list of contacts at the right, which can be surprising at
first. This is to avoid doing full searches on the server
without you explicitly asking for it. You can now search for
names using the "Lookup" form at the bottom of this list. If
you want a full listing, just search for "*".
__________________________________________________________
5.4.2. Integration with jPilot
Claws Mail can use addresses stored on your handheld device.
__________________________________________________________
5.4.3. vCard support
Claws Mail can import vCards of your contacts by using
"Book/New vCard".
__________________________________________________________
6. Advanced features
6.1. Actions
Actions allow you to use all the power of the Unix command-line
with your emails. You can define various commands, taking
parameters such as the current email file, a list of emails,
the currently selected text, and so on. In this way, you'll be
able to perform various tasks such as editing a raw mail in
your text editor, hide what you mean using ROT-13, apply
patches contained in emails directly, and so on. The only limit
is your imagination. You can create and configure Actions via
the "/Configuration/Actions..." menu.
The "Tools/Actions/" menu will contain one submenu item for
each action that you have created. When you have selected one
or more messages in the Message List, or are viewing a message
in the Message View, selecting one of these menu items will
invoke the action, and, depending on how it was defined, will
pass the message(s) to it.
Additionally, it is possible to add toolbar entries for your
actions. To do so, open the "Configuration/Preferences" menu
and select "Toolbars/Main Window". Select "User Action" in the
"Item type" dropdown menu, then select the Action in the "Event
executed on click" dropdown menu, and click the "Icon" button
to select the icon that you want to use.
Example 1. Simple "Open With..."
Menu name: Open with/kate Command Line: kate %p
Opens the file of the selected decoded MIME part (%p)
with the kate text editor.
Example 2. Spam management using Bogofilter
Menu name: Bogofilter/Mark as Ham Command Line: bogofilter -n
-v -B "%f"
Marks the currently selected mails (%f) as "not spam"
using Bogofilter.
Menu name: Bogofilter/Mark as Spam Command Line: bogofilter -s
-v -B "%f"
Marks the currently selected mails (%f) as "spam" using
Bogofilter.
Example 3. Search Google using an external script
Menu name: Search/Google Command Line:
|/path/to/google_search.pl
Searches Google for the currently selected text (|)
using the external script google_search.pl.
__________________________________________________________
6.2. Templates
Templates are used in composition windows, and act as a model
for emails. Templates can be filled with static text and
dynamic parts, such as the original sender's name ("Dear %N,
..."), the date, etc. When applying a template, the dynamic
fields will be replaced with the relevant values. You can
configure templates via the "Tools" menu.
When applying a template, you will be asked to "Insert" or
"Replace", the difference between replacing and inserting is
only concerned with the message body. "Replace" will replace
the current composition window message body with the body
defined in the template, clearing it if the template body is
empty. "Insert" will insert the template's body, if set, at the
current cursor position.
Whether you choose to Insert or Replace, any To, Cc or Bcc
field that is defined in the template will be appended to the
compose window's recipients list. If it is defined, the
template's Subject will always replace the compose window's
Subject.
Symbols can be used in all parts of the templates and will be
substituted with their respective dynamic value if possible,
otherwise no value will be used. This often makes more sense if
you apply a template when replying or forwarding, otherwise
most of the symbols value will be undefined. There is no
restriction on which symbols can be used in template parts,
even if inserting the body (%M or %Q) may make no sense in
common situations.
When applying a template, the body is processed first, then the
To, Cc, Bcc and Subject fields follow.
Further information and examples of usage can be found in the
user-contributed FAQ on the Claws Mail website
http://www.claws-mail.org/faq/.
__________________________________________________________
6.3. Processing
Processing rules are the same as Filtering rules, except that
they are applied when entering a folder or when manually
applied from a folder's context menu and apply only to this
folder. You can use them to automatically move old mails into
an archive folder, or for further dispatching of emails, and
more. You can set each folder's Processing rules by
right-clicking on it.
Processing rules are accompanied by Pre-processing and
Post-processing rules. Like Processing rules, they apply when
opening a folder or manually applying them from a folder's
context menu, but like Filtering rules, they are shared across
all folders. You can configure them from the "Tools" menu.
Pre-processing rules are executed before the folder's specific
Processing rules, while Post-processing rules are executed
afterwards.
__________________________________________________________
6.4. Colour Labels
Colour labels can be used to denote a message as having a
particular significance. To set a colour label simply
right-click a message in the Message List and use the "Color
label" submenu.
Colour labels are user-configurable. Both the colour and the
label can be set by the user. Preferences can be found on the
"Configuration/Preferences/Display/Colors" page.
__________________________________________________________
6.5. Mailing-List support
Claws Mail offers mailing-list support from the
"Message/Mailing-List/" submenu. When you have a mailing-list
message selected, the submenu allows you to quickly initiate
subscribing, unsubscribing, posting, getting help, contacting
the list owner, and viewing the list archive; either by opening
a new Compose window with the appropriate address pre-filled,
or by opening the URL in your web browser.
__________________________________________________________
6.6. Plugins
Plugins are the mechanism for extending Claws Mail'
capabilities. For example, imagine that you want to store your
mails in a remote SQL database. In most mailers out there this
is simply impossible without reworking the internals of the
mailer. With Claws Mail you can simply write a plugin to
achieve the task.
This is just an example of the possibilities. A good number of
plugins developed for Claws Mail already exist, and more are to
come. The Extending Claws Mail section gives details of them.
__________________________________________________________
6.7. Deploying Claws Mail
The initial configuration wizard tries to guess various fields
using information gathered from the system, such as username,
hostname, and more. As it is oriented towards general use, the
default values often have to be fixed. However, this wizard is
customisable, in a manner designed to allow system
administrators to deploy Claws Mail easily over various users
of one machine, or even over multiple machines installed via
some replication tool.
The first part consists of creating a wizard configuration
template and setting the various default parameters of a new
Claws Mail installation.
* Start with a user who does not have a ~/.claws-mail
directory, ideally a new user.
* Start Claws Mail and go through the wizard. The values you
fill in will be of no use for the future deployment, so you
can click next-next-next.
* Once the wizard is finished and you have Claws Mail' main
window opened, configure the various defaults you want to
have in the master. You can load plugins, add people or
LDAP servers in the addressbook, create filtering rules,
and so on.
* If needed, and if the deployed Claws Mail will use MH
folders, you can create subdirectories in the mailbox.
* Next, quit Claws Mail.
* Now, edit the newly created wizard template file,
~/.claws-mail/accountrc.tmpl. In this file, you will see
different variables, corresponding to the wizard's fields.
You can leave some commented, in which case the usual
default will be used, or specify values or variables. Not
all fields can contain variables; for example, smtpauth,
smtpssl and recvssl are booleans, either 0 or 1, and
recvtype is an integer value. The other fields, like name,
email, or recvuser, are parsed by the wizard and the
variables they contain are replaced by values. This allows
you to specify everything as needed for your site, even if
you have strange server names or server logins.
* Save this file, and delete both ~/.claws-mail/accountrc,
(which contains your dummy account) and
~/.claws-mail/folderlist.xml, (so that the folder tree will
be correctly parsed for new users). Recursively copy
.claws-mail to /etc/skel/; if the deployed Claws Mail will
use MH folders, also copy the created Mail directory. chown
all of /etc/skel/.claws-mail and /etc/skel/Mail to
root:root for security reasons.
* Test! Create a new user, login as that user, run Claws
Mail. If you filled everything as you wanted, this user
will just have to fill in his passwords.
* Now, if you're creating a master for a site-wide
deployment, you can continue with this process. If you were
just doing it for one machine, you're done!
Here are the different variables of the accountrc.tmpl file:
domain
Your domain name (example.com). If not set, it'll be
extracted from the hostname.
name
The user's name. If not set, it'll be extracted from
Unix login information, which is usually ok.
email
The user's email. If not set, it'll be extracted from
$name and $domain.
organization
Your organization. If not set, it'll be empty.
smtpserver
The SMTP server to use. If not set, it'll be
smtp.$domain.
smtpauth
0 or 1. Whether to authenticate on the SMTP server. If
not set, it'll be 0.
smtpuser
The login on the SMTP server. If not set, it'll be empty
(same login as for reception will be used).
smtppass
The password on the SMTP server. If not set, it'll be
empty (if smtppass is empty but smtpuser is not, the
user will be asked for the password).
recvtype
The type of server to receive from. 0 for POP3, 3 for
IMAP4, 5 for a local MBOX file. If not set, it'll be 0
(POP3).
recvserver
The reception server. If not set, it'll be
(pop|imap).$domain, depending on $recvtype.
recvuser
The login on the reception server. If not set, it'll be
extracted from the Unix login information.
recvpass
The password on the reception server. If not set, it'll
be empty (the user will be asked for it once per
session).
imapdir
The IMAP subdirectory. If not set, it'll be empty, which
is often sufficient.
mboxfile
The MBOX file to receive from if $recvtype is 5. If not
set, /var/mail/$LOGIN.
mailbox
The MH mailbox to store mail in (for $recvtype 0 or 5).
If not set, it'll be "Mail".
smtpssl
0 or 1. Whether to use SSL for sending mail. If not set,
it'll be 0.
recvssl
0 or 1. Whether to use SSL for receiving mail. If not
set, it'll be 0.
Here are the different variables you can use in the domain,
name, email, organization, smtpserver, smtpuser, smtppass,
recvserver, recvuser, recvpass, imapdir, mboxfile and mailbox
fields:
$DEFAULTDOMAIN
The domain name as extracted from Unix hostname
information. Often wrong.
$DOMAIN
The domain name as set in the domain variable, the first
of the template file.
$USERNAME
The user's real name.
$LOGIN
The user's Unix login.
$NAME_MAIL
The user's real name as set in the name variable of the
template field, in lowercase and with spaces replaced by
dots. "Colin Leroy" becomes "colin.leroy".
$EMAIL
The email address as set in the email variable of the
template field.
Be sure not to use a variable before defining it.
__________________________________________________________
6.8. Hidden preferences
There are a number of hidden preferences in Claws Mail,
preferences that some users who we wanted to please couldn't
live without, but which did not have a place in the GUI in our
opinion. You can find the following, and change them while
Claws Mail is not running, in ~/.claws-mail/clawsrc.
There's a small tool written in Perl-GTK called Clawsker which
provides a user-friendly GUI for tweaking these settings
instead of direct editing of clawsrc. You can read more about
it on the Clawsker page.
addressbook_use_editaddress_dialog
Use a separate dialogue to edit a person's details. '0'
will use a form embedded in the addressbook's main
window.
bold_unread
Show unread messages in the Message List using a bold
font.
cache_max_mem_usage
The maximum amount of memory to use to cache messages,
in kB.
cache_min_keep_time
The minimum time in minutes to keep a cache in memory.
Caches more recent than this time will not be freed,
even if the memory usage is too high.
compose_no_markup
Don't use bold and italic text in Compose dialogue's
account selector.
emphasis_color
The colour used for the X-Mailer line when its value is
Claws Mail.
enable_dotted_lines
Use the old dotted line look in the main window
GtkTreeView components, (Folder List and Message List),
instead of the modern lineless look.
enable_hscrollbar
Enable the horizontal scrollbar in the Message List.
enable_swap_from
Display the sender's email address in the To column of
the Sent folder instead of the recipient's.
folderview_vscrollbar_policy
Specify the policy of vertical scrollbar of Folder List.
'0' is always shown, '1' is automatic, '2' is always
hidden.
hover_timeout
Time in milliseconds that will cause a folder tree to
expand when the mouse cursor is held over it during drag
'n' drop.
live_dangerously
Don't ask for confirmation before definitive deletion of
emails.
log_error_color, log_in_color, log_msg_color, log_out_color,
log_warn_color, log_status_ok_color,
log_status_nok_color, log_status_skip_color
The colours used in the log window.
outgoing_fallback_to_ascii
0 or 1. The outgoing encoding of a message will use 7bit
US-ASCII whenever it is suitable for the message
content, ignoring the "Outgoing encoding" option unless
it is necessary. Turning this option off forces the
user-defined encoding to be used, regardless of message
content. Default is 1, turned on.
primary_paste_unselects
0 or 1. Causes the primary buffer to be cleared and the
insertion point to be repositioned when the middle mouse
button is used for pasting text. Default is 0, turned
off.
respect_flowed_format
0 or 1. Respect format=flowed on text/plain message
parts. This will cause some mails to have long lines,
but will fix some URLs that would otherwise be wrapped.
Default is 0, turned off.
save_parts_readwrite
Saves temporary files when opening attachment with write
bit set.
skip_ssl_cert_check
Disables the verification of SSL certificates.
statusbar_update_step
Update stepping in progress bars.
stripes_color_offset
Specify the value to use when creating alternately
coloured lines in GtkTreeView components. The smaller
the value, the less visible the difference in the
alternating colours of the lines.
textview_cursor_visible
Display the cursor in the message view.
thread_by_subject_max_age
Number of days to include a message in a thread when
using "Thread using subject in addition to standard
headers".
toolbar_detachable
Show handles in the toolbars.
two_line_vertical
Spread message list information over two lines when
using the three column layout.
unsafe_ssl_certs
Allows Claws to remember multiple SSL certificates for a
given server/port. This is disabled by default.
use_networkmanager
Use NetworkManager to switch offline automatically. This
is enabled by default.
use_stripes_everywhere
Enable alternately coloured lines in GtkTreeView
components.
use_stripes_in_summaries
Enable alternately coloured lines in the main window
GtkTreeView components, (Folder List and Message List).
The only useful way to use this option is to set it to 0
when use_stripes_everywhere is set to 1.
utf8_instead_of_locale_for_broken_mail
Use UTF-8 encoding for broken mails instead of current
locale.
warn_dnd
Display a confirmation dialogue on drag 'n' drop of
folders.
__________________________________________________________
6.9. Autofaces
Claws Mail allows setting the Face and X-Face headers directly
from files, either globally for all defined accounts or on a
per-account basis. These files must be placed in the
~/.claws-mail/autofaces/ directory.
If they exist, the global Face and/or X-Face headers for all
accounts are taken from the face and/or xface files
respectively. In a similar manner, Face and/or X-Face headers
for a specific account can be provided by face.accountname
and/or xface.accountname, where accountname is the name of the
account you want this header to be associated with.
If the name of the account contains characters which may be
unsuitable for the underlying filesystem (including spaces)
these are replaced by underscores ("_") when searching for the
autofaces of that account. For example, if your account is
called "<My Mail>", the name for the X-Face filename for that
account would be ~/.claws-mail/autofaces/xface._My_Mail_. Be
aware that this feature doesn't check the content of the files,
or for duplication of headers, (most mailers, including Claws
Mail, will ignore duplicates and display the last one only).
__________________________________________________________
7. Extending Claws Mail
7.1. Provided plugins
Claws Mail' capabilities are extended by plugins. It comes with
the plugins listed below included, all of which are built
automatically if the required libraries are present.
Plugins are installed in $PREFIX/lib/claws-mail/plugins/ and
have a suffix of ".so". To load a plugin go to
"Configuration/Plugins" and click the "Load Plugin" button.
Select the plugin that you want and click "Open" button.
If you don't find the plugin you're looking for, it is possible
that your Operating System distribution provides it in a
separate package. In this case, search for the plugin in your
package manager.
Bogofilter
The Bogofilter plugin comes with two major features:
The ability to scan incoming mail received from a POP,
IMAP or LOCAL account using Bogofilter. It can
optionally delete mail identified as spam or save it to
a designated folder. Mail scanning can be turned off.
The ability for users to teach Bogofilter to recognise
spam or ham. You can train Bogofilter by marking
messages as spam or ham from the Message List contextual
menu, or using the relevant toolbar button in the main
window or the message window (see
"Configuration/Preferences/Toolbars"). Messages marked
as spam are optionally saved to a designated folder.
Plugin preferences can be found in
"Configuration/Preferences/Plugins/Bogofilter".
Bogofilter's advantage over Spamassassin is its speed.
Bogofilter is available from
http://bogofilter.sourceforge.net/.
Dillo HTML Viewer
Enables the viewing of HTML messages using the Dillo web
browser, version 0.7.0 or newer. It uses Dillo's --local
option by default for safe browsing. Preferences can be
found in "/Configuration/Preferences/Plugins/Dillo
Browser". Dillo is available from http://www.dillo.org/.
PGP/Core, PGP/Inline and PGP/MIME
Handles PGP signed and/or encrypted mails. You can
decrypt mails, verify signatures or sign and encrypt
your own mails. Uses GnuPG/GPGME,
ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/gpgme/.
SpamAssassin
The SpamAssassin plugin comes with two major features:
The ability to scan incoming mail received from a POP,
IMAP or LOCAL account using SpamAssassin. It can
optionally delete mail identified as spam or save it to
a designated folder. Mail scanning can be turned off,
which is useful if your email is scanned on your server.
The ability for users to teach SpamAssassin to recognise
spam or ham. You can train SpamAssassin by marking
messages as spam or ham from the Message List contextual
menu, or using the relevant toolbar button in the main
window or the message window (see
"Configuration/Preferences/Toolbars"). Messages marked
as spam are optionally saved to a designated folder.
Plugin preferences can be found in
"Configuration/Preferences/Plugins/SpamAssassin".
SpamAssassin's advantage over Bogofilter is that it's
not only a bayesian filter, but it also performs various
local and network tests to determine spaminess.
SpamAssassin is available from
http://spamassassin.apache.org/. Version 3.1.x or higher
is required to use the learning feature in TCP mode.
Trayicon
Places an icon in the system tray that indicates whether
you have any new mail. A tooltip also shows the current
new, unread and total number of messages.
__________________________________________________________
7.2. More plugins
Other plugins have been written too, which are available as
separate downloads. At the time of this writing, there are a
number of plugins available at
http://www.claws-mail.org/plugins.php:
Acpi Notifier
Enables new mail notification via the LEDs found on some
laptops like Acer, Asus, Fujitsu and IBM laptops.
AttachWarner
Reminds you about possibly forgotten attachments. Checks
for common expressions found when attaching a file and
warns you if no attachment was added to the mail you're
sending.
AttRemover
Allows you to remove attachments from emails.
CacheSaver
Saves the caches every 60 seconds (or user-defined
period). It helps avoiding the loss of metadata if your
computer (or Claws Mail!) crashes. (NOTE: using this
plugin can slow down Claws Mail.)
Fetchinfo
Inserts headers containing some download information,
like UIDL, Claws Mail' account name, POP server, user ID
and retrieval time.
GtkHtml2 Viewer
Like Dillo, enables the viewing of HTML messages, but in
a nicer way (antialiased fonts).
Mail Archiver
Enables folders and subfolders to be archived in several
different formats.
mailMBOX
Handles mailboxes in MBox format.
NewMail
Writes a msg header summary to a log file, (Default:
~/Mail/NewLog), on arrival of new mail after sorting.
Notification
Provides various ways to notify the user of new and
unread email.
PDF Viewer
Provides direct rendering of PDF and PostScript
attachments in the Claws Mail message view. It also
allows browsing, zooming and displaying detailed
information about such attachments.
Perl
Intended to extend the filtering possibilities of Claws
Mail. It provides a Perl interface to Claws Mail'
filtering mechanism, allowing the use of full Perl power
in email filters.
RSSyl
Allows you to read your favorite newsfeeds in Claws. RSS
1.0, 2.0 and Atom feeds are currently supported.
S/MIME
Handles S/MIME signed and/or encrypted mails. You can
decrypt mails, verify signatures or sign and encrypt
your own mails. Uses GnuPG/GPGME and GpgSM,
ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/gpgme/.
SpamReport
This plugin reports spam to various places. Currently
only spam-signal.fr and spamcop.net are supported.
SynCE
Assists in keeping the address book of a Windows CE
device (Pocket PC, iPAQ, Smartphone, etc.) in sync with
Claws Mail' address book, with respect to email
addresses.
vCalendar
Enables vCalendar message handling like that produced by
Evolution or Outlook, and Webcal subscriptions.
If you're a developer, writing a plugin to extend Claws Mail'
capabilities is probably the best and easiest solution. We will
provide hosting to your code, and will be glad to answer your
questions in the mailing-list or on the IRC channels, #claws on
Freenode or IRCnet.
__________________________________________________________
7.3. Network access from the plugins
Some of the external plugins, for example RSSyl, vCalendar or
GtkHtml Viewer, need Internet access for their operations
(retrieving feeds in the case of RSSyl or vCalendar, and
fetching images in the case of GtkHtml Viewer). These plugins
use the Curl library. Hence, if your Internet access is
restricted by a proxy, you will need to tell libCurl to use
this proxy. This is done by setting an environment variable,
http_proxy. For example,
http_proxy=http://user:passwd@myproxy.example.com:8080 will
tell libCurl to connect to port 8080 of the machine
myproxy.example.com, with the user "user" and password "passwd"
to connect to the Internet.
You can either set this variable before starting Claws Mail, by
using for example
http_proxy=http://user:passwd@myproxy.example.com:8080
claws-mail, or set it in your ~/.bashrc file (or your shell
equivalent), by adding the following line[1]: export
http_proxy=http://user:passwd@myproxy.example.com:8080 (you'll
have to reconnect to have it taken into account).
__________________________________________________________
A. The Claws Mail FAQ
A.1. What are the differences between Claws Mail and Sylpheed?
Claws Mail is a fork of Sylpheed, therefore you will find that
it has all the features that Sylpheed has and a lot more
besides. It also includes some modified dialogues to enhance
usability. Further information can be found at
http://www.claws-mail.org/features.php.
__________________________________________________________
A.2. Does Claws Mail allow me to write HTML styled messages?
No. A discussion has gone on around 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 email.
__________________________________________________________
A.3. How can I submit patches, report bugs, and talk about Claws Mail
with others?
Patches should be submitted via our Bugzilla,
http://www.thewildbeast.co.uk/claws-mail/bugzilla/, but please
follow the patch guidelines at
http://www.claws-mail.org/devel.php.
Bug reports should be submitted at our Bugzilla,
http://www.thewildbeast.co.uk/claws-mail/bugzilla/.
To talk to others, you should join the Claws Mail users'
mailing list. Details can be found at
http://www.claws-mail.org/MLs.php.
__________________________________________________________
A.4. Does Claws Mail have an anti-spam feature?
Yes. It has a SpamAssassin and a Bogofilter plugin. You can
find details of it on the Extending Claws Mail chapter.
You can also use other spam filters via the "Filtering" and
"Actions" features. Instructions on how to use other antispam
filters with Claws Mail can be found as a Bogofilter-based
example on the Bogofilter FAQ.
__________________________________________________________
A.5. Does Claws Mail support Return Receipts?
Yes. To request a Return Receipt use "Options/Request Return
Receipt" in the Compose window. When you receive a message that
requests a Return Receipt a notification area is shown just
above the message view. You can either use the "Send receipt"
button, or ignore the request - no receipts are sent
automatically.
If you do not ever want to send Return Receipts then you can
use the option "Never send Return Receipts" in the
"Configuration/Preferences/Mail Handling/Sending" page.
__________________________________________________________
A.6. How can I make Claws Mail notify me when new mail arrives?
Go to "Configuration/Preferences", in the "Mail
Handling/Receiving" section, use the settings for "Run command"
in the "After receiving new mail" frame. Alternatively, use the
Trayicon plugin.
__________________________________________________________
A.7. Why are special characters (e.g. umlauts) not displayed
correctly?
In most cases, this is caused by emails with broken encodings.
You can try to force it using the "View/Character Encoding"
submenu.
__________________________________________________________
A.8. Can I quote just a section of the original message when
replying?
Yes, select the section of the message that you want to quote
and use "Reply".
__________________________________________________________
A.9. Where can I find the answers to more FAQs about Claws Mail?
An enlarged, user-contributed FAQ can be found on the Claws
Mail website, http://www.claws-mail.org/faq/
__________________________________________________________
B. Default keyboard shortcuts
B.1. Motivations and general conventions
Although Claws Mail is a graphical application and can mainly
be commanded with your mouse, it also requires the frequent use
of the keyboard. Composing a mail is the most common of the
tasks that require the use of the keyboard. For people who
write a lot of mails, having to move hands from keyboard to
mouse greatly reduces productivity, so Claws Mail provides
keyboard shortcuts to allow faster operation.
This not only benefits power users by providing keyboard
alternatives and keyboard navigation, it also enables people
with disabilities, (who may not be able to properly control a
pointing device), to use Claws Mail.
The most general convention is the Escape key. Focused
dialogues or windows can be closed by hitting the Esc key.
There are other key combinations which are assigned by default
to menu items. We won't list these here, as they are already
shown on the righthand side of the menus themselves, so you can
easily learn them with usage. Furthermore, if you don't like
them, these shortcuts can be changed on the fly by focusing on
the menu item and pressing the desired key combination.
In addition to these shortcuts there are others which vary from
window to window, which are summarised in the following
sections.
__________________________________________________________
B.2. Main window
Shortcut
Ctrl+p Print...
Ctrl+w Work offline
Ctrl+Shift+s Synchronise folders
Ctrl+s Save as...
Ctrl+q Exit
Ctrl+c Copy
Ctrl+a Select all
Ctrl+f Find in current message...
Shift+Ctrl+f Search folder...
Ctrl+t Toggle threaded display
n Go to next mail in Message List. The Down arrow does the
same.
p Go to previous mail. The Up arrow is a synonym.
Shift+n Go to next unread mail.
Shift+p Go to previous unread mail.
g Go to other folder...
Ctrl+u Show message source
Ctrl+h Show all message headers
v Toggles the message view panel visibility. When invisible,
Message List expands itself to fill the full window height and
more summary lines are displayed.
/ Positions the cursor on the Quicksearch field, also opening
the Quicksearch panel if needed.
Ctrl+Alt+u Update summary
Ctrl+i Get mail from current account
Shift+Ctrl+i Get mail from all accounts
Ctrl+m Compose a new message
Ctrl+r Reply
Shift+Ctrl+r Reply to all
Ctrl+l Reply to mailing list
Ctrl+Alt+f Forward message
Ctrl+o Move...
Shift+Ctrl+o Copy...
Ctrl+d Move to trash
Shift+d Empty all Trash folders
Shift+* Mark message
u Unmark message
Shift+! Mark message as unread
Shift+Ctrl+a Open address book
x Execute
Shift+Ctrl+l Open log window
__________________________________________________________
B.3. Compose window
Shortcut
Ctrl+Return Send
Shift+Ctrl+s Send later
Ctrl+m Attach file
Ctrl+i Insert file
Ctrl+g Insert signature
Ctrl+s Save
Ctrl+w Close
Ctrl+z Undo
Ctrl+y Redo
Ctrl+x Cut
Ctrl+c Copy
Ctrl+v Paste
Ctrl+a Select all
Ctrl+b Move a character backward
Ctrl+f Move a character forward
Ctrl+e Move to end of line
Ctrl+p Move a previous line
Ctrl+n Move a next line
Ctrl+h Delete a character backward
Ctrl+d Delete a character forward
Ctrl+u Delete line
Ctrl+k Delete to end of line
Ctrl+l Wrap current paragraph
Ctrl+Alt+l Wrap all long lines
Shift+Ctrl+l Toggle auto wrapping
Shift+Ctrl+x Edit with external editor
Shift+Ctrl+a Open address book
__________________________________________________________
C. Acknowledgements
The Claws Mail manual was written by:
* Colin Leroy
* Paul Mangan
* Ricardo Mones
* Tristan Chabredier
Thanks to:
* Hiroyuki Yamamoto for starting Sylpheed, and all past and
current contributors.
* Caroline, Clo and Silvia for their tolerance wrt long
hacking sessions!
* Norman Walsh, for his invaluable technical help and
assistance with the PDF version of this manual
* ...
__________________________________________________________
D. Glossary
A
Account
An account represents an identity within Claws Mail. As
such only one email address is associated with each
account. However, the number of accounts you can setup
is unlimited.
Action (filtering/processing rules)
An action is something that is performed on a message
when it matches the rule conditions. A typical action is
moving the message to a particular folder. See also
Condition (filtering/processing rules) .
Actions
Actions are user-defined commands that can be applied to
a message, or part of a message, using a special syntax.
They are presented to the user in a customisable menu.
Address book
Storage for names, mail addresses and custom user
attributes. Also provides access to LDAP servers and
vCard files.
ASCII
American Standard Code for Information Interchange. A
standard Character encoding using 7 bit. It's defined as
an Internet standard in RFC 20.
Attachment
Additional file(s) included with a mail message. Some
attachments can be displayed by Claws Mail, others
require external programs. Plugins can provide
additional functions for attachments.
C
Character encoding
A map between written symbols, like letters and other
symbols, and the numbers used to represent them inside
the computer. The most well-known character encoding is
probably ASCII , but it has been superseded by others,
such as UTF-8 .
Compose
Create new a message text or a reply to a received mail
in the Compose window.
Condition (filtering/processing rules)
The prerequisites that a mail message must fulfil in
order for the rule's action to be executed. See also
Action (filtering/processing rules) .
D
Digital signature (GPG)
A piece of data obtained from merging a message and a
cryptographic key which ensures message authorship, in a
similar way that a hand-written signature does in a
document. This piece of data is sent with the m essage
so the recipient can verify its validity.
E
Encryption (GPG)
Scrambling a message with a cryptographic key so that
only the recipient and ownwer of the key password can
unscramble it for reading.
F
Face
A more modern implementation of the X-Face , it's a
coloured image (48x48 pixels) included in the message
headers.
Filtering rule
A Rule applied to incoming messages. Filtering rules can
be also applied manually to the contents of any folder.
Folder
A folder is the primary message container. Folders can
be local or remote, but they are managed in a uniform
way by Claws Mail.
Forward
To send a copy of a received mail to another recipient,
optionally adding your own message.
H
Headers
Machine readable lines which form the first part of a
mail message. The purpose of headers varies; Typical
headers are From and To which state the sender and
recipient of the message, others are used by the mail
system. Some headers are optional and are used to
provide additional information, such as X-Face or Face .
HTML
Acronym for Hyper-Text Markup Language. It was the
standard language to encode web pages in the beginning
of the WWW . Some mail clients use this language to
encode the textual body of mails in order to craft
special effects to text at the cost of multiplying the
message size several times. HTML mail is also widely
used by spammers to send Spam .
I
IMAP4
Internet Messaging Access Protocol (version 4). A
protocol for accessing email on a remote server from a
local client. All messages are stored in the remote
server.
Immediate execution
When the "Execute immediately when moving or deleting
messages" option is used, operations performed on
messages, (like deletions or movements), are performed
immediately. If the option is turned off, all operations
performed on messages by the user are only carried out
when the "Execute" button is pressed.
ISP
Internet Service Provider. A company which provides
Internet access to its customers. In the dialup access
age these were the big telephony companies, with the
arrival of broadband access the number of companies and
types of services offered has grown exponentially.
L
LDAP
Lightweight Directory Access Protocol. A protocol for
accessing information directories such as organisations,
individuals, phone numbers, and addresses.
LDIF
LDAP Data Interchange Format. A text file format widely
used for moving data between LDAP servers and/or other
programs.
Local mbox file
A local mailbox spool file in MBox format.
Log window
A special window which records protocol operations in
detail that are performed by Claws Mail. It's a useful
tool for debugging.
M
Mailbox
The root folder of the folder hierarchy.
Maildir
A mailbox format in which all mail is kept in separate
files. Maildir++ is an extension to the maildir format.
Mailing-List
Electronic mailing-lists are a special usage of email
that allows for widespread distribution of information
to many Internet users. They often take the form of
discussion lists, like the Claws Mail users' list, where
a subscriber uses the mailing-list to send messages to
all the other subscribers, who may answer in similar
fashion.
Mark (message)
A tag that can be set on a message by the user in order
to draw attention to the message. Marks are shown in the
Mark column of the Message List.
MBox
A mailbox format in which all mail is concatenated and
stored in a single file. The mbox format supported by
Claws Mail is mboxrd.
Message
A message is the basic piece of information handled by
Claws Mail. A message is usually an email message, which
is stored in MH format on disk. Other kinds of messages
(and storage formats) can be handled through Plugins .
MH
A mailbox format in which all mail is kept in separate
files. This is the default mailbox format used by Claws
Mail.
MIME
Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions. Internet
standards for representing binary data in ASCII text
format, Headers encoding and Attachment s.
N
NNTP
Network News Transfer Protocol. The protocol used to
post, distribute, and retrieve USENET messages, also
called news articles or simply news for short.
Newsgroups
A set of hierarchical partitions of USENET messages on a
News server . The NNTP protocol allows the user to
subscribe to one or more newsgroups. New messages posted
to the subscribed groups are automatically downloaded on
connection.
News server
Server which provides access to USENET messages in
Newsgroups through the NNTP protocol.
P
PDF
Portable Document Format. An open binary file format
developed by Adobe Systems to allow interchanging of
printable documents between different platforms.
Inherits some features from PostScript but not being a
language made it easier to process, especially on
desktop computers.
PGP Inline
Digital signing method which includes the signature data
in the message body. Currently deprecated in favour of
PGP MIME .
PGP MIME
Digital signing method which includes the signature data
as a separate MIME Attachment .
Plugins
External modules which can be loaded and used by Claws
Mail to extend its functionality. Technically speaking
these modules are shared libraries which can register
one or several functions to be called by Claws Mail when
something interesting is being done.
POP3
Post Office Protocol (version 3). A protocol for
retrieving email from a remote server. Messages can be
automatically removed from server after downloading.
PostScript
Page description language primarily used and understood
by printing devices to generate its output. Was
developed by Adobe Systems and is now a widely used
standard in the printing industry. As it's a fully
featured interpreted language it requires some
processing power to deal with.
Privacy (GPG)
Privacy provides methods for both signing and encrypting
mail messages you send and also for verifying and
decrypting signed and encrypted messages that you
receive.
Processing rule
A Rule or set of rules belonging to a folder which are
executed on entering the folder.
Q
Queue
Temporary storage for messages which are waiting to be
sent, either because they couldn't be sent due a network
failure or because the user requested them to be sent
later.
Quick Search
A powerful way to search for messages using almost any
criteria that you can think of.
Quotation
When replying to a message the user will often include a
quoted section of that message to provide the context.
The quoted section is shown by the prepending of a
common character, usually ">".
R
Recursive (Quick Search)
A recursive Quick Search will also search in all
subfolders of the selected folder.
Redirect
To send a copy of a received mail in its original form
to another recipient.
Reply
Answer to a received message. As verb also the act of
answering a message.
ROT-13
Simple encryption method used since Romans age, which
uses an alphabet rotated thirteen positions to encode
each letter of the message. Used sometimes to hide funny
messages on mails.
Rule
Logical structure comprised of one or more conditions
(see Condition (filtering/processing rules) ) and one or
more associated actions (see Action
(filtering/processing rules) ). Rules are used for
filtering mail messages.
S
SMTP
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. A protocol for sending
email to servers.
SMTP server
A server which receives mail messages from other hosts
and/or sends mail messages to other hosts using the SMTP
protocol.
Source (message)
The full text of a message as it is transmitted over the
network. This includes all headers, message body and
encoded attachments if present.
Spam
Junk mail, unsolicited commercial emails.
Spell checking
Automatic verification of spelling while typing or after
composition has finished.
SSL
Secure Sockets Layer. A protocol used to encrypt and
protect data sent over a network.
SSL certificate
A certificate installed on a secure server that is used
for identification.
STARTTLS
STARTTLS (Start Transport Layer Security) is a command
used to initiate a secure connection between two servers
using SSL .
Sticky (Quick Search)
When the sticky option is set on Quick Search the search
terms are not cleared when changing folders.
Synchronisation (folder)
Making the contents of a local folder mirror those of an
equivalent remote folder in the associated mail server.
T
TCP
Transmission Control Protocol. The main protocol used in
the Internet. Allows media-independent reliable
connections between two endpoints and is supported by
all modern Operating Systems in use.
Themes
Image sets for changing the appearance of buttons,
folders and other graphical elements of Claws Mail.
Thread (messages)
A set of messages loosely relating to each other.
Toolbars
Sets of buttons arranged horizontally which provide
access to all commonly used functions. Toolbars in Claws
Mail can be customised.
U
UIDL
Unique IDentification Listing. A POP3 command which
allows single message handling by asigning a unique
identifier for each message.
URL
Uniform Resource Locator. A naming scheme for objects
(usually files) in a multi-protocol networked
environment like current Internet. For example, this is
the one of the Claws Mail home page:
http://www.claws-mail.org.
USENET
User's Network. A bulletin board system of discussion
groups, often called Newsgroups .
UTF-8
8-bit Unicode Transformation Format. A variable length
character encoding capable of representing any universal
character. An Internet standard defined in RFC 3629.
V
vCard
File format standard for Personal Data Interchange, it
can hold information such as address, phone numbers,
etc., much like the information usually found in a
business card. They are commonly found attached to mail
messages.
W
Wrapping
Restructuring of the message text based on a
user-defined maximum number of characters per line.
Wrapping ensures that paragraphs are justified, which
means that they are aligned to the left and right
margins.
WWW
World Wide Web, the hyperlinked network of web pages
across the Internet.
X
X-Face
Specially coded black and white image (48x48 pixels)
included in the message headers. Capable mailers like
Claws Mail and others can decode and show it alongside
the message text. Although they are not unique, they can
help to quickly identify the message sender. See also
Face .
__________________________________________________________
E. Gnu General Public License
See http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html.
Notes
[1]
Other shells may have diferent syntaxes, check your shell's
manual page.
